The Year That Was

Have been back from Europe for a few days now and we spent Christmas at my brothers' in Melbourne and am now settling back in at home after having unpacked things ( I brought back some of the things I seemed to have needed when I lived in France for 2010) plus inevitably books plus  a wonderfully inspirational book on Calligraphy  by Denise Lach a gift from my friend Christine Moulin. However I need to get back to work- there  are many things to make and who knows what the new year will bring?

I hope everyone had a wonderful festive season however you celebrated it!

The first  photo is of a  cot quilt I made for a friend- the instructions were bright and with an elephant with the trunk up. I really  liked the colour combination of the poppy quilt I made earlier as a cot quilt so decided to use the same combination of fabric ( and yes I had dyed some extra pieces). The  hardest part was getting the grey for the elephant dyed  the right colour and not be too green for the background and to contrast nicely with the blue of the sky.

We really did enjoy our stay in Venice and I can share more images if you are interested, but I also want to propose and idea for my blog for the next year. I take many photos like so many people do these days, but how to translate these photos into textile or even how to assess whether it's a good photo for translation- whether it meets certain design criteria. Every photo I take is not a good photo - so i wanted to be critical about the photos I take whether they are any good for translation or simply stand alone, and i wanted to discuss a little my decision making process for choosing what I think works. And of course there are many reasons to take a photo- to remember something you saw and liked, to remember textures, to remember an idea, to remember colour combinations.

The photo above is a small boating quay in a walled village near Lazise on Lago di Garda- the day was grey and still and cold and the scene was quiet- it was still fairly early and only local people were out and about.

 When we were in Lyon checking out the Musee des Tissus  we travelled on a tram, and found this graffitti on the wall, walking to the tram stop- another sentinelle perhaps? Her face seemed very sweet somehow.The textile collection in the Musee was fabulous ( we did not get to the decorative arts side of it as we ran out of time) and I loved the exhibition Icone de Mode- the dresses and cloaks used to adorn parade madonnas. No photographs were allowed but some of the dresses and cloaks were wonderfully embroidered and the method of display was also very evocative- it definitely gave me some ideas for sentinelle adornment!Oh and what joy to find some printed fabrics designed by Raoul Dufy!

I have also been  travelling to places to  see whether they will be  good for the 2013 Creative Arts Safaris tour particularly in the south of France. We stayed in Aix-en-Provence and of course visited Cezanne's atelier which they said had been left exactly in the state he had left it in in 1906- the outside is rather charming and the light inside was really good with a very large north facing window and south facing windows. Unfortunately we were not allowed to photograph inside.The garden seems to have grown somewhat since 1906.

And last but not least of course I went to see my friends in le Triadou and went for a walk in the shadow of Pic St Loup- it just never seems to be the same and the grape vines had been pruned and were all bare with not a sign of life.

The rosehips on the wild roses added a lovely  accent of colour and  a pretty grey and cold landscape.