Author Archives: Teri Berry

Busy Week

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It’s been another busy week but unfortunately not in a creative way, my day job has been going more than a bit crazy. It’s been as much as I can do to make myself eat something before crashing into bed each evening. This weekend I have really thrown myself into textiles to make up for an otherwise rubbish week. It has been a very productive weekend though…

Mr TB was out on a stag night on Saturday so I put the evening to good use, watching trashy TV while applying wax to an apron I rainbow dyed with blues and greens that morning:

This is the batik pattern I have been doodling, it’s taking a surprisingly long time, 4 hours so far and I’m only half way finished…

I plan to over-dye this with a deep purple and then spray with plasti-dip spray to waterproof it so I have a felting / dyeing apron (no more soggy felter’s middle for me!).

I have finished a couple of C&G “samples” that I started last weekend, the assignment is to explore natural wools with a view to creating a wall hanging but to my mind these pieces are too large (approx 40 x 60 cm / 16 x 24″) to be samples and I like them as wall hangings in their own right:

Do you remember this piece of ice-dyed felt from a few weeks ago?

I turned it into a bag, this is the front flap: 

Inside the front flap:

I plan to do a lot of hand embroidery on this piece, mostly blanket stitch around the edges and bit of embellishment on the front flap. If I can get it finished in time I will submit it to the Yarns in the Cathedral exhibition in May.

And finally, some blue tits have been showing a lot of interest in the bird pod I hung a couple of weeks ago. I can’t decide if they are nesting in it or just stealing the cat fluff I put in it as welcome present…

Linking up to nina-marie, off the wall Friday

End of March

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Here we are again, another month passed by in the blink of an eye….

As a recap, these are the goals I set myself at the beginning of January:

  1. dedicate more time to creative activities
  2. create at least 50 good quality pieces for sale
  3. find alternative sources for selling my works, including at least 2 craft fairs and improve marketing of my work
  4. complete my City and Guilds felt making course before August
  5. post at least once per week

Overall it has been a busy, and I think successful moth:
  1. The first couple of weeks were almost entirely consumed with my day job going crazy, my awful tenant (soon to be ex-tenant) and a family bereavement, not much room for creativity with all that going on but the last couple of weeks have been much better and I did manage to take one day off work and had a very productive day.
  2. I’ve done very well on this goal, making 3 new scarves for my C&G course and 2 more on commission, not to mention various bowls, a pair of slippers and my woven vase.
  3. I conducted a reconnaissance mission on a craft fair in Guildford that happens 3 times a year last weekend only to find it had been cancelled. On a more positive note I’ve been much better about posting items on Etsy with 6 new pieces finding their way into listings and half dozen more with photos taken just waiting for me to write something interesting and then of course there is my woven vase that has been accepted to a juried national exhibition, how cool is that?!!
  4. Little bit behind here, but that is mostly due to my doing 3 times more work than I needed to for my last assignment but it was totally worth the extra effort. I expect to get back on track this month, I should be able to complete this month’s assignment in a couple of weekends.
  5. This was easy, in fact I think blogging has become a bit of a habit for me already, it’s a rare day that I don’t at least pop in to see if any of the blogs I follow have posted something new.
On the whole a very productive month despite the flaky start.

How was March for you?