Not the Tank Engine Thomas

We're off to Dundee for a couple of days soon as John is to be godfather to our nephew Thomas. He's a lovely baby as you can see:-

I wanted to make something a little different as a gift, so, using the photograph as reference, I hand-stitched this portrait.

Once it's framed, I think his parents will be quite pleased. And yes, I know it's green. Black looked too harsh so, after auditioning umpteen different coloured threads, I decided that I liked green the best. Or maybe I'm just odd .......

Water, water, everywhere ...

Back in this post, I mentioned I was going on a two day course with Jean Littlejohn at Broadland Arts Centre. I finally got round to taking some photos of the work I did there, and some other bits around the same "Waterscapes" theme that I've done subsequently.

First, a couple of (bad) watercolour pencil sketches of reflections/patterns in a river:-

And a painting of swimming pool reflections that I did with Koh-i-Noor dye-based watercolours, left to dry and then drawn on with a cocktail stick dipped in bleach.

Here are some of the small pieces I've stitched:-

So definitely water everywhere but none that can be drunk!

Vision East

It's been a bit quiet on this blog of late but I have been busy stitching as you will see.

Last Saturday was the Embroiderers' Guild Eastern Regional Day at Letchworth and you could have knocked me down with a feather when I was given this!

It took a big nudge from Dilys, our Branch Chair, before I realised they'd called out my name and to get me out of my seat to receive my certificate from Anthea Godfrey, judge and national EG Chair, and have my photo taken.

The full title of the competition was "Vision East - from Aldeburgh to the Orient - any dream will do" so I put my thinking cap on and came up with my entry entitled "East London Vision" which you can see below.

It's a double layered wall hanging 80cms by 40 cms - the upper, free floating,'dreamy' layer is made of hand dyed, appliqued and embroidered silk chiffon and is based on a map of the Olympic park in East London - the vision of the British team who were successful in getting the Olympic bid awarded to London for 2012. The under layer is the part of the Lee Valley where the Olympic park is situated and is hand embroidered on 'fabric' constructed from free machine embroidered layers of torn, hand dyed scrim, fibres and threads on sticky water soluble film. The 'medals' represent the hopes held by all the athletes of winning a medal there.

Here are a couple of close ups:-

Not only did I get a certificate, but all these as well:-

I still haven't got over the shock .......