Final piece 2

Many thanks to everyone who gave me their input on the previous post. With yours, my tutor's and of course my OH's help I have finally managed to start getting somewhere with the piece.

As I knew I would I chose a comlpetely different design, but it was similar to the last one that I posted on the previous post.



This was largely due to my OH's input as he suggested that if I duplicated the image and flipped it, it would look like a cave, with a waterfall running down. The RH portion of this image has been stretched to fit the left and that's what gave me the waterfall look. I tried all sots of connotaions with this idea and finally came up with a rather 'heavy' result.



While I was thinking about what to do next I decided to get on with the part I did like, the cave, so I printed this directly onto PFD cotton, having first increased the saturation on the image to +10. I'd run out of Bubblejet 2000, so I thought I'd see what I got with no coating and was quite pleased with the slightly muted effect.



I now decided I would FME and quilt the main features, so I made the usual sandwich with wadding and calico. I have to confess that part of the reason for doing this was that I wanted to try out my new Bernina Artista 630 with the BSR (Bernina stitch regulator ) and I can now report that it's fabulous!!!

Partly because I needed to incorporate some fabric manipulation into this piece and partly because I thought it would add something to the textural quality, I bonded some sheer to the 1st and 3rd hanging areas of the design, FME'd it and then put the heat gun on it.



My Oh suggested that I needed more texture and said perhaps I should do some embelishing with wool tops to make it look like rock, impressed eh!! I was!

Anyway, great idea though it was, I decided to go for my favourite French knots and some beads over the LH hanging part, as this already looked a bit volcanic. The third area I worked in running stitch to keep it inkeeping with the original texture, and finfinally I stitched the waterfall area with some fine siver thread, by hand, so as not to loose the depth created by the original machine quilting.





At this stage I was now wondering how to put this into a final hanging and as a last resort I just had a bit of a doodle over the original design in PS and came up with this:



At least this one covers all the critria for the module, I hope. All I have to do now is work out how to do it in fabric.

I think the outside will be dyed silk organza and the hanging pieces could be organza bonded to acrylic felt and the zapped with the soldering iron.

PS sorry about the poor quality pics , but seeing as it hasn't stopped raining for a week they had to be done indoors.

Final piece

I've now begun my final piece for module 5:
The starting point for this was to make a continuous line drawing of the three corners of one of the rooms in your house. I chose our studio, surprise, surprise!! And the final drawing was taken from my OH's corner as he has so much more stuff than me, so it made quite a good study.



Because the original idea was to make a long thin wrapping cloth I elongated the design in the computer to fit a rectangular shape.



We then had to trace all the individual shapes, number them and then cut them out. This was so we could trace them onto pieces of textured or painted paper that would reflect the colours used in Aftican art and textiles.



My final composition turned out quite well but I was a bit worried that it was too busy. At this point I had decided to make a protective runner for my sewing table, so I set about working a design, on the computer, to fit the shape, using the dark BG of the table I photographed the design on as a foil.



Having decided that this was a bit heavy I looked into ways of manipulating the image in PS and came up with this idea using the stamp filter.







After having a tutorial with my tutor today we decided that in the interest of what was required for the course that it would be better to make this piece the wall hanging with the integrated hanging divise, so here are some variations on the original design idea, I'd be very interested to know which one you think works the best.

On to appliqué

The second part of the of my C&G module 5 stitch sample collection is concerned with appliqué.
In the first part we had to look at constructing samples using traditional techniques in both 'hard' and 'soft' edges. In other words neatening edges or leaving them frayed.

In these first 2 I've used both hand and machine finishes and continued to use the African colour pallet.





This next sample is one of the 'soft edge' attempts, I won't put up the first one I tried as it's not very pleasing. I did find this part of the exercise much harder than the hard edge.



The next couple of samples were inspired by the architectural grid work on the top of Brighton Pavilion.



This one has a computer printed cotton BG with FME'd pieces of a silk scarf I found impaled on a bush one day when out for a country walk.





In this one I used some lovely fine Indian cottons that I just bonded to the BG with Misty Fuse as in the previous sample.



