Open Houses at Brighton Arts Festival

Well it's that time of year again when Brighton is busy and the festival's in full swing. I like to go to a few Open Houses to see what local artists are up to... and sit in some of their lovely gardens having a coffee and a cake or two! Many of the gardens are amazing - it gives me garden envy sometimes - if only I had the time and energy to make my garden look so good!

 

 I've been trying out my new Instagram filters, as you can see from the photos... if only this was my garden!

Below is the work of Janet Brooke - she does these lovely colourful lino prints. She's exhibiting at the Open Houses in Brighton.

 

Her work is all about Brighton - Brighton pubs, Brighton houses and rooftops, old shop fronts etc...some of it's disappearing as the old shops and pubs close down.. The colours she uses are very appealing - some of them are almost like Japanese woodblock prints.

After a quick soya latte...

 

...I went to have a look around BIP (Brighton Printmaking Open Access Workshops). I'd love to do a course in printmaking sometime - if I had the spare time and the spare cash! One of the people who teaches there is Helen Brown - this is her work below:

 It really reminds me of walking out on the Sussex Downs - the rolling hills and colours of the fields - its very evocative of a breezy summer day :-)

I'd love to learn properly how to do these multi-coloured lino prints and you can do courses at BIP on it. I've done some lino printing before, but just very simple black and white ones - nothing as sophisticated as the work of Janet Brooke and Helen Brown!

Blue Hydrangeas Cross Stitch

I've finally finished sewing the blue Hydrangeas cross-stitch design from Veronique Enginger's book 'L'Herbier du Jardin au Point de Croix'... it's only taken me well over a year to stitch it... well, the shades of blue were very similar, so that's my excuse!

My stitching

Cover of book by Veronique Enginger

Close up of my stitching

 Now I'm wondering what to do with it.. I've got some lovely fabrics in shades of blues so I was thinking I might make it into a cushion with a patchwork style border. Patchwork seems to be quite fashionable lately and well I can't say I'm an expert but I could make a simple square border to frame my stitching..a bit like the patchwork quilts below..

Blue and white quilt

Blue hydrangeas are such lovely flowers - the blue is quite unusual in flowers and you can't go wrong with a blue and white colour scheme :-)

Close up of Hydrangea flowers

Blue and white china

These are my fabrics that I'm thinking of using for the patchwork border:

Shades of blue

I found the fabric below in a charity shop and was thinking I could maybe incorporate this into the patchwork - it's a tablecloth and it's got little printed crosses on it that imitate cross-stitch. It's very sweet - but maybe I'll save it for something else, I'm not sure yet....I might stick to a totally blue and white colour scheme, I'll see how it works out!

Imitation cross-stitch on old tablecloth

One last lovely blue and white image... :-)

Hyacinths and blue and white china

My new 'Sampler Book'

I've got a new book coming out in a few weeks time - it's called a 'Cross Stitch Sampler Book'. It features 15 different designs which can be stitched as a whole sampler design, or you can pick out small motifs to stitch.

Front cover

Back cover

I've been working on this book for some time now, so it's great to see it finally finished and on sale soon!

New Facebook page..

Well I've finally got around to setting up a Facebook page about my embroidery designs... after much procrastination and faffing about! To have a look click on the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/susanbatesembroidery

Here's a screenshot of  some of the things that have featured on my page:

 

Designs for a new book...

I've been working on a new book which will contain 15 different cross-stitch sampler designs.
The motifs can be stitched as individual motifs, or you can stitch the whole design.

Here's one of the sets of designs from thebook, featuring flowers, birds, blossoms, treehouses and nests..

 

The book includes many different motifs and themes. It'll be on sale soon, hopefully!

It's been a while....

It's been a while since I last posted anything... well I have been busy doing some sewing... but mainly been busy doing my cross-stitch designing.

But here are some of my new stitching things that I've been making recently...when I find the time..!

The main body of this owl is from a vintage dress, which looks like it's from the 60's or 70's. It inspired me to make a very colourful owl in yellow, orange, purple and green.

























I also bought this old tea towel whilst on holiday in Wales a while back - it's made of lovely linen fabric and reminds me of some of the places I visited on my holiday. I love the style of the illustration and the colour palette is really nice :-)

 

Well eventually I got around to my plan of making it into a cushion cover! I made an 'envelope' style cover - you just fold it over to the size you want it to be and stitch up the sides - really easy :-)

Here's the 2 cushions together:

 

















I also started a patchwork bed cover, which just grew and grew.. now its large enough to cover a double bed :-) Again the colours were inspired by some vintage fabric that I bought which was had a turquoise background and yellow roses, (a bit 50's style, I thought..) The bright turquoise inspired me to make it in really strong colours, e.g. blues, purples and pinks etc...

 
Now I've just got to quilt it on the sewing machine and add a border, then it's finished, hooray!

It's the first 'proper' quilt I've made, so it's all a bit 'trial and error' - but hopefully I'll like it when its finished!

Pacman cuteness!

 I found this chart on the internet for a Pacman design, helpfully already charted up! So I decided to stitch it up as a cross stitch design and make it into a little purse or maybe a make-up bag..

 It's stitched using 2 strands of stranded cotton on 14 count aida fabric.

This is how it looked stitched up and made into a little purse, cute! :-)

After I made this purse I made up my own design using the same motifs but adding in the 'game over' lettering and some scores. Below is the design stitched up. It's a tapestry made using wool, (Anchor wool I think), and stitched on 10 count tapestry canvas.

It looks wonky as that's what happens when you stitch it up. I'll block it to make it go back to it's proper rectangular shape. Then I'm going to make it into a pencil case, as it's larger than the previous purse.

I might get around to making a cushion design too eventually....something like this!