OK, a new scrap journal page.
Whilst thinking about this design, I was inspired by the work of Naomi Renouf, whose textile collages are beautiful, and intended to put together a garden, but when it came down to it, I liked the lines of the grass as they were and so, it became a collage of grass.
As usual, I started with my piece of canvas.
Added a bit of blue fabric for the sky.
Then cut some strips of green fabrics for the greenery.
I arranged the strips along the bottom.
Then covered the whole thing with tulle and pinned it down. A few of the strips moved and bent and I liked the effect, so I bent a few more myself.
I sewed some grassy lines with free motion all over the green strips.
And here is the final piece. I free motioned over the sky in a similar way to the grass, to keep the illusion of the lines.
These journal pages are not meant to be works of art, but very simple quick explorations of aspects of landscape. Most of the time the cutting and arranging takes less than ten minutes and the free motion from ten to twenty minutes. They are experiments which I might expand on later in larger pieces.
I am sure I will use this effect again (with more careful cutting and embroidery of course).
Hopefully, later in the week, I will outline the method I am using for constructing this journal.
At present I am overloaded with samples! I have several projects on the go, so my scrap journal is providing me with a bit of play to alternate with all the work I am doing!
In order to construct the journal, I wanted two half size pages for the front and back.
After a little opportunity shopping, I put together these two similar pages.
Basically, they are the same. From the top, the fabrics are:
Blue cotton
brown, orange and yellow chiffon
a piece of open weave straw (much used in fascinators) over the top of the chiffon
bright orange homespun
a piece of fabric cut from an apricot jumper
Dark orange brushed cotton
yellow fleece - fleece side up
This time, I did not use tulle, but simply stuck the pieces down with a glue stick.
Here are the pieces after embroidering
This time there are a few slight differences.
In the sky, I stitched a linear pattern on the left and a shell type cloud pattern on the right.
On the chiffon, I used granite stitch to define and stabilise the edge and to highlight some of the darker areas.
I simply stitched down the the woven straw at the edges.
On the orange cotton, I used stem stitch in a sideways zig zag motion to represent trees or grass.
On the apricot knitted fabric, I stitched contour lines.
On the dark orange brushed cotton, I drew lines irregularly with a multicoloured thread and did some weave stitch at the top.
On the yellow fleece, I stitched alternating shells.
I am quite happy with this piece and I can notice a theme starting here, there are two desert type themes (and one watery) I wonder what I will do next?
Here is a little video of how my journal will look at this stage. It's not my best effort so far, but next time will be better!
