No slow stitch Sunday for me this weekend

Yet again the sewing things have been put aside while I continue my (probably temporary) obsession with gelli printing. I did manage an hour on the allotment, the rain holding off, and am harvesting the first of this year's blackberries.

My cultivated blackberries are slightly earlier than the hedgerow ones, I've noticed, and larger too. Sadly the raspberries are finished, which is a shame, but the apple trees are laden with fruit. My brother passed along a punnet of ripe plums from his allotment, which are sweet and juicy, perfect for snacking on.

Apart from allotmenting, I've been playing with the gelli printing again, though it's been frustrating today. All the colours I mixed seemed to come out muddy. I couldn't get the bright colours I craved. But I have had success with finding things to make marks in the paint and add texture to my prints.

Joining the bubble wrap and poppy seed heads are buttons, nuts and bolts, cotton reels, shells and bottle tops. I've also been cutting circles out of clear plastic document wallets.

I spread paint on the gelli pad, then drop on to the surface my plastic circles, then apply the paper to obtain my print. You get these lovely big loose circles. Sometimes I let them overlap, creating more odd little shapes between the circles.

The prints in these photos will have more layers added, so they're very much works-in-progress. But here's one that I really like -

I'm will have to put the paints away for a few days this week, and crack on with my quilting. There are Christmas presents I've got in mind to make, and I need to estimate how much time they'll take and write down a schedule for sewing them. Otherwise August will roll on, and before you know it we'll be into autumn and I'll not even have threaded a needle!

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Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to. Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate. Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden. I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday. I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different. There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city. It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery. There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery. My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...

Another week's flown by ...

Saturday's rolled around again, and it's not been the most eventful of days. Cleaning and hoovering, a walk to the shops to buy groceries, an hour on the allotment, then home to do some odd tasks in the garden. The strawberry plants are sending out runners, so I've been dealing with those, plus deadheading the perennial sunflowers, and cutting back the gone-over flowers on the sage and marjoram. I'm sad to see those blooms gone as the bees loved them. This afternoon I spent a few hours finishing 'Dawnlands' by Philippa Gregory. It's a really good book, a page turner where you care about the characters and want to be reassured everything's going to work out well for them. Plus you become enraged about the corruption of the so-called justice system at the time of the Stuart kings and queens, about transportation of prisoners to the West Indies, and about the vile nature of the sugar trade in the 1600s and the vast profits made from it....

Folding a zine and an alternative use for a bank card

Hello again, and excuse me while I scratch my insect bites. I don't know what it is, but at this time of year I'm invariably itching like crazy because I've been bitten by bugs. It seems to coincide with blackberry-picking season, but whether that's purely coincidental I don't know. Whatever's biting me, I'm obviously a tasty morsel in their world! I might try using a highly scented oil like Tea Tree oil, see if that deters them. Anyway, let's get on to more pleasant matters - I'm having a go at making a zine style booklet. Because I didn't have any paper large enough, I joined together two A3 sheets of sketchpad paper, using torn pieces of book pages for the joining. I thought that'd look less noticeable than packing tape or similar. Having chosen my colour scheme I used acrylic paint and an unwanted plastic bank card to apply the paint. Plus a stencil, sponge and modelling paste. Applying paint with a ATM card wa...

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