November Design

Aha, now we have done some totally unrelated techniques, comes the hard part.  Using those bits and pieces to create a textile and mixed media piece.
Here are the bits and pieces we have.

I find that I can think and think, and draw sometimes, but that the design doesn't come together until I start fiddling.  That was the case here.

"inspiration exists, but it has to find you working"  Picasso

This is one of my favourite quotations and is very true here.

Whilst tidying up my workspace, I came across a picture I had seen of different coloured leaves, and that got me started.

So I started with my painted batting.

I cut out some leaf shapes from my hand dyed fabric.

I played with arranging the leaves.  I started with one row of five, but couldn't think of a way to add the folded fabrics, then I hit on two rows.  I have placed the leaves in gradations going in opposite directions.  It was the negative space - that is the diamonds this arrangement forms that made the design.

I added some of the paper beads.

and the folded elements, and I was pretty happy with the design after a few tweaks.
This design uses negative space, repetition, symmetry and colour to achieve its form.

Now on to the stitching - hand first?  or machine, we will see.

Hope you like my ideas for this month's design for my TAMMS project.  I'd love to see what sort of things you all come up with here.

Have fun creating!

fly stitch and some running water

today's ATC is about two challenges in the one task.  I decided to combine TAST (Take a stitch tuesday) on Pintangle with my ATCs and here is my first result.

Just a little fly stitch swirl.  TAST is a weekly chellenge run by Sharon B at Pintangle.  I'm pretty sure she has near a thousand participants, as there were over a hundered a month ago when she stopped adding to the list
I sketched out my design for this as I was getting confused

And I also drew a little spiral on my fabric as a guide with an iron off pen.

And now, a little peek at a fused collage a' la  Laura Wasilowski (Quilting arts TV episode 401)

Here is the basic fused picture.  This one I am going to embroider by hand in the evenings.

I have begun with some swirly water (close up on right).  Mostly, I will use straight, running stitch, lazy daisy, seeding. blanket stitch, but of course, now I will have TAST to inspire me as well!

happy stitching!

Art books

 Just a quick mention, that I am going to start posting an ATC a day as a way to play with lots of techniques.  This was an idea put forward by my friend, Lisa  and I have decided to join her in her venture. we shall see!  She also has a great list of techniques which she wants to try.

My art books, as I have said, are recycled/altered books which I use to create little bits of art and experiment in on different themes.
Here are a few pages I have worked on recently.

This is a page from my bird theme book.  The backgrpound is newspaper painted with gesso and then a watercolour wash, which I find easy to paint and draw on and is a cheap and easy way to cover up the page contents underneath.  The bird was inspired by a card.  It is a little hard to see because it is drawn with a metallic pen, but basically each piece of the bird is doodled with a different free motion quilting design.  I have a small quilt based on this page in process, so you see the books are a great design resource..

This is a page in process in my water/oceans book.  Again the background is painted newspaper/gesso.
The seahorses are molding paste applied through a stencil, then painted gold.
This page will be layered again to add some more weeds and depth before it is finished.  I already have ideas about using painted fusible in a small quilt like this.

These ferns in my leaf theme book are stencilled with oil pastel.  Next, I will put a watercolour wash on which will be resisted by the pastel.  This can be mimicked on fabric using shiva sticks and fabric paint, so i do see a batch of fabric comming up.

I have shown this page before.  It is a ripped printout pasted to the page, but here, you can see I have begun to sketch out the missing parts.  I think this page needs a wash for the background, so the leaves will brobably be completed with oil pastel.

Another page from the leaf book, this is a simple layout for a small motif (about 4") I made using couched copper wire on a piece of woven wool fabric.  This page has a piece od non woven paper/fabric (the type florists use on their posies) pasted directly to the page.  It is semi transparent, but I actually like the little views you can see.  The pink/orange paper is paste paper .

I have actually been doing a lot of sewing an textile work, but haven't quite got to the point of something to show yet and a couple of my WIPs are things I can't show until a certain date, but two days untill I start posting ATCs!!!!

Some paperwork

Today I'm going to look at a few pages in my sketchbook and one of my artbooks

This page is one I did recently, when I was designing pages for a fabric book.  The top sketch is obviously just some leaves, but I was interested in contrasts and the shadows of the leaves.  The bottom sketch is of a pomegranate, inspired by a design of Judy Coates Perez'. 

On this page at the bottom is a modification of the pomegranate that I was happier with.  At the top is a doodle of a dragonfly, where I intend to thread paint dimensional wings and bead the body.  There is also a little scribble of my cat's ear, since she was handy, lol.
This page is just drawn in pencil, and generally, that is where I start, then I go back and rework the pages later with color.  going back over the sketches this way allows me to revisit ideas and remember what I was going to do.  It's a great way to find inspiration when you are at a loss.

This is a reverse applique sample in my leaf art book.  I was playing with Gesso and decoded I liked the washed out effect it gave.  The leaves at the bottom are just stickers I found in a bargain store, which i used to balabce the page a bit.

This is a half  finished collage in the same book.  You can see that this is not an artist's sketchbook, but a reclaimed book (you can just see the writing on the page in the background.  I like to use an altered book for my art books.  A page which has been painted over with gesso or medium to wash out the text is much easier to get started on than a pristine white page, which can be daunting for most of us.

