Quilting for Cornwall

Monday 25 July

outside in the lane
there was a bustle in the hedgerow
and sweet music carried on the breeze

the sound of piped and fiddled music
floated into the cottage

and then I remembered ...

it was the five year anniversary
of the John Knill Ceremony

and the traipsing up the lane to the Steeple
of the 10 little girls dressed in their white frilly frocks
the two widows dressed in black
the Master of Ceremonies
the Trustees of the keys
the fiddler
the piper
the Mayor
Uncle Tom Cobley and all
(everyone else)

... to carry out the ceremonial wishes of John Knill

it's a ceremony that has been taking place
in St. Ives every five years since 1801

The John Knill Ceremony

and I would have traipsed up to the Steeple too
but I forgot what year it was
(I'm in my own little world of fluff and beads)
and anyway ... I was indoors quilting for Cornwall at the time

spreading out with all my favourite shimmery rosy reds

and choosing threads and beads

you can quite see why a girl could be a bit distracted

Wednesday 27 July

I had a Crow Day with my friend Jo
We had planned to work on our sketchbooks
for The Sketchbook Project
but the cottage quilt dominated my week and
I ended up taking the quilt to work on instead

it was a very hot day so we had a picnic lunch on the island

and afterwards visited St. Ives Society of Artists Gallery
and The Crypt Gallery
where the Penwith Printmakers were exhibiting

I particularly loved the work of Lyn Winters and Carol Lander
and was very pleased to meet Carol who generously shared
information on printmaking and talked about her work

I will do a post about this on my textile blog very soon

thank you Carol ♥

Friday 29 July

deadline day for posting the quilt ... thank goodness
and Friday brought an interesting surprise

the grandaughter of a lady who once lived in our cottage in the 1950s and 1960s knocked on our cottage door, out of the blue, and gave to us a copy of a beautiful painting of our cottage and cottage garden. It was painted by none other than St. Ives and Newlyn School artist Winifred Freeman (1866-1961). The painting had belonged to her grandmother, who was a friend of Mary Maud Winifred Freeman

Of course this sent me into a flurry of googling
and I was delighted to find that Winifred was

"cheerfully eccentric, would cycle in knickerbockers with her easel strapped to her back and smoked cigars in public"

good gracious!

Winifred Freeman

Winifred exhibited at The Royal Academy
and more recently, in 2008, there was an
exhibition of her paintings at Falmouth Art Gallery

As we have all the old deeds for the cottage going back to the early 1800s we were able to share some of the documents that related to this lady's grandmother and we were given some old photographs of her grandmother on Porthminster beach. We are hoping there may turn out to be some more old photos of the cottage. It would be so interesting to see what it looked like a few decades ago as already we have restored a lot of the Victorian character

Saturday 30 July

are we on the turn already?

a leisurely walk to the post office and some time to notice
the leaves are beginning to change colour and rosehips are a plenty

I've noticed a few other bloggers are of the same opinion
Penny made a lovely mosaic with her late summer finds
called "summer passing"

I love autumn time but I'm not quite ready for it yet ...
there's plenty of time ...
I'm not done with summer yet

when I got back from the post office I had a nice card from my friend Chris Gray waiting for me along with some of her butterfly geospun textile fabric (a very soft fibretex product) for experimenting with
I've used some of it to make beads with
and painted a sheet of it to use in my hearts
I will share the results here

Chris is going to be at Festival of Quilts
NEC Birmingham next week 11-14 August 2011
selling her beautiful hand dyed threads
and other textile goodies

Chris Gray
Butterfly Threads
STALL E52

August

this past week was another busy one ...
I've been posting regularly on flickr

Love Stitching Red

I had a custom order and made over 300 beads this week
I will be listing beads in my etsy shop over the next few days

and I have just a few skeins of yummy sari silk yarn left

in my shop

the week ahead is an exciting one
I will be at Festival of Quilts on Thursday 11 August
to see my humble effort hanging amongst the proper quilts
spending time with family that I miss very much
and working on custom orders for hearts

♥

this is the mosaic I made for TILT

girly pink

Things I love Thursday

dried roses, pretty dollies dressed in pink, rosy cheeks, pink rose petals, summer bonnets trimmed with roses and pink cotton threads on vintage spools and reels

1. decay 2. a tiny glimpse of a project I have been working on 3. softly flowing 4. manon gignoux dolls 5. pinks 6. buttons in pink 7. Sukienka 8. pink spool 9. fused page with painted bee 10. surprise package from sweet Paula 11. pinky rose 12. work in progress 13. burlap and roses

have a wonderful week ahead
and thank you so much for visiting me

Carolyn ♥