A little bit of sunshine.

I have been working on my butterfly felt. The felt itself is very fine and probably I should have made a more substantial piece of felt; I didn’t have much energy when I made the background and I would have liked the colours to have been stronger. I used some metallic powder with Ormoline Medium to colour some areas on the wings and gradually added more outlining until they stood out a little better.

Finally, I added some words up by the tiny butterfly on the right,’ the elusive butterfly of love’. I did it quite quickly as a bit of therapy; I am reasonably pleased but its execution could have been better. I made two circles of felt as hangers which echoed the circles of stitching. The brick wall like part in the middle is in a dark green metallic thread.

Here is a small tip for those who you who do a lot of machining and may not have heard it before.

Two rubber doorstops under the back of the machine tilt the machine forward which is helpful to the back. Make sure the machine is nice and stable before you go into top gear of course.

Opportunities

The HEN embroidery site has a new on-line exhibition up and there are varied entries from a number of countries. See my links. Have a look and why not think of putting a piece of work in for next time. My entry was from my City and Guilds Course as it seemed to fit the theme of Winter Wonderland, and there had to be some reason why it sits in a box under my desk taking up space.
Another opportunity is here where you can enter a machine embroidery competition and every entry gets a small thank you from the organizers. I only just started and the entry date is early in March, but there is still time and it does give you a focus, or you may already have a piece which fits the remit.






The problem with my piece is how to define the butterflies now that I have free machined them. I have a number of ideas. I must admit that I have a phobia about butterflies, and in fact most fluttery winged creatures, so not a theme I would choose.
Thanks to people following my blog. I am sorry if I don’t get back to you, I do try.
To answer the question about Louise Baldwin’s workshops, yes I am sure she runs them regularly at City Lit...
The next mini workshop at Doodles, Tadley is next Wednesday and we will be working with silk carrier rods. They now have a good website with details of all their courses and the craft shop items.
I have just joined the ECHO group on Flickr. They have a bi-weekly theme and the current one is Juicy, hence my new header, 'threads that make my mouth water'. See the badge in the sidebar. Why not join in?

More Paper and Fabric Samples

On the last session of Louise Baldwin’s course the theme was distressed paper. We had suggestions, one being machining a grid on the paper and then crumpling it before rubbing areas away. I first heard of this technique from Val Campbell- Harding and like to think she first came up with it. It is fun and you can try it on a variety of different papers to make an open grid. In fact one of the first pictures I posted was of a photo album which I made using this technique; with the open grid areas layered on top of a newspaper which I had picked up in China Town New York.

This sample is layered over a piece of woven fabric and generally distressed to the point where I have forgotten exactly what I did. There is some dyed wool in there and some metal pieces.

The second technique was Faux Chenille but using paper for the layers rather than the usual layers of material. You machine the layers and then cut through to the areas you choose to have showing. This sample was also covered in wax. It opens up like a book.

This is a tiny photo of the album I mentioned. The sky has some wonderful colours in between flurries of snow, and its difficult to get good photos today so this is an old photo. At least I feel that my photos have improved. My other excuse is that I have been in bed for two days with the lurgie. I can’t wait to have some energy again.