www3...woops!

Ok, so it's Thursday, I forgot to post. In fact I actually forgot to take some photos yesterday. So here are the two out of four that loaded. I took them this morning but the work was done yesterday...honest!

I know, I'm not showing much, that's because it's in its early stages and it's for an exhibition...I hope.

I can tell you that the above piece has a mixture of fabrics, some painted with gesso, some printed (can't really see that in the picture), the beige is an old linen and some builders scrim as well as my all time favourite, calico. The lace and the linen came from a super charity shop. That's where I found the linen thread which you can see in the top photo. They had labels on them saying that they were Irish linen. A bit of a scoop I'd say.

Managed to load the other two photos. Above is another snip of what I was working on yesterday.

This photo shows some of the crochet mats that I found in that same charity shop. I hope you can see how fine the white one is on top. I don't know how they managed it and it is beautifully worked. I put the pen beside them to help with size.

Anyway, that's it for this week I hope to be on time next Wednesday.

Bye for now.

x

www...3

...working Wednesday work...ok so I'm going to run out of W words!
I really didn't do too much today. This was all done as I waited for the washing machine to finish. A little trial that didn't go where I thought that it would, which I suppose is what we should expect. I've not got these pictures in order but I can explain as I go along. 

 Nice Kit Kat wrapper...this is the large one from the multi wraps, silver inside. Anyway these pieces show the wrapper a bit shrivelled and painted. The background fabric is calico which I smeared some yellow acrylic paint on first.

 As you can see in the photo above I have used the painted piece to print onto the fabric.

 This one above is getting back to the beginning, my first thoughts. I originally decided to melt the foil wrapper with the iron. NB. protect the iron & the foil with baking parchment. It is literally a case of laying the iron down onto the baking parchment with the foil  below and quickly lifting it off. It is that simple! You may want to repeat it but you start to lose the shine of the foil and it can flatten rather than leave all these nice cell like shapes. Don't expect them all to work, I probably got about half that worked ok.

Some of the pieces were great like the one above...others not so.

These two photos, above and below show the before and after print. I used a metal scraper to put on the paint and rubbed over the back with my hand. The foil is pretty robust so it shouldn't come to much harm. You could use an old credit card to scrape the paint on if that's what you have.

Back to the beginning again with the one below. After melting I thought that I would glue the foil onto the fabric. As I started to colour the surface of the foil and the fabric the foil started lifting a little. I eventually got fed up and removed the foil and was left with a lovely glue shape on the surface. I will add a bit more colour to it when I get a chance. I thought that it left a rather interesting shape so I tried it again and it was rubbish. Probably a bit too impatient me thinks anyway it didn't work so I'll give it another go sometime. 

All these things I've been trying are not new it's just that I've come across them by accident. If I'd thought about it I may well have tried out these techniques but that really wasn't in my mind when I started. Basically a quick creative fix that turned out quite nicely thank you.

Just as an aside and not that great a photo but this was a huge bumble bee that landed at my feet when I was hanging out my washing. It was a lovely day and really quite warm in the sunshine. I ended up spending the rest of the morning in the garden. A fruit pancake and a coffee, something to read and a comfy chair...then some hard graft in the weeding department.

Lovely!

X

here they are....

this was the first piece that I worked on, fabric, paint and stitch, chopped up and linked back together again. It's great how it can be manipulated but still hold together.

Some calico, Lutradur and stitch then burt with the heat tool.

A little closer....took these outside this evening with the flash as it was starting to get dark and as you can see the rain was just starting to fall.

This one has come out even darker!

This is another of these photos that I've forgotten to turn before posting!

Different fabrics joined together with machine and hand stitching. Just like the old fashioned Christmas decorations!

Some Acetate this time with paint, hand and machine stitching, sorry about the flashy bits!

Some linked fabric pieces...

Some more of the same shaped pieces but linked in a different way...and the photo is round the wrong way!

Calico, garden fleece (burnt), machine and hand stitching. I made the beads from offcuts and wire when I came home.

Didn't realise this is almost the same as the previous photo. Never mind.

I've just deleted another photo!!!! I'll save it for the next time.

Check out Dawn's book for some of the instructions .

"TRANSPARENCY IN TEXTILES" by DAWN THORNE (hope I got the link ok, it should take you to Amazon).

If you'd rather support The Embroiderers' Guild and buy from them try http://www.embroiderersguild.com/bookshop/

If you get the chance to go to a workshop taken by Dawn then I would recommend it. I had a great time and hope to develop some of the ideas into my own work.

Thank You, Dawn for the inspiration and such a lovely time at the Embroiderers' Guild Scottish Branches Summer School, Stirling.

Bye for now.

Moira

x

10th March...

...day eight!...

...This is what I was doing on Saturday... Somehow I think you can guess what I was doing!

... how come you never see the thread going right across the photo when you are taking it!! Then you forget to turn the photo before you upload it!!...mutter, mutter...

... a little bit of shaded dying....

...and some graduated dyeing...

...and some space dyeing. How about the silk velvet, don't you just love it!

Actually I don't think the photos really do the colours justice.

This was a class run by my branch of the Embroiderers' Guild.

A big thank you to Dorothy who took the class, it was a great day, we learnt a lot and all had a great time. Thanks!

Moira

...mmm... now what am I going to do with all this lovely fabric?!*:-)

9th March...

...this is day seven, already lagging behind. Anyway here is a continuation from the last post!
As you can see I was playing around with some Lutrador. My sister brought it over from Australia with her last year and we had a little play with it I know that I can get it here but it was fun. I never got round to writing up the notes so hope I get this right. The photo above shows the Lutrador bonded onto two pieces of felt and one piece of calico, some free machining and a blast of hot air!
We continued with the samples by trying out the soldering iron as well. I liked the way you can draw with it and get more defined holes and patterns.

The black and red on the left is one of my Indian wood printing blocks (still with the red paint on it!) this was printed onto the yellow felt before the Lutrador was bonded on. We added some free machining echoing the wood block design.

This was the result once it was blasted with the hot air tool along with the photo from my last post (it had some cable free machining as well) .

I suppose you could go on to add some hand stitching and beading but I think I'll just keep it as a sample. I may try and melt it again to reveal more of the red stamping below.

That's it for now.

Byee!