According to the weather forecast last weekend, Monday was going to be a reasonable day so we packed up a lunch and went to Bishop Aukland to do some photography on Aukland Castle. This castle was built by one of the prince bishops as a hunting lodge and retreat. It is now the seat of the Bishop of Durham Cathedral. The grounds, deer park and castle are open to the public.
I featured the castle on one of my quilted shadow pieces.
We arrived there just as it began to drizzle. In spite of this we decided to put up our brollies and go and take a look at least. It is a beautiful and wonderfully maintained building with incredible architectural detail. It was very dull and grey but I still took a few photographs of the detailed stonework of the walls.
I don’t think I have ever seen such decorative all over stone work on such a building. These bishops certainly lived well.
We went for a walk in the deer park but it was very boggy and wet underfoot. We came to the ‘deer house’ an extraordinry construction built by one of the bishops for the deer to shelter from bad weather and a viewing tower for his visitors to picnic and watch the deer. We will have to visit again when the weather is better!!! and take more photographs.
I came home and got down to some quilting. It was one of the printed silk images of a Japanese geisha - a free download. I had already used French knots to pick out the pattern on the collar, printed the surface of the kimono with small red metallic flowers and machined over the hair detailing the hairstyle of the geisha. Once I had quilted the girl, I vermicelli stitched the background and finally added some beads on the hair decoration.
I have now begun to quilt another piece, very different to this one so cheers for now.
3 comments:
Fantastic photos - lots of design potential there.
Love the Geisha girl. S much detail. Is this a new series of work following on from the Egyptian series?
Hi Shirley,
I wonder if you coached in Durham, that's where my Grand daughter trains, it would be a coincidence wouldn't it?
I love your photos of Auckland Castle. We were meant to be going there for a special presentation with my son's school a few years back but it was cancelled and we were ever so disappointed.
I will be very interested to see what you do with these photos, do let us see if you use them in your work.
Thanks for dropping by my site. Tricia
Comment transferred from other blog:
sharon young
Hi Shirley
You’re right about the stone work, it is very unusual and extremely decorative, I like the high relief.
Your Japanese geisha is lovely, you’ve done a greet job of detailing the hair and the kimono, it’s a very effective piece.
Thanks for dropping in on my blog I had a fantastic meet up with Val, will blog about later.
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