September already!!

Today is 1/9/19. I was reminded that I had to blog because of the interesting numbers. So here I am, blogging.

I was going to put in a picture of the hydrangea sprouting leaves and say something about Christmas coming but every time I think of it, it is dark and I don't have a picture, so I will have to leave that till another day.

I did take some pics of the Silver Princess in our garden. The bees were busily humming (that song about Spring coming, something to do with daffodils - which are not up yet) and I saw some that went RIGHT INTO  the centre of the flowers. You have to look closely.

I have been doing some more bits and pieces for the Farmyard theme. I may be the only person in my group doing it - we had a smaller than usual group today because it was Fathers Day and some members were absent. I think there are a couple of others still doing it but they don't always bring them.

Not to worry, I am being inspired, if that is the correct word.
I recently attended another Kathryn Harmer Fox workshop and have been influenced by her techniques and advice. I did a Pademelon and was advised to let the fabric talk, not to sew it to death (my words, not hers).

I have done a cow, which needed to be knocked back in the body and I used tulle.

The horse didn't need as much stitching as I had planned, I liked how it was turning out so have done minimal stitching. It has lots of small pieces of fabric laid out as a collage. So the fabric speaks a lot in this one.

Now to work out how to mount and, possibly, frame them.

Playing around with collage

I can't remember if I posted about doing some paper collage recently. I was inspired by a couple of posts online, from a primary art class.
One here and one here being the main inspirations. But Pinterest does take you on a journey, suggesting endless other related links.

The idea is to put strips of paper radiating out from near the centre, then to look at the eyes and nose/beak of an animal and draw those, cut them out and put them on the collage. Voila: you have an image of an animal.

I tried it with mainly tissue paper. I was just doing a sample to show some young girls I was going to get to try this sort of art. I didn't take close notice of how to do the features and should have, my piece would have been a bit better. But I still like it.

I used the face of our dog as my inspiration. I didn't take the photo till afterwards, I probably would have put in a mouth if I had taken the time and done it in proper sequence. Not to worry, the girls and I had fun.

That was several weeks, if not months, ago.

I haven't done any fabric collage in this way - until this weekend.
Once again, I am trying to do the machine embroidery group's Farmyard theme and am struggling with it. The topic this month is Pigs.

After having it in the back of my mind for ages, and having looked online at lots of Pig images, especially pig collage images, I finally got around to trying it.

So far I have laid out the fabrics, adding very minimal eyes, nose and mouth.

I laid the fabrics, which are off-cuts from other projects, all very small, onto some adhesive interfacing and then ironed them on.

Then I cut out the shape of the head and added the features, rather haphazardly.

So far, so good. I went back to my inspirational image that I found on Pinterest, and decided that I needed to add some body.

Now I have to choose the background. I was originally thinking of doing a Pig in Clover and have tried two green backgrounds. The bright green does interesting things to the fabrics. The pale green is, well, pale.

Then I tried the linen and cotton background that I have used lately for other collages. I think that is the one I will use. Probably.  I am not going to try to do the clover bit - it was going to be free motion quilting but I think it is overkill. It will be quicker to just put on a plain background too.

There is still a fair bit of sewing to do, to put in some detail and to make sure the fabric pieces are really attached. The tilt of the head needs work too.

Actually, looking at the photos makes me see them differently and now I can't decide between the bright green or the duller linen-cotton fabric. That decision will have to come on another day.

How Things Develop

The machine embroidery group I belong to has a Farmyard theme this year.
This month's is buildings and fences. Not all that inspiring, I thought. But at least it is a theme and I can think about it.

Having thought about it for several weeks now, and having taken some extremely boring photos, I decided to bite the bullet and start today.

I had looked at some people's work on Pinterest. I especially like Cinde Hoppe, a new to me textile artist.
After browsing her site I thought I might pull out some fabrics I have dyed in the past and see if I had anything suitable.

That was yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. Finally, I got into my, relatively tidy, studio today and was about to start looking at said dyed fabrics.
I don't know what made me look down at the box on the bottom shelf but I did. There were some bits and pieces left over from my Cas Holmes workshop that I did about 10 or 11 months ago.

I pulled them out. I laid them out. I radically changed my mind about what I thought I was going to do!

Now I have a piece that I think is going to be 12" square - just because that is the size I have been working on lately.
I made the image. It is rather more abstract than I had anticipated. I was influenced by a book I borrowed from the library: Art Quilt Collage by Deborah Boschert. I haven't really done what she is teaching in the book, but I was definitely influenced by reading it.

I also had a bit of sewing I had done on soluble fabric which I had done it for the Secret Garden exhibition in 2016. It was still on the soluble fabric, I had not used it but I had put it on my pinboard so that I wouldn't forget I had it. Today was the day for soaking it and pinning it out to dry.

This is it, drying in the sun.

Then I noticed that the bag of offcuts from doing the Unfinished Business challenge (2017). They went into the mix tool.

After I placed the bits and pieces and sewed them onto the background (a drop sheet from the Cas Holmes workshop), I decided I wanted some quilting-type texture, so put a cotton batting on the back. Then there was some not very planned free motion sewing.

I laid the trees in the foreground and sewed them on. 

I have cut away some of the backing, where the edge of the image is going to be. There was a slightly frayed, raggedy edge that I didn't like as it was too white. 

(I think I am going to sew it over a piece of foam core, as I have done with my other pieces recently.)

Then I remembered that I treated myself when I was overseas visiting friends late last year, by buying some Inktense Pencils. I have coloured the edge of the fabric and will hope that it has done the job. 

I needed some new foam core for the required size and it was too late to go to the shops, so I will have to work on how to present it tomorrow, after I buy the foam core.