Norton Priory Exhibition

The latest exhibition of Textile 21 entitled 'Outside In' is to be held at Norton Priory between 22 May - 14th July 2008. All 15 members have designed and executed new pieces based on the gardens at the Priory to reflect the theme throughout Cheshire this year 'The Year of Garden'.

I have started three pieces that have allowed me to create new surfaces/backgrounds. I can't see much else getting done over the next few weeks as I plough on with these pieces.

The first is an embellished piece on ivory cotton velvet. I have used lace, wool roving and silk tops, as you can see from this pic I played around with the arrangement.



This pic shows the finished surface before I started to create the silhouette design on top. It has been well batted down and the gummed silk has remained in relief giving a very pleasing surface pattern. The finished size will be 9x15inches and mounted around a frame that Hubbie doesn't yet know he will be making!

These are a variety of experiments to reproduce stems for my silhouette of Dill plants. Very long painted tyvek beads and painted machine wrapped cords. I will couch on both types to achieve the different thicknesses of stems.

This is the image that is my inspiration for my first piece.

The second piece is embellishing again but this time on layers of organza with trapped fibres. This pic shows the random placing of cut fabric and fibres before I embellished on my janome Xpression.

This pic is after I have embellished . I love the resulting crinkle effect . I intend to FME a closeup of the Flower head on this background. Following pic gave me this idea.

This is the start of my third piece. Lace and muslin on Lutradur after I have machined in place and painted the reverse in browns and oranges. (thanks to Carol McFee for technique)

Then I painted the right side in acrylics and interference paints.Love the shimmer effect of interference paintsFinished piece ready for the window design to be applied, haven't quite worked that out yet but think the Roman window shape at Norton will be cut out before I FME on the Lutradur.

This is the pic that gave me the inspiration for the window shape.

So back to it.............. having said that I am at a workshop with Jackie Cardy and the Macclesfield Embroiderers Guild tomorrow so it will have to all wait until Friday, then again it's my birthday so i hoping some of my 'friends' will be popping round or phoning up to take me out for lunch!!

I've heard back from most of my nominees for the award of 'inspirational blogs' and it is plain to see the positive effect it has on people as they realise how they an affect other bloggers work and life. A great idea to spread good will and creativity.

Embellished Postcard

This postcard has been completed from a piece of embellished felt on my Xpression. I used mainly wool rovings but there are other fibres in there. The embroidery was to represent the colours of March. This year everything is so green and so early. Fresh greens and the new shoots of bulbs, grass and shrubs. The postcard was my March contribution for the 6x4 lives flickr group. I am not totally happy with colour repo it is actually much brighter/richer than this.

EMBELLISHER - FIRST ATTEMPT

JUST GOT MY HANDS ON MY NEW TOY!
My Janome Xpression has just arrived and I couldn't wait to try it out. I went to the NEC at Birmingham last week to the Stitching for Pleasure exhibition and tried out as many embellishers as I could whilst there. Came home with lots of samplers. I had done research beforehand as to cost, delivery and guarantees over the internet, as well as ask as many bloggers as possible as to which they would recommend based on their usage of the machines. I decided on the Janome as it has an easy to reach separate compartment for the large amounts of fluff. It has five needles which can be removed separately with pliers to replace, I was assured, and I have already tried to do this successfully. So my first attempt was to create a motif for a denim bag that I have had for many years, my daughter was going to throw it out! I used a grey felt as the base and wool rovings, net, silk tops and novelty knitting wool for the design which evolved as I worked on it. After completing the motif I then needle felted it to the denim, it was so much easier than I thought it would be.

This closeup shows the variety of threads and fibres used and how they felt so well together. I learnt a lot from my first attempt and the potential for creating new fabrics and embellishing with embroidery seems endless. Watch this space for more creations.