Saturday, October 28, 2006

Beach combing..

B and I have been spending quite a bit of time at the beach lately as the weather is warming up for summer. Although having said that I am now tucked up in bed with two doonas as the temperature has dropped significantly.

We plan to do some snorkelling, but the weather and wind hasn't been too kind to us for that, so instead we walk the sand and rockpools.

We found a beach this week that was just covered in shells. There were areas where you could pick up several handfulls of shells without getting any sand!. Needless to say our shell collection is really growing. I also managed to collect quiet a few sponges which will be great for painting. These are dead sponges and used to look like this...



Various sea sponges (alive)

Dried sea sponge (can you sea how this could be fun to print with?)

I can't wait to go snorkelling to see these things alive. We also found a sea urchin which was pretty cool, as I've only ever seen the dried ones in craft shops. I think that this one was a bit sick because it's spines were a lot shorter, as though it'd been tossed around the rock pool.

Purple Sea Urchin (alive)

Dried sea urchins (the one's they sell)

In textile news... I've been working on a quilt using scraps of kimono fabrics. The fabrics are mostly deconstructed kimonos with a few other japanese fabrics thrown in.

This is a picture of the quilt in its assembly stage.

This is one of the 6 blocks that make up the quilt

At the moment all of the blocks are put together and I'm tacking the layers together. For the quilting I'm thinking of hand-quilting it as some of the fabrics have a bit of 'give' and I think that they're going to stretch and give me trouble if quilting by machine. I'm also planning on doing some sashiko (japanese embroidery) on the back , creating a bit of a patchwork effect on the back as well.

Sashiko patterns

Well time to get outta bed and get on with the day. Hopefully I'll have pics of the quilt progress soon.

Oh and I should mention that the room swap worked well. I love my new 'work room' and Mum, Simmy thinks that your new bedroom is just fine!

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