This page looks like a mess, doesn't it?  I purposely tore the picture so that I can complete the picture myself, sort of like a drawing exercise (an idea I got from Laura Kemshall).  This is another way to overcome the clean page block.
Another thing I learnt when doing this page was that ink jet prints do work with medium and PVA and will not bleed - BUT  you have to leave them for a few days, maybe a week to allow the ink to set and use neat PVA or heavy medium (the less water, the better) to glue and gloss over them.
I have had bleeds when using ink jet prints in the past and now I think that perhaps I really did not let them set properly in this way and used PVA with too much water.

Any way, that was just a brief look into my always incomplete and sometimes messy paper work.  Perhaps because of my painting and drawing background, I find this work invaluable to my textile work.  Like this blog, keeping a record of what I do and how it all turns out does come in handy down the track.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.

Scott Adams

Snow Gums

For my WIP Wednesday, I am showing you the first steps of a new large landscape I have been mulling over for a while.
In this case, I did not have a sketch or photo to work from, the idea had just been in my head for a while.  I started by placing a large 1400 by 900mm   (about 50  by 36 in) sheet of lutradur up on my design wall.

The lutradur is lightweight and a pale green colour.  I get it by the roll from the hardware where it is sold as weed mat.  I have recently started using this under my free machined work because it gives it body without bulk, so I don't need to use a hoop or add batting to do free motion work.  It is very similar to light lutradur and becomes softer with use, especially when you are doing hand work.
You can see above I have drawn a sketch of the tree straight onto the stabiliser.  I know this is a difficult picture to read, because of the transparency of the lutradur.  Here is a digital sketch of what is drawn on the stabiliser.

Better?  At least now you will know what I am talking about.  I traced this onto wide format printer paper with coloured markers as my pattern.

Above, I have the pattern folded and some tracing paper ready.
Of course we all know that when the moment comes to begin a new project, the perfect fabric is nowhere to be found.
I could not find any sky fabric which I really wanted to use in this piece, so I took some mid blue fabric and painted it with decolourant!

Here it is before the decolourant dried.

After ironing, looking good!

after washing out the decolourant.

And after the final iron.  This is pretty close to what I wanted, except perhaps a little blue still (this fabric did not go all the way to white - even with steam)  This gives me an opportunity to add more white with thread later.
So now I was ready to start putting up the sky.  I do try to start from the distance if I can, but since I am pinning my pieces not fusing or glueing this time (to allow more ease in the thread painting), I can easily add extras in at any stage.

Here I am tracing the sky areas of my pattern.  you can see that I don't worry too much about accuracy here as the layers will all overlap.  The arrows I have drawn outside the piece are to remind me of this overlap.

Next, I take my tracing and pin it to my sky fabric.  Then rough cut out the pieces with at least an inch extra.

Here are two of the rough cut pieces.  Remember, the arrows mean overlap.  No arrows means an edge of the whole.  In this case, the top.

Next, I trim the tracings back to the line.  ONLY the tracings, not the fabric.

 This is the reason why.  I trace around the shape onto the fabric with an iron-off pen.  This is to help me place the overlapping layer correctly later.

Then I simply place these pieces onto my foundation in the correct place ready for the next fabric, which will be all the hills in the distance.
That was a lot of writing, for something that really took a short time.  Needless to say it might be a few weeks before you see the next step in this sequence.

Just to finish off on a high note, here are a few photos of a very friendly King Parrot I had a chat with this afternoon.

Hello there, you don't mind if I just have a nibble?

If I promise only to eat weeds, would that be OK?

Of course, with all these weeds, I might have to stay a while...

No, No, I was not casting nasturtiums on your gardening skills!

Oh well, it was a lovely chat and I must visit again soon.  bye.

As you can see we had a lovely talk and it wasn't until I had gotten about a foot from him/her that  he/she felt the need to depart.

I'll be seeing you
Vicki

Leafy fabric book - progress

As you  know if you have been checking in, I am working on a little fabric book based on a leaf theme  (which is my current work theme).
As it has been a while, I thought I would give you an update on where the pages are at.

I have shown this one before, it just needs a little adjustment.

This one is basically finished, now, except, I think I may go over the word "fern"  in a contrasting colour.

This one is a bit further along.  I have defined the blue tree with some free motion, and now I think I see some yellow grassor bushes under it.  I also found these fish bone leaf danglies which I will embellish with some blue and gold thread.

My wrapped leaves have found a new backing, which suits them better, but I am still dithering over my next steps here.

So, instead of dithering, I just went on to some new pages until the muse strikes.  This one was inspired by the circle, which I have blanket stitched on.  The sequins are a bit lost, although I think their shape and arrangement are good.  I did try stitching on them with green (top left), but it just wasn't enough contrast.  I think I will paint them with pale green gesso. Although I do like the pearly sheen, it doesn't work here.

This page uses some pressed fern leaves my mother gave me.  I liked the three sizes.  They are glued beneath a piece of tulle, which is attached with gold brads.  I will be stitching the leaves down and trimming the tulle with wave blade scissors or pinking shears.

This is a very simple page with lovely fabric and a little gold embellishment.

This one uses a bit of nylon lace curtain in a whorl.

This last one uses some little leaf charms I found with fabric shadows.  Not sure where this one will go.

So there is a peek at where I am at, but of course, if you know me, a peek is not much help, because it is just the tip of the iceberg, since I am into anything and everything vaguely to do with fibres and textiles.  My hubby says he has no idea what I am upto from one minute to the next, but he is exactly the same with his craft.  Two peas in a pod.