a full weekend!

Uffington is finished, I now have to decide what he should be surrounded by - perhaps this vivid blue silk, found in a flea market for very little.

and we have had ad weekend full of people, we who are normally very quiet.

Neil's niece and her man, on their way from here to there, stopped by overnight; a fleeting pleasure as they had to be gone early the next day. Then followed, good friends and their two children, who had come to sample the delights of the area. They stayed the following night, so we had the delight of childish stage whispering early in the morning, the two youngsters full of unsuppressable excitement at being somewhere different overnight; two young souls used to having their eager questions answered. I found myself on the floor wiht them, pencils out, drawing elephants, cups and hot air balloons. A delight to be with, full of interest in everything, full of delight in being alive, eager and thoroughly exhausting! They loved the dell where the badgers dwell, and played with the cats on the lawn. It was their mother's birthday and she was wistful, being far from her family in France. I felt for her. I hope these brought her some balm

we are really enjoying the garden at the moment. 

Thinking of Jude who is in the storm across the indigo sea, I am conscious of being in a very good place.

Stitchfest 2011

 Today I drove over to the South of England Showground at Ardingly to attend my first Embroiderer's Guild event, Stitchfest 2011.

Regional Challenge stands

This was the event for which Beezeyeview was created and here he is amongst the rest of the East Sussex bees, twirling in front of their blue sky with little pots with each of their names sitting below. The regional challenge was Flight, look out for Elvis coming at you head on

and Hip-Bee with her cool flower power pants

It was really enjoyable and quite busy, despite, or perhaps because of the rain falling outside. Downstairs there was a goodly range of traders to tempt, while the exhibits and food were upstairs. I was very struck by how much variety creative people can come up with, given a one word theme and lots of skill and imagination. There were quite a few bee and butterfly themed displays, but also kites, balloons, witches on broomsticks, a prehistoric panorama, a marvelous airship flight complete with ticket office and attendees and some beautiful and very skillful pieces of individual embroidery around the theme. I got the impression that some stands had been put together specially for the challenge, while others may have included work done in the past by branch members, brought together for this particular theme, though I may be wrong here.

Here is a selection of just some of the things I enjoyed

East Surrey's garden trellis with butterflies

Kites

several of which really repaid a closer look

Butterflies fluttering about

Croydon Branch display

more butterflies, these from Maidstone 

some close ups of the high quality and lovely presentation of some of the embroidery there

One of the several very lovely things on the Chichester display

and finally the airship from Tunbridge Wells complete with fairground ride, Mystic Meg, tea and cakes and some very fine costumes

Did I buy anything? How could I not. There were shimmering silks on the Silk Route stand - so I chose their Summer Leaves silk pack for a hanging in the very early planning stage. Another stall had some delicious hand dyed silk and threads from Neredah McCarthy, so I chose a couple more bits to go with what I had already, along with some of her threads in rich deep shades. There were stalls with sumptuous thread in every colour, thickness and texture that you could possible want, so I also bought some of the Wildflowers Collection by Caron in deep greens. These are exactly what I was looking for to bring some dark tones into Uffington, who is now back on track, having been put aside for the bee. Here he is, with colour gradually flowing in from all sides,as he gallops across the Downs, pulling the rising sun behind him as the night stars fade, a little bit of early morning cloud on the horizon, some shadows at his feet.

Still plenty more to do, but I am really enjoying how he's coming along, evolving with each stitch as the story grows.

stitchin' done

I am happy with the stitching on Norfolk Furrows. Having put it by for a while to distance myself from it, always a good thing with creative projects, I added a bit more and now, I feel there is enough. Just got to work out what to do next - bind with fabric and put a hanging loop or, as the Man suggests, get it framed like a picture. I tend towards the binding and looping - if you know what I mean!

Meanwhile I've been adding to Uffington, bit by bit, but have now put him to one side as well to work on bees; well, a bee. 

The homework I came home with from the embroidery group is to create a themed bee from the pattern above, with wings for goodness sake! All will be hung at the regional show day in Ardingly so I thought I'd give it a go. No harm in trying, but it's the first time I've done anything like it - it's a 3D object! 

The theme for the "challenge" was flight so they chose bees as an interpretation. There were several very fine bees at the meeting on Saturday. I can't hope to match them, but we'll see how my "bee's eye view" goes. Still in it's "pupal" stage one might say, I'll keep you posted. 

These  are little bee bodies, with the fabrics evoking the landscape the bee buzzes across. I want to couch some silver and gold threads across to represent the little bee paths that other bees see when they fly across the landscape

This is the side I've started stitching - I take photographs of things as I'm working, partly to show you, but also so I can see how things are going. You can see more in a photograph, it puts a distance between you and the object, rather like turning an almost finished painting to the wall for a while, so you can see it clearly when you look again. The open space on the left is where the head is supposed to attach.

I was glad I did this. I made the classic hurry'ers mistake, forgetting to turn the template for the mirrored half. Much turning over and marking of new outlines ensued. Then I had to patch some bits in at the tail end to create enough space for the template to turn round in, then I stitched the outline again, having done it once the other way round ..... then I put the template on to take this photograph and realised I've sewn the wrong outline in the fore end of the body!

Back to the sewing machine!

The head - not even started yet, will be in bee colours, with a bee face and beaded eyes .. bzzzzzzz

White horse grows

I had a strange glitch with Blogger that has resulted in a repost of my first Uffington post.
Here is the update - his land of dreams is expanding - time to go talk with him some more!

On white horses

Having finished Elephant, I wanted to try something similar and found inspiration from our oldest chalk figure, the Uffington White Horse. He gallops his way across mystical realms in Oxfordshire; you can read more about his history here. I've not visited him myself, but we have our own chalk figure in Sussex, the Long Man of Wilmington who watches over us from the wonderful Downs. I have climbed up the very steep hill to look down on him from above and salute him with affection each time I drive past on the A27. His presence is one of my earliest memories of coming to Sussex from Petersfield, when Dad was still alive and driving us to visit Ganna, "quick, look, look to your right, there's the Long Man". There is something very evocative about these ancient chalk figures, speaking to us of human activity and the desire to mark our landscape and advertise our presence. Something evocative too about the Downs themselves which roll and roll across the south of England, part of my own life's background, scoured by sheep and carolled by sky larks.

My white horse has been edited and added to, partly to make it possible to use applique to create his image, he is very slender in his original form, and partly because I sensed he wanted to feel the wind in his mane and tail. I am hoping he is pleased with my additions and will enjoy a little landscape growing in stitch around him.