Another leaf and some painting

today's ATC is another leaf!!
Felt, Wire, Silver thread, green stranded cotton, running stitch, couching, chain stitch.

I was looking at  the colouricious site in response to their newsletter, and found a gorgeous landscape by Ineke Berlin.    This one is also gorgeous, too.' 

Ineke uses Lutradur for her landscapes and because it is a non woven fabric, there are no fraying problems.  I thought I would have a go at it.  I have lutradur, but I looked around to see what other nonwovens I had.

I found some nappy lines, some face wipes and baby wipes and for good measure, I added some tea bag paper.

Since they were all very thin, I layered them up, so that ant paint going through would go onto the fabric below, and I decided to use the kids paint brushes I bought the other day. (Instead of throwing out the paint - nothing goes to waste around here!)

Here is a baby wipe painted.  I was using primary colours, nothing very nature like about that, but I will show you how I changed the contrast and colours in a bit.

Tea bag paper - very translucent and yummy!

and some nappy liner - you can see here the colours are much more natural and the contrast is more blended in.  I did this by doing something I often do when painting fabrics for landscape.  I roll the fabric together to blend the paints.  In these two above, I rolled the fabric into a sausage and then rolled it between my hands.  In other samples, I scrunch and roll into a ball and roll between my hand, and this gives a more blotchy pattern rather than the streaks you see here.

My group of tea bag papers.  Because these were so see through, I didn't blend the colours by scrunching.)

Here are some of the face wipes and baby wipes.  you can see the bottom right, green one was scrunched rather than rolled.

More baby wipes and some nappy liners.  The two nappy liners at the bottom show clearly the difference between rolling and scrunching with these very thin materials,

All in all, a very successful session.  Now, I need to do a bit of work on my sketch of the creek, which is what I want to use this for.  and start cutting ripping, arranging and sewing.  Hopefully, I'll have something to show by next week, although I still have one deadline today week to get done!  (It will be down to the wire as usual for me)

An ATC a day keeps the world at bay!
Go see lisa's ATC

another metal ATC and my doodled bird in progress

Today's ATC is another embossed foil one, a leaf, which I have painted with nail polish.  It is sewn onto some more of my collage background with chain stitch and french knots and bound with organza ribbon.

some of you probably remember this bird from one of my artbooks.

I actually have a small quilt in process using this design.

here it is with the outline quilting done

and a close up
I have now started the doodling in the feathers

I am really enjoying doing this ddodling and have been practising lots of doodles in my quilting scrapbook

Here's a close up.  I think I need to go over the stitching more than once as it is such a thin thread and I'm sure there will be some scope for beading when it is done.



Happy stitching, don't forget to check out Lisa's ATC and the TAST page

Celebrate design - 2

The next steps in my process.
These pages show some thumbnails of my ideas regarding the theme.

Some are more detailed than others, and you can see that I go back and make changes.  I decided that the two in the middle with the double ended arrow could be merged into one idea.  sometimes I need to add notes, as in the bottom thumbnail, to remind me about what is in these quick sketches or what they symbolise.

This thumbnail was developed a little more with some calculations and extra notes.

Whilst this last thumbnail is more detailed in the notes added.  Allof the diagrams are just that.  They are sketchy notes that may become work.  From these, hurried sketches, I create mock-ups in photoshop which I print out full size and put on my Design board for a while.

As I am walking past them each day, I make mental notes of additions to make, of how to do certain parts and alterarions to make.  Here are five mock ups.  Some are a printouts of only one layer of the piece, some are just line drawings, and some are just photo collages.  All have had changes made to them since this photo and there are  a few more of them now.
At this stage, I might take only one of them to the final stage, or I might take them all and add a few more.
This is only a design process and changes will happen at other stages as well, so the final work might actually bear little resemblance to my initial mock up.  And of course, the photo mock ups have no texture or dimension.  They are just flat pictures, so changes may occur when they metamorphosize into textiles.

Remember everything in your sketchbook does not have to become a finished piece of work.  They are just ideas that you are playing with.

wallhanging

After an hiatus trying to get my bad back behaving, I have started back working, but of course, it played up pretty soon after.  However, I have done a little work on my sample for the wallhanging.

In the sample I tried both free motion and  general, feed dogs up couching.  Remember the white is water soluble, and will be a lace and fringed bottom.  I have put the skeleton in for this but I will do more work when the couching is finished.

in the enlargement above:

• the first thread is a black and metallic mix and is obscured by the fluffy red stuff, I will remember not to put it in such a place in the real thing.  This is what samples are for, sorting out the problems.  This first thread is chain stitch, but as i said you can't see it.  
• next is an orange boucle, also obscured, 
• then the red eyelash, 
• followed by a brown cord.  
• On the other side of the curve are four more textured threads.  
• All of these were attached free motion using a narrow zigzag.  
• the next threads were done using the feed dogs up.  
• The gold one used a narrow, long zig zag. 
• the next two ribbon like yarns were done using a straight stitch down the centre.  
• They are followed by a decorative cross stitch. 
• The gold and the red threads next up used a narrow long zig zag in black thread 
• and the orange ribbon used zig zag with monofilament.

I am pleased with the way these threads look on the back background, but as I said, I will have to do more work on the lace at the bottom, so it is not just swallowed up.
Another reason I worked on this sample was to create some couching samples for a Quilt uni course on embellishing with Susan Brittingham as I am very far behind due to my back.

Let's see what creativity tomorrow brings!

FME stitches

Here are a few new stitch try outs I did recently.

This one is a heavy garnet (or granite) stitch using a wide zig zag.  This is really good for filling large areas, like the poppies in my itty bitty landscape.  The next one is the same, only a little bit lighter.

 

It is good for shading and merging different colours.

The next one is also a garnet stitch, however it is bobbin work, working on the bottom of your fabric using the bobbin. a thicker thread (sorry, I had white to hand at the time) is wound on the bobbin and the bobbin tension loosened to compensate.  This thread (a no 10 crochet cotton) is at the limit of my bobbin screw, anything larger must be bypassed, which creates a nice mess of moss stitch on the bottom.

Another bobbin technique, is called cable stitch,  this is the same as the one above, however it is not a circular stitch

This is good for outlining and embellishing.  Once tension issues are solved, it is easier than couching, since you don't need to control where the thick thread goes.  And this leads us natually to couching.

My sample is not the best.  I have used FME, however if you are using this in a straight line, or in a manner that allows the feed dogs to be up, you can get a much smoother look.  The top one is showing a dense zig zag, while the bottom is a longer stitch and shows the thread.  Obviously, you would not use a dense zig zag if you wanted the thread to be a decorative element, and in this case you would probably use a monofilament thread, so the couched thread could be seen in all it's glory.  The dense couching, I would use to create dimension, as the lines of satin stich would be raised.  It would not really matter what thread you couched, 'cos you wouldn't see it.  another thought, is that using the feed dogs up, you can couch with a variety of decorative stiches, which is what I will be doing on my wall hanging

The last stich is another couching stitch, which I first learnt from Quilt in a day.  It is called chain stitch

This technique is also used in machine ribbon embroidery.  Generally, you use a pretty thread for the chain (not white!) and monofilament for the top and bobbin.  Basically you fold the thread in half and attach it to the base with a few stitches. Cross the thread or ribbon in fron to the needle, not pulling too tight, sew a few stiches forward to anchor the crossover, cross again and so on.  This is another technique which can be done with the feed dogs up.
So, there's a headful!