Sewing off the edge

 This is our current challenge for our monthly meeting at the EGV. I'm not sure what it means, exactly- but if I have interpreted it correctly, I'm not sure why anyone would bother!

I found an old piece of experimentation that I had done in the past - it was a circle full of fairly heavy free motion sewing. I decided to try that again. 

Unfortunately, two of the pieces I did had fabric tucked under the hoop and I sewed it without noticing! But two others were done more correctly. 

I drew a circle on some cotton - then decided that I could just sew the shape, it doesn't matter if it is not an exact circle.

After I cut them off the fabric I then tried sewing off the edge - the only thing that seemed to happen was that the white fabric at the edge got covered - not a bad outcome but I'm nor sure if that was the aim. 

One other thing was that I used the automatic speed and sewing, no use of the foot pedal. When I tried doing it without the automatic aspect the thread kept breaking on the top. 

I left a little bit where I didn't sew over the edge and you can see the white fabric edge. That one didn't have the mistake of folded over fabric on the back! 

What I did notice is that the heavier sewing made the 'flower' more 3D.

I'll know more when I go to our group meeting next Sunday.  

April already - and well into it!

 How time flies, whether you are having a good time or not. 

I have recently been to a 5 day workshop at Ballarat Grammar, doing a machine free motion embroidery course with Dionne Swift. 

It was very interesting. The pressure was taken off by my machine deciding it didn't like the changes in tension and it stopped working on the first day!! Fortunately there was a machine available for me to borrow. It was not my usual type of machine (mine is a Husqvarna and it was a Bernina). However, I managed to make it do some of the things we were learning. 

We played with different thicknesses of thread and tension. Some of it looked like we didn't know what we were doing but others worked very well - we got some interesting results.

Our first exercise was to make a colour wheel using different techniques for texture. We played with varying weights of thread, different tension settings, etc. Using different tones created different colour wheels - not really a surprise. 

We also had some drawing sessions - not my thing really. I rarely draw. It's not that I can't but that I usually don't. But we had some fun doing the drawing - time limits changed my perspective quite a bit!

We did very abstract impressions of what we were seeing - then sewed them even more abstractly! 

I decided that, once home I would try to draw 5 days a week, for 10 minutes a day - that hasn't happened yet!! I've been home for about a week now but I am not going to beat up on myself, I'll see if I can do two days a week - soon. 

I am still doing my daily doodles but drawing scenes, using perspective and the vanishing point (an interesting  lesson we had) hasn't come into my daily practice yet!

Our final exhibition did not have all that much to show - we were lucky, there were only three of us in the class. There were some last minute withdrawals with meant that we had a lot of time from the tutor!!

But we were very happy with our results. 

Thanks Dionne!

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.

Missed my group

It was the meeting for our machine embroidery group today but I was unable to attend.

Not to worry,  took the opportunity to work on the piece for this month ... The Four Seasons. (Based on a song title.)

I had worked on the design and decided to just do it!

 You can see the basic (very basic) idea in the printout.

I traced the vague outlines of the piece onto the fabric, then laid out the sky, then the ground. All this is supposed to reflect the landscape in the different seasons.

I had noticed that our last winter was extremely green! I don't think I have noticed it being so green in previous winters but maybe I just wasn't looking.

Anyway, I have done winter as very green, summer as brown and the current autumn as a bit greener - but we are in dire need of some rain soon.

I seem to have attached the tree at an angle, so what was a straight on view is now slightly downhill.

It is only an A5 piece, so not very big. (14.8cm x 21cm, or 5.8" x 8.3")
It was a challenge to get my ideas into the small piece but I am reasonably happy with it.

Machine Embroidery Group Challenge

It is coming to the end of January, sort of. I have to have my piece for the February meeting done.
I decided to just DO IT. I have used an image from the internet.

At first I was going to crop another one, just focus on the tree trunks, as I have done some pieces on gum tree trunks in the past.

I saw something about doing crazy quilting, in non-traditional ways,  and thought I might do the tree trunk in that technique.
Lots of thinking, not much doing.

Then, I can't remember why, I decided to look at different images and came across another one that appealed to me.

So I have done some free motion sewing on soluble fabric, a bit of sewing onto fabric backed with interfacing and then sewed the free motion pieces onto the fabric.

LOTS of pins to stop it shrinking too much when the soluble fabric is dissolved. 

It is 'inspired by Hans Heysen'. I don't think I will be challenged on any copyright laws (not that it is for sale anyway). But the inspiration is definitely from his images.

I used fabric I already had, emptied some bobbins that still had thread on them and didn't buy anything to do this one. Still working on reducing my stash.

Inspired by Art

My machine embroidery group has come up with the idea of doing a small piece each month, based on a famous artist.
January is based on John Olsen. I saw his exhibition, The You Beaut Country, recently and really enjoyed it.
I have come to my artistic life rather late, so don't know many famous artists. This year should be a great learning time.

