Wendy Dolan Workshop

I've just had a very busy and exhausting but most rewarding three days attending a  2 Day workshop with the textile artist Wendy Dolan and an Area Day for Region 10 of the Quilters' Guild.  The aim of the workshop was to explore the creation of texture with fabrics, mediums and stitch.  The theme for the workshop was architecture.  

Wendy is a very friendly and generous teacher and shared so much knowledge with us over the course of the two days and through the talk she gave to the Area Day on Saturday.   We were all kept extremely busy throughout and as I work quite slowly I did find myself falling behind a bit here and there but by the end of this afternoon my piece was well on its way for completion at home.

I can't share the whole process with you as that would be unfair to Wendy but I can show you parts of the journey.

I thought I should keep things simple so I chose this door and stonework that we came across in Knaresborough last year.  We were tasked to trace the main lines and details of our source material and then to use various fabrics of differing textures and mediums including Xpandaprint, to construct a base for stitching and painting. 

The tracing provides a guide to placing the network of fabrics.  

After securing the fabrics with stitch the next task was to make a paper colour collage and then to choose pigments and apply them to colour the surface.   Rather than apply realistic colour we were encouraged to use abstract areas of colour.  I chose to work in a monochrome and you won't be surprised that turquoise was my chosen colour.  You could use fabric paints for this part of the process but we used screen printing inks with an extender.  If I remember rightly that is what Jo Budd uses in her work too.

With the fabric painted and dry we set to with the free machining.  Initially the main lines were stitched from the reverse and once they were established we continued to work from the front.  

This is the stage up to stitching the main lines from the reverse.

At the end of the day today we all gathered to share our inspiration and the progress so far of our work.  I have a lot more work to do in free machining but I am pleased with the way it is taking shape and I have learned a lot, not least about making use of the settings on my machine to make life easier when free machining.  

On Saturday, between the two workshop days, we went back to the venue for the Area Day where Wendy was the guest speaker.  If you follow this link you will be able to see some of the commissions that Wendy has worked on.   These commissions were on a mammoth scale and I am full of admiration for her skill in bringing them to fruition.  Wendy also described her work in some detail and passed round samples of some of the stages her work goes through and which we had been working on in the workshops.

Working from a landscape source the image above shows the prepared fabric base on the left and a painted and stitched image on the right.  Wendy also employs small pieces of agricultural fleece ironed on to create a resist in lighter areas and you can see this in the clouds.

We were shown many other examples of Wendy's work and all the while I was getting inspiration for ways to use her methods to explore texture and colour in my work.  In particular I can see other ways of working the wall hanging that I made for the Festival of Quilts last year.

I havn't up to now worked in anything you could call a series but I am now asking 'what if' about the way I constructed this piece and may explore it with the skills I have learned this weekend for this year's FOQ.  For now though I need to finish off my wokshop piece with further stitching and possibly with added colourwork which could be in paint or inktense pencil etc.

Free Machine Embroidery

I've had a great day today down at Art and Stitch in Peterborough.  Gina Ferrari led a workshop exploring the basics of free machine embroidery.  While I've done several machine embroidery workshops I was keen to work with Gina again as she is a very calm tutor and inspires confidence.   Before I went to Peterborough today I watched Gina's DVD "Creative Free Machinery Embroidery" which she made with Colouricious. I was really glad I did as it put me in a good position to benefit fully from today.  

The aim today was to slow things down (not literally as far as the stitching was concerned) and concentrate on excercises involving only straight stitch.  

My main efforts working on different patterns within in a grid, after having played with some very basic (more basic than this!) scribbles to settle into controlling my machine and tension. 

The next step was to work on a 'colouring in' exercise which took a while but was a lot of fun!

I was so pleased with my effort I even signed it! lol  It's about 4" x 3" (10 x7.5 cms)

With the remainder of the time (in my case not that much of it) we made flowers and leaves which again was fun and I can see lots of uses for these,

The leaves are made of paper stitched onto felt.

