Another tiny piece!

 I have tried again to make a miniature piece. This time I had been given some little frames, so tried to work to that size. Once again, I just started and working to that size didn't come into my initial calculations. So I had to choose one part and cut the rest off - big decision needed. 

I ended up using the frame I had been given and just making the piece fit! I chose the landscape orientation. 

I have finished it and have put it into the Alcove Art Shop's Christmas A'Fair exhibition, which opened last night.

There were some lovely pieces. I especially loved the works by our newer members who are filters. 

Fabric Collage again

Well, I wanted to go to my Free Motion Machine Embroidery group today with something to show and tell about. So I beavered away yesterday and have finished the piece. It is only A4 size (about 21 x 29cm). I had envisaged the background fabric being visible but then I sewed it and some edges were complete and some not, so that wasn't going to work. I had to make it a bit bigger in spots so that it would wrap around the edges. Now it is a fully collaged piece.

I cut a piece of foamcore to slightly less than A4 (that was the size designated by the online group that inspired the piece). 

Then I sewed it on the back with the trampoline stitch (I really must look it up and check that I am actually using the correct term). Then I sewed a piece of calico onto the back to hide all the strands. 

I will put it in the upcoming Embroiderers Guild's Members' exhibition. It also fits the challenge for one of my online groups. Then I might put it in the Christmas (so soon!!) exhibition for the Alcove Art Shop, at the Box Hill Community Arts Centre. So, even if it doesn't sell at any of the exhibitions, it will have been useful. 

I have not used any sticky products to assist me with the collage. I cut the tiny pieces of fabric, laid them out, steam-ironed them to the background - a piece of linen with interfacing on the back, not sewn. Then I free motioned the pieces on. I find that the steam iron helps to hold them in place so that I don't need to use pins or any product with glue.  I learnt this from Kathryn Harmer Fox. I have done a couple of her workshops. And I hear that she is coming back to Australia again!

I haven't been feeling all that creative recently, so am pleased that I have finished a piece. Yay me!

Fabric Collage

 I am trying to get back into some creative work. 

I did a paper collage a while ago and have used that as my inspiration. 

A group I belong to on FaceBook came up with a challenge, based on Place. (Have you noticed how many challenges have had that theme recently??)

This one is based on the very many walks I did along the Yarra River during the several lockdowns we have had. 

I went away for the weekend, taking my sewing machine and a selection of scraps. I had decided that I would just have to make do with what I had, no worrying about something I may have left at home. 

I managed to make a base using what was there, now I am trying to sew over it to make it look more like a drawing or painting. It is a bit of a struggle still, finding the energy to get into the sewing. But I am making some progress.

I have some seriously wrinkled background fabric, due to the uneven thickness of the sewing. I've decided not to worry too much about that at the moment, I'll try to deal with it when I come to mounting it. It will need to be mounted, I think, so I can stretch the background and try to make it less wobbly. 

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.

A Pig in Clover

Well, I made the decision to put the bright green background, I liked the way it changed the colours of the collage.

I put the head and body onto yet more adhesive interfacing and sewed over all the bits of fabric.

Then I pinned and sewed it to the background which had a layer of cotton batting under it and a calico backing. (I won't use calico again, it is rather boring even as a background.)

The pig was sewn onto the layers and I quilted a rough clover leaf pattern to hold it together.

The border is on, all I have to do now is put on a hanging sleeve - later.

Photos taken at different times of the day, mostly evenings, give very different images!

A New Year

It is the first interesting date for the year (interesting for me): 9/1/19. Pity I can't write one of the nines the other way around and then it would be reversible. 9/1/1P. Sort of.

Anyway, Happy New Year. I haven't got off to a quick start but it is rather hard to do in summer, when you are recovering from Christmas too.

I have been working on a small machine embroiderey/fabric collage piece. It is based on a photo I took of an acorn sprouting.

I played around with it in Photoshop and then found a filter on the internet that put a Picasso filter onto the image.

I did my latest favourite technique and fabric collaged it without using any product, just the sewing machine, no glues, etc. As usual, the fabric shrank a little and there are some wrinkles but I think I will be able to deal with them.

I traced the image, laid out small pieces of fabric and sewed small areas at a time, just to attach them. Once it was all on, I then worked more heavily on specific areas. As with quilting, I started in the middle and worked on the acorn first. I used straight stitch for that.

