Occasionally I have one of those early mornings and on this morning I woke about 3 am. The good news was that I was in time to see the most spectacular dawn sky across the valley. Armed with a cup of tea and my camera I took this photograph. I had been trying to make a decision about the subject matter for the Cloths of Heaven Exhibition at the Weaver's Gallery, Church Lane, Ledbury. This view clinched it. This year the theme is W.B. Yeats poem. My favourite line is "--- of night and light and the half -light" so this is what my piece is called- The half-light.

The Inspired by Slad Valley opening in Slad Chuch was very jolly and very "Stroud!" There are beautiful flowers in the church, a great exhibition, bunting, speeches, straw hats, sunshine and cider.
There were over 300 visitors to the exhibition this weekend and Open Gardens as well.
http://www.sladsociety.org.uk/festival.html
Next week I will be at Nature in Art, Twigworth, Gloucester as artist in residence. The current exhibition showing is
Extinct Boids Paintings by Ralph Steadman June 10th - July 20th
http://www.nature-in-art.org.uk/exhibitions.html

  Weavers Gallery, Church Lane, Ledbury, HR8 1DW
Ledbury Poetry Fesitival launches on Friday 5th July and once again Weavers Gallery is hosting a themed exhibition to coincide with this. 'The Beauty of Books' is an exhibition of stitched textiles either inspired by or in the form of books. It has proved to be an inspiring theme with a delightful variety of imaginative work on show. It is open every day until 14th July from 10am-5pm and I do hope you will be able to visit.

Here is the completed piece "A Good Book". The text is cut out and appliqued onto a stitched background. I used stencils and reverse applique to construct the "illuminated" letters using silk and metallic thread to enhance it.
Mr Bedford's signature is printed in the bottom left hand corner.
This piece will be exhibited in the Weaver's Gallery, "The Beauty of Books", Ledbury, during the poetry festival from July 2nd to July 14th.
And --- I've updated my website at last!

I've been working on more ideas for my piece which will be included in the Exhibition at Weaver's Gallery, Ledbury, in conjunction with the Poetry Festival. The exhibition runs from 2nd July to 14th July 2013.
I have had so many books to sort out. They were my father's collection. The experience was overwhelming. They were so precious to him but I don't have the same connection.  However, I feel bound to look through every one. I like the idea of recycling the pages but find it hard to destroy a book even to move it on into something else. If they are damaged, that is easier. I made a large piece of fabric paper collaging it together with wax and thread. The book was Letters of Dr John Brown and actually is really interesting if incomplete. The pages are quite small and there are attractive spaces between paragraphs. This has now become the background for my new piece.
There were several books in the Everyman series published by Dent. The book is truly beautiful. There are quotations and beautiful intricate designs decorating the pages. Inside the front cover of The Life of Samuel Johnson was a signature H. Bedford 1906. I realised that I had known this man. I remember visiting him and his wife with my family when I was very young. The memories are extremely hazy but I remember he gave us boiled sweets - and their garden was quite dark with a huge holly hedge at the bottom.
So what a good job I looked in that book. I've used the page with the Milton quotation and the publisher's stamp as the inspiration for my design.

Just delivered my piece Four Nights to Ledbury.
It promises to be a lovely exhibition with varied styles of work.
I changed my piece slightly and added slivers of lacy stitched scrim to extend the organza "shards". I've got more ideas to explore with this piece - can't wait to try them out.