Flower and Leaf Charm

With all the summer pictures of our garden you might think I'm not making any art, but nothing could be further from the truth. I'm working on 2 quilts and also making a collection of fabric collages of which more in the future but I've also managed to finish my 5 charms for the Flower and Leaf Charm swap on the Alphastamps Yahoo group. If you are interested you can still sign up till the 15th July but you have to be a member of this group to participate in the swap.

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to do for the swap but finally came up with the idea of using one of the Alphastamps fabric sheets (Sleeping Beauty #1) to make a stuffed inchie, in which I punched a hole, and combining it with a flower or butterfly bead + a leaf (both of course available from Alphastamps) I joined this with a large copper jumpring to a small length of copper chain to form a charm with another jumpring at the other side of the chain so that the whole thing can be hung easily from a bracelet.

Of course I made one to keep myself and have attached it already to a ready-made copper charm bracelet (also from Alphastamps). Can't wait to see what charms come back for this swap to add to this bracelet!

Foxgloves

Don't worry, I'll be back to the roses before too long but I wanted to capture the foxgloves in our courtyard before the rain, which is apparently on it's way, destroys the effect. I know I've shown you a view before but I think they are now at their very peak, with all the flowers out.

We have a show like this every other year as foxgloves are biennial, so one year leaves grow but no flower while the next year the flowers arrive in all their glory. Which means that one year we have a few foxgloves while the next year we have a veritable forest of them. Some of them are taller than I and of course they are surrounded by bees and it's quite hard to capture the flowers in pictures without insects.

The floxglove is considered to be the flower of the fairy and you can just see how they would love to shelter in the bells but on the other side this flower is very poisonous indeed (as you can tell by its Latin name Digitalis which is a heart medicine but can be fatal in the wrong dose). In many an Agatha Christie detective the victim is killed by digitalis extract (usually administed in sherry!) which was easily produced at home, using the foxglove flowers. In the language of flowers foxgloves stand for Insincerity.

I have been re-reading many of my flower books with poems, folktales and histories of flowers and I found another lovely poem, this time celebrating the foxglove:

Deep, deep in wizardry

All the foxglove belfries stand.

Should they startle over the land,

None would know what bells they be.

Never any wind can ring them,

Nor the great black bees that swing them -

Every crimson bell, down slanted,

Is so utterly enchanted.

(Mary Webb, 1882-1927)

Roses

And finally high summer is here as far as I'm concerned. The weather is wonderful, warm and sunny and:

the first roses are flowering and I'm floating from one to the other in the garden (just like a butterfly)

I'm going to share as many as I can with you and also want to share the following poem which is very old (written 600 B.C.) but has the same feeling about roses as I have:

If Jove would give the leafy bowers

A queen for all their world of flowers,

The rose would be the choice of Jove,

And blush the queen of every grove.

Sweetest child of weeping morning,

Gem, the breast of earth adorning,

Eye of flow'rets, glow of lawns,

Bud of beauty, nursed by dawns;

Soft the soul of love it breathes,

Cypria's brow with magic wreathes;

And to Zephyr's wild caresses,

Diffuses all its verdant tresses,

Till glowing with the wanton's play,

It blushes a diviner ray.

(Sappho of Lesbos)

Have I got news for you!

This is not just about me giving you news but is also the name of the quilt about which I'm telling you today. I should have done it earlier as the little quilt (8 x 12") was on exhibition at the Swiss Quilt Festival earlier this month but somehow I overlooked this and was only reminded when I received the CD of all the quilts in the exhibition Textile News today. This exhibition will be travelling around Europe for the next two years or so and you can read all about it on the website of the organizer here. There is an English language option (the original site is in German). I also participated in their exhibition last year, called Textile Experiments, that's still travelling at the moment.

The theme for this year's quilts was Textile News and for some reason this made me think immediately of the British satirical TV program Have I got news for you! and that in turn brought to mind the many ways news can be revealed: letters, a bill, gossip in the pub, taking off a mask. Revelations can also come by music, time, telephone, while in the bath, newspaper article etc. And then there is the ultimat bad news in the shape of the grim reaper? I combined as much as I could in this small work and you will recognize the techniques used from my Journal Quilt Flames of Passion which was selected for exhibition in Houston last year and is still travelling through the U.S.

Materials used are: 100% cotton commercial fabrics, wadding, Mistyfuse, beads, sequins, charms.
Techniques used: raw-edge applique, machine quilting, hand embroidery and beading

A field of flowers

Not much text today but instead more pictures of the glories in our garden. The weather remains unbelievably lovely and sunny and we can't quite believe our luck. I'm continually wondering around to find more beautiful flowers to share with you, and here are some of my favourites today!

Even more Generosity ATCs

I've spend this morning on the road, to the library, the Post Office and to visit the Borders Bookshop and Hobbycraft, which made for a great though expensive outing! But while sitting in the sun when I came back, I did finish four more ATCs for my Generosity ATC project. There are 2 on show above and the other 2 are much in the same spirit. The photos are my own, the transparencies are from Artchix Studio and you'll recognize the background from my June Journal Quilt.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, click on the Generosity ATC label at the very bottom of this blog!

A Cause for Celebration

Today my quilt Tod und Leben returned from the National Quilt Championships at Sandown with its 2 Rozettes. I had already been told that these were won but I somehow only believe it once I can see them with my own two eyes. The quilt won a Special Merit Rozette as well as the Award for Computer Design and has thus become one of my most successful quilts ever as it had previously received a prize at the European Quilt Championships in May 2008 as well as the prize for Best Handwork Manship at the World Quilt Show, in August 2008.

It was inspired by a small detail on a Klimt painting of the same name (Tod und Leben which means Death and Life in English) and also by a horizontal window in the house of one of my neighbours (an architect). I almost always make vertical quilts but the window opened my eyes to the possibility of a horizontal one. The quilt was designed using the Electric Quilt 6 computer program, that I used to draw both the block and then to design the quilt.

My latest copy of the Where Women Create magazine was waiting for me when I arrived home too (published by Stampington and I get my copy here in the U.K. from Rainbow Silks) and it almost seemed like the introduction written by Jo Packham was meant for me today and I quote:

"Creative women don't often do what is defined as the average or the norm. We are often beyond happy, giddy with an artistic success, or have our hearts broken in frustration and disappointment. To creative spirits, highs are dizzying, blinding and exhilirating and lows can be deep, dark and seemingly insurmountable".

Yes, indeed!! I have learned to live with my lows and also to realize that eventually my mood will turn upwards again and I have even learned that music, my garden, and animals help to turn the corner. I have also come to accept that I have to have the lows in order to obtain the highs. And the highs are definitely worth suffering the lows!

Today really was a high, even the sun was shining and as you can see the foxgloves are now out and form a delightful forest of colour in our courtyard. I sat in the sun and enjoyed my high to the very fullest extend possible. Gorgeous!!