Close to my heart

In April I took a whispering heart mini workshop with Jude Hill. It was a month-long course. It was great because we concentrated only on hearts. I'm a heart person and have been using hearts in my quilts for a long time. In this workshop I made a gift for the host family I will be staying with in Japan. I made a little heart cloth for a friend who was taken ill and I'm making a 'soft heart' cloth for myself. Yes, I did do quite a few things in this workshop. 


My trip to Japan with the Silk Study Tour is only a week from today woo hoo! A lot of things happened since I booked the tour. There was an earthquake, the Tsunami, and a radiation scare, but we are still going ahead as planned. We feel that this is our way of supporting Japan. 

I made this cloth for me. I will call it 'soft heart'. I'm happy to use my natural dyed silk for it. There are three different pieces of natural dyed cloths here. They were all dyed using three different types of Eucalyptus plants except the piece you can see through the hearts which was dyed with rose leaves on silk linen. It's not finished yet. I will add more stitches during my trip.

This little cloth is for Herm. Herm is a lovely lady I met in the online workshops. Herm was taken ill so all of us in whispering heart workshop are making Herm cloth with a heart on it. You can see more hearts on SEW, a blog set up by Jude as a gathering place for all her past and present students to share the works they are making in her workshop. 

If you remember I took a Shibori workshop with Glennis a couple of months ago. It was so much fun and I learned a lot about Shibori from it. I love Shibori, but now I treasure and appreciate it even more! Deanna sent me some photos she found in an old copy of Piecework magazine of ginkgo leaf patterns done in Shibori. I haven't got time to make a whole cloth, but managed to stitch up just one using a piece of indigo backed with felt. I can wear it as a brooch when I attend Shibori Festival in Arimatsu. More on that in my next post...!