Ineke Berlyn

Last week we did the first of our summerschools  ’Degrees of Transparencies’ – we only had 7, but that meant plenty of room and lots of time.  Here are some of the fabulous results.  We’re doing it again on the 23, 24 and 25 of August with an international cast.

All totally different and all as good as finished.  Thanks to Tina for the pix.

Also just done 2 days of dyeing and printing with fab results – forgot my camera again, hopefully I will remember next week and post the results then.

Here are some of the fabrics I’ve been printing in France.

There are the  very dutch houses and tulips and above the fabrics inspired by the ammonites and oyster catchers found on the beaches of the Vendee.  These are just a sample of what we’re going to do at the summerschools in August, all the classes then are fully booked, but you can come to France and have a go there in September!!

I’ve also finished my ‘Summer in the City’ entry for the Festival of Quilts, and here’s a preview.

It’s a colourful version of the quilt that has been accepted for the  European Art Quilt exhibition, also opening at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August.

Another quilt finished is Elvis …..  The idea for this started at the classes with Edwina Mackinnon in September last year.  We had to bring in one word; mine was Elvis and it’s amazing what can come of this.  It’s not just the person, but there are the lyrics, the music, the guitars.  Lots of fabric was printed and eventually – after 3 attempts – I chose this version.

ammonites

Finally I have found some time to update my blog.

I’m in France and its raining – the first in three weeks so not complaining.

I have been very busy dyeing and printing.

Here are some of the results.  This is a piece purely for self indulgence.  Dyed in a rainbow of colours then bleached thermofax screen with ammonites, rinsed again before overprinting with fabric paint and more ammonites. 

Delft Blue

I brought about 20 meters of white cotton with me and turned the ping pong table into a print table – here are my favourite dutch things in blue.

It’s exhibition time again!

We’ve got our yearly exhibition at Bromsgrove Rugby club on the 4th (2-5) and 5th (10-4) of June – brilliant work, traders and lovely cakes! Do come along.

See you there

I’ve just added a new date for the Black Magic Workshop, 16th June and a new 2-day dye and print workshop on 4th and 5th August.

Valentines weekend was spent in Ireland – teaching first in Kerry, then we Nikki drove us all the way through Ireland just north of Dublin, Drogheda.

After the long drive I couldn’t wait to stretch my legs and walk to the beach, just in time to see the sun set and to find some gorgeous shells.  I took the beautiful sahped cockle shell home, the rest of my finds I arranged onto the sand for this picture.

The reflection of the sunset over the Irish Sea was stunning. No matter how often you see a sunset – each one is special.

I had a busy weekend teaching the ladies at An Grianan to make a sheer landscape.  We were lucky to have almost two days,  this enabled everyone in the class to complete their project. With some ladies even finishing two pieces.   This picture just shows a selection of the  little jewels they made.

Ireland was ‘grand’ and I made some lovely friends – Nikki, Jan, Romi, Jillian, Sarah and Maura (only two Irish amongst them).  If any of you read this – thanks a million!  Also thank you to all the ladies from the Irish Patchwork Society and the wonderful hospitality at An Grianan.

THURSDAY 28 JANUARY  at  Bromsgrove Rugby Club

A DAY OF SCREENPRINTING  or half a day for half the price!!

If you’re free why not come to Bromsgrove and have a great day printing  your own fabrics. Start with plain and go back with lots of interesting textiles . The picture shows what I’ve done with Elvis!

Or have a go at discharge printing black fabric with a special discharge paste that takes the colour out, then print over with metallic dyes! Brilliant effects.

Cost is £30 for the day or £15 for a morning or afternoon. Use of screens and inks, refreshments and cakes included, just bring fabrics and lunch.

Black and natural calico available to buy at £3 per metre – please order in advance.

Phone me on 0121 445 3011 or text on 0787 537 2589 or email me ine@inekeberlyn.com

It’s still very snowy here and an ice cold wind.  Still have to walk the dog everyday and I remembered to take my camera.  This is the picture I will use for my January journal quilt.

As I’ve been snowbound for a while I’ve had time to make it as well.  First of course is a sketchbook page with some designs.

The size for the journal quilts are 10″ x 8″  a good size, as they will fit into poly pockets.  For Christmas I had a Pogo mini picture printer and printed the first photograph off and used it as part of my design page.  The landscape formed around it and the mini picture almost dissappeared into the background.  For a bit of interest I added a weather map of a very snowy Britain.

And this is the finished piece of textile art……

These are a few pictures of the sheer pieces that have gone on show at the Cowslip Gallery in Launceston, Cornwall.  This is inspired by St. Ives

One of my favourites – a VW sunset

As always, tulips have to put in an appearance.

Sunflowers in a vase to make you happy! and a landscape from my favourite calendar.

I’m off to Cornwall to celebrate the New Year and also will be dropping off 20 new pieces for an exhibition at the Cowslip in Launceton. It’s on from the 9th of January.

Wishing you all a very Happy 2010.

My new book is finally here – I’m very excited as you can imagine.
I’m having a booklaunch here at home next week Thursday 13th August from 11 am – 9 pm, so if you’re in the area please call in for a coffee, tea, cake or drink etc. Hopefully the weather is nice and we can be outside.

I will have a selection of my quilts on show and also have a few copies left over of the catalogue that accompanied the exhbition at the Rugby Club in June: Sketchbooks and Journal Quilts.

We’re still in France, weather has been glorious, but last three days a bit off. That means a bit of time to catch up with internet matters and plenty of time to do some stitching, painting and preparing for things at home.

Also been catching up with my journal quilts and July here is inspired by the lovely harbour here. Also still working hard on getting my LBD done for the Festival.

We’re in france – another month, another country. Lots of butterflies and bees and dragonflies. As you can see life is hard, having to sit by the pool and on the beach. I did do some teaching last week, with just one very happy student – we did some dyeing, printing and lots of sketchbooking.

We visited a dragonfly farm on a very hot day – this is me doing the sketchbook thing too.

This week I finally got round to finishing a few projects. One of them is a quilt for an exhibition in Ledbury at the Weavers Gallery next week. All quilts have the theme ‘Sea Fever’, a poem by John Masefield. I put some pleats in giving the quilt some movement. I also made a quick baby quilt for a friend – I used my new screen with Dutch houses to print some rows on it with white ink. Again the sheep couldn’t keep away – anything to get in the picture!

I also did a workshop for the hexagon quilters near Reading. We made bookcovers or wallhangings and the results were very colourful and inventive. The blue seemed to be the favourite choice of colour for many, which made the pink and greens stand out a bit more.

All the quilts started with a backing fabric with fusible 80/20 Hobbs Heirloom on top and then ripped pieces of fabric in mainly one colour way were ‘composed’ on the top – then ironed to fix most of it. Then we screenprinted using thermofax screens. After lunch the sewing machines came out and a grid was stitched to keep it all in place, before stitching nice threads, bits of dyed scrim, bondawebbing pieces of velvet, gold and silver etc. They are going to be fabulous book covers or a wallhanging. I particularly loved the flying geese – a screen design that has hardly been used, but looks stunning combined with the bull rushes printed around them.

Another reminder for those readers around the Midlands area; we’ve got our exhibition this weekend at Bromsgrove Rugby Club – both Edwina’s Textile Inspirations and my Landscape Explored groups are showing off our work on Friday from 2 – 5 and Saturday from 10 – 4. There are traders, a textile book tombola and Laura Kemshall is demonstrating machine quilting. And if that isn’t enough – the cakes are delicious and all home made! See you there!