The English Romantic

In these peculiar times my art work has been my best friend. I live alone which is something I love. I selfishly enjoy the freedom of not having to compromise. So I am probably well equipped to deal with the situation. Plus, I have enough fabric and art materials to work through for several months to come.  It is a time to learn a different way of working and re-evaluating the things we like to do. I have always enjoyed creating books and have made and sold many different styles over the years. Hand embroidery has always played a major part of my life since being a little girl. Taught by my mother and grandmother, it has been a constant pleasure. This is a small journal inspired by Faded Roses. It has a Dupion Silk outer cover with a Briar Rose hand stitched on the front. Inside are four signatures of pink hand tinted paper each enclosed in an embroidered signature cover. aaa This is one of five books created during this lockdown. Today

I'm hoping you will head over to Maggie Lowe D esigns to see my final pieces of work for my degree. You will find me  here Only six more weeks to go until my final hand in. Then!!! I'll be back to blogging and also working on some innovative online workshops to inspire you all.

2016 has brought a new name and a new blog. I needed a short and snappy name to launch my new look. so, I've combined my maiden name and my middle name to create Maggie Lowe Designs. There is a new website and Facebook page too all ready to launch. Find me at Maggie Lowe Designs on blogger.

Phew!!  We certainly hit the ground running in the second year of my degree course….. Our module brief  'Shades of Indigo' asked us to create designs for fashion textiles using 'indigo' as our colour palette. Well, everything has turned blue, not only paper and fabric, but my hands( no gloves) and  several white shirts (oh.. where did I put my apron) . I needed to produce thirty paper designs and fifteen fabric designs using print, stitch and manipulation. Heres a selection of my work. My inspiration came from my summer sketchbook. I had experimented with Oriental brush painting. I also looked at Japanese textiles especially 'Boro' with is now considered an art form although it was initially a utilitarian way of preserving clothes and other textiles. During my further research I looked at the work of 'Yayoi Kusama' who lives and works in Japan and works with repeated 'Polka Dots.                                        

I love the look and feel of cloth dolls and the quirkier the better. There is a real pleasure in searching through the internet and looking at American Primitive dolls, there appeal is endless. My friend Joan had a birthday recently so I made "Maddy" as a gift for her. This happy little soul now sits on a chair in her sitting room. One doll is never enough, so along came 'Adeline'. I am very fond of her as she dares to be different. She looks at life from all directions and is a proud individual. Her hair is wild, although she tries hard to tame it somehow it always has a windswept look. Her necklace is made from boot buttons from her grandmothers button box. She always has a wry smile on her face thinking about the scrapes she gets in to. We would all love her as a friend!! Coffee time now, off to meet another friend. Have fun. xox Angela.

At the end of our last term we were set a summer project to keep us busy during the holiday. We were asked to fill an A3 sketchbook with a documentation of our summer and to look for design opportunities in the every day. The trees in my last post are part of this sketchbook and were inspired by the artist David Hockney and his wonderful "Yorkshire Sketchbook". My work is a random look at places and events of the summer, Chelsea flower show,  The Tour De France in the UK, walks along the coast and various other ramblings. On a visit to the beach in Devon I came across a wonderful bed of alliums. Such lovely shapes and colours.                                                                                                                                                                               So many ways to draw and paint these majestic flowers. It would be great to develop this theme further  I couldn't resis