This last sample is an example of reverse appliqué. I wasn't looking forward to doing this at all, but once I'd discoverd the method wasn't as frightening as I thought I found it quite exciting to see what was revealed. Next time though I think I will pay more attention to the design before I start cutting!

Blogger is playing all sorts of jokes on me tonight so sorry for the scrappy uploading!

African art experiments

Well we've achieved the change over to BT extremely successfully and all is well in cyberspace. It appears I still have my AOL email address but I don't know it that's permanent so best to stick with the Yahoo one for now.

Anyway enough of the boring stuff and onto some creative stuff. At last!!!

I've been beavering away on module 5 of the C&G and am now almost done on the stitch samples. Yippee!!!!

I've found the new deadline quite galvanising and it's been really good not to have the time to agonise over every little decision. This module is about form and concentrates on the use of architectural grids as a starting point for developing a project. At the same time as part of our cutural studdies we are asked to look at African textiles, particularly Kuba Cloths.



The stitch exercises have been divided into patchwork and appliqué and the last of the patchwork was to design a small sample using the Kuba Cloth as inspiration and here is my sample.



Prior to this we had been asked to work 2 samples of log cabin patchwork, one conventional and the other extending ourselves a little, this is the extended version, still keeping within the African theme.
I've never done proper patchwork before so it was a bit of a steep learning curve, but I got the hang of it eventually.



The next sample was made from some sun printed fabric (the darker one) and a piece of silk that I printed with a manipulated image for another project. It's my experimental sample for English patchwork, I hope, I was getting a bit confused by this time.



And just because I was so pleased with myself that I had managed to complete a sample of traditional English patchwork and made all the sides meet, I thought I'd put up the pic :-) even though it's a bit ordinary.



The final 2 samples are of strip patchwork, the first was only the second attempt and by the third I had got a little bit more adventurous.





I'm really enjoying this module now despite misgivings in the first place. I wonder if it has anything to do with the connection to patchwork and of course the African art theme, which I love.

Excited!!

I'm, off to Devon tomorrow for 2 exciting reasons.

Firstly I'm meeting up with the lovely Val tomorrow at the RHS Rosemoor gardens, which I've never been to despite being a member of Wizley Gardens, which is the Surrey equivalent, since '93. I'm really excited to be meeting Val as she's going to bring some of her embellishing samples for me to have a look at in the flesh, while we indulge ourselves with some naughties form the cafe.

The second reason for the visit is that we're going to a friend's wedding at Broomhill sculpture park, which looks amazing, so all in all it should be a very special w/e.

I would like to make a couple of thank yous in this post too.
I have been very touched by the number of bloggers who welcomed me back after my enforced internet break, it was so nice to know that my ramblings had been missed.



Secondly I was delighted to receive the 'I love your blog ' award from Carol this week, it's so nice to know that people enjoy your blog enough to want to give you an award.
At the moment things are pretty busy, so I think I will just have to say a big thank you and pass this on to all those who have given me so much friendship and support since I started blogging.

I have been promoted yet again by my lovely DD2 and am now responsible for the in stock baby carriers. You can see them here. Once again there have been a few tricky moments as I get to know the new fabrics and design, but I think I'm up and running now, but very busy with a steady work flow, so time is tight.

I'm still managing to keep my 2 DCD's (dedicated creative days) a week that I set out to do on Jan 1st, but they are now focused on the finish date in March next year for my C&G embroidery course. No mean feat considering it's taken me 2 1/2 years to get half way , so now I have to do the other half in 6 months, hmmmm!

Anyway the point of all this dribble is to explain why my presence might be patchy over the next few months. But I'm so nosey I dare say I won't be able to stay away for long.

And because I can't bear to put up a post without pics here's a few to be going on with.



I saw this lovely planter at a local NT house the other Sunday, made me think of my progress at the moment.



This lovely carved seat has been placed in a recently reworked little retreat garden at the Arundel Wetland Centre.



And this paper-cut design is the first piece of design work for the new module 5, which I will post about later, just wanted to prove I have been doing something creative.