ROSEY ROSEY

NEW WORKSHOP JUST UPLOADED TO http://shelaghfolgate.bigcartel.com

ON SALE HALF PRICE for ONE WEEK ONLY until 8th January 2011

ROSEY ROSEY

One day left for the other workshops before they revert to their normal price (not the SMASHEES COURSE)

HUBBLE BUBBLE

HUBBLE BUBBLE has arrived... 
This photo is a taster of the SMASHEE workshop number 2 released today.
Join up & you will get the FIRST workshop, which is LOLLIPOP LANE as well as 6 more workshops to come over the next 6 months.  Go to http://shelaghfolgate.bigcartel.com to join.

Watch out over the next few days for an ANNOUNCEMENT, that I am very excited about :-)

Photo paper

Following on from the last post, one of my tree pressies was a huge 70 sheets of paper for the Pogo,  Guess what I have been doing?  Sticky picccies everywhere.  My phone has quite a bit of editing software in it this phone was my birthday present from my children) I am still discovering what it does, but I have some lovely images printed which I want to use for design.  Today was supposed to be stitching day BUT I now have the Christmas cold that the rest of my family have had & one large sneeze resulted in a pulled muscle in my shoulder, oh ah.  So its ibruprofen, hot water bottle and a telly fest, roll on tomorrow; brimming with ideas today, bet they evaporate by tomorrow lol.
Waiting for the cricket; am staying up for a while tonight to watch it, how exciting...Barmy army...
Snow report from the holiday kids, thick snow & snowing all day in Austria.  Thick lying snow & freezing cold in Sweden...ha glad I am here in the thaw
Right cricket is on, off to see us retain the Ashes :-)

CHRISTMAS QUIET

Santa, aka DD bought me this fab little machine.  It connects to me phone via bluetooth or USB cable & prints out pictures, yes it is a little printer.  There is no ink only Polaroid paper & its so easy to load.  The images are really clear & the paper backing can be peeled off to give sticky photos.  My bedside wall is now peppered with them.  It is huge fun & will be fab for designing. Maggie Gey was the instigator of this particular Christmas 'want' There is a cheaper version in black but the pink is fab
The photos can be altered etc in my phone cropped etc before printing and it takes about 20 seconds to print!!!  Stayed up really late on Christmas night playing with it & trying to get it to work with my DSLR camera.  It does work with cameras but mine wont work at the moment, so its off to find a bit of link software (hopefully) Cost of each print is around 12p maybe 20c

I also received money & have alreasy spent some on buying books, which wont be here until the end of the week.
We are quiet here now after three days of fun with relatives & friends.  I am shattered with all the cooking, clearing up etc.  DD has gone to Sweden until New Year & DS to Austria to ski, and I am going to SEW SEW SEW - workshops to write & explore and the SMASHEE WORKSHOP 2 is ready for the 1st January 2011.  If you have some seasonal cash to spend please remember that you will receive ALL the workshops (8 in total, 1 a month until 1st July 2011) whenever you join http://shelaghfolgate.bigcartel.com/

I have a fabulous announcement to make but am holding back until 1st January 2011  I am very excited about it!!

It is beginning to thaw here & it is awful to see that those of you on the Eastern seaboard of America are now suffering what we have had in Britain since November.  Please dont send it our way :-)

Back soon with stitching piccies.  Hope you had a wonderful time x

SEASONS GREETINGS

Wherever you are in the world, I wish you love & peace at this most beautiful time of year
Happy Christmas x

CROWING!!!

Oh dear, I did crow about the snow didnt I?  Now we have it as well. :-( this probably means that our relatives might not be able to come for Christmas.
Here is our 'tramp' cat who lives in the box next to the back door.  Well she is not our cat, she lives next door, she has a huge sun-lounge all to herself & an enormous cat flap to get in & out of & she sleeps in the cardboard box!!!!  She has found the only place on the patio that the snow has thawed, clever cat!  She is getting really mucky living in the box, we have some cat wipes but it is too cold to use them as she wont stay in our house very long, in fact when she sees me she darts off.  We leave the kitchen door slightly ajar as she mieows & paws at it in a very distressed way, we are paying to heat up the garden!!!
But isnt she lovely, look at her lovely little face & the way her tail curls over her paws
Gosh I must wrap up presents & get off of here!!!!

