Seafood and Sculptures

Last week to take advantage of some good weather we headed out to the Colintraive Hotel for lunch.

 One pleasant ferry trip later and a very nice lunch as you can see, we left the hotel to take the long way home. A few minutes later we were intrigued by a sign for the Scottish Sculpture Park at Caol Ruadh, so took a detour to find out more.

Here is what we found, this magnificent house was a private home, then a residential school and since 1998 has been a private home again. Since 2012, the gardens have been the setting of six summer sculpture exhibitions and we were lucky enough to be passing when the latest exhibition was open.

Sitting on the shore of the Kyles of Bute it is no surprise that water features quite heavily in the gardens as a setting for the sculptures,

as a feature of the garden

Woodland Choir by Kilmodan School & Teresa Hunyadi

or as a glorious backdrop.

You probably know by now that I love a good outdoor art installation, so this exhibition was absolutely my cup of tea :)

Tellus by Frances Clark

Spring Boobs by Lotte Glob

Spring Boobs by Lotte Glob

Sprouting by Lotte Glob

As you can see there was quite a variety of styles on show but my favourites of all of the works were the metalwork pieces by Helen Denerley

Flying Raven by Helen Denerley

If I had a spare £5+K and a space to accommodate him this magnificent Raven might have found his way into the boot of the car! He would certainly keep those pesky window pooping seagulls away, don't you think?

The exhibition is on until August 26th, so if you happen to be in the area before then and looking for something different to do you can't do much better than a sail across to Colintraive followed by a delicious lunch and a wander around the Scottish Sculpture Exhibition at Caol Ruadh! Failing that if you click on this link you can check out the sculptors and their exhibits without leaving the comfort of your armchair, the delicious lunch you will have to sort out yourself :)

Diggers, Dolphins and Dilemmas

In between waiting for workmen to come and finish my sewing room I have managed to get the sewing machine out and stitch up a couple of summer shirts for gorgeous grandson number 1.

Like all small boys our grandson loves all sorts of utility vehicles but diggers are especially interesting, so when I saw the Small Things on the Move fabric by Lewis and Irene I knew exactly what to do with it.

I used the pattern by Pox Couture to make two shirts last summer, which were a tad big for him then so I used the same pattern size this year and will be keeping my fingers crossed that they are now the right size!

This one is also in a Lewis and Irene fabric called Spindrift. This time I triple-checked that I had the buttons and buttonholes on the correct side!

The shirts are fairly straightforward to put together, there is a bit of jiggery-pokery required to fit the collar on neatly but other than that it is relatively simple.  Less simple on this one was getting the buttonholes right. My sewing machine did not like that pocket placement on the dolphin shirt even although it was the same on the diggers shirt. When I was stitching the automatic buttonhole nearest to the pocket, the machine foot got stuck when it reached the pocket and had stitched repeatedly in the same place before I realised. I really hate unpicking buttonholes :( The solution I found was to stitch the buttonhole from the opposite end so that the foot worked away from the pocket not towards it.

That wasn't my only button related mishap though as I managed to miscount when I was marking the buttonholes and had to mark them out again. Now, I have some questions for the experienced dressmakers reading this. I made the mark above with an air-erasable marker and haven't ironed the shirt yet as I am worried that if I do it might set the mark permanently. Is that likely? How long should I wait for the mark to disappear and if it doesn't if I wash the shirt will that make it disappear? I am definitely regretting using a pink marker on white fabric!

Looking forward to getting the benefit of your advice :)

Quiet counting

It is time for this quarter's reveal on the Endeavourers Art Quilt blog. The theme for this quarter was " A walk in the park" and needless to say I procrastinated a lot on what to make that would fit the theme. Eventually, I decided to combine two projects into one and make a Quiet Book for the gorgeous grandsons based upon a walk in the park.

We are lucky enough to live next to a park with a boating pond so I based my book on the things that can be found in the park.

I went for a counting theme for the book so each of the pages relates to a number from 1 to 6.

Every Sunday the Model Boat Club sail their yachts and model boats in the Boating Pond, so they were the inspiration for my first page.

Just as I was beginning to make the pages for the book, a visitor to my weekly quilting class dropped off a trolley load of furnishing sample books. The lady had just retired after several years of working as an interior designer and thought that the ladies of the class might be able to find a use for her sample books. Well, you can imagine how thrilled we were to receive them :) The hull of the yacht is a piece of suede from one of the sample books and the ruffle waves are strips of silk-like furnishing fabric from another of the books.

I wanted the finished book to have lots of different stimulation, so there are a variety of textures on each page, and hidden elements to some of them. Nestled amongst the waves of the pond is a tiny fish button from Totally Buttons As I hope that this book will get handled a lot I have over stitched nearly everything as you can see :)

 Just beyond the fence of the park a couple of swans have taken up residence over the last few years, so they were the inspiration for the second page.

Lifting the flap of the swans' nest reveals two eggs waiting to be hatched!

The Model Boat clubhouse was the inspiration for page three. I used magnets to attach the three window shapes to the page and another button from Totally Buttons with three ducks to reinforce the number.The name of each shape was also free-machined embroidered below the window magnets.

Of course, a park will have dog walkers so they were the inspiration for page four. I used the Crafted Applique technique with Mod Podge for the dogs and added snaps to felt bones in different sizes to match up with the dogs. Tiny butterfly buttons from Totally Buttons again finished off the page.

 Page 5 was inspired by the beds of flowers that are currently in full bloom in the park.

Each different colour flower head is attached by a matching button and the colour is freeform machine embroidered up the side of the flower stem. Of course, flowers in full bloom attract bees so they were embroidered on too! Can you tell that I was having great fun with this challenge ?

Initially I only intended to make five pages but as I wanted this to be an accordion type book I realised that I needed six to make that work. Some (lots of ) head scratching later I decided that my park would definitely have some ladybirds and here they are. The leaves are made of various fabrics, those sample books came in very handy, and the ladybirds are satin stitched red felt bodies attached to a black felt base. Contained within each ladybird and leaf is a sew-in magnet and each leaf has a number from 1 to 6 machine stitched on. Six tiny embroidered caterpillars added another bit of texture and fun :)

The back pages were created with squares of sun-printed fabric attached to a number fabric that just happened to be lurking in my stash! I used flowers, leaves, paper cut outs of butterflies and sliced mushrooms to create the prints. The feather print on the book's cover was made with my grandson when we visited them recently so it is particularly fitting for the front page :)

The interior of the book pages is a thick, firm wadding that also happened to be in my stash. I think it is Bosal Foam that I originally purchased for bag making. It was perfect for the book as it is soft for little hands but also sturdy enough to stand up and, hopefully, keep its' shape.

With the attachment of a button and felt flap closure for each side and a binding of green with tiny spiders my Counting in the Park quiet book was complete.

I do love working on the Endeavourers Challenges, but I think this has been my favourite so far even if it has probably also been the most work!

So, that is my response to the challenge of "A walk in the park" head on over to the Endeavourers blog to find out how my fellow Endeavourers rose to the challenge!