The atmosphere all day was one of fun and enthusiasm and there were some great results considering most of us were fairly novice (as in havn't practised enough before!) at FME

Don't you love Sally's dragonfly and mushroom?

I don't know who did the owl but I love him!

 

Sorry I can't attribute any of these properly but everyone did really well.

Of course, a workshop at Art and Stitch wouldn't be complete without lots of cups of tea and coffee and a little treat to keep the day moving:

Raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes. Oh my!

I need to catch up on another workshop I did last weekend with Hilary Beattie (no wonder I'm shattered!) so I'll try  and get that on here in the next couple of days.

Journal Quilt July

Striking while the iron is hot I have worked on my July Journal Quilt today (having been banned by G from visiting her, she said I have to rest. What's she like?!) and practised some more free machining. 

The Applique/bonded flower arose out of a mini workshop at my Quilting group on Monday (thanks Frankie) and I used a fancy stitch on my machine to stitch round the larger flower and stems.  The top was made up first backed with wadding and then I added the backing and free machine quilted with a meandering stitch with leaves and loops.  I am quietly chuffed with my efforts, especially as I was beginning to despair of meeting the deadline at the end of the month.  I still have one more to do by Bank Holiday weekend.  The background and stems are my hand dyes and the flowers are batik.

DH is suffering today.  He started with a yucky cold and cough yesterday so we both had a bad night.  I left him to sleep this morning and had a quiet start to the day and then got on with the JQ. Fingers crossed he doesn't pass it on to me!

Gill Theokritoff Workshop

Back in March this year I went along to the Fashion Stitch embroidery Show at the NEC in Birmingham where I was fascinated by this quilt entitled  'Karma'.  

At the time I blogged about it here and I kept going back to it at the Show.  Today I have been to a workshop at the Husqvarna Studio in Nottingham and guess who the tutor was?  Yep!  Got it in one.  Gilli Theokritoff, the maker of this stunning quilt.  Gilli is part of a group called Contemporary Expressions , a very talented group of ladies who support each other and exhibit together.  I was thoroughly delighted to meet her and the workshop was excellent.

As you can see from the collage above Gilli put us through our paces with free machining.  (Excuse the yellow thread on cream fabric, not the best colour to choose).  I have done previous workshops with Gina Ferrari which have been equally as informative and enjoyable and this was a chance to brush up on the skills that I should be using regularly but haven't been.  Bad girl!  Anyway, I made a bit of a hesitant start but with Gilli's guidance and a very relaxed atmosphere my confidence started to grow and I really enjoyed the day and learned some new things too.  The workshop came at just the right time as I have recently acquired a much more sophisticated machine with all the whistles and bells and I've been a bit scared of it but I feel ready to tackle a bit more now.  I have to say that we worked so hard that I had to wimp out before the allotted time was up and retire home exhausted but it was worth it!

Thank you all for your words of support for my friend.  Her leg is broken and she should have had an operation yesterday but at the last moment it was called off as her bloods were wrong.  She now has to wait a few days while they treat her so that she is as strong as she can be before they give her a new ball joint.  G is so strong, she is just  accepting the delay and getting on with it.  I'm sure being confined to bed will pall in a day or two though.  It was G who insisted that I attend the workshop today even though I wanted to visit her.  A special lady.! I told her she is in good company, Zsa Zsa Gabor and the Queen Mother both had hip replacements very late in life (Zsa Zsa Gabor has of course only just had hers done).

Enjoy your weekend wherever you are.

Thank you Gina

Yesterday I travelled down to Peterborough, a short train ride from here, to join a Free Machine Embroidery workshop with the lovely Gina Ferrari. The workshop took place at Art And Stitch and its aim was to use the sewing machine to create a variety of textures to be used in a landscape type picture. I had been waiting for this workshop for several months and really looking forward to it as Gina is a very unassuming and generous teacher and I knew that I would learn a lot. I had high hopes and I was not disappointed!


