Wednesday, 9 December 2009

French Knot sampler

No, I have not given up on either this course or the blog, its just that either the design work I have been doing is not yet blog ready or mostly that I have been taking a bit of a break for the summer, a busy patch at work and now our round the world trip. Rest assured though, I am gathering ideas as we go!

I also have a small sewing kit with me in the hope of getting some stitch samples done so here is the French Knot one. Starting from the top right these are my notes on how they were done:


Top row

1. Two twists around the needle, done in traditional manner

2. Three twists using a twisted cord and a loose tension on the knot

3. A single twist used as seeding

4. Four twists using a fuzzy kind of elastic thread. I like the rag rug effect but the thread is fragile and breaks too easily

5. Sewn with ribbon in a random pattern


Second row

1. Two twists - left hand on top of beads, the right hand without bead for varied height

2. Used to attach some sheer fabric - the idea of sewing in a peak of fabric didn't really come out the way it was in my head!

3. Red thread knots sewn on top of knots sewn with knitting ribbon

4. Knots used to decorate and attach a silk carrier

5. Two twists with the thread brought back through and a loop stitched between the knots


Third Row

1. A chain was formed by stitching into the tail of the last knot

2. As 1 but with ribbon for thicker texture

3. Two twists of ribbon with another finer thread used to add knots on top and at the side of the original knot.

4. Loose tension with a woolly thread

5. Same woolly thread - two knots with tighter tension with 'bars' of thread between.


Fourth row

1. Raffia with tight tension

2. Raffia with looser tension

3. Torn pieces of sheer fabric

4. Three strands of thread in one needle - I like this but it was too hard to get the mix through the fabric and it kept tangling and breaking. I think the slubs in one of the threads caused this.

5.Knots used to secure the end of lazy daisy stitches.


Fifth row


1. Flower formed by stitching a knot and leaving a looping tail then securing that with a knot and repeating. Done vertically and repeated horizontally.

2. Knot used to secure end and side of lazy daisy and also stitched into the top

3. Long thin lazy daisy secured with knots in alternating bar pattern

4. Knots securing lazy daisy in random overlapping pattern.

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Shape Sketchbook 5 = more pages

I have been having some more Sketchbook Sundays. And Fridays. And Thursdays....

Playing with shapes inside shapes. Some examples of Mola design and a couple of card designs of my own doing


A couple of pages about the Aboriginal Artist Paula Paul ( pictires from Aboriginal Art Magazine) and a page of circles inspired designs.





Some notes about the types of shapes



A spread about Kandisnky.



And another about MC Escher with some of my own designs inspired by his.








A page on Mondrian and a fairly lame design inspired by him.



Sunday, 31 May 2009

Morrocan boats - Part One

This course requires the production of three 'experimental panels' each using fabric manipulation techniques. The three count as mini-projects and together are supposed to be the same as one of the bigger finished projects. In fact, I am not really sure how much work these are supposed to involve or how large they should be, but I started one today and as we have a learner day in July no doubt I can find out if I am going wrong. Here is the record of my work progress today:

First I chose my inspiration source. In keeping with my general theme of Place these are photos of fishing boats in Morrocco.


I started to make some paper models. I want to make a really luscious panel, something nice and rich, but keeping the repeated shapes I liked so much and also the idea of the rope lashing the boats together and the idea that the boats are bobbing free on water.

I tried using folds to represent tucks in fabric and inserted BBQ skewers to represent the oars and wooden slats.


The combined the two design sheets

I began to think about the background and the fabric manipulation. Tucks seemed like a good place to start as the seats and the wooden planks of the boats were similar lines to tucks so I tried some samples

One: basic spaced tucks.


Two: This was a rescued mistake - I was trying to make doubled and centered tucks but went wrong, kept going and ended up with something I like and may return to - but despite the mimicking of the shapes of the intersecting boats in the second photo, its not for this piece.


Three: staying with the intersecting shapes - two sets of spaced tucks pieced together. Too heavy.


