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!