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As you can see we were suitably supervised throughout the workshop by this very attractive young lady who I think may have been laughing at me a little! :)

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There were 10 of us taking part in the workshop and we soon made our presence felt by spreading ourselves out to fill the available table space.

Angela and Pam who run Art and Stitch kept the tea and coffee flowing all day and even supplied sustaining biscuits (chocolate and I think I spied Jammy Dodgers too!) in the afternoon when energies might have been flagging a little.
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Gina eased us in gently with a little basic Free Machine practice but then soon had us working on small pieces which would become part of our final pieces. Before we got started on the stitching we painted bondaweb and tyvek which would be used in the afternoon to construct the landscapey scenes.

We stitched onto net which had been stabilised with water soluble membrane which was then dissolved away and prepared other texture with small pieces of knitting, the looser and holier the better, and also a little crochet.

Above is the tyvek with sheers stitched on top and blasted with the heat gun. Unfortunately my blue sheer came from an old scarf, maybe silk, and it did not respond to the heat gun other than to start burning! Oops! Despite that it has given me a nice dark piece which has its own texture.

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So, by the afternoon we had knitted and crocheted pieces, embroidered netting, painted and stitched tyvek with sheers and a background of painted bondaweb to work with in adition to fabrics we had brought with us.

This is my very-much-a-work-in-progress seascape. My first piece of knitting came out with too tight a tension so I cut into it and opened it up before I stitched it down. It is the lowest layer in the piece above. I also cut up the stitched net to get more sympathetic shapes that would suggest wave shapes in my sea. I also incorporated scrim and previously painted nappy liner and velvet to start building the landscape. I have a lot of work to do to complete the scene but I really enjoyed getting this far. The idea is to use Free Machining to attach and incorporate the pieces together. Hopefully I will get time to work on this some more this week and it will then become my Journal Quilt for November.

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I have to confess to a 'Eureka' moment during all this process. A light suddenly went on in my poor old brain while I was Free Machining in zigzag and I suddenly could see how I could use stitch to build and describe movement, landscapes, flowerscapes or whatever I want to make. I know that may be very obvious to all of you out there but I suddenly realised that I was capable of using this very simple device to achieve what I have been working towards for the past couple of years. FME has always seemed a great mystery to me but Gina's teaching at the previous and this workshop has opened me up to exciting possibilities. I know you read everywhere about Free Machining and drawing with the needle but it all seems a bit unreal till you actually sit down and do it. I'm not saying I'm suddenly going to turn into a Diva embroiderer but I am very excited to have this new tool to play with. I am also not scared of working on this piece because, if I make a 'mistake' I know I can use more stitch, handsewing and beads to get round it. Watch this space!

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If you live anywhere near Peterborough do check out Art and Stitch. They are a lovely bunch of people and make you feel like one of the family and their workshops are always accompanied by copious cups of tea and coffee.

FME Workshop

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What a great day I had yesterday! As planned I toddled off to Peterborough to take a Free Machine Embroidery Workshop with Gina at Art & Stitch. Angela who owns Art & Stitch very kindly sent her DH to pick me up at the station as I travelled down by train and, blissfully, the studio is air-conditioned so we were wonderfully cool all day inspite of the raging (for the UK) temperatures outside.
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Since a lot of the class were relative novices Gina started us off very simply with some genreal free machining of basic patterns. Just remember to relax your shoulders and breathe!
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Sorry, I used a pale-ish thread so it doesn't show up too well here but I did feel that I was learning a bit more about controlling the speed of the machine and the movement of the cloth under the needle. It's surprising how long it takes to do these small samples when you're not used to this activity.
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Our next task was to take a couple of fresh leaves (Gina had made a foray into the undergrowth to pick some ivy for us) and layer them - base fabric, bondaweb film (no backing paper), leaves, bondaweb film and a sheer. After we had ironed to seal the bondaweb the fabric was laid onto a piece of calico and free machined. We used granite stitch ( tiny overlapping circles, or spiky triangles most of the time in my case) in the spaces around the leaves and stitched round the edge and up the leaf veins in straight stitch. Unfortunately my machine decided it was going to have a few grumps so I didn't get this finished but I'll come back to this piece in a minute cos I've loaded the pics out of sequence.