I didn't like the dark pieces in the background, so went over them with some tulle and other small pieces of fabric. One of the great advantages of this technique is that you can cover up a lot of your mistakes.

One of my helpful critics said that she thought my stem should be greener, possibly the actual nut too. I returned to the original image and saw that she was correct. Now the final piece is greener.

It is sitting on the wall, waiting for me to decide if it is finished or not. That will take a few days. Then will come the mounting and finishing off, not my favourite part.
I allowed quite a bit of room for the shrinkage, so the ragged edges will be lost as I mount it on foam core and try to make it fit the size required by the current challenge from my group - 12" square.

Online visual diary

I have finished the tapestry and have even sewn in the ends and put a backing on. Yay!

Actually, this has been done for a week or more, I just haven't done anything with it since then.

I have been working on several ideas lately, mostly in my head. One is for the upcoming exhibition at the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria, with the theme Art Deco Now!

One is to lead a Play Day group at the guild, making folded fabric books. I have not done that for ages and am trying to work out how to make them so they can have some texture but still fold.

I wanted to see how I had done something (the folded books) and the best place to find it was ... here, in this blog. I know I started it to be a visual diary (and to learn how to blog - so long ago!). I have dropped off lately. I used to try to post at least once a week. Now I am being productive if it is once a month.

Facebook and closed groups there have sidetracked me a bit. There is a lot of sharing of ideas, prompting new ideas, techniques, challenges, etc. So I have been distracted by that. And then you get even more distracted looking at stuff you had no intention of knowing about. Or wanting to know about.

So I think I will try to be a bit more self-focussed (in a good way) and start blogging a bit more often - really just as a visual diary.

I have this tendency to try various things and then forget how I did it, once I have moved on to something new. I also try to meld ideas from various workshops, books, discussions, etc and need to keep a record that is easy to find. I do have folders with examples, but it is cumbersome to find them, locate the exact bits you want and then see what use it might be. Here, you can put in a search and, if you have put in useful labels, it comes up rather quickly.

On the other hand, going through the old folders can be great - you come across things you had totally forgotten you had played with and get re-inspired.

So ...

Onto the current project. Actually, it is one of several things that are occupying my mind at present but I will try to just do this one.

One of my Facebook groups has set a challenge to come up with 4 more textile art pieces in the coming 12 months. The first one was due this month. Not sure of the date and it really doesn't matter as it is not for any deadline other than an arbitrary one.

The 4 pieces are to be 12"x12".
The overall theme is Micro/Macro.
Not sure how I will interpret this and expect things to change over 12 months.
The first one is to be rather monochromatic - approximately 80% the colour and shades of, the other 20% to be another colour.
I have photos that I have played with and played with and then not used, of the hollyhocks in the back yard.
One of the photos is of a close-up of the flower. That is my macro (or is it micro? It may depend on whether you are talking cameras or not).

I am going to stick with my current technique derived from Kathryn Harmer Fox's workshop in 2017.

So I have lightly outlined the image and then covered it with little bits of fabric. Due to my recent work with being Inspired By Van Gogh, I am tending to use that technique that replicates the brush strokes. This has caused some of the pieces to be very small indeed. But I have managed to roughly sew them all so that they are attached, even if some of them are barely attached.

I have put a frame with a 12" hole over it, to give me an idea of where the edges might be.
I liked the raw edge effect of my other Van Gogh pieces, so will try to do that. I think.

The next step will be to decide how to sew the fabric in, how to make it look more like I envisaged, more a part of the overall fabric.

Park bench inspiration

Going on with the Inspired By ... theme, I have another small piece done.
It is still inspired by Van Gogh and Kathryn Harmer Fox.
I used the seat in the garden at the asylum, by Van Gogh.  On my frequent walks with the dog, I came across many bench seats in parks.

The image I used as my model is nothing like the Van Gogh painting, but the painting was still my inspiration.

I have continued with the technique we learnt early last year, from Kathryn Harmer Fox. I used lots of small pieces of fabric, loosely attached them and then did some heavier stitching to give shading, etc.

Once again, it is roughly 12" by 16", or A3 size.

I actually quite like the back too, except that a piece of fabric got caught up in it, not that it matters as it is on the back.

It has taken me a while to get it finished, not for any good reason, just that life got in the way. But finally it is finished. Now to get the four framed. One day.

Between Projects

It may just be that it is that time of the year. I am between projects, not feeling very enthused about anything at the moment.
Summer is approaching, although we had a lovely cool night last night. The weather is changing on a daily basis and I think that enervates me. Any excuse.

Anyway ... The tapestry disappeared from the clothes line and is currently residing under some fennel greenery in the compost heap. And the temperature in the compost has risen in the last day. It is now approaching 60 degrees, something that I have been assured it to be desired (for compost).

The tapestry is only just under the surface, so not exposed to the full heat - yet. I will try to contain my interest and tendency to fiddle with it. I will leave it for at least three days (maybe!) and then put it down deeper.

I have also been trying to finish off a machine embroidery piece I started early in November. It was supposed to be going to be for The Alcove's summer sale/exhibition but I didn't get it finished. A familiar story.

Not the finished version, still a work in progress. 

It is based on a photo I took a few years ago and have used previously. This piece is slightly larger than A4.  I am thinking of doing another frame making course before trying to complete the whole piece.
(You can see how I have used the photo for a much smaller embroidery here.)

I have realised that it could fit the Ebb and Flow theme of the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria. This exhibition won't be till October but I probably won't do any great things for it in the near future, so it can be my failsafe piece. And we are allowed to put in up to three pieces, so I can still work on the idea.

Blue sea and sky, dark island

Life has been busy lately and not much of a creative nature has occurred. However, the Machine Embroidery Group at the Embroiderers Guild is meeting this week and I have a task to complete before then.

I missed the last meeting, being at the Ballarat Fibre Arts workshop, which was wonderful. But I felt that I had to complete the small piece that I undertook to do at the February meeting.

So I have been thinking, thinking.

The task is to use an image that has been provided and interpret it in stitch.
This is the image I was given.

I decided to continue with my current interest, fabric collage.
The original is only small, about 6" by 4" (can't remember what it is in centimetres, quilting happens in inches more often than not. Even though this is not, strictly speaking quilting, it is related. It has three layers, or more, and has pieces of fabric joined together to make the piece).

I used lots of very small pieces of fabric that I had saved from previous works. They were even smaller than I have been using lately. I am not even sure why I kept them.

I used a piece of fusible interfacing and laid out the fabric pieces. I ironed them on and sewed then so that they were secure. I worked on the background first. You would think I would remember that that is the way to go but I had to pick off quite a few pieces that were the foreground, rather than the background, and then put them back on later.

I used the image as my inspiration but didn't try to be exact (so not my thing, being exact). It was enjoyable to be doing some creative work again, even though it is only small.

This is one of the times when the actual piece looks much better than the photo.

I then cut a piece of commercial craft felt to size and zigzagged around the edge to attach it. It is firm enough but also pliable.

The idea of the book is that a person has made the book (some people opted to just have a box), put in an original image that was then taken by a member of the group who interpreted the image in fabric and thread. Then that person put in a related image, which was interpreted by a different person. This has been done many times and when the book if finished the original maker will have a lovely book of works by different people.

It is a great idea. The pieces are small, the techniques are up to the individual person and there is no time limit. Someone will end up with a lovely little book.

Making a small fabric collage.

I have been asked to do a demo of my fabric collage method for the Creative Play group that meets monthly at the Embroiderers Guild. So today I did a trial run.

I have made it quite small as I will either use it for the demo or take it with me to the Ballarat Fibre Arts forum. Even if I don't take it to the group, making it today has allowed me to record the step by step procedure so I can be organised for the day.

Participants at the Fibre Arts workshops are asked to donate a 15cm x 15cm work or, even smaller, a 10cm x 10 cm piece. The money raised is either for a student scholarship to attend the week-long workshop, or for a charity, Mind.

For the demo, which is in May, I am hoping to make another sample, using wadding instead of the interfacing, just to see if there is much difference in the outcome. It will give me the option of offering two slightly different methods that might suit the machine and hand sewers better.

This one is fairly simple and I think it will be possible to do it by hand - there will be hand embroiderers at the play group. I used the machine, heaven forbid that I do hand sewing!

