Finished!

 Prepare to be surprised - in fact, are you sitting down?  I have finally finished the rabbit I was making! It feels like I have been working on her for years, even though it is about two months or so.  At last, her face has been added and she is done.  Hoorah!
As you know, I found the 'Tilda' pattern quite fiddly and I also needed to do some judicious amending to the dress pattern.  The hat finally fits her and took me five attempts to get right, but I am pleased with the end result.

 I added some vintage lace around the bottom of her dress and it does lift the whole outfit I think.

 I hope she has a serene and pleasant expression - that was the plan when I was sewing!  Now she needs a friend who is going to be wearing a dress made from the left over pink silk from my wedding dress bodice.  I am going to use the 'Sugar Bunny' pattern by Helen Philipps, which is a little larger and see how I get on with that.  What do you think - will I be any quicker with the next one?  (Somehow, I doubt it.)

I was looking through Mum's photo albums and found the only colour picture (from 1972) of me in my puffed sleeve dress - the material of which started this rabbit construction project in the first place.  Granny is behind me and my eldest sister is sitting on the grass with Tina, the Yorkshire Terrier.  It was a bright and sunny day which is why the details are a little washed out, but I do look incredibly pleased with myself, don't I?  (I may have a go with Photoshop and see whether adjusting the brightness/contrast/colours will help.  If so, I'll post the updated version too.)

Latest felt inspiration

The photo of the parrot tulip was on a calendar that came free with Gardener's World magazine, December 2009. I particularly liked the rich colours in the petals and decided to investigate some of these colours by creating a grid in Photoshop. This was something we had to do during my Art course at College and I like to keep practising so that I don't forget the steps involved. I was curious to see what colours it would find in the tulip itself, not the background. Some of them were very surprising! I could identify the blue bloom (as on a purple grape) and the plums and purples are obvious, but the pale greens? However, all these colours are in the image, along with many others in the peach colour range. As the ink dropper tool picks just one individual pixel in the image and finds that colour, the eye isn't able to distinguish that amount of detail, unless with a microscope. I really enjoy this process, because you can never tell just what colours are lurking in an image.
So, having found some interesting colours, what, you may ask, am I going to do with them? Well, I think that I shall take a cross section of the image so that it becomes more abstract, and then, using some of the colours in the grid, try and replicate this in felt. I don't know how it will work out, but it will be fascinating to try.

Fabulous Fireworks!

As we live near the local football ground, we are treated to a free show of the City Council's Firework 'Spectacular' each year around 5th November, and this year, it was held last night. I like to try to challenge myself and my camera and see whether I can capture any of the explosion of colour.

I was really pleased with these photos - for a little 'point and click' digital camera, I think it has done a really good job.

All I have done to the photos is to crop them down using Photoshop; other than that, they are as the camera took them.

These last two really show the explosion of the fireworks and the bright colours.

I particularly like the red firework to the right of this image and I think it is quite amazing that photography can capture and hold that split second. Fireworks are one of the most ephemeral of things - they last for such a short time, but we can now relive the moment. Where would we be without photography?

Repeating pattern

Above is a completely new repeating pattern that I created using a segment from a photo I took of some grasses and with a little added Photoshop magic! It is something I learnt to do on my art course and once I'd created the patterns, I translated them into textiles. I really enjoyed creating a brand new pattern and the finished result is always interesting. It makes me look at objects in a different way. The above was a practise to make sure that I hadn't forgotten how to do it.
The original photo is one I would like to use for a new felt piece...