April meeting

We had a very busy evening this April with lots of different activities going on. The theme was Barking Mad. I am of course well behind on the themes and have just finished my Beneath my Feet piece. Have been very taken with lessons on Intuitive Painting and my Beneath my Feet piece came from a lesson by Alena Hennessy. It started on a box canvas and ended up being fused to paper. Had to  grunge up the paper though as it didn't seem to go with the rest of the picture. I basically started with just painting colours and inks where I felt they needed to  go, I had to add some circles as I just love circles and then it started to look like a path. I opted to turn the canvas and build on my path with fabric circles that I fused to the canvas with Bondaweb.
Have to say that I am really pleased with the result.

I have also started a book based on the elements which is what I want to add my tags from Angie's day to. I've finished the Earth piece and am now working on air- this is the painted and printed backgrounds, going to stitch them with the machine and add some hand sewing later. The background is made from strong cotton fabric which I have coated with 3 layers of gesso. I then added paper (torn and randomly placed using matt medium) and some structure paste. I painted over the top with a thin extra gesso layer. Then I added the colour using inks and acrylics. Surprisingly this will still go through the sewing machine!

This one is water, I did try some acrylic (matt medium) transfers but they didn't work very well. I did have more luck with the Prima matt medium although managed to transfer my fish upside down! 

Again this is just the background, I have to add more machine stitching and then hand sewing over the top

Mel has also been experimenting with structure paste which I think is a wonderful medium. Here are some pieces that she is working on.

Is it me but I can see a face in the one above! 

Below are the textures she has created from fabric manipulation. I would love to see these coloured perhaps with dyes or inks??

Pauline was printing this evening. I love her prints and using natural objects to create some fabulous printing. These could be backgrounds or pieces by themselves.

Ellen finished her Barking Mad piece or is this Cracks?? I love the layered organza the colours are so beautiful.

Averil brought in her beautiful felted vessels and also her three dimensional stitched structures that she created through Sheila's workshop. I am so sorry I missed it I would have loved to do this one! 

Ellen brought her's too! 

Tag day!

What a wonderful day we had with the fantastic Angie Hughes!

It was wonderful to see so many of us and also to welcome some new faces too. I thoroughly enjoyed myself printing and selecting fabrics to create my tags. We had quite a variety of themes, some people sticking with the Indian theme and some trying out new ideas possibly based around our group themes.
Here are some photos from the day!
Apologies if I labelled any wrong ( some I don't have labels for but let me know and I'll add them!) I take photos and forget to label them on the day!

The next few I know belong to Mel! Love the theme! 

Love the printed textures on these ones! 

Think these are Averil's fabulous work! 

I think this one belongs to Ellen, love the butterfly, there should be butterflies on everything!

Love the wrapped threads on this one, what a wonderful way to say Barking Mad perhaps??

But thank you so much Angie for an amazing day. I really enjoyed it, it was the perfect remedy to a hectic week. I'll post more photos of the finished tags as soon as I get them! 

Angie Hughes at Not Necessarily Sew!

Greetings everyone!
Hope everyone is well and you are all busy stitching and creating beautiful things. I have to say that I've been flitting between so much I have loads of bits and pieces and nothing finished! I guess that's pretty normal though!

But onto the 18th March- so looking forward to seeing everyone and getting involved in one of Angie's fabulous workshops.
Remember we asked to do a stitched tag book. I know that Mel has sent out all the requirements but I thought I would add them again on the blog just in case.

Here are the requirements:

Materials and equipment

• Something to make the base out of, pelmet Vilene, about ½ metre (I will have some for sale)
• A few scraps of colourful fabric for the base and decoration, mine are hand dyed and printed
• A nice central image, mine was an elephant from an Indian miniature painting I found on the net. (I will have some to choose from)
• A price labels and brads
• Some letter blocks and stamping pad
• Starry Sequins, beads things to decorate
• Bondaweb and baking parchment
• Iron and board
• Hand sewing threads and twinkly cords (there’s a little bit of machining but you can use my machine for this)
• Sewing kit, scissors etc.
• I will bring everything else.

angie@angiehughes.com

Within these walls

Had a wonderful stitchy time at our January meeting. So many wonderful items made and still being worked on. I have to say that there are so many different viewpoints and ideas going on, I am inspired and then want to change everything I have done! But then that's why we work so well together!

The theme for the day was Within These Walls. I was going for more of a realistic style wall thinking of using the flour and gesso pieces I made last year and others were looking at more textured pieces or using threads to create the layers.