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The next task was to take soluble fabric (Avalon in my case), lay it across your hoop, cut snippets of fabrics on top and cover with a top layer of soluble. The sandwich was then hooped and free machined in any pattern you wish. You could also put a sheer over the snippets if you wished. I was decidely unadventurous and machined grids to hold everything together. You need to make sure that the stitches all cross each other so that it doesn't fall apart when you wash away the stabiliser.

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I did manage to FME a little flower and could have done a lot more had there been more time but by now I was seriously flagging and had had several battles to get the machine to stitch.
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In case you don't know her, Gina is seated at the sewing machine in the top photo. I've asked Angela to order me one of those storage boxes in the photo, they look ideal for keeping unruly spools of thread in line! Not sure who they are made by?

Busy, busy!

I made my mind up to get busy with some creativity this week, not necessarily to make anything but to catch up on my Free Machine Embroidery practice and to try and catch up a little on the Journalling course that I am taking with Sharon Boggon. The course started just as I was going to Austria and is now in its third week. I am still working on the exercises for the first week! More of that in a minute.

Yesterday I had a play on the sewing machine and tried out a few FME ideas. I think my control is improving a little, although I do tend to keep my foot over the foot pedal when I've stopped stitching and find that the machine sets off again! The practices above were done with straight stitching with the darning foot on and the feed dogs down. It all felt a bit random as I hadn't a design in mind but I was quite pleased with the little fish I managed to draw and the stars. I shall keep practising but I wonder if it would be better if I had an actual design or project in mind.

This second piece was done in zigzag and I enjoyed playing with this stitch. Excuse the yucky colours, I don't like wasting my best threads.........skinflint! You can see the stitching more clearly on the sample below which is actually the reverse.

I'm working up to printing a photo onto fabric and then machining on top which I thought I had seen on Gina's blog but I can't find it now. Must have seen it somewhere! It had to do with printing a photo onto fabric, ironing on painted Bondaweb and machining and hand stitching on top. Oh well, I shall just have to try it out!

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As I mentioned at the beginning I have made a start on Sharon Boggon's "The Studio Journal as a Designer's Workhorse". The idea of the course is to 'help you establish a pattern of observing, notating and using your studio journal'. This is done through a series of exercises which so far I have enjoyed.

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The first exercise I did, after setting up the Journal, is an exercise in frottage or texture rubbings.

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My DH and I took a walk round Belton House one day last week and while he was busy with his camera I took the opportunity to take rubbings of the different tree barks. Eventually I selected 5 of these in a range of tones from light to dark.

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I particularly liked this rubbing of yew tree bark and, as it was quite an open pattern I decided there was scope to turn thepaper through 90 degrees to make a mesh.

As I've noted in my journal, I can see this being interpreted in an open weave fabric or by weaving yarns or ribbons and threads. I have left the opposite page blank to come back to sometime to actually try it out.

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The second exercise was to make texture marks and interpret them in stitch. I feel at a bit of a disadvantage here as I don't know many stitches but I did find ideas were sparking.

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I had planned to work this exercise in colour but the ideas were coming thinck and fast so I never got to picking up the colour pens!

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The final exercise which I did today involved looking at a painting by Van Gogh and thinking about interpreting it in stitch. I have to admit I cheated a little as I had already got a sketch I made some time ago so I have put that into my journal.

I think when I did this original sketch we were looking at the movemnt through the painting.

Van Gogh's brush marks are so distinct that you can almost 'see' the stitches on the canvas! My little sketch above shows just a few of the stitches I have considered and as yet I haven't given any thought to the actual threads. The colours are only to identify the areas and are not representative.

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The next lesson concerns colour and I have made a start but not enough to show here.

