Felt tips

The background in this piece was first drawn with felt tips and then sprayed with water as described in Sherril Kahn's book 'Creating with Paint'. I added some foiling at one point. The stitching is sort of Kantha quilting. I framed it with frayed edges; I'm quite fond of it really, I suppose because it was just a bit of fun.
I have been getting ready for a craft show in our local village hall tomorrow. I am looking forward to it and hope that I have a few sales, but I am quite philosophical about that these days. I wonder if I will sell my little friend above.

London Design Festival

We have been to London to see The Scrawl Collective exhibition. The setting and the large scale work was impressive. More by accident than any 'design' on our part we were in the BrickLane area and on a sort of art trail round a number of other design shows. We even went on an old syle red bus which was showcasing the work of designers from Singapore. The New Designers Selection showed the work of 50 selected designers and was excellent; you can see examples of all their work on the link.
The emphasis in the show above was on recycled materials. There was a chance to sit down and have a go with fabric strips, hessian and a sort of prodding technique, it looked really interesting, but to tell the truth by that stage I was bleary eyed.

Dyeing

When I followed some links to find out what Parfait dyeing is, I found mention of Ann Johnston's book 'Colour by Accident' and instructions for Low Immersion dyeing on Paula Burch's web site; I think they are the same thing. The results are really interesting and make a good background for stencilling and screen printing.
I am making some book covers for hard backed sketch books ,using pelmet vylene as a backing, to sell at a craft fair. Its difficult to know what to charge, as they take quite a bit of time, but at the same time I do want to sell them. Any thoughts about charging?




Here I enlarged a maxi leaf pattern and stitched it as the final layer.

The dyeing and printing is done on a brushed calico, which I like as it is very tactile,almost velvet like.

Inspiration

This is my new' inspiration wire' copied from an idea on port2port .I am using it for unfinshed pieces and samples at the moment. At some point I'll probably add another line.
I have added a badge for a flickr album this week, if you would like to have a look at some of my work as a slide show.

Eyelets

We had a lovely morning visiting some of the open studios in the Hampshire Artists scheme.Prints, felt,glass and digital photos were particularly memorable. As you know I am really keen on experimenting with working on felt , and you can see some inspiring work at raspberry.

I have just finished a piece using mainly eyelets; after reading Julia Caprara's article in Quilting Arts I fancied doing some hand stitching and got out my stiletto.

I layered some painted scrim over in parts and worked some eyelets on the machine. It made a nice change to work some pretty intensive stitching.