Nearing the end of this term's textile course on "Lines of Communication". My piece is based on postcards sent at the turn of the 20th century between sisters living in Constantinople and Leeds. I'm showing a close up of part of the piece as the whole of it would look too indistinct. I used a firm water soluble base to place small bits of hand dyed silk in colours I felt were rich and, hopefully, resonant of Ottoman mosaic tiles. This was then free motion stitched over with a mosaic, web pattern and text representing postmarks stamped onto the original cards which, when the water soluble is washed away will hold all the pieces in place. It was a challenging piece and I am not really satisfied with it as an end result but it would be a useful sample to explore different approaches.

This is part of the text that says Carte Postale and I stitched the text after drawing the letters on with a fine, black marker. The circular pattern was made with my circular sewing attachment which helps to make perfect circles and perfect representations of post marks. The text in the perimeter of the circle says Constantinople, Leeds, Post Office, Depart.

Having finished my earlier piece I thought I would do further practice on the soluble fabric and so sandwiched small pieces of organza between two sheets of the water soluble and then stitched lace like patterns all over within the confines of a wooden hoop with red rayon and then metallic thread. Apparently there were nuns in Constantinople who made lace and my friend Luise's grandmother had her wedding dress made out of some of their lace. Thus the practise lace session...
See you soon!

Houston International Quilt Show

My sister in law Eva, from Norway, and I went to Houston for the Quilt Festival and had us a good laugh! We joined up with some other ladies from Norway who showed us a good time and provided us with many merry ,moments. The festival was lovely but I'm only putting up a few photos. There were lots of inspirational quilts from world renowned quilters and I'm hoping to be inspired just a wee bit. We all spent a lot of money but how much remains a secret...

 Houston by day

 Houston by night

 Shopping!

Two quilts I really admire from Caryl Bryer Fallert

A huge chocolate desert!! Did I finish it or not?

Design Matters Module 2

I've now completed the second module from the Creative Sketchbook online course by Linda and Laura Kemshall. It is such a terrific course with excellent video demonstrations and a printable booklet to support the videos. This module was focused on colour and we were encouraged to both develop techniques already started in module one but to expand our horizons if we wanted to.....

Water colour attempt stuck into sketch book cut away to expose page underneath. This was difficult - actually I found the module fairly demanding in terms of skill level as I'm only a little beginner when it comes to this stuff!

A collage of the view from my balcony through the balustrade.

Drawing and water colour from an original photograph - unfinished

Now ready to start module 3.....

See you soon.

Textiles course has started again!

I started back on my textiles course each Wednesday three weeks ago. Our theme is "Lines of Communication" and I think I'm going to do my project based on some postcards belonging to a friend of mine which stretch back to 100 years ago - good old snail mail. They are wonderful pieces of communication between some sisters in London and Istanbul but I have to talk with my friend Luise again to find out the story behind them.
Anyway, in the course we spend the first few weeks covering different techniques and then use one or a some of the techniques in our project. So far we have done Faux Chenille......

I didn't take to this process and, if I'm honest, and most of what I made was a dog's dinner - this was the best of the bunch and, thankfully, looks better in real life!

It consists of layers of hand dyed habotai silk covered with a fine mesh. The layers are sewed together with straight lines of machine stitch which are then slit between with scissors to, supposedly, expose layers and patterns beneath. Well, it didn't really work for me but onwards and upwards...

Last week was much more my thing whereby we created a series of small collages using different types of paper (and fabric if we wished) based on a particular image we had taken in. I decided to use an Istanbul mosaic tile and developed a series of images based on that.

This is the image I chose to work on first which is black and brown paper shapes stuck onto ordinary  photocopy paper. We then had to interpret the image into stitch.

First I cut out the shapes from fabric having applied bondaweb ( fabric glue mesh) to the back and ironed them down onto cream felt. I then began to stitch into the pattern using a very gorgeous orange thread.

