I had a busy few hours at the quilt exhibition and didn’t manage to see all the exhibitions, I had about 30 mins left before I needed to locate the bus stop to start my journey back (I had allowed myself 40 mins to find it, experience had taught me this). So I spent my last 30 mins in the Merchants Mall – holy moley girls, think of our merchants mall at symposium and that would be a very small portion of this one, every Stall was different, some quite French, others American or English, a whole area devoted to ‘country’, I didn’t even go in there, did a quick circuit and bought a few wee bits, a lot of stalls had ‘no photos’ so I didn’t get any here. That done, I headed to find the bus stop, there were thousands of women milling around, I tried to ask one where the bus stop was but she was unsure I wandered aimlessly, hot, tired and hungry (I hadn’t eaten since 7am and it was now 6.30), I approached a guy directing traffic and asked him he directed me down the road and around the corner, off I went, found the bus stop and sat down to wait, after 15 mins I was getting concerned that no one else was waiting, out of all those thousands of women surely there would be at least one other getting the bus to the train station, I then saw a bus turning the corner down the street, so I took off running, there was some ladies waiting, the bus pulled up and sure enough it was my bus, where we got on there was no signs, no shelter nothing to signify that it was a bus shelter, WTF! Anyway, I was on my way, caught the train to Strasbourg, and then the train to the airport, yay Air France were still flying my flight, phew. Got to Nice at 11.30pm missed the last train to villefranche so got a taxi, fell into bed. This is the shortened version of my travel adventure, needless to say I learnt a lot about travel in France and have learnt to read/guess French.

 

There were some stepping stones to get across the pond,

This is as far as Jenny got, I got a fit of the giggles watching her trying, and she started laughing and couldn’t go any further so had to go around the long way

They even had a New Zealand flax in the garden, labelled.

Got back, and raced to the beach for a refreshing swim, headed out to dinner at the restaurant that the others had been having breakfast lunch and dinner for two days, sensational

Just testing if I can post from my phone 🙂

Today was Lunch with the Layers group, an off-shoot of COOTS. Five members from our area have formed this group to cater to our insatiable need for knowledge and encouragement in the fibre field.

I did not like my Karen Eckmeier Quilted Village (sorry can’t find the original photo of it) so the Layers girls encouraged me to turn it over and cut it up. So here it is. I have gessoed a piece of the front (coloured) and a pieced of the back (black) – I quite like the effect, I’m not sure what to do with it next but it was quite liberating to chop it up and I won’t be daunted in the future to do this again as I can see more potential.

This next piece is from a Textured Landscapes workshop I did at the Picton MiniSymposium. I didn’t like this much either so once again I chopped it – it is in need of some stitching now but I like it more.

Here are some more pictures from my Layers book. You may notice a theme here – I am fixated with architecture at the moment – maybe driven by the fact that we are currently not living in a home of our own – we are renting and we always get a bit unsettled. I am fascinated with old buildings, decaying and no longer used, flakey paint, etc. These next pictures are painted and stamped papers, writing about derelict abandoned buildings and photocopied photographs of the Old Drapery at Ophir. I ripped these up and wove them back together.

The next two are layers of felt, magazine pictures, transfer dyes, writing, organza, and photographs

These lunches are great – we go away thoroughly recharged and ready to produce more work. The emphasis is more on exploring and playing and not necessarily producing a “finished piece” we are all heading in different theme directions.