It has been a busy winter so far but I finally finished a few journal covers. I hope to add some to my Etsy shop and will bring a few to Fibre Fling 5 in April as well. The way I assemble these is kind of complicated (for me!) but works well. The only problem is that I need to add the landscape first so very careful measuring needs to happen all the way along. I always forget to take photos while I am working so each time I need to look at a finished journal and copy the steps:) They are time consuming but I like to have a few for each show I attend. The skies are all painted satin and the landscape is made up of fused cottons which I machine stitch. These are approx. 6 x 8". I am working on one in fuschia that's not quite finished yet.
While I am painting satin for skies and machine stitching I usually make a few postcards as well because they are made with a similar process. Here are two that are ready for backing.
When working with these satin skies I kept seeing silhouettes of trees in front of sunset or dawn skies ( I guess I am not quite finished with sunsets - my 2015 theme!). I decided to try embroidering trees onto the satin. I had been doing some stitching on felt which I LOVE because it is so easy to stitch and so forgiving. Not so with satin. It needs a lot of TLC, sharp needles and gentle stitching. I am happy with the results though. It was what I had visualized before beginning. If you zoom in to the trees in the first one you will see sparkles! I discovered that sparkle chainette worked very well for the few 'leaves' still remaining on the trees and scattered on the ground. If you haven't discovered sparkle chainette, go to Lorraine Stobie's online shop Colour Complements where you will find a wonderful selection of her dyed threads. They are my favourite threads to work with (she has perle cottons, rayon, silk, chainette and more) and they come in a wide range of yummy colours!
I am so thrilled with felt these days so I am needle felting on pieces of ready made felt and adding hand stitching. Unfortunately I framed this next one before photographing so this photo is not very accurate but you can get an idea of it. So relaxing to spend the evening stitching circles on felt! I even did a tiny daisy piece on felt for the spring show. I am developing an idea for our coming exhibition at the Textile Museum that involves needle felting and hand stitching on felt. Our theme will be Colour Unboxed (Out of the Box Fibre Artists).
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| 'Circling' |
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| this one is 3 x 3' approx |
I attended a workshop on Monday where we did some Gelli Plate printing on papers and fabric. It was my first time using a Gelli plate and it was a lot of fun! It worked especially well on smooth card and rough watercolour paper. I used both acrylic paints which gave vibrant colours, and fabric paints - mostly translucent - which worked better over opaque base layers. I think I need more practice but I have several new ideas of things to use to make marks and interesting designs. I haven't taken photos of my results but I have begun hand stitching a couple of printed fabrics.
We had a mostly mild winter with little snow on the ground until last week when we got a dump of 51 cm in less than a day. Since then the weather has turned nasty with more to come tomorrow. And we thought winter was over.......
