Magggie's Patches & a winner

First, welcome to my new followers. I'd love to visit but I can't see a link, if you comment I'll be able to ;)

Second, I was one of the winners of Maggie's book giveaway! I chose Dale Rollerson's 'Let's play with Sari Ribbon' which is a sweet little booklet giving you ideas of how to use sari ribbon. In with the book, Maggie had very kindly sent some of her own precious flat woollen tapes for me to use on my 'applied yarns' samples, which she was enjoying on my blog. I was delighted, thank you Maggie!

So this week I was struggling with making this....or that, my usual weekly problem ( my list is so long, I know I'm not alone there!) I had already decided the next sample from Maggie's book 'stitches, straps & layers' would be Patches.

such exciting little things! Maggie uses them as borders & edges around her pieces, horizontally or vertically. The basic way to make them is with pelmet Vilene, bondaweb & crumpled tissue painted with walnut ink. You could use card, felt, painted papers or book pages & tea bags for dyeing instead of ink. Anything, really.

I made an A4 ish page & cut into the above strips. This gave me straight edges of course except for the one on the far right, above as I had a small piece of vilene already cut. I like both, but the cut edge means you have to paint or tea bag dye each edge...which is fine, worth it to get rid of the white. You can stitch or burn the edges (I've wanted to get my lighter out for ages!) Then you can use embossed foil, little pieces of painted papers, fabric, beads.

From left to right (top pic) I used a rusted razor blade, sweet foil with stitched raffia, painted paper from my drawer, newspaper on a tiny patch with other found paper edged in metallic paint, & finally, a copper roof tile nail - they don't make them like they used to! with verdigris colored gimp french knots , the extended kind. Couldn't believe it when I thought to myself, bet I haven't got any verdigris colored thread anywhere,  to match that wonderful nail - got these when  Jetta, who I gardened for, had her roof reslated. I was picking up these little beauties for weeks ;) -  & there it was in my ribbon & thread drawer! Kind of a 'gimp' sort of thing I think.

Well, I loved making these & decided to make a little book, inspired by Maggies 'The Little Book of Walnut Ink' which she was using to demonstrate how to use the patches on the cover. Beautiful, I really want to look inside! I found one entry on google, just one delicious page!

This is only about postcard size, with 3 signatures made with brown paper used on the worktop, handmade paper & book pages. (there's lots of work out there using book pages - finally we can use the pages we tore out of reclaimed, altered in some way, books) I bound it using phamphlet stitch, the only one I can do with ease.

Inside front cover - you can't quite see copper & gold highlights. I made the patches on the front cover quite symmetrical, for me & used book pages as well as the painted paper from my stash.

The writing on the back is from the dressmaking tissue paper I used. I'll put this in my Etsy shop next week - I only manage to add heart cards for Valentine's day last week. Well, we need a heart all year, really ;) Oh & did I mention I got my first sale? Thank you....so exciting!!!!

I showed the DH my book & patches, expecting him to say 'what're you going to use them for?' or 'they're a bit hairy' but no, he said it looked like an ancient book, reminded him of the Book of Kells. Well, you can't get better than that!

If I thought I was tired last week

the week just gone was even more exhausting with my Eldest & my 'dil' staying for a week & my parents coming all the way up from Oxford for half a week (staying at the local hotel for a treat) impressive at nearly 82, the Middlest to & from work in the bar at the same local hotel & the Youngest home for study leave but exams finished. Oh & B&B & (some) visitors to the studio. Phew! At least it's a worthy tiredness & it was wonderful seeing them all together & having a celebratory meal in that local bar for the engagement. She went down "150%" with her prospective Grandparentsinlaw. So that was good!

Showed my parents the lovely blue iris in my little bog garden. The light Northerly sent them in to the warm after not too long.

We saw an eagle over the garden....honestly! We were so excited thwt we left the binoculars out in the rain overnight. Ooops.

The book above is what I've been practicing for, something for the Eldest & my 'dil' to keep all their wedding ideas in. Well, they'll need to over 2 years! My Dad said the lace made him think of knickers & my Mum couldn't understand what you'd need a wedding book for. Hmmmm I didn't bother to show them the Beryl Taylor book 'Mixed Media Explorations' which I've been pouring over! I've just thought, I'd like to call my exhibition in September "An Exploration in Mixed Media & Textiles" , the title came to me a while ago.That's not being too copycat of Beryl's book is it? I am exploring after all, we all are....

Anyway, I didn't finish the book in time to hand it over so I showed it to them & will post it. They loved it, specially the E & J fme & beaded on there & the velvet heart & the little paper flowers punched with a punch just like Beryls! Well, similar. I tried to use fabric paper but too stiff. The painted paper & chocolate paper mix looks sweet but too delicate. Similar colors to the other books but the 'dil's fave colors are turquoise blue & plum - she even got a new jacket walking boots & socks for the climb up a Munroe they all did (well, I had to keep house& studio didn't I!) & they all had plum on them - why didn't they have those beautiful colors when I was being kitted out for the mountains?!

Need to go to work soon, but as they all left, one by one this morning in a great flurry of activity I went into the garden & heard the Great Tits from the box on the shed & knew they'd fledged. I'd ome out to photograph the book so crept about, listening.

There were at least 5 & I caught 4 of them in this photo. The parents were about with bugs in their beeks & they were talking, chattering.

So fluffy! After the wonderful week I've had I couldn't help but have at least one tear in each eye!

Looking forward to visiting everybody again, & my new followers! Any comments from this post (if they can get thru - just email me if not!) I'll add to last weeks comments for the draw next weekend.