Fibre Art for the Library, Starting New Projects and Finishing Others

Prairie Dawn

In my last blog entry I talked about entering "My Sacred Tree" in a show at our local library in Stittsville, Ontario.  I had to abandon my hand stitched prairie piece for now so here is my second attempt, all machine stitched because I still can't do any hand sewing.  My hand was improving then the pain started in the other hand and my physiotherapist thinks the culprit is arthritis not a tendon injury so she gave me instructions and exercises which seem to be helping.

So at least I have been able to start machine stitching again.  I painted the satin sky, did some free motion on the fields, then painted the edges of a stretched canvas to match and mounted it on the canvas (still needs to be glued down).

Painted Edges

I love the premise of this show.   We took the first line of a book as inspiration.   This piece was inspired by W.O. Mitchell's 'Who Has Seen the Wind'.    The line reads as follows.

"Here was the least common denominator of nature, the skeleton requirement simply, of land and sky - Saskatchewan prairie" (Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O Mitchell, 1947, McClelland and Stewart, page 3).

I have also finished off my black and white hand embroidered piece by adding some subtle watercolour effects to it and framing it in a float frame.

Safe Harbour

Inspired by a photo taken in Prince Edward Island several years ago.


My latest project is completing some journal covers for a show in November.   I had ideas for the creative part  but really no idea of how to make a journal cover.    So I tried several techniques which did not work or only worked marginally.   Then I went online and looked at several tutorials then started again.   I completed three journals so far and working on more.  Here are a couple of them.

This next one, still to be assembled, started out by painting fabric, stamping with homemade stamps, then free motion stitching the leaves.  I've got to say that I think my machine skills are improving since I am unable to do any hand stitching.  I needed to have a reason to keep at it I guess.  The plan is for this to be a journal cover but it looks interesting as is.

Free Motion Embroidery

On Thanksgiving Monday, after a big turkey dinner the day before, I went for a walk with two friends to Mud Lake, a lovely spot along the Ottawa River.   We spied these Wood Ducks.   The female was aggressively grooming the male.   We wondered what he was carrying around in his feathers.

Wood Ducks

And the weather was fabulous!

 This post is linked up to  WIP Wednesdays     Take a look at what other Canadian fibre artists are up to this week.

The Sacred Tree

This post is linked to Needle and Thread Network WIP Wednesdays  Take a look at what Canadian Fibre Artists are doing this week.  I'm also linking  up with Off the Wall Fridays.  More great fibre art!

The Sacred Tree

 I managed to mount my tree piece onto a black canvas that I purchased.  I think that this will be my contribution to the 'Out of the Box' Stittsville library fibre art exhibition for the month of November.  It is based on the book "The Sacred Tree".    I have another possibility - a piece I have been working on with prairie grasses and big sky (Who Has Seen the Wind) - but I wanted to do more hand stitching and I am still nursing my injured hand (more physio - sigh!).  Yesterday they told me that it will take a long time to heal and my other hand is starting to hurt too, from overuse I guess.  So I need to exercise my hands but hand sewing is out of the question for now.  I'm trying to stay positive (ie when life hands you lemons, make lemonade, right?)....so here's what I am doing.

One thing I learned to do when I was a child and there were no left handed scissors, was to cut with my right hand.   So I was able to use my painted satin skies to make some 4 x 6 mini landscapes/postcards.   They are fused down and ready to machine stitch.   Placement was tricky because my finger splint kept knocking pieces every which way (but my nurse practitioner told me yesterday to throw away the splint anyway). 

I'm also taking photos of the wonderful fall colours outside my door.    Last month I decided to trim my maple instead of cutting it down.   Today it rewarded me by producing the most gorgeous red leaves ever.   Some years they are mostly yellow but not this year.....

And my newly cabled ash tree is brilliantly yellow out in my back yard....I do love autumn!

Tomorrow Junk that Funk is coming to take away a load of things from my basement as well as a removing a sofa from my fabric/computer room so that I can finally have a room dedicated to sewing.  I am excited!

Painting Skies and Cape Breton Flora

Since I still can't hand stitch although my finger is improving, I decided to paint some skies so I can work on more machine stitched mini/postcard pieces.

  I'll cut each square horizontally for 2 skies

The middle sunset one is my most favourite.   I used setasilk colours on three of them, tsukeniko inks on another three, and another three were done with derwent inktense blocks.  Unfortunately I was not very scientific and I can't remember which were which.  The inks gave the strongest colours so I think the orange sunset and stormy sky piece was done with them.  I believe the palest three were the setasilk colours.   And the remainder were inktense.   I got the results I wanted from each more or less.  They are painted on satin and were difficult to photograph - If I used a flash it bounced off the satin.  These photos don't show some of the subtle effects of the colours mixing together.  I tried a bit of editing to capture the true colours.