I found an image I liked as my inspiration.
I didn't want to copy it, just be inspired. But it is hard to not copy! It inspires because I like it.

I have used some techniques from recent workshops.
I started with a small piece of silk that I dyed a while ago, using oxalis flowers. The whole work is only going to be A5, half of a piece of paper. So not a lot of fabric was required.

I ironed it onto a piece of fusible interfacing.

Then I used some small bits of Vliesofix that I had kept, left over from previous works. I teased out a layer of a silk hankie and ironed that to the Vliesofix.

Next I teased out some pieces of raw, dyed silk I have.
(I decided to only use things I already had, no purchasing at all - not a problem on a hot day when I didn't want to go out anyway.)

I used the very thick wadding that I bought recently, after a workshop.

I also used some thrums from my weaving and some novelty yarns I have had for years. (I only ever use tiny bits of yarn in my sewing, so it will last for many more years I think.)

It all came together rather well. I think it was because it was so hot and I just decided I needed to be doing something to take my mind off the heat. It is also rather small and not getting it right would not be a disaster - quite a good way to be trying things out, really. 

Fossils piece continued.

I have been putting silk roving (or whatever it is called) into loosely curled shapes and then laying some water soluble fabric over the top. I copied the design onto the soluble fabric to assist me in the sewing, my freehand sewing is not that good.

I tried some in a hoop. At first I didn't put the soluble fabric from side to side but that wasn't entirely successful, I needed pins to hold it in place.  So then I did two at once in the hoop. 

 I cut the extra soluble fabric away before washing it as I didn't want the piece to be too stiff. The soluble is relatively difficult to get rid of entirely and does change the hand of the fabric.

 Here it is dried out. I used chiffon for the background piece, then a layer of silk hankie (not an actual handkerchief. I think it is a cocoon pulled out into a flat piece that has many layers and then you can peel those layers apart for really thin pieces of silk).

 Then I decided not to use any background fabric. I just laid out the silk roving and put it between two layers of soluble fabric. It might have been easier to use the see-through soluble but I don't have any and I do have a reasonable amount of the other. I am still trying to use up my stash.

I was going to try to sew one without the soluble fabric as it does get flattened and stiffer but the thought of all that loose silk under the needle seemed too challenging. So that experiment can wait for another day - or another life.

Anyway, they are coming along. I just have to work out how to attach them to a background. And make the background first!

This one is quite small, it is lying not the floor beside the heating, drying. 

It has been enjoyable playing with the ideas. Also, because they are all separate pieces, they can easily be discarded, or used differently, if they don't work out properly.

I Wonder What Would Happen ...

I am trying to come up with a design that has some connection to fossils.
We have a fossil lying around in the house, of which I have taken photos.

I have LOTS of silk, scrim and other bits and pieces that I have dyed, mostly using eucalyptus leaves and bark.

Not quite the same studio as in the magazine article.

I played around with this idea, a little bit, a few weeks ago, for one of our machine embroidery group meetings at the Embroiderers Guild of Victoria.

I made one piece too big for the task. It has been hanging around on my pinboard, looking interesting but not particularly useful.

Then I thought … I wonder what would happen if I did several of these. Can I layer them to look like layers of fossils.

Here it is with another couple of trials. 

After playing around with the idea, I keep changing how I am doing it.  The changes are not huge, just trying to work out a better way to make the bits.

I made a couple more pieces similar to the first one - of course I couldn't find any more scrim that colour. So now the pieces are of varying colours.

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.

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.

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.

Self Portrait sewing

As part of our last assignment, we had to elect to work on a portrait, a landscape or a still life.  I thought I would challenge myself with the portrait - and it was definitely a challenge!!
I tried drawing and collaging an image but wasn't particularly happy with what I had come up with.  Nothing looked particularly human, let alone like me.
So I tried a different approach.
I started by taking photo of myself, using the computer.  This was a 2.00am, when I couldn't sleep - I thought I might as well get up and be doing something.  I got good shadows as I hadn't turned on many lights.
Then I tried some effects in the photo programme but they weren't particularly great.  So I exported them to photoshop and played around a bit more, trying to get some value areas to work with.

I then used this to play around with the first part of our assignment which was to paint Vliesofix and iron it onto fabric as a background.        

                                                
I painted the Vliesofix according to the areas of darkness, etc.  I used fabric paints - I had tried some old, very old, silk paints but they tend to stay on the backing paper more than the gluey part.  Fabric paint works much better.
It is reversed because I traced it. It was relatively dark when wet but dried much lighter.

Then I used Photoshop to draw around the photo and get a line drawing.
I traced that onto the backing paper and sewed it.

One has just machine embroidery thread, the other has Australian Tapestry Workshop wool in the bobbin.  I prefer the sewing thread one, it is more subtle.
A friend saw the finished piece and thought it looked like I have the evil eye - such is life when you don't like drawing.