Fibrations and Finishing my Library Exhibition Piece

The Conversation

My hand embroidered piece 'The Conversation'  is heading for Burlington Ontario to be part of the September show  Fibrations     I am thrilled to have this piece chosen for the show even though  I won't be able to attend because I will be hiking in Cape Breton.    This year has been a good one for me for juried exhibitions.  I have sent applications to three shows and had work accepted in all three - Quilt Canada, FFAA Prairies show, and now Fibrations.  It gives me the confidence to apply to more shows in future.   I also decided to try out a couple of additional craft venues this year as well since I now have enough smaller items for sale. 

I am so close to finishing my library piece.  It is sitting beside me as I write, ready to have its edges stitched then to be mounted on a stretched canvas.  Here are some photos of the (almost) finished piece.

Votes for Women: Nellie McClung's Women's Mock Parliament

I mounted the text and posters to my previously hand pieced background and machine stitched them down with invisible thread.    I covered the edges of the stretched canvas with text from articles about votes for women and will machine stitch the edges of the piece together (front, middle and back) then attach to the canvas.  I haven't found a good way to attach the piece to the canvas other than glue or double sided tape.  If the piece was smaller than the frame I could stitch it on through the canvas.

Here are some close ups of the text.
 

 The piece will be on display at the Stittsville library in November along with other pieces from Out of the Box members on the theme of '1914'.  I hope that visitors to the library take the time to read about the brave and resourceful women who worked so hard to get us the vote. 

In the evenings I have been working on more tiny hand stitched pieces.  Here is another field of wildflowers from one of my photos taken along the Jack Pine Trail. I left out the trees in the background and made it look more like the viewer is on eye level with the flowers - nothing but flowers and sky.

It is not quite finished yet but I set it under the matt to see how it would look.  I think I like it.

Next time I will show you some cards I made using painted satin skies which I have stamped with a hand made tree stamp and a few other designs.  I need to take some photos of them.   I also want to do some sun prints and make cards from them as well.  A friend told me about a field of sunflowers not far from my house so I think I will hop over and take some photos of them.

I have small pillow boxes for my jewelry and wanted to purchase some small printed foil labels for them but the price seemed prohibitive.  Instead I looked into ordering labels and printing my own.  I managed to find some clear Avery labels online from Amazon with free shipping and yesterday I printed some up and attached them to the backs of cards and to the jewelry boxes.   They work fine (once I found the correct template and did a few test runs).  I might try to find blank foil labels and try them as well......