This one is not quite so bright.  I want to use it in a mainly green landscape.

I used a flash with this one

I like the effects in this one.  I can see rainbows.

Think stormy skies

One of my favourites

this one looks a little 'dirty' in the photo

I can't wait to use them in mini landscapes.   I started three last night before painting these skies.   I'll machine stitch them soon.

I have been so busy this week I hardly had time to look at my Cape Breton photos so I relaxed for a bit this morning and took a look.   Here are some photos of flora along the trail.  If you look closely you might see a bit of fauna as well.

On last night's news they showed a fellow who found a very large mushroom - Here's what  I saw on Red Island Trail - at first I thought it was a wasp nest or a buoy hanging in a tree but I think it is a giant fungus.  I couldn't get close enough to examine it but it stuck out from the tree and appeared to have a large stem attaching it to the tree.  

I feel another mushroom quilt in the making

So many varieties

This beauty looked like a large scallop shell

Mmmm...more stitchery

This grouse was 3 feet away from us but she didn't think we could see her.   Eventually she flew up almost taking out a hiker.  The resulting photo was just a blur of bird and human.

The trees at Fishing Cove were laden with cones

 This post is linked up to Off the Wall Friday    Take a look at what other bloggers are up to this week.

Hiking the Highlands 2013

I have just returned from the annual Hike the Highlands festival in Cape Breton, NS.   We had fabulous weather for most of the ten days - except for this....

Money Point on a cold foggy rainy morning

By that afternoon we were hiking barefoot on Cabot Landing beach

The highlight of our hiking was a sunset hike on the Skyline trail.   We hiked into Skyline and waited....

View of highway from the top of Skyline

 

Up on the Boardwalk

Waiting for the Sunset

Behind us the moon was rising

It was a  Wow!! moment

Sunset on one side of us - Moonrise on the other - what could be better than that

Shadows from the Setting Sun

This is really how it looked - honestly

 On the way out we encountered several moose - cow and bulls - who were not too happy to see us there at that time of night.   It was too dark for me to photograph them but they were majestic.

I hurt my dominant hand before my vacation so I am unable to do any hand stitching (and not much else) for maybe a month - very frustrating!   Hopefully I can do some machine work.

Focus on Colours - Black and White Embroidery, Turquoise Challenge, Multi-Coloured Minis

I've made progress on my black stitched embroidery.  Just a few more stitches then I will add a few watercolour accents like I did on my raccoon piece.

I was notified that I have been accepted into the annual Glebe Craft and Artisan Fair in November so I am busy making some smaller items for sale since I have already completed several medium and larger sized items this year.  Besides my bookmarks and ribbon embroidered minis, I am working on some 4 x 6 landscapes that can either be used as postcards or framed with or without a mat.

Since I loved laying down strips and machine stitching the two swamp pieces, I used that method on some of the minis.   Some of the skies are hand painted and the satin ones were dyed with ranger transfer dyes (which are no longer sold I believe).  They are mostly stitched with straight and zigzag stitch with some free motion on the florals.    They are really relaxing to do (I can't believe I said that given my sewing machine anxiety:) 

And finally, 'Turquoise'.    I loved finishing the landscape part of it but adding the border is not fun for me.   The finished piece is part of a challenge so it needs to be 12 x 12".   Emulating the 'elephant head' in the landscape I made two stamps, one with trunk-like swirls which I repeated on a piece of darker fabric and the second is an elephant head.   How and where to use them is still a work in progress.

 Do I run the strips along the horizontal above and below to add to the panorama?  Then add some elephants on the outer border?   Maybe too distracting.

 Do I add a narrow strip of darker fabric to frame the landscape then use ghostly images of the elephants on the larger border?  Maybe.....Question is 'how much is too much?'

 Perhaps the stamped darker pieces would look less distracting around the edge of the stretched canvas??

What a process finishing is!!   I put it aside to perculate for awhile and went outside to visit the fall flowers, even a few grapes that the critters haven't yet seen.  

 This fall flowering bush with an unpleasant odour (name??)  was buzzing with bees, a few wasps and even several house flies.

It was tricky trying to get close without getting stung by a wasp but it's great to know that some bees are still surviving.      If they go, we are in real trouble.....

This post is linked to WIP Wednesdays over at the Needle and Thread Network.  Take a look at what some Canadian fibre artists are doing this week.