The Textile Art Forum residential week at Ballyduggan, Co. Down.

This was my second year participating in a week's residential with The Textile Art Forum in Ballyduggan, Co. Down (www.thetextileartforum.blogspot.com).
Four of us attended this year to explore the theme "Stitching the Legend".
I am initially creating some pieces with tree silhouettes against various sky backdrops, taking inspiration from the legend of "Eithne the fairy bride" which is associated with the hill of Knockma in Belclare Co. Galway near where I live.
The work each of us will produce on this theme which we have started during our residential week will be exhibited firstly in Ballyjamesduff Museum in June 2011 and will then tour to other venues through to 2012.
This residential week though relaxing is also very productive for me and I have come home with an initial signature piece completed and 3 others in various stages of progress (see above) and lots of ideas for further work....so I'm fired up and hoping to keep up the momentum!

Textile Art Forum Update

Day 4 of the Textile Art Forum residential at Ballyduggan Cottages.

On Thursday I took a walk up 'The Old Town Trail' at the back of the cottages. The 360 degree view from the top was lovely looking down on the lake, back towards the Mourne mountains and on to Downpatrick. I walked back through the Sally Gardens.

Then back to work stitching!

The photo above shows the variety of muted shades of 'Colour-catchers' I have collected from the household laundry and just have to include in stitch projects because they are so nice!

Textile Art Forum Update

Day 3 of the Textile Art Forum residential at Ballyduggan Cottages:

'Buttermilk Cottage' was full of nooks and crannies. This photo was taken from the hallway, through a little window into the kitchen and across to the outside window. Jan's tulips from Amsterdam sit in a jug on the windowsill. The cottage windows were so nice I took loads of photos into and out of them!

I spent the day experimenting with different media (Clear gloss, clear semi-gloss and white matte precoat Inkaid's) painted onto different fabrics (bleached cotton, unbleached cotton and linen). Once these were totally dry I printed onto them using a standard inkjet printer. I then washed the pieces to see how 'fast' the colours remained. This was a good day's work as I learned a lot about the media, the fabric and the printer so that I will know what to use depending on the effect I hope to achieve for future design-work.

The photo above was a sunset over the stone-walls on Inisheer in 2009.

The photo I printed here is of the stone walls at home in the snow with thorny brambles.

The photo here is of my stone walls again at sunrise.

And here they are again at sunset with the sun shining through the walls.

Textile Art Forum Update

Day 2 of Textile Art Forum Residential at Ballyduggan Cottages:

I wanted to work on creating individual 'stones' instead of embroidering/quilting onto a whole-cloth piece as I've been doing lately. I hoped to create a more airy, lighter piece.

I used some 'colour-catcher' swatches I have been saving from my household laundry (because I hate to throw them out as they always seem to be such nice random dyed pieces!). They varied in colour from grey and blue to pink but they reminded me of my stone-walls at home when the sun hits them at different times of the day.

I joined them together by stitching through the spaces between them on water-soluble fabric.

Jan donated some light pink organza for the background, which was just what I needed for the 'floaty' effect I hoped to achieve. I added a foil moon and used the bare branches of the hedge outside my window as the inspiration for my stitched patterns.

The whole piece went into the bath to dissolve the water-soluble fabric as you can see in the photo above! Then I hung it out to dry on the line before lunch!

I like the way it floated about in the breeze, with the lovely stone cottage in the background for the photograph.

This was a satisfying experimental piece to work on.

Textile Art Forum Update

Ah! What could be better than a whole week in a beautiful cottage in Downpatrick, near a lake, looking towards the snow-capped Mourne Mountains with nothing to do but eat, sleep, share ideas and be creative? Maybe 2 weeks of the same!

I'm just back from my residential week with the Textile Art Forum, where 4 of us lived and worked towards creating new work for our upcoming exhibition 'Make it New'. The work will be exhibited first at this year's Lakeland Quilt Festival in the museum at Ballyjamesduff, Co. Cavan in September, 2010 (http://www.cavanmuseum.ie/).

I have loads of lovely photos from my week at Ballyduggan Cottages (http://www.ballyduggan.com/) and I will post them over the coming days and weeks here and on the http://www.textileartforum.blogspot.com/ page. The photo above (thanks Jan for catching me absorbed in my work!) shows my lovely little workspace at the cottage beside the fireplace.

Right now, I have a lot of catching up to do at home! I'd better start by putting away all the stuff I brought with me to Downpatrick!