Back from my holidays

I am now back from my holiday in Tuscany. Trouble is I now feel as though I need another break just to recover! Unfortunately this is going to be tricky as I have had a mountain of washing to climb as well as my usual college work and full time job. I took my sketchbook with me and I may post a few extracts here. The picture above is one of a couple of fabric postcards I started on the journey.

My friend C suggested pelmet vilene as a possible postcard background - stiff so that it did not require hooping but still stitchable. So the night before my departure (in between wiping my nose and feeling awful) I cut some 6x4 pieces of pelmet vilene and packed them along with a selection of stranded embroidery cotton taking extra white incase I needed to "dye" some on my travels. My pencil case just about takes my koh-i-noor dye palette and my water brush pens as well as the usual sketch pens and pencils. At the last minute I slipped in my water colour palette block too.

The pattern and colours were inspired by a poster of a pottery exhibtion happening in Rome. I think it was Etruscan or inspired by - my Italian really isn't up to much. The red is an improbable colour as it is only in modern times the a real red ceramic glaze has been developed. Majolica ware mainly relied on shades of blues, greens, browns and some yellow.