Embroidered hand felt and new beginnings.

Hi all. Here as promised is my latest piece of embroidered, wet felted...felt. Would you like a closer look?

I nearly didn't finish this piece. Although the wet felting went to plan,

I wasn't overly pleased with the garden bench in the centre of the picture.

Maybe I'm just being a bit picky though, probably because I found this part particularly difficult to do. My sewing machine objects a little when it stitches over the same spot several times, which is a bit of a pain when you're machine embroidering!

It's growing on me though. I particularly like the two small bunches of dark pink flowers in front of the bench and the fallen rose petals on the path.

There is quite a lot of machine embroidery on this piece.

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It's then finished with lots of hand embroidery, each little pink petal is cut from silk which I space dyed myself and then individually stitched in place.

And this is it's new home (not for too long I hope). This is Chapel Gallery in Hawes in Wensleydale. A brand new arts and crafts gallery offering craft workshops, coffee and of course MarmaladeRose goodies.

The new owners Anne and Tim Smithies kindly let me take a few pics to share with you all.

I think Anne is hoping to fill the gallery predominantly with art and crafts from local Dales artist but there is a sprinkling of fabulous work from farther a field.

Don't you just love these luscious ladies sitting having a chat. These are by the very talented Anna Mercedes Wear.

Anne herself is very gifted. She works in more mediums than I can list here, but in these pictures you might spy her handmade glass decorations, beautiful patchwork quilts, machine quilting DVDs, hand drawn cards, cuddly toy bunnies and art dolls, not to mention handmade ceramic and glass buttons! That's right ladies I said BUTTONs and we all love buttons, lol.

Turned wood bowls, coloured glass bowls, leather purses, and ceramics.

More beautiful wood, needle case-cushions, a couple of my felt brooches and fat owls, and some lovely little round angels.

On the bird table we have...well...birds and underneath are growing some of my crochet flowers.

Here are the beautiful sparkly class ornaments Anne makes. Dangling and...

standing to catch the light.

Buttons, buttons, buttons, drool!

Bunnies, bags and bowls. Glass, ceramic tiles and lavender hearts.

And last but not least a stunning exhibition of photographs of 'the locals' by Richard Hanson called The High Life. . Click here to see the photos in close up and more of Richards exciting work.

I hope you enjoyed our little day trip. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of Annes pride and joy...a very fancy, all singing, all dancing coffee machine! And I couldn't resist this last picture, lots new lambkins skipping about our fields. Aaaaah :)