weekly round up 2

I wrote a long post yesterday, saved it for publication this morning. It vanished into the ether overnight. Frustrating. I know I should write in Word and then copy into the blog, but I don’t. Until today.

I am going to summarise what I was going to share with you. Little stitching has happened. I am fired up with thoughts and ideas but I am contenting myself with jotting ideas down, sketching things, taking photos. Looking with new eyes.

I have several books to browse- three by Jan Beaney, or Jan in combination with Jean Littlejohn-The Art of the Needle, Stitches-new approaches and Creative embroidery. Add to that Paper, Metal & Stitch by Maggie Grey and I am in image and colour heaven. I have the Jan Messant book to get me thinking, and a library book on the Bayeux tapestry and my horizons feel well stretched.

Indeed, further stretched than I at first imagined. My internet browsing this week has a real highlight from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It is an interactive guide to making and designing mudcloths. These are the textiles made by artists in Mali and the site is atmospheric-wonderful African voices singing and instructive and allows you to “make” your own mudcloth. I love interactive sites like this.

Lainie’s Red Thread studio provided me with a lovely link this week. There were some stunning images of more African cloths at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, on her post here. Lainie’s site is a goldmine of textile research.

Several of you will know the site Sri Threads, specialising in Japanese Folk Textiles. Last week there was a post featuring a magnificent kantha cloth. I will be studying kantha techniques and motifs for my course soon, and this was a real bonus.

And finally, my blog find of the week was Rough Around The Edges. Robin is taking part in Jude’s What Iffing and uses the blog to post her work for this, as well as for some of her artwork.

There will be stitching soon, I hope. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend.