Hmm …

That could have gone better.

I am referring to my attempt to make an A4 sized work of art. The call for entries ended yesterday (Contemporary Art Society), so I won't be sending this piece off.

I thought I would try some Alison Holt style sewing (and silk painting) using one of my many photos of eucalyptus blossom.

I blew my photo up to A4 size, traced the relevant parts, using a water soluble pen, and then put some gutta on the silk. The gutta dissolves the pen, taking away the necessity to worry about blue lines.

I haven't done silk painting for a while and the gutta is one that I have not used before. That's my excuse anyway. The lines are blobby and thicker than I had hoped.

Not to worry, the sewing should cover the white parts, I thought.

But my planning was a bit off, some of the background details needed to be painted without the white lines around them. I have to sew quite heavily to hide the whiteness, so they aren't really background anymore.

I hooped up the silk for my sewing.

I used a large hoop, maybe I should have used a smaller one. Or maybe my technique needs work. Or perhaps I should have used some sort of stabiliser under the silk. (But I find that soluble fabric causes the sewing to shrink when you wash it out - further experimentation needed there.)

The silk has ruched in spots and I can't seem to get rid of the wrinkles, despite stretching the silk over some cardboard and sewing it tightly.

Actually, it looks worse in the photo than reality, and the red is much darker in reality too. 

I have recently completed a 4 week CAE course in frame making, maybe I can do something to improve the piece. At the least, I can practise making a frame - and then hang it up high, above a door or somewhere similar - where the light doesn't shine directly on it and the wrinkles aren't so obvious.

If I were a true scientist, or a perfectionist, I would try the whole process again, changing only the size of the hoop (if that is the problem), and see what result I got. But I doubt that I have the patience to do that. Maybe - I will have to see how the mood strikes me.

Deciding what to do

Our course is finished, the exhibition is up.

The small art exhibition will be on soon at The Alcove Art Shop. I have been playing around with some eucalyptus blossom pieces for that. Am still trying out some images.

I have taken some photos and fiddled with them in Photoshop. Not sure what I will do with them yet, just thought I would play around.
I have printed the photos out onto silk and then done thread painting over them but now I would like to try something slightly different.

I am thinking to paint the base fabric and then sew over it in the sort of machine embroidery I did last year (almost a year ago - where does the time go?!) in the Alison Holt workshop. It probably won't turn out all that differently, it will just be a little more my creation, rather than a photo.

I just used Poster Edges, twice. It made the background nice and indistinct. 

I am going away for a holiday soon. I will involve a long flight and then, perhaps, a long train trip. So I am trying to come up with some ideas for handwork to do. But there is the problem of what they will let you have on a plane. And how much I want to carry around.

I have played around with blackwork (just found this site with some free tutorials) in the past and am thinking of trying to develop an idea for that. So I have been tracing some photos, using a black pen to help me develop some images that I might be able to use. Or I might try some doodling patterns as I did when I did the workshop with Katherine Devine, ages ago.

Then I made it black and white, not sure why. 

I am also thinking that it would be good to dye the base fabric using eucalyptus leaves or bark, just for a different effect. So I have been researching that. The even weave fabric for counted thread work is expensive, so I don't want to mess it up. But I am looking at eucalyptus blossom ideas, so it seems appropriate.

I put the image on a light box and it is ready for me to play around with. 

Sailor or Shepherd? I can't remember

Red sky at night, someone's delight,
Red sky in the morning, someone's warning.

We were getting solar panels put on the roof today, of course the warning is appropriate.

I went to the bottom of the street, at dawn, not that early at this time of the year, for the view to the mountains, because it looked as if it could be interesting.

Then I realised I had been too early. Even stronger warnings!

But it turned out to be an ok day, no rain despite clouding over. It is forecast to rain tomorrow, of course! Solar panels will have to wait to be functional.

One of these days I'll have a go at trying to use these images as Alison Holt inspires us.

I saw a link later in the day, that was about the dawn.

Peer Pressure

Well, not really peer pressure, just the pressure to have something to be doing when friends get together for a creative day.
So I searched for hours yesterday, trying to remember where I had seen the various bits and pieces I wanted, where I had put them when we packed up for the start of the renovations.
I eventually found as much as I needed (I hoped) and packed the car.
I had some photos I took recently, of a spectacular sunset nearby.

I had lots of them, the sky just kept on being beautiful and changing quite quickly. It was hard to choose which one to focus on. In the end, I chose a couple and will try to work out how to use them as inspiration.

I had decided to have a go at a piece similar to one I did at the Alison Holt workshop. Except it is not the same sort of image and I will have to make some of it up as I go.

So I got out the silk and paints and the gutta and had a go today.

What did I learn?
That I probably should have used a thinner nib for the gutta, the outlines of the buildings on the skyline are much too thick and the dye doesn't extend enough.
That maybe I should not have used the gutta in the sky.
But it was a day for experimenting and I may be able to change some of it when I get around to sewing it. I will have to look up my notes and see if they were helpful. The last workshop was for reflections in water and the amount of painted silk that you do not sew on is clearly there. I'm not too sure what I will sew and what I will leave as just painted silk, if any.
There are lots of examples on Alison's website, it the gallery, so I will have a closer look before I start playing around.

It doesn't really matter how it turns out, at least I did some creative work today. And I hope to do some more in the near future.
But there is still a fair bit of tidying up that needs to be doing. And sorting and throwing out. I'll try to fit in some creating as well.

