The Garden Room opens at RHS Harlow Carr Harrogate this weekend

Firstly I must apologise for the amount of photos I plan to attach but it is really to document my recent jewellery creations.

The weekend has finally arrived when a new exhibition blasts off featuring lots of new work from local artists and makers.

My friend, the uber talented textile artist Corinne Young, has devised and is curating this fabulous garden inspired exhibition which runs until the end of March. All the details about the exhibition and artists involved are featured on Corinne's blog.

http://stitchedgarden.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/the-garden-room-opens-this-weekend/

I've been busying myself making things in the windows of opportunity between a busy schedule of graphic design work and as well as the embroidered gloves and birds you may have seen on here recently I have a new range of tweed & felted Old Masters brooches.

Some of the jewellery has turned into necklaces and here they are packaged and ready to go.

Next we have the Old Masters range of flower vases and these are needle felted designs onto Harris Tweed.

The layers are built up and I only had one finger pricking incident!

I enjoyed slapping lots of different colours into these and here they are almost finished before turning into brooches or pendants.

I want to wish Corinne all the best as she's in for a busy and exciting fortnight. Hope the weather is kind too.

Thanks for sticking it out to the end if you made it and have a good weekend.

Sledmere project - finished

Over the weekend I finished my work for the Sledmere project. The exhibition called 'Ways of Seeing' will run at Sledmere House from April 22nd to 17th June.

When I visited Sledmere I tried to look beyond what my eye initially sees when I entered the rooms.I found myself looking closely at surface patterns, everything from ceiling motifs, marquetry furniture, textile patterns on carpets & cushions and opulent designs on cloisonne vases. Pattern it seemed was everywhere and often an eclectic mix which flowed beautifully from room to room.

My artworks were inspired by an Oriental vase, I was drawn to the image of a bird, a popular symbol in textile and ceramic decoration. My challenge was to take that ceramic design from the vase and create a stitched collage using recycled scraps of fabric & paper, to create a heady mix of Oriental Chintz meets floral bouquet.

Much of my mixed media work will use recycled materials, fabric, wallpaper, newspaper etc. and in keeping with the spirt of that I turned the leftover scraps from the collage into a trio of brooches, each one being a wearable piece of art in its own right and paying subtle homage to the patterns I saw in this English country house.