Sending a message.

Viv had made great progress with her old jeans pockets.They had been saved from a project some years ago and are now just the thing for 'Messages'.

She had obviously had a great time creating these little gems.The stitched slogans look as if they were on the original pockets such is her skill.

Sally had taken up the suggestion from last time to have some fabric printed from her images.She had gone with Prinfab.

She collaged some pieces and integrated them with stitch.

In addition she decided to use the emulsion method of transferring images ,using acrylic wax to coat them once the paper had been rubbed away.

She makes great use of her tablet.From original drawings and photographs she uses layers and creates some effective images which will feed into her eventual pieces.She intends to use cotton fabric as a base and maybe fashion a skin shape......we shall see.

Thread engineer.

Inspired by what she saw at the Anni Albers exhibition Jane decided to engineer some of her own thread studies.

She uses an industrial embroidery machine but is not content to use it with commercially produced patterns .She has trialled and experimented until she is able to engineer her own.

Each of these pieces have been constructed using either one or two colours of thread to create the shifting spectrum of colour you see.

They have an incredible amount of stitches in each one and take a lot of skill to produce.

The stitch patterns used create the nuances of colour

and variation of tone.

The photos do not show them at their best ,being difficult to capture especially since it was a dull, dark day.

She also brought along this piece ,which is from a photograph of the underside of the Prince Charles Bridge,Second Severn crossing.

 Jane used five shades of thread and created something like 156,000 stitches.

She has plans to create more pieces along these lines.

March and all speed ahead.

Such a busy year of exhibiting means we have to keep on top of our work, and try to pace ourselves while keeping to deadlines.The first will be our exhibition'Viewpoint' at the Bristol Guild 27th April-18May.

Jenn has been drawing with her machine,capturing people in cafes and coffee shops.

She works quickly ,in a small sketchbook with a pen ,to capture the people she observes.Then transfers these to fabric adding in detail as she sews.

StitchTextile Artists exhibition

Jenn will be exhibiting here with Stitch Textile Artists.Meet the artists on Saturday April 13th 11am-2pm.

Boxes and books

Sue had continued her fascination with the boxes trying out a slightly different construction method and experimenting with materials to make them.She was toying with the idea of memory boxes .Precious little trinkets and loved items finding a safe home within.

Liz had been doing a variety of projects a  book using oak dyed fabrics 

Exploring different bindings to create little booklet of marks ,such as chain stitch,

running stitch.

string of pearls

Using card cuts to hold thing together 

She had also been revisiting work adding in  holey shells collected in St Ives ,and adding in highlights of blue to echo the sea glass.

Lastly, a 16" journal quilt for Contemporary Quilters West .It takes its colour scheme from the rooftops of St Ives and makes use of recycled fabrics.

Green in more ways than one.

Deryll had been trying out different framing for her cut up green piece .

We think she has nailed it with some watercolour paper mount and small white frames.

They glow like little jewels.

She had also thought about what we said about this piece and had found a lighter tone frame.

Her thoughts had been turning towards new work for UWE this coming August and the message she wants to impart.

She had turned up some old samples using plastic bags and wax crayons before being ironed and stitched with Fly stitch.

She wondered about using plastics to create some land/seascapes using newspaper cuttings as a collage background. Fracking has the potential to harm the land and Deryll has been collecting newspaper cuttings regarding this.We thought the idea was good but she would need more impact ,perhaps by tearing the small landscape pieces asunder ! 

Foreign climes.

Sally had been in India looking for tigers and she found some .She also picked up some textiles on her travels.This cushion cover has a great deal of work in it .

Although not the best quality it still shows a great deal of skill and cost the grand sum of about £6.00.

Her elephant fabric was bought in Africa and will become the cover of her sketch book in due course .

Some of the images she hopes to use 

for her messages pieces, for our UWE stand this year, will be based on animal markings, camouflage and deception.

A word of warning for those of you who use Bondaweb. Sally purchased some sold as Bondaweb by Fabricland but she was extremely disappointed .You can see why in the image below ,the whole surface has a very obvious diamond grid across it which distracts from the image of animal markings she wanted to transfer.

We suggested she might choose instead to use her photos and have a length of fabric printed by a firm such as PRINFAB.

She has some lovely papers from Bhutan she intends to use ,they are so gorgeous.

Missed it .......

Debby had been busy making for Valentine's Day but realised she missed the deadline for getting them to one of her outlets.Oh dear.....but we were treated to these beauties instead they might have appeared in the EG. shop last week and we expect they found new homes.

Hearts are lovely all year around.

This piece has been in the making for a little while ,Debby has been deciding how to proceed and thought maybe a 3-D vessel would suit .We agreed and hope she will go on to make more .It was an Ethiopian angel Debby had printed onto fabric and has embellished with stitch.

She had been revisiting Bondaweb and transfer foil to create this little lino printed bird.More work to do to integrate the foil .

She has integrated plastic cheese wrappers into this still life ,colouring with Acrylic paint then burning with a heat gun.

Lots of lovely pastels with stitch and beads .

She has fallen out of love with her birds just now so is working on another of her trademarks .....fish

A different colour palette to normal 

and such a neat back.

Finally this lovely SHELFIE !