Saturday 21 January 2017

Turbine blades are huge! and some stitchy bits

As part of our City of Culture celebrations we have a Siemen's wind turbine blade snuggled in amongst our old buildings and what an incredibly involved and lengthy process it was to get in amongst the Queen Victoria statue and the buildings!
75' long too.
Siemen's have built a factory here in Hull where they make these blades and they went to enormous lengths to transport this from there in to the city centre.
I mean, these things do NOT bend well round corners at all!







The blade was secretly installed overnight and throughout the following day, so secret was this celebratory City of Culture art installation,
that they hadn't obtained Planning permission!
Had they done so ahead of time, the secret would have been out of course, but naturally some 'Jobs Worth' in the Council has raised the issue. So retrospective permission is being sought. DUHHHH
It is pretty impressive!
If your interested how this mammoth made it in amongst the buildings, follow this link - clever work all round this.


And I make no apologies for reposting this, by far the best version of the made in Hull light show on the City Hall.



Our Ferens Art Gallery has been revamped with super clever up to the minute, humidity controls to enable us to have some of the wonderful (Turner) art exhibitions in future and it opened last weekend.
I popped in with my grandson to see the Ferens Open Art Exhibition and there were some stunning pieces submitted.
He was totally Unimpressed lol


Remarkably, every man, woman and child there seemed to be taking photos with their mobile phones or Ipads!
This was certainly never allowed before but I gladly followed suit lol
Apparently in its first week of reopening, there were well over 30,000 visitors!
( My apologies but I will pop back and add in the makers names when I unearth the galleries brochure ..... which is somewhere safe at the moment ... bear with me!)

Loved this character, all made up from washers, serviette rings, bicycle cogs and other odds and ends!


This stunning mosaic rocking horse listed at over £2000 was superb!
Adorable. 
If you embiggin ( do love your word Mary Ann lol ) the pictures, you will see that there are several of those delightful vintage porcelain half dolls sat on the saddle!









Lovely also to see textile pieces included again, the Ferens was often resistant in the past at including stitched or textile work, but I'm happy to see that is continuing to change!



Also loved the penguins!!





This was a large and stunning piece of work which I think was etched onto metal with fine silvery paint added onto the surface. Remarkable.



My grandson sat last weekend and archeologically 'dug' a few artifacts out of a lump of 'sand' that he had as a Christmas gift and he soon lost interest in archaeology!
Oh how short a concentration some span youngsters have!
Until that is, I suggested that he could make a mini tomb to house the artifacts.
With that he set to digging with much enthusiasm and there was bloody sand everywhich where in my lounge!
But he made great use of double sided tape, a discarded cat food satchet box, some sandpaper for the inner walls, sugar paper on the outside of the box and strong glue to fasten the artifacts in position.
He was chuffed to bits with it too bless him.
Car boot hunting now include further Egyptian artifacts to put in.....he tells me.





Workwise I've been making a Storysack of Marion Gambles childrens book 'Jack wants a pet', a story set in Australia.


Eagle eyed amongst you, might notice the bodged hedgehog!
He has additional claws on his front feet, an extended nose and a small hard hairbrush stitched onto his back lol
He is a bad representation of an Echidna, a seriously spikey hedgehog like creature!
Image result for echidna pictures
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=echidna+pictures&view=detailv2&&id=0B44192F3AC6CA046EB9AD32060E06962850CBBF&selectedIndex=1&ccid=yy6QinG9&simid=608055014081236916&thid=OIP.Mcb2e908a71bd6b96601652540d76be7bH0&ajaxhist=0


I'm using the same storyboard idea with Velcro accepting fabric on it and gathering in all the various animals from the story .... though so far Ive had to make everything but the dingo!
Duck billed platypuss, goanna, wombat, possum and koala to follow ...
I will be lucky to get this finished before Australia Day for our Peri teacher to use!

Today at stitchy club, we had a Hope Flag making workshop and it was really successful.
I was theoretically running it but it wasn't a case of giving everyone a template pattern thankfully and everyone mucked in.
Most of the 25 or so members already had an idea what they might do, all I provided was a stash of scraps to ferret through, books and printed pictures for inspiration, basic rules of requirements, a Big Shot machine and dies plus stamps and stamp pads to play with.
(Many thanks to Jean too for bringing in her die cutting machine and being the tutor on die cutting!)
We are making our version of Prayer Flags - ie.  Hope Flags, to display along with some of members work, in Beverley Minster in May this year.
Here are some pictures of some completed ones.
We have limited the size to A5 since they will be hanging above the heads of visitors.
Oh and they need to have something front and back too!

  one side of mine : )


Margaret above had sued some self adhesive letters she got in Hobbycraft, don't they look great!

A couple of the ladies had made themselves one of these below and I reckon they must be really useful.
I don't recall seeing the pattern before but if anyone recognises it I would be grateful to know whose pattern it is please?
I forgot to ask them and it will be weeks till I see them again.


It has a carry handle, is a pin cushion, has pockets all round for scissors, pencils etc and one of the ladies added the buttons on each corner to hang things off.
Clever eh!
Take care all : )