Here are a few photos of what everyone was doing .....

Averil has finished her piece on cracks. Loving the textures and stitching. Beautiful and so effective.

Also more wonderful book covers have been completed. Thank you to Pauline for her wonderful tutorial. The covers are so diverse and wonderful. This is Averil's book cover, I love the stencilling and the Autumn colours and textures. I can't wait to see what you do inside Averil.....

Caroline took a very different approach and layered her book pages to create a longer book. It would be an amazing  wall panel. The  colours used look like old leather. The wording is a tribute to a very well loved character from Game of Thrones... do you know it ??? 

I absolutely love this and am so taken with the way you have made your book, such a wonderful idea Caroline.

Mel used texture paste and wonderful colours to create a watery, underwater theme to her book cover. I love the stencil you've used, the texutres just pop off the cover and make it look more like fish scales or skin. Again what is going to go inside ???? 

Mel also used the same stencil to create a very different effect using different colours and tones. I love the colours and the way you have created such a mystical look. We are so going to have to have a day working on the insides of these books! 

Some of us started our Within These Walls pictures. I only have a few - sorry- Please can you bring your pieces with you to the next meeting so that I can take more photos! I've not started mine yet. I was going to go for the realistic wall idea which had a big crack across it and then I was going to join the two pieces together with some webbing or holes and threads. I've totally changed my mind on this and am now working on a more abstract idea on Within These Walls- not based on actual walls at all! But we'll see if that gets going it's only dancing around my brain at the moment! 

Ellen was working on some lovely textures using fabrics, I am very curious as to how this is going to turn out. Would love to see what happens next .....

Loving the colours on the painted background too- how is this going to work together???

Sheila was experimenting with Kozo fibres. I bought some of these years ago but didn't really know how to use them so am very interested to see what you do with them. Here is the beginning picture and I await the next step in the February meeting! 

Caroline also showed us her wonderful cuff that she has made from a piece that she hand felted. I love the shape and the beautiful stitching that you have used. This is gorgeous.

So much going on ladies ! I'm loving all the different projects. I appologise if I have not added photos of anything that you wanted me to display. If so please bring your pieces with you to our February meeting and I'll take the photos then.

Here's to a busy fortnight before our next meeting. Can't wait to see how things have developed! 

Paper Stitch piece

Well since I'm on here thought I would post my paper piece.
I had started to create a face using torn pieces of paper on a canvas which I quite enjoyed doing. I added a little warm colour just to the cheeks but the colour did spread out since I used the same brush for the glue!

I was worried she was a little thin in the face so I made her face a little more rounded and when I cut her out she did seem a lot better.

I created the background by just tearing lots of different types of paper and ironing them to calico using bondaweb. There were a few loose ends however but I opted to solve them by adding stitching.

I did like the rough feel of the paper. I wanted to add the face but wasn't sure where and then there was an awful lot of empty space. I had thought of adding more faces and have been quite taken by textile artists that just create line drawings in stitch. So I thought it would be interesting to just draw out the faces but not colour them so that the only colour was my torn paper girl.
I must admit that I really liked the effect and am quite taken with this line drawing in a darker thread.

The background however still needed something to fix in all the loose ends of the torn paper and something to tie it all together. So I opted to have a go at script and put it sideways to make it look more like a pattern. Also I used a brown thread to push it back into the background as I didn't want to overshadow the faces. I chose a quote by Helen Keller as I really liked it! 

It says

The best and most beautiful things in the world

 cannot be seen or even touched 

- they must be felt with the heart.

Here is the finished piece. I don't think that I want to add anything further to it.

Please let me have copies or bring along your paper stitched pieces with you to the next meeting and I can post them here. If you would like to add any commentary about how you made your piece that would be wonderful too.

Meeting- 6th January

Happy New Year everyone! 
Can you believe it is the start of another year. How time flies!!!

Well the first meeting of the new year has the title Within These Walls. I am going to have to have a good think about what that means for me. I've not done a Pinterest Board on that topic either so might have to have a little research look-see.

Hopefully everyone had a lovely restful Christmas and are ready for the year ahead. Hopefully everyone can make it and we can have a look at any updates on the work you have started- I've finished my paper and stitch piece which I'm quite pleased with. Please bring with you anything you would like me to add to the blog to either your pictures sections or the posts.
I'm still working on the Cracks piece although I might leave that one for a bit as I'm a little stuck with it and try and move onto this topic instead.

If I receive any more information I'll add it here but looking forward to seeing you on Saturday.
Take Care!!!