Shorter days and Longer nights

I started October in a really productive mode, I worked steadily on the idea mentioned in my last blog with the upholstery fabric and newspaper combination which resulted in the work below.

I mono printed a pattern onto black fabric and then cut out the desired shapes inspired by work from my sketch book. I then appliqued these shaped strips onto the painted newspaper background with a satin stitch. Black leather geometric shapes were added to enhance the design. I loved the feeling of sewing into the leather and it's texture worked well with the background of rough painted paper, smooth leather and gold foil. For a strong contrast I then added a small red rectangle and matching red  bias binding to complete. As I work in this manner i.e. without a plan, I am slowly beginning to relax a bit and  let serendipity take control.

 I also set myself a challenge to try drawing everyday of course this went on quite well for a few days and two examples can be seen above BUT this then fizzled to nothing as life and family required my time. In spite of all this I have finished a quilt started almost a year ago for my second granddaughter Phoebe, so that is an accomplishment especially since I was making it with her other grandmother Carole, who gave it to me a long long time ago to complete my bit. Phoebe is almost one now and we started it before she was born.

During the past month I did manage to visit the brilliant and very popular exhibition of Vermeer's women at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, I  visited  it on two occasions with Melissa and it was an absolute treat. Having only seen most of this work in books it was really enlightening to see the real thing. They were a lot smaller than I had imagined but exquisitely painted. While there I

took in another exhibition which was not as popular but very interesting to me because I am always interested in African Artifacts, it was about African headrests which looked very uncomfortable to sleep on but had strong design elements and interesting textures and I am hoping to use these as possible inspiration in the future and will visit it again.

Finally I would like to say a Thank you, to the kind blogger Dawn Lang from Canada  who informed me about some trouble she was having while viewing my blog, I was able to sort it out quickly and would not have known otherwise.