Sketchbook pages and some new work....

Here are a few pages from my sketchbook, finished at home after my museum drawing day. I don't spend time on sketchbooks, often my ideas are a very rough sketch which I then use for a lino cut; so it was a change to spend a little more time on these pages.

 

Following on from my love of hares my new work is 3D lino cuts, each a one off featuring a hare.

This one is Hare, the lurker, the looker to the side. 

They are great fun to do, working smaller makes a change for me.

Here's Hare, the swift as wind at Wimpole Hall. 

The titles are taken from a Middle English poem The Names of the Hare which may have come from a Shropshire family. It was apparently designed as a ritual to be recited by the hunter on his first encountering a hare; and the 77 different names were supposed, on their recital, to deliver it into the hunter's power. It's 64 lines long, so I can't help thinking that by the time the hunter has recited it, the hare would be long gone!

Creative juices flowing

Barney's quilt is well under way, I decided on modern log cabin squares, making up 2 squares of the same fabrics. It was going to be 18 squares but I had so many lovely fabrics that I ended up with 28! I've chosen picture fabrics for the middles; animals, birds, letters, numbers and boats plus plain black and red and black and red 'graphic' fabrics (lines and spots). At this stage I just made up squares I liked with no definite plan for the finished quilt. Machining the pieces in strips makes it quite a speedy process.

lots of lovely squares to play with!

One day when I needed a break from the quilt I played with some screen printed fabics to make a couple of sketch book covers. I cut out and fused the birds and suns onto the tree fabric and then quilted it....

  

....and made it into a cover, quilted in black and yellow; here's the front...

...and the back. A bit of fun.

While on a roll, I'd wondered what to do with a piece of linen I'd printed with  my modern trees. I made it into a simply quilted cover for my new small sketchbook that goes with me in my handbag.

With the small piece left over I made a needle case, again edged with black shiny bias binding.