Sew Somerset & More Jigsaw Pieces Received

Yesterday I received my complimentary copy of the new Stampington publication - Sew Somerset. I love the very bright and cheerful looking cover! A couple of pieces I sent in for a Somerset Studio theme were selected for this magazine (which is more like a book than a magazine really) which was really very lucky and a nice surprise too!! My pieces are based on sewing dried leaves to simple collages.

The magazine is going to be produced twice yearly and judging from the first issue it is going to be a terrific magazine with a range of articles and styles. I think it will appeal to a lot of people as there are so many of us who enjoy including sewing in mixed media projects (although it is not all mixed media - there are some art quilts and fabric articles as well).

I have also received the next two pieces in the Jigsaw swap - these ones are by the incredible Lexie Grady who always makes beautiful, highly detailed work and who is an absolute master of working small/tiny. I don't even want to send my pieces to her after seeing these wonderful creations on my theme of Vintage Dressmaking. The scan is a bit blurry due to the three dimensional aspects of the pieces but you can easily see how fabulous and classy they are.

I'm still beading and stitching my postcards and hoping to get to the various weekly challenge themes tomorrow night: Pirates for Think Monday - Think ATC; Autumn Colours for Wednesday Stamper, Vacation for Gothic Arches and Rust for Inchie Artists...

Stuff!

First off I am sharing a photo of a beautiful scarf my friend Adam G in Melbourne knitted for me. Not only is it the most beautiful shade of green (a favourite colour of mine!), it is lovely and long and very warm. It also has a lovely long fringe which I think makes a scarf feel really decadent and luxurious. The scarf arrived in the mail last week and today I wore it to work - it passed all scarf tests - it was warm but not itchy (I am allergic to lots of fibres including most wool and a lot of synthetics), it looked great with my black clothes (what I mostly wear) and to top it all off, the lower portion survived - unharmed - the drive to work hanging out of the bottom of the car door (lucky I am only a very short distance from work and I didn't drive through any puddles!).

Note to myself for future reference - check whereabouts of all extraneous extremities before closing the car door. P.S. If you write scarf more than three times in quick succession it looks really really weird by the third one!

And now to a creation of my own - while I grew up in a household (or was it just the era???) where we made clothes and learnt to sew, I am very new to fabric surface embellishment of the experimental type. It has become a real addiction in recent months and I am gradually trying new things and adding to my repertoire. The scan above is of a fabric postcard that I made on the weekend for an exchange with Purple Missus - it is a sandwich of blue felt, random scrap threads and snippets of organza with a layer of blue organza stitched randomly over the top. On the lower half I have then added a pink organza triangle again randomly stitched. I have used a wood burning tool to burn holes in the pink layer and then added sequins and seed beads to embellish it. I have backed it with painted heavy weight lutrador. I love the resulting colours and although I was planning to try a lot more techniques I decided this was enough on this one - plus I didn't want to wreck it by that "one last thing"!

I received the latest Somerset Studio magazine today and found my two tags in the Expressions section - they are coated in beeswax, another addictive technique - I love the smell - maybe because my name (Deborah) is Hebrew for "bee"???? I really love the way they (SS) photograph artwork! On a good news note, I also got a couple of emails late last week to let me know that I have a couple of items in "Sew Somerset", a new biannual publication which comes out in October, so that is a real thrill. Mind you, I got very excited a couple of years back when I was told that a piece I had made using a transfer of a photo of my maternal grandparents was going to be in Somerset Wedding but I don't think it actually got in there as I never heard anymore (and I certainly didn't get a complimentary copy).

So now I am off to attend to domestic stuff (food primarily) and then I am going to "progress" a set of six fabric postcards that I thought were due at the end of July. It turns out I lost a month somewhere along the way. Thankfully I am not alone...