I finished it with various machine stitches using free motion embroidery and changing the thread colour to black and a matching turquoise. I'm very satisfied with this effort as i feel it's a strong, bold design - not very reminiscent of a mosaic tile though -heh heh.

See you soon!

Sewing curved seams

I made this small quilt using the technique of curved seams which I had seen demonstrated online. It requires no pinning which is great for me and my poor little thumbs! I was amazed how easy it was although I stuck with gentle curves to make it a little easier. Next time I will challenge myself with steeper curves. This is just a sample but I hope to make a small quilt using this technique at some point in the future.

Aside from this project I finally finished the last cushion for the living room sofa which is in dior need of some tarting up!! I've been practising my free motion quilting on some cushions using fabrics I hand dyed with procian dyes. The centre square of the cushion is trapunto, a kind of raised quilting, which I learned with Phillipa Naylor in a workshop a couple of months ago. I'm not too pleased with the final result but satisfied enough for it to go on the sofa for the moment. I've learned that I need clear, distinct shapes rather than the running into each other look I've got here.... oh, get over it Liz and stop the self flagellation! Learn for the future! By the way, the small quilt above was also done with free motion quilting. If you are curious as to what on earth is "free motion" then take a look at  http://www.freemotionquilting.blogspot.co.uk where Leah Day shows her mastery of this skill!!

And, last but not least, my textile course has started again and this term's project is called "Lines of Communication". I have some thoughts already about what I want to do so...watch this space.

Finally, ( I really must get more disciplined and post on separate dates) I went on a two day workshop with Clive Bartlett at Art Van Go on Discharge Techniques. We worked on fabric applying Finish Dishwasher Liquid to discharge the colour out of the fabric and then, if we wanted, to reintroduce new colour. We started by preparing a screen for printing onto the fabric initially using "Finish" to discharge the colour, and then applying colour with fabric paints. The first two are discharged fabrics and the third is using a silk screen to apply layers of colour. The colours are not great in these photos but, what the hell, you get the idea.  I learned a few new techniques which I feel will be useful in the future. Clive is a qualified nurse working with adults with learning disabilities but he also has a passion for textiles - really lovely guy!!

See you soon! x Liz

My Place

I've just completed a collage (the first I've ever done) for my Creative Sketchbook course. We were asked to do a picture that gives a sense of where we live and I decided to use several techniques that are demonstrated during the course. I've used photocopies of parts of the building, both the formal aspect of the entrance, and contrasted it with our personal space on the balcony with flowers. The leaves are to soften the effect but also to reflect my walks in Hyde Park.
This was a fun, mixed media approach, using acrylics, water colour paints and pencils, photocopies and sketching. I'm looking forward to trying this again.

Screen printed cushions

I made these cushions from some fabric I designed on my Textile day course during the summer term. They are based on manhole covers as part of a project on "City Scapes". As I wanted to develop my skills with screen printing I researched textile artists who use it in their work and was struck by the work of Neil Bottle.
The first stage was to paint the fabric with screen printing paints and then apply layers using block prints I made out of floor protectors you put underneath furniture to prevent scratching. That's all the circles and squares you can see. I then applied another layer using the silk screen and created stripes and the large flower type patterns which are actual manhole patterns cut from original photographs. These are drawn onto thin paper which is placed underneath the silk screen and then paint is applied with a scraper. The patterns can be used repetitively across the fabric and are good up to approx five to ten times before the paper starts to disintegrate.
I was thrilled with the results and felt they were begging to be made into cushions -

hey presto!!

Design Matters

I have just completed module 1 from Design Matters TV, devised by Linda and Laura Kemshall. I started this online course as I wanted to develop my sketchbook skills to inform any future textile work as opposed to following a commercial design or pattern. It's also to support a textile course I attend on a weekly basis where we are expected to use and develop a sketchbook as a basis for our designs.....well, as I didn't even know what that really implied I thought I'd better find out. So far, it's a fantastic course and I have learned masses already! I'm now ready to start module 2 but a little taste of what from module 1 where we were encouraged to draw basic objects from our home.