Finding your joy.

Debby has been finding she has been stitching less in Lockdown,apart from teaching her classes .She has gone back to doing more painting and drawing.

She told us about an online course by Louise Fletcher 'Finding your Joy"The two pieces below were part of an exercise where an A1 size sheet was divided into sections with masking tape before being painted with marks in a chosen colour way.She was using ink and fluid acrylics .The tape was removed and the background sections ready for working into .Debby loved the freedom of  the mark making but was especially drawn to the masking tape that was supposed to be discarded.No doubt she will work some alchemy and transform it into something delicious.

She had also revisited some older pieces of textile work ,working into them with Inktense .The bird below has been given more life and now takes centre stage instead of disappearing into the background.It is such a rich piece ,now with added depth.

She also brought the Puffin ,printed by Prinfab and embellished in her usual style.

and this multi media collage of fabric and stitch.

The sketch below is so atmospheric ,it was done after a walk to see the  bluebells on a local hill this Spring.

Will it provide inspiration for a new piece ?

 

Accidental colour matching.

Jane had lots of little offcuts of fabric after making her wall hanging and vase wrap. Rather than putting them to one side she has employed her string piecing skills in fashioning these little purses.....the clever bit is they have all been sewn on her embroidery machine including inserting  the zip ! And below some pieced lavender bags .We are sure they will fly off to new homes when she puts them up for sale on her stall in September during  North Somerset Arts Week .

Coincidentally using almost  the same colour palette was Sue with her embellished piece .We thought it could be a blue moon or the blue planet and could envisage a series of space related work.

 

She has completed this piece and was deliberating how it might be backed .She had picked out a lovely russet linen which picks up some of the colours of her hand embroidery .We thought a hanging rather than a framed piece would do it justice .

Lastly ,she had bought a casual coatigan from a well known high street store .Sue was dissatisfied that it was quite bland so has begun to embellish it to make a style statement .Will she go further......?

 

Red letter day !

 We had our first face to face meeting this month ,June, in Carol's garden and very good it was too!

Sally began the 'show and tell ' with this lovely piece ,above, It came about from a workshop we did ,when we were allowed , at the Guide hut.It has printed leaves, hand stitch and some very delicate machine stitched acer leaves.

Sally has continued to work in zig zag sketchbooks inspired by her 'lockdown 'garden.This little book uses printouts of her pages arranged in a hand made zig- zag book.

These are some of the actual pages which use observational drawing, painting ,collage and print.

She has gone on to make some individual small fabric pieces which make become a fabric book.

May offerings.

Jane has been using her piecing skills to create a wrap for a glass vase , it can look quite different depending which side you use .

She has also used the same technique to createa wall hanging to accompany the wrap.It is very reminiscent of the sea and shore.The recipient of this gift should be very pleased.

Debby was given some gouache paints for her recent birthday 

and has  been trying them out.The resulting papers  

 have been used in this lovely selection of collages.

Viv has reviewed  some of her photos of favourite visits to different parts of the country, turning them into very personal drawings.

She has again printed them onto canvas and sewed, just with a straight stitch, to make individual little works of art .

 

Silk paper and stitch .

Debby has continued to teach her stitch group using Zoom to connect with them.They had loved doing wet felting so she had introduced them to silk paper making . Here she has used a silk hankie adding in extra silk fibres to make a sheet of luscious silk paper.

She also showed how to use the gummy strips which still retain the glue ,needing only to be spritzed with water and ironed to create silk paper.These can be coloured with dye or Inktense or left their natural colour .

In these  examples Debby has begun to add hand stitch.Her group are so lucky to have such a talented teacher .

 

Luggage tags.

Jenn has continued to create tags for the '52 Tags ' instagram challenge . Some come quite easily and others are a bit of a struggle to complete .She hopes to keep going.These are the latest kisses ,a bevy of buttons ,hexies ,bullion stitch and french knots ,bits and pieces.

On her mostly daily walks she tries to collect something natural to bring home to draw.

These quick drawings have given lots of pleasure over the weeks and are building into a collection of ideas.Taking inspiration from things collected  she has been hand stitching  small tag size pieces .

The backgrounds are pieced from  hand dyed silk sari ribbon, organza,lace and silks.

A background she created some months ago is now being picked up and worked into with straight stitches.She has an idea to eventually use the drawings to create gum arabic prints on the background

before adding stitch.Time will tell but then we seem to have a lot of it just now.

 

More prints on canvas.

As mentioned in the last post Viv said there was more to come and she has not disappointed .These three photos record her inspiration ,drawing and eventual stitched piece ,once again limiting herself to straight stitch.This piece was inspired by the Wiltshire landscape.

Meanwhile Sally has been having a go .This time inspired by the flooded Somerset levels 

using a very atmospheric photograph and stitching with free machine embroidery.It really is a versatile medium.