Spoonflower design challenge

 Last week's Spoonflower design challenge was 'passementerie' which means an ornamental edging or trimming made of braid, cord, beading or metallic thread. I decided to do a brightly coloured version of this, including pompom trim, tassels and braided trim, hand-drawn and in a stripe layout.

I decided to match the colour palette to my pompom design.

These prints could be used as wallpaper in a craft room.

Big bold designs that add colour to any space.

Pearpod

I came across the aptly-named Pearpod recently during a trip to Frome to visit my dear friend Roz. We went out for dinner at the lovely Rye Bakery which is situated in an old church with high ceilings and a warm atmosphere. Next to our table was a magnificent woven structure which created a fabulous nest-like space to sit in. It turns out that the artist who created this is Ellen Mulcrone, a Frome-based artist who began building these structures on her art foundation degree at Falmouth.

The structure was commissioned by Rye Bakery as a space for mothers to breast feed their babies in public, hence its name, Breast Nest. As well as being used as a space for breast feeding, it has also been used for holding classes in such as ukulele-playing and story telling.

Ellen's pod-making stems from a desire to celebrate our introverted nature and feels that weaving creates space, allowing her thoughts to wander and her hands and body to dance as she sculpts. She is drawn to to the use of willow due to its flexibility, richness of colour and abundant qualities. She also creates this fabulous pear pod which can be hanging or free-standing, indoors or out.

For something smaller and more manageable, check out these beautiful copper placements inspired by traditional tea mats found in Japan. In these, Ellen wanted to capture the essence of delicacy in woven form and apply it to a modern material.

Check out Ellen's website to see more works as well as see images of her design process as well as a fabulous film of her creating her pieces in her studio.

Sunday craftiness

Having my nieces to stay is always good fun and a great excuse to get crafty. This time we decided to make decoupage letters. I managed to find wooden letters for each of them at the local craft store, as well as some pretty patterned tissue paper especially for decoupage, although this is expensive!!! You can just as easily use regular tissue and we had a lovely selection of colours to choose from as well as some stick-on shapes. All you need is a cheap craft brush and some PVA glue and then you can get sticking. The best approach is to tear your tissue into small pieces and then spread glue on a small section of the letter with your brush, stick down your tissue, and then spread more glue over the top, to make it nice and flat and to give it a sheen once it dries. Work methodically around the letter in this way and then leave it to dry!

We spread all the items out on the kitchen table and had a nice selection to choose from, including glitter shapes, furry balls and patterned Japanese washi tape.

Delilah went for shades of blue and pink and added shiny shapes and polka dot hearts.

The tissue changes to a lovely shade of purple when the pink and blue overlap.

 Florence decided to cover hers in the pretty floral decoupage paper.

We had a lovely selection of bright tissue paper colours to choose from.

The finished result!

Looming Marvelous!

Yesterday I had my first ever weaving class! It was held in Seibu department store in Ikebukero, on a floor devoted almost entirely to crafty things of everything you can imagine. My friend Chikage had organised the class and we trotted along at 10.30 to learn the gentle art of weaving. The teacher was lovely, but couldn't speak English, so Chikage kindly interpreted and once we'd been shown the ropes, as it were, we were off, weaving away to the piped muzak of the department store, vaguely aware of the shoppers pootling around us.The loom was very compact and I felt like a giant as I sat hunched over it - in fact I think I have cultivated my hunch a little more since doing the class!
We had an amazing choice of yarns and were allowed to use whatever we wanted. First of all the yarn is loaded onto a bobbin and this would become the weft.
The bobbin is then slotted into the shuttle, and the shuttle is passed through the warp threads that are pulled tight and attached to the loom. It all sounds rather complicated and there was definitely some heavy concentration going on, mainly because you had to use your feet as well as your hands to alternate the warp threads. The hand/foot co-rdintaion took some time to master, but it was very therapeutic once a rhythm was established.
There were some wonderful coloured wools to choose from, but I went for the more subdued tones.


I'm rather pleased with the finished result!