Hot water bottle cover

I have previously tried using the delightful font at Hinton Parva for inspiration for art, and so from initial trials in felt, I decided to make something bigger.

The creatures and patterns on fonts and tympanums, which we have seen in our travels, lend themselves perfectly to creating something new and artistic. I wanted to do a bag, but not being that sure what sort of bag to make, I settled for a hot water bottle cover, the instructions for which I found online.

First I looked for inspiration in my sketchbook, from all the places we have visited. One of my favourites is the font at Hinton Parva, with its happy snake, birds, fish and unspecific quadruped. It is perhaps he (or she) whose jaunty stance appeals to me most. So I had my main motif for the hot water bottle cover. I then wanted to use some of the symmetrical designs we have seen to decorate above and below.

The zigzags with circles in that we have seen around several arched Norman doors seemed perfect for the purpose, so I used the sketch from Whaddon. I also chose part of the design from our lovely font at Christian Malford, and also the shell shapes from Bremhill for the neck of the bottle.

Not wanting to overload the bottle with creatures, instead of a lamb of God, I chose a pattern for the bottom half of the back, adapted from the doorway decoration at South Stoke, back before the blog began.

Here is the finished result. I am quite pleased with it, and even more pleased to pass it on to my sister, because it is through her interest in these fabulous works of art, that we have both been inspired to create our own artwork.  She made the observation that no one will ever have made a hot water bottle cover with this design before!

Chippenham, Bremhill and Tytherton Lucas

Trips Out have even been squeezed in after work these days, so we were very disappointed to have missed the opening times of St Andrew's Church, Chippenham by half an hour. I was looking forward to seeing a chest in there from the thirteenth century.

We tried instead Bremhill, a small village not far from Chippenham. There we were pleased to find another appealingly decorated font, which had scallop shapes and a band of ridges above and below it. I am not religious but it is nice to just sit, undisturbed, in a quiet church and know that you will not be interrupted (in these heathen times!) The ridges were quite chunky and yet I was not very content with my interpretation of them. I have been using the coloured crayons to draw (they cover a multitude of sins and also add something to the picture) so I tried this time to render the font in pen. I am not sure that pen is my medium, but it will of course take time to practise!

After Bremhill we followed winding lanes to nearby Tytherton Lucas, a tiny village with seemingly very few people around. The church was set back away from the road and seemed to be accessible by a pathway that led up to someone's house - but no, what was this? There was a sign at the start of the path expressly forbidding people to use the path to access the church (except for services). The alternative route meant ducking under overgrown shrubs, through a gateway and then being forced to wade knee high through a field - it was hardly the welcome you would expect from a house of God. I for one did not enjoy it and I cannot really understand a house set opposite a church being quite so "unChristian" - after all, how many people can there be wanting to access the church, when it is in such an out of the way spot? I was going to march back down the pathway to the road, but my nerve failed me.

Naturally after such a trek, the church door was locked. We were determined to get a glimpse at the font so my sister stood on tiptoe and held her camera to the window to try to photograph it. As I watched her, I remarked on the extent to which her obsession had now grown. But to be fair she got a good photo and was able to draw the font from it.