Four: Just the offcut of the above sample framed and with another tuck across the tucks.


At this point I decided that the tucks were best left in the boat shapes and went in another direction of scrunching up sheers over hand dyed cotton and stitching down

This I like for the background. When I next get time to play I shall be experimenting with scrunching and layering these sea coloured sheers and will then stitch into it and maybe even bead it for a shimmery background. I then need to fathom out how to do the boat pieces and what to use as the ropes. I am thinking that this will make a nice panel for a simple silk bag.

Monday, 25 May 2009

Machine Applique samples

This is the last of what feels like hundreds of post I have just done to this blog tonight so indulge me if I comment a little more on my course experience on this one. When I did the Quilting C&G the focus of our tutor was on doing samples 'to show you have done it'. I like that on this course the focus is much more on samples to see how far you can push something. That said, I realised today that I am going to get far more satisfaction from doing the samples if I also think about design and inspiration rather than just pulling out materials and seeing what I can do with them, because the answer then is usually 'make something that lands somewhere between a mess and mediocrity.'


I have also found that because of the encouragement to link output with design and to push ideas that rather than making a sample as quickly as I can to check it off the list, each sample is sparking off lots of other ideas. at the moment there is insufficient time to chase down all those ideas and, because I am just at the beginning of learning techniques I am often not sure how, practically, to translate those ideas into reality. But that's why this is a two year course, right?

Taking the advice of Jan Beany in one of the her books on the benefits of working to a theme and, considering my own personal interests, I have been thinking in terms of Place. Which is a theme so vague and all encompassing that I can do anything I like! It is however helping to focus me down when I need to do a sample.
This sample of soft edged applique does not really push anything in terms of the embroidery but it does use the concertina cutting technique we did in shape sketchbooks which I posted earlier. I was thinking about friezes on Indian buildings. Vaguely. I wish I had used the Indian print blocks I bought at Malvern on the fabric first
This sample shows two different stitches for hard edges applique and different ways of doing corners and is based on African kuba cloth but also a variety of the concertina cutting. No embroidery on this base yet but oh so many thoughts!



In the three experimental panels I have to do at some point we are required to do fabric manipulation. I wasn't even thinking of that but looked what happened when I cut the bits of of bonded cotton strip sto make the kuba sample and just tossed the trips down for a moment.Hmmmm!

Quilting samples

Free motion quilting and outline quilting


(that fabric is actually a vibrant purple!)
and quilting with the feed dogs up based on the lines of a part of the Imperial war Museum in Manchester

Asssi work

First a traditional sample. Assisi work involves working around the motif in cross stitch.



Then I got overambitious! This is the required contemporary sample. I have framed this partworked Liver Bird between two pages of my display books so I can take it out and maybe finish it sometime but for now it will have to be part-worked - it has taken over 12 hours just to do the bits I have done so far and there are other techniques to keep up with!It is all irregularly worked cross stitches in various threads and ribbons.

Drawn thread samplers

I got strangely addicted to this drawn thread work - its nice to be creatively destructive! Shame I am not all that good at it!

First a sampler with a range of edging techniques and a border square done using perle thread. Then using some non -traditional threads and random methods of bunching up the bars of threads. And some needleweaving
These next to are about rescuing bad ideas: Scrim really is too loosely woven but I tied the one bar I got out of it and let it be,well, scrim like!Then I tried on muslin. Withdrawing the threads gathered up the fabric - I ended up leaving the partially withdrawn threads free and tangled ( if you can have both of those at the same time!) and trapping the whole sorry thing in folded silk. To me it is like a decaying wedding dress. my husband saw it and said, " corset for a child." I'll take that.
Finally, a piece of coarsely woven mud cloth from Mali, which, produced lovely soft thick threads when I pulled them out. The photo is not brilliant but the top line is hemstich with hemp string and threaded through with a knitting ribbon, the tassels tied with raffia. The second line is hem stitched with a knitting ribbon one one side and perle thread on the other with cowrie shell beads on the tassel