All wrapped up

It seems like summer is already here on the West Coast of Scotland, so what better time to try something new than when the sun is shining and all is right with the world? (OK maybe that last bit isn't strictly true, but there are certainly more smiles around here when the sun comes out!)

So, welcome to another New to Me link party from sunny Scotland :)

 This month I went on a very muddy New to Me photo walk!

I unveiled my latest Endeavourers mini quilt, complete with New to Me bead embellishments :)

and I have made my first attempt at machine-wrapped cord.

I first saw this being done at the Paper quilting workshop I attended a few months ago and resolved to have a go at it then. Originally I hoped to add some to my Shoreline embroidery but just never got around to it.

If you are reading this wondering what on earth I am on about, the cords in the demonstration piece from the workshop above were made by stitching over cords several times with a machine zigzag stitch to create a tightly bound shaded cord for embellishment.

My first attempt was definitely not successful but then I dropped the feed dogs!

I started off with a length of bare cord, which I think might have been a bag handle at one time.

Then using these threads alternately in the needle and a light turquoise thread in the bobbin, I stitched up and down the length of the cord with a zigzag stitch. I struggled to pull the cord evenly through the machine, so the colours bunched in places but to my mind that only added to the effect.

As you can see the use of the different colours gives a variegated effect to the finished cord. I hope to use the finished cord in another seaside themed embroidery hence the colour choices.

So that is my New to Me for May, what have you been up to this month? If you have tried something new or been somewhere new then I would love to have you link up and join the party.

As ever the link party will remain open until the end of the month, so if you have tried out something new but not yet blogged about it you still have plenty of time left. Who knows perhaps your something new will inspire a fellow blogger to give a new technique a go?

An InLinkz Link-up

Mud, mud glorious mud!

Yesterday evening I went on my first Photowalk with my Camera Club. During the day it was touch and go whether it would be on or not as the weather was wet and miserable. The sun, however, eventually made an appearance so we were good to go.

We met up at a local Marina, so I expected, not unreasonably I felt (!), that the walk would be mostly on paved paths and roads and dressed accordingly.

How wrong I was!! There was mud up to the eyeballs on several parts of the route, some of which we navigated more than once as the walk leader decided that we needed to double back on ourselves at least twice. Can you tell that I was not a happy bunny???

There were a couple of themes for the walk, namely Contrast, Texture and Motion. I completely ignored the Motion theme and just concentrated on Contrast and Texture. I am always on the lookout for inspiration for my embroidery so kept an eye out for anything that would help in that regard too.

When I wasn't dodging puddles or trying to avoid the ankle deep mud, I came across lots of this wonderful lichen clinging on to the tree trunks. I am itching to work on an embroidery piece inspired by these :)

These frilly fungi are just begging to be recreated in textiles aren't they? I love the blowsy nature of them, don't you?

There were lots of ferns around, busy unfurling themselves from their tight buds. The next theme for the Endeavourers Quilt group is spirals, so I had to take a photo of this beauty for inspiration too.

Our walk took us away from the woods and along the shoreline of the Firth of Clyde (on a paved path at last!) where the contrast between the rocks, leafy plants and the rusty looking seaweed caught my eye.

It wasn't the only thing to catch my eye as this German cruise liner sailed serenely by us heading off to Belfast after its' passengers had enjoyed their day dodging the showers in Scotland! I would certainly have swapped my muddy surroundings for the elegance of a classic cocktail before dinner watching the scenery slip by :)

And speaking of classic cocktails, Ardgowan House whose estate we were visiting featured in the recent adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence, so has undoubtedly hosted the odd cocktail evening or two in the not too-distant past.

No time for cocktails here though, I have a pair of very muddy shoes to clean!

Song of Zadar

The second reveal of our Endeavourers Quilt Group is due today. This quarter the theme was Transformation/Change. Now you would think that as I was one of the members who suggested this theme that I might have had a jumpstart on making the challenge quilt, well you would be wrong :)

I had originally toyed with using the Mathematical concept of Transformation as the basis of my quilt for the quarter, but Mathematics has never really been my strongpoint so that idea was soon jettisoned.

Nothing was really grabbing my attention, until I came across this photograph taken in Zadar in Croatia last year.

This is part of the sea wall at Zadar, which was replaced with these steps and the system of pipes contained within them in 2005/6. As the water moves through the pipes it is transformed into random musical notes. I had my inspiration!

And here is my quilt - Song of Zadar!

I gathered together a selection of white/cream and grey fabrics and pieced them in strips to represent the concrete steps, then surrounded them on two sides with strips of blue watery fabric to represent the sea.

The back consists of pieced blue fabrics, each of which portray the movement of the water through the pipes.

I used a metallic blue thread to quilt waves on the sea strips and a light grey to quilt straight lines on the steps as a nod to musical notation.

When the quilt was bound I decided that it was lacking some movement, so I added some beads as well.

As well as giving a sense of movement to the quilt, the beads also represented the soaring sounds that the Sea Organ achieves.

I had received this book in the post the day before, so embellishment was very much on my mind:)

I thoroughly enjoyed working on this challenge and I can't wait to see what my fellow Endeavourers have come up with, I am sure it will be amazing. You can check them all out here

We visited the Sea Organ twice on our visit to Zadar, and I recorded the sounds of the Sea on our second trip but I have not been able to find that recording since I upgraded my phone a few months ago :(

You can listen to it here instead.