The sun is back!

We finally have the weather we are intended to ahe in France at this time of the year, so I'm a bit reluctant to be inside the studio.Nevertheless, my large fabric piece is at last finished, using all my dye samples from Sydney and Denmark.Now I am working on a pattern for a garment to make with the cloth.

Somehow, the colours look washed out here-maybe too much sun shining on it-but they are the usual rusts and woads.The cloth fills a whole table in the studio, so there is plenty to play with.As I don't want to waste an inch, it may be a case of one of those garments which just have two armholes cut into a rectangle and then draped artfully around the body-can I do draped artfully, I wonder? Does anyone out there have rough measurements as to where the armholes go?

sketchbook pages and the start of a new cloth.

This is the Botanic gardens page from my Sydney journal,which is,surprisingly,now full.I made the book before leaving France and have had to make another from the carrier bags I have collected so far in my shopping trips.

I have already started to fill the pages and the unexpected pockets which can be semi-secret-really appeals to me!

This is the back-old French cloth and running stitch.

This is the front,with two pieces of the wedding dress stitched in and ready to dye much later.Hopefully the whole thing will tell a story which we can read much later and enjoy.More pieces have already been added,more after Christmas.

More current work

I'm busy working on a collected cloth made up of individual Nuno felt samples, which is growing rather more slowly than my blue one.This is white and cream but the chair I draped it on is black, hence it isn't as pure white in this picture.I am going to print on some areas ,but it has been so cold and wet today, I haven't even been inclined to walk down the garden to my studio.I really need to be able to look at it unexpectedly, to decide what happens next.It's nice to make something which grows almost without me thinking-sort of like a meditation, but there finally comes a time when thought has to come into it!