See My New Bookmarks Page

I have added a new page to my blog for fabric Bookmarks which are now for sale!   I have also added a few new items to My Gallery.

Fibre Art - Mosaic Challenge

My quilting challenge partners and I met on Monday to unveil our latest challenge pieces.  Last year we decided to do a piece based on a mosaic style.   That was the only rule.  After many months of hard work, here are the results.  My piece might look familiar to my regular visitors because I first posted it several months ago.

This first piece is by Shirley Santos Pedro and it is a depiction of 'the king'.  She used two different 'elvis' fabrics, one for the clothing and another for the guitar.   If you look closely you can see that the mosaics in the clothing have words printed on them.   She also cut out words and expressions to attach to the background fabric.   Isn't it great?  And what a lot of work!

The second piece is Iris Krajcarski's interpretation of the John Lennon Memorial in Central Park, New York City.    Note especially all the tiny square mosaic tiles around the perimeter.   The fabrics chosen for the piece have a faint pattern which really captures the mosaic feel of the memorial.    Perfect! 

In case you are thinking that our theme was a musical one as well, here is my piece.  It is called simply "Iguana" and I started with a small sketch which I coloured with pencil crayons then roughly drew horizontal and vertical lines over it - each square would be equal to 1".   I chose and fused several fabrics then cut a zillion 1" squares and fused them onto a black background then hand-quilted the whole piece.  Aside from placing all the squares, it was the easiest piece I ever designed.

Here are some close up shots of the pieces.

Now on to our next challenge.   We have added a fourth member to our group and, inspired by the book Twelve by Twelve, we decided to each pick a theme and it will become the four by four challenge.     We are giving ourselves two months for the first challenge (yikes - I still sew by hand) and the first theme is 'resting places'.   The next themes are houses, clocks, and dragonfly.    We have set the size as 12" x 12" ( I suggested 4" x 4" since we are the group of four but after much laughter they all nixed that idea).  So stay tuned for our next challenge results.

Too Much Politics and I Turn to Doodling - The Sketchbook Challenge

 

I don't know about everyone else but I have heard enough from politicians lately (from any country)    about the economy and their solutions to it and I find myself practicing deep breathing, meditation, tai chi, doing sudokus, sewing, and now doodling to help me remain calm - reminding myself - 'do not panic'.   When the Sketchbook challenge announced their theme is doodling this month, I had to join in.   So here is my first sketchbook challenge.  I hope to be able to take part every month because I do love sketching and drawing.     If you want to check out 'The Sketchbook Challenge' see the badge here on my blog.    And don't forget to breathe!

Framed Fibre Art - Fog on Micheleen's Path

Fog on Micheleen's Path

This is my month for finishing pieces and here is another.  I worked on this one for over six months, using paint,  applique, embroidery, dyed cheesecloth (trees and foreground), beads, stones, pearlized paint, layers of tulle and strips of tulle for the fog.   I stapled it onto a stretched canvas and mounted it in a floating frame.  I still feel like it is missing something but I am so used to making brightly coloured art that doing a piece like this which by definition needed to be shrouded in fog, is very difficult.  I tried to put stronger colours in the foreground fading to fog in the distance.    This was a path we took on the East Coast Trail in Newfoundland on a foggy day and this piece has heavier fog than the original photo.  I may need to put more colour into the foreground.

Designing a Business Card Holder - something practical for a change

Voila! My new sewing machine.

So this is what purchasing a sewing machine does to you.  I've suddenly started to think of practical things to sew.   Actually someone in our fibre arts group gave us each a collaged business card holder a couple of months ago.   I thought of it when I was trying to decide what to give a friend for her birthday.  She has been getting work done on her house recently and I thought this might be useful when collecting cards from designers, paint stores, painters, carpenters etc...  I started by embroidering leaves on a white background again using Laura's beautiful threads.

If you look closely you will see my inspiration - a plastic place mat that I placed on the table to have a smooth surface to work on happened to have a leaf design.   I ended up doodling leaves onto my fabric but making them more colourful, loose and flowing than the rigid design on place mat.

Using my new sewing machine I was able to machine stitch the lining to the cover but I decided to do the final assembly by hand because I am just learning to manage this beast (although I had fun trying out stitches and even alphabet letters a few days ago).  So the finished product is a little wonky but it works.    I gave it to my friend along with some exercise DVDs for when the weather is bad and a new journal.  I think she liked it.

lining

front

back

An Autumn Walk in the Greenbelt

I need to thank Neville Hamilton for the inspiration for this hand stitched piece.   Before Christmas he purchased one of my pieces as a gift for his partner after they saw it at my open house in November.   At the open house we had discussed my upcoming exhibition called 'Pathways' .  It just so happens that he is an excellent photographer.   When he came to pick up the artwork he brought me three photos for inspiration.  I immediately had an idea for one of them and he gave permission for me to use it as a photo transfer.   It was an autumn scene of his partner walking their dog in the greenbelt forest.   So here is what I did with it.  First I scanned the photo into my computer and printed it on fabric.  See original photo below.   My scanned version would not upload because it was in the wrong format so I had to take a picture of the picture for this post.

I surrounded it with rectangles of autumn colours, adding stitches and paint to the photo transfer.   Then I appliqued trees in the foreground and hand cut many tiny maple leaves and fused them in the foreground as well, stitching their veins with some lovely variegated threads I purchased from Laura Wasilowski at Artfabrik.

Laura's threads

  I covered it all with a fine yellowy netting and prepared a stretched canvas by turning it over and covering the frame with fabric.

I mounted the artwork inside the stretched canvas and, as a final touch I fused and stitched a few leaves drifting over the frame.

closeup of stitched leaves

spilling over onto the frame

                                                  

An Autumn Walk in the Greenbelt

It took a lot of hand stitching but once I started, I worked on it steadily until it was finished.  Today we are living in a winter wonderland in Ontario and this bright burst of autumn (and a steaming latte) is just what I needed.  I seem to find myself working on autumn scenes every winter.    This piece will definitely be part of my 'Pathways' exhibit.  I'm still thinking about the final naming of this piece.