Photography

As I sit here by the window of my studio, I can see the most wondrous sight. The sky is pale blue-grey with a tinge of pale ochre & a dash of cream is starting to appear like a peek into another world, from it an intense ray of gold has appeared, highlighting the frost crusted fields & fluffy hedgerows.



Nearer to my window are my garden trees, majestic with their straight still branches covered in fur, a blue-tit is hopping about & is almost at the very tip, oh now he has flown. Clouds of black specks zoom by on the wing, standing out in high relief to the backdrop of the sky, which is now opening up with a glimpse of cerulean blue peeking through. The majestic conifer trees have been dolloped with icing, highlighting every sinew & curve.


To capture this scene I need a specific type of camera lens, a very expensive one, one that I don't have.  I use a 28 - 80mm lens, this takes great photos between those distances.  For close up work I use extension tubes, as I don't have a macro lens either, but the tubes work really well as long as I shoot in bright daylight, therefore I can take a general picture but how do I keep in the detail?


If you have a digital camera or a camera phone (cell) get out your manual, see what resolution you can take pictures at. For me to capture the detail I need to make sure that I set mine on large format, this will stack my picture with many pixels, lots of the little details.


CHECK YOUR WHITE BALANCE - most people seem to skip learning about this & it is important.


Oh another hole has appeared and looks like a bright diamond shining.


This is how I photograph my textiles.


Indoors


By a window


Under a daylight bulb if at night


On a white sheet of paper


NOT on automatic but on manual - take the time to learn your camera / phone, there are lots of settings


Lots of pixels


Download Picasa 3, it is free from google. When I studied for my A level photography I used photoshop. Not the most user friendly program & I spent hours & hours faffing about.


Now I find that Picasa does everything I need for Internet up loads


I shoot my pictures, plug in the lead & it automatically loads up Picasa & the photos, I sort out which folder to put them in


Then I open each photo & click - I am feeling lucky, which adjusts the settings, if I don't like what it does, then I undo & adjust manually. This includes cropping - as I have a lot of pixels I can crop really close & still keep detail


I save the settings or I save a new file & then delete all the alterations


I hold all the photos in the box on the bottom left hand side & then export them, I set the pixels to 300. This reduces the size for up loading but still keep information & detail, I also add my copyright here


Wow the diamond has now become a jagged slit & 3 more birds as bathing in it on the branches in front of me, they look fat so there must still be lots of food around, oh flown off now
 
In the time it has taken to write this on my SMASHEE group & here, the sky has turned a flat grey, the birds have vanished & the fields now look dull.  It is so important to capture images as you see them.  These conditions will never happen again.
The photograph at the top has been taken through a window, a dusty winter marked window so is poor quality but I wanted to share the fabulous subtle colours
For design work this photograph is perfect, interpret the background in fabric & stitch & add the foreground with detail
WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD :-)

ALLY PALLY & TARLATAN

WOW what a frost, its so still & the trees look like they are growing white fur.

In a couple of groups that I belong to, I promised to add pictures here of Ally Pally & the cloth Tarlatan

 This is Tarlatan, it is a stiff, openweave cloth.  I have dyed it with silk paint & overlaid it to produce colour mixing effects

 The cloth is used in the hat making industry & a friend bought mine from a shop off of Oxford Strret in London which I cant remember the name of.
These 2 images are stitched with mono-filament thread, you can jst see the flecky bits of white on the image above.  I dont use this thread very often now-a-days.  I used it so much when I ran my soft furnishing business & have many different ones from fishing wire through to fine hair like ones.  As I love to use heat tools, the iron, heat gun, soldering iron etc, this thread melts & pings so I try to avoid it, but it was right for this piece which was exploring colour & the stitch was playing the understudy
The edge is a ribbon.