I used a square of adhesive interfacing. I made it about 2cm bigger than needed, to allow for shrinkage that happens with heavy sewing.

As the piece is so small, the pieces of fabric needed to be small also. Yet another reason to never throw out anything, even the tiny offcuts.

I found some pieces of silk that I had dyed previously, using eucalyptus leaves or bark, they were the perfect colour for what I wanted and would give a slightly different texture.
I laid the pieces of fabric out on the interfacing and ironed them on. This is the only ironing the fabric gets - I like wrinkled and textured pieces.

Then I sewed over them to carry the colours across areas, meld edges and generally make it very secure.

At this stage, it looked very boring. So I took some more fabric, a very small amount, and ironed it onto some leftover Vliesofix. Then I cut the small pieces even smaller and added them to the collage - using my original photo as the cartoon.

I used this image for a small tapestry in my first year of the Studio Textiles and Design Course. 

I think I went a bit overboard (pun intended) on the masts.

After I had finished sewing, I cut it to size and put a piece of felt on the back and zigzagged around the edges.

A different approach

Having made my crocodile partial face too small, I tried again this morning. I must have been tired.
I had enlarged the image and printed it out on silk again. But then I used Vliesofix and put it on the wrong way round - extremely annoying, except I couldn't be bothered being too annoyed.

So I then decided to take a different approach.
I have been playing around with fabric collage for several items lately, some larger and some quite small: the banner quilt and a much smaller piece for my interest group, machine embroidery, at the Victorian Embroiderers' Guild. We have been asked to use an image and interpret it, then leave another image for the next person. I thought an abstract interpretation would be good. It is only about 15cm x 10cm (that's a guess because I can't be bothered going and measuring it. Getting the message about energy levels?).

I only interpreted the rocks. 

So, for the mystery piece, I laid out some background fabric onto some wool batting (it was left over from a project from years ago and was the right size), attached it to the backing and then laid out some small bits of fabric. As it is a small piece, about 20cm x 18cm, they were quite small bits of fabric. As I have said many times, it pays to keep all the scraps.

Then I sewed them down and realised that I would only need a couple of colours for my thread.

I discovered the self-threading ability of my sewing machine. I have had if for nearly a year and haven't used it yet. This is because I had my free lesson and the person teaching me said she hated using it, so I have done my own threading ever since. But I wanted to use a thicker thread today (I had put in a slightly bigger needle) and decided that I wasn't going to be able to do it without help.

Out came the instruction book - lo and behold! it was easy.

Then I decided it needed something extra and I found some knitting wool in my stash (it serves for my tapestry weaving and my sewing, but not for knitting). I couched that down.

Remembering my last disaster, I had allowed room for it to shrink by making it a bit bigger than the finished size. Knowing that it has to fit in with many other pieces, I started to stress about how to make it the correct size. I measured the distance from the lighter patch to the edge and used that as my starting point.

I hope the distances are correct and that it will all line up in the final piece. I suspect it is a wing. Time will tell.

Collage exercise

We are currently working on making collages in our design course.  For the first time, I took fabric to the class, as we were instructed to do.

I took a small sample of fabrics as I had nothing in mind to do. I'm not sure if this was a good idea or not. It did mean that I didn't have too much stuff to think about but I also came up with a rather muted collage.

 

One of the exercises was to make a recognisable image using collage.  Quite a few of us chose trees, without any collaboration about what to do.

Then we were to cut the collage up and put it back together in a pleasing design.

 I did a very rough drawing of my tree, then cut that up to see if I thought it might work.

We ran out of time (due to other things happening in the class) and I finished it at home.

I cut it up and laid it out in a variety of ways, using the same background cloth. Not very inspiring!

I came across a piece of fabric that I had recently sun-dyed; it seemed to be in a similar colour range, so I decided to use that.

Turns out it wasn't such a good idea as all I could see was the background and not the original collage.  Then I put some more little bits of fabric over the stronger parts of the background, trying to mute it down to a similar level.

Once I thought it might do, I did some free motion sewing.

It took hours to play around with and all I have ended up with it a piece that I think might make a background for something else - or to go in the samples folder.  Lucky it was just an exercise.

But I have confirmed something that has been becoming clearer to me lately, in my sewing and tapestry weaving - I like texture.