Free motion dragonfly

As part of my Design for Stitch class, I am working on some images developed from a dragonfly pattern. 
I decided to try free motion sewing on soluble fabric.  I tried tracing the outline of an image from my iPad - extremely tricky as the screen kept resizing and moving - so it is not much like the image I was using. I only used half. Then I folded that in half and traced the rest from that, trying for a symmetrical image.  (I did my post about dragonfly designs using my iPad, that's my excuse for the amazing number of errors in that post.)

I then traced it onto soluble fabric, using a water soluble pen (it should disappear when I dissolve the fabric).

I still had the naked needle on my machine, from the Alison Holt workshop I had recently attended, so I decided to keep using that as I had my image in a hoop. It turned out to be more difficult than in the workshop, the lighter weight of the soluble fabric meant that it leapt up and down and I couldn't focus the image properly.

I did the first side of the wings without a foot on the machine but decided that I might see better if I put the free motion foot on. It did make it much more stable but the disadvantage was that I couldn't see the lines as accurately, the foot obscured them. So it was six of one and half a dozen of the other.

It was also a bit ambitious to try to do a freehand symmetrical image, next time I will trace the design, or my idea for the design, in every section before sewing. I just made the pattern up as I sewed this time and I couldn't always see it clearly when it was moved in the hoop. Live and learn.

I haven't been able to use my machine for several weeks, due to renovations to the house, so it was good to get back to experimenting, even if it doesn't work out perfectly. I have missed the creative play.

Alison Holt freemotion machine workshop part 2

The first day was pretty much devoted to painting the image.
The second day was devoted to sewing. Once again, Alison gave a demonstration, this time of her sewing technique.
One thing that I had never done was to take off the foot and just sew with the needle. I thought I would find this hard but Alison was clear on how to do it safely (hold the hoop and that keeps the fingers safe) and it worked really well.

We set up our work and began the sewing. Despite mine being a very small image, it took all day to complete and I still haven't quite finished.
Alison demonstrated choosing the colours you want - by laying the whole reel of cotton on the picture, not just a thread, and matching it as best you can. To move from one shade to another, you put the colour in both the bobbin and the top, then you choose your next colour, put it in either the bobbin or the top. The next gradation uses the colour in top and bobbin, then change one or the other, and so on. It was remarkably effective.
Of course, I forgot to be that careful all the time but Alison was always moving from person to person and would remind me.
We started with the darkest colour and gradually added lighter shades.

I discovered that sewing over already sewn parts made the thread break. I discussed this with Alison and she said that she uses cotton rather than polyester or rayon as it holds up much better with her technique. I will have to try it again and a) not sew so densely in the dark parts, leaving some room for the lighter shades, and b)use cotton rather than the odd selection of fibres I took with me.

It was sometimes easier to turn the image and the work sideways so that you would look at what was actually in the image rather than what you assumed was there.

By the end of the day I was getting rather tired, I'm not used to all that concentration over two days anymore.  So I decided to stop and leave the sewing of the grass and the plant that overlaps on the right till another day. Or I might just decide that this is a good workshop sample and not do any more work. I'll see.

One good thing about using such a small image was that it all fitted inside the hoop, no maneuvering the piece. 

I am determined to try another soon, it is always good to repeat what you learnt in a workshop before you forget too much. Luckily, I knew quite a few of the participants and will be able to confer with them if I need their help.

Alison Holt freemotion machine workshop

I was lucky enough to attend a two day workshop run by Alison Holt. I had read a couple of her books and love the effects she gets.
The first part of the workshop was to work on choosing a photo from which to work. The focus of the workshop was Reflections on Water, so I looked at a lot of my photos from walking the dog. I have plenty.
I wasn't quite sure what we were going to do and decided not to include ones where I had some wonderful reflections but it was hard to tell where the land started and the water began. So I chose quite a few that had lovely reflections but you couldn't see where the reflections were coming from. It turned out that these were not suitable for the class.

Luckily I had chosen quite a few images and had one that looked ok to work with.

As the notes we were sent had mentioned photographs, I had mine printed out in that format. I did wonder if that would be too small a format but it turned out ok. A couple of other participants had printed theirs out on A4 paper and had bigger images, but photograph size was fine for the workshop.

The first day was doing silk painting. I had some supplies that I could easily access as I had been using them to teach primary school children in the not-too-distant past. I thought I had plenty of silk so didn't purchase any new supplies. This turned out to be a mistake as I didn't have the correct weight silk, mine was a bit thin. 

For the first part of the work, after Alison had given a thorough demonstration, we chose our image, cropped it to the interesting parts and then traced it onto the silk using a water or air soluble pen. I used the above image but cropped out the left hand side and pretended I could see behind the bush in the front at the right.  

Then we painted the silk. The top part was fairly easy. We put in gutta lines to block in the areas of colour that we would later sew over. The bottom part was much harder. I hadn't realised it but we weren't going to sew over the reflections, they are solely painted. 

The effect is gained by painting the background, then going over it, once it has dried, with a very fine brush to put in small horizontal lines to make it look like shimmering water, even though that effect was not visible in the photo. 

Because my silk was a bit thin, I doubled it up in the hoop when it came to sewing it. We also had to bring our  hoops with tape around the smaller ring, the better to grip the fabric.