A little more FME

This machine embroidery is a bit addictive! I had another little practice yesterday and again today and I think I'm beginning to get a little more control. When I started I seemed to put my foot down and run the machine hell-for-leather but today I have been sewing at a much more relaxed pace and I've been able to control the stitch to some extent.

First of all I had a general practice (which I odn't appear to have photographed) and then I thought I would have a go at machining fabric snips onto a water soluble membrane. The photo above is the fabrics machined with a zig-zag stitch onto the membrane. The stitching doesn't show up too well as it is a metallic thread. I have also used a transparent thread in the bobbin.

Above you can see the result after dissolving the support. The idea is to cross all the stitches over each other so that after the support is dissolved the fabric pieces are all held together. I have ended up with a few holes where the stitches didn't quite mesh but I am pleased with my first attempt at this technique.

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Today I have been trying to embroider with a little more control and I am pleased with what I've done so far:

Again it is a metallic thread so not as clear as it might be. I found the triangle difficult to stitch as I couldn't keep the line straight and kept forgetting which way to turn. Practice, practice, practice!

I had intended to practice some more but I ran out of steam at lunchtime so I'll save it for another day. So far I've worked with a ring to hold the fabric taut but I think I will try without and see how I get on.

I also did some fabric dyeing/painting this morning but I'll wait until it's dry before I put it up here.

Finally, a little shopping! My friend whisked me off to Newark yesterday afternoon and we went to the Scrapstore. If you've ever wondered what happens to fabric sample books I can tell you

They end up at the Scrapstore! I came away with just 2 but there were a lot more. These are all luxury fabrics and there is a wonderful assorment of patterns and colours. The fabrics include silks, linens and cottons, some plain and some with machined patterns. Each piece is 6"x10" so they will be ideal for ATCs and Postcards. I just have to find somewhere to store them now! Oh! How much did all this cost? 99p! (50cents) Can't be bad! I bet I don't manage to spend as little as 99p when I go to the Sewing for Pleasure show at the NEC on Saturday! lol

FME & Printing

I've still got some pics to post from Yorkshire and also from a day out this week but I just had to tell you!!! Woo hoo! I did some Free Machine Embroidery today!!!! Yay! Jumping up and down here in Lincolnshire doing the Happy Dance!!! LOL OK so it's not that big a deal but I've never managed to do it before and my friend and Saturday workshop leader showed me how today at our monthly workshop. Course, it may have helped that I had the correct foot on my sewing machine!

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Right, now don't get too excited, but I'll show you my first effort ever. No, I mean, really, don't get too excited!

It's a bit messy but I was just pleased that I managed to control the machine and move the fabric around and get the feel of the movement. I obviously need lots of practice but at least I've started.

A bit messy again but I wasn't following any lines. Just one question.........how do you get the dot on the "i"?

This morning, before the adventure with the sewing machine, I did some printing from collagraph plates which I have written about previously. I took prints onto cartridge paper, newsprint and cotton fabric. Now that I have made a start with FME I can try some stitching on the fabric prints.

Sample printing block above.

This is my messy work area with the inked block and a cotton fabric laid on top.

These prints were all on fabric, I think.

These prints were done onto newsprint and cotton fabric.

None of these prints is wonderful but I had a lot of fun and they can be added to with colour washes. Look out! Portions may be appearing on an ATC near you!

You may be wondering what materials I used to make the printing blocks. I used all sorts of things, nappy liner torn in strips, string, elastic(rubber) bands, wallpaper, pieces of plastic store cards, doillies, punchinella, polystyrene strips, tissue paper, coarse pumice texture paste, sliced cork, clingfilm (saran wrap), corrugated cardboard............ I particularly liked the texture given by the torn nappy liner and the pumice paste, and also by the polystyrene strips on the piece that looks vaguely like a seascape (well, that was the idea anyway!) :)

By the way.........I cheated with the FME...........the fossil shape was pre-printed on the fabric. I just had to follow the shape. Mwahahaha!