 Here is Alexander Palace, the venue for the Autumn Knitting & Stitching show
To quote Jane Austen, it has a very fine aspect!!  Being on a hill over looking London, it is a stunning building

 This is the entrance, I bubble inside when walking up these steps

 This shows a close up of the entrance to the Palm Court, which I did not get an image of & blogger wil not let me add image after the initial upload grrr...drives me batty

 This is the fabulous window.  My Mum & mother in law used to go to dances here during the second world war, well may have been before the war, hmmm not to sure now of when, I will ask my mother in law.  My mum sadly is no longer alive.  But she is with me in spirit.

Off to get dressed!!! maybe I will get my camera extension tubes out & try & take some photos of the 'fur'



SILKEN CIRCLES

A completely NEW workshop just up loaded to http://shelaghfolgate.bigcartel.com

Would make a great Christmas gift to yourself or someone you care for, on sale until 1st January 2011

We have been very very lucky here in Northamptonshire, there is snow lying on the fields & it is icy but the sun has been shining all day & everywhere looks so pretty

 December sunrise is directly opposite my studio window, on the shortest day it rises over the chimney pots of the only bungalow in the road.  I photographed the sequence & stupidly had my camera set on small quality so I have lost a lot of the detail duh!!

See the red sparkles, this is the sun catching on the frost, look liked little rubies & precious stones.  This is the roof of my kitchen, see the weathered barge boards, such wonderful texture, but will need renovating come the spring.  The frozen 'lumps' are infact leaves with lumps of snow on them.
I know that a lot of you have real snow, but sometimes just a little produces such wonderous effects.  My patio is speckled with little lumps of snow leaden leaves, such fun.
Charlotte the neighbours cat is still living in the cardboard box.  Most days when she is ot of the box, I dash out & remove her quilt & shake it & bring it in & warm it up on the radiator.
She does come into the kitchen now, but we must leave the door ajar or she goes very distressed.  She sits on my husband craddled like a baby purring away & sometimes will sleep (with the door ajar) on the kitchen chair & patchwork cushions.  We can only guess what an awful life she had as a rescue cat before our kind neighbour provided a home for her.  He is at work all day & I guess that she likes our company, well she loves my husbands company, she is ok with me & has once sat on my knee, right on the knees with all 4 paws tottering.  Beautiful cat how could anyone be cruel to her.

AWOL

Hi, so sorry that I have been AWOL, got another stupid flare up of the TMJ & back on the pills again, make me feel a bit woosy, so no stitching to report.  Its very frosty / bit snowy here & cold but the sun has been out making the fields look like diamonds.
Will try to get back to some images tomorrow, night x

WORKSHOPS FOR SALE & ON SALE

Hiya

I have added 2 new workshops to http://shelaghfolgate.bigcartel.com  These are 2 of the FREE Smashee Bites that arrive from time to time over on THE SMASHEES

I have reduced ALL my workshops (except the Smashees) as a Christmas gift until 1st January 2011

If you dont know what to get a friend for Christmas - can I suggest one of my workshops?  If you let me know then I will send it to whoever you want & AS A BONUS you will get it too!!  2 for 1 (except the Smashees)

I can send it on Christmas Day, just let me know your time zone

Whilst thinking about using colour for workshops I researched back through my photographs & these are so lovely that I thought a bit of August might cheer up some of you, some have appeared before but this funky collage would make a great download onto an Inkaid piece of fabric. I have ordered a pile of pretreated fabrics from http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/ as they have free postage at the moment, also a can of fixative to replace the one that I left at someones house a while ago & cant be retrieved!!!



This is a great acrylic spray, I have used it as a sealant on fabric, paintings & wood for years.  I used to use it in the days before pre-treated fabric for inkjet printing, it smells a bit so I wear a mask.  Works like Acrylic mediums except in spray form.  Put the work into a cardboard box, outside is preferable & then spray away

PATCHES GALORE

The thaw in England has begun & it is so wonderful to see green fields again

I am launching a new venture in partnership with a very kind friend.  This is PATCHES GALORE

There is a new blog for this:  http://patchesgalore.blogspot.com & it all starts in the new year

There will be a range of NEW & EXCLUSIVE PATTERNS in patchwork & applique & also PRE-CUT pieces with which to make these patterns.

Wish us well!!

THE LONG & WINDING ROAD

 From here to here, a very loonngg journey with a family wedding in between, exhausted

The very frozen north
Be back with textiles soon x