Snow Writing Graffiti

One of my new heroes is Alisa Burke whose work I have mentioned before. I liked her style because it is very much art based. I first came across her on The Quilting Arts website; it has quite a lot of information and every so often there are free promotional gifts if you register. Currently there is a free e-book about free motion quilting, which I was too busy to take up but which sounded worth having.




I think I mentioned before that I paid to download a video lesson by Alisa and these are the results of using her graffiti style using my snow writing symbols.

Elderberries

I made my first attempt at making Elderberry Jelly this week. I added plenty of lemon juice but it took two attempts to get a set. Left with the debris from the jelly bag I was inspired by Cathy Cullis’ description of no pain natural dyeing to just dunk some pieces of cotton into the jug and see what happened.

The cotton had been mordanted in alum a long time ago; in fact when I gave up on the tempting idea of natural dyeing feeling that I didn’t really have enough space or energy. I have washed these pieces and the colour seems stable, although it may fade with time.

Paper Beads

These are two samples from my City & Guilds course. Its good sometimes to look
through the folders full of samples for inspiration and to either feel how you have moved on or perhaps to be aghast at how much work went into them - often a bit of both feelings.

At the moment I am working on designs and samples for an evening class and two creative textile workshops I hope to run starting in September. The evening class will be about using Ethnic textiles as a design source for an embroidered panel. A lot of work if not enough people sign up for them to run but it keeps me busy. The classes and workshops will be at The Hurst Community College near Tadley, Hampshire (0118 9811611).

'Snow Writing'

This is a stitched piece which I recently completed using the ‘snow writing’ symbols.


The symbols were printed out onto calico from the computer. I have found that using A4 labels to carry the fabric through the printer works well. I then machined the fabric using a double needle, which made it curl round like a book spine which I liked. I intend to keep it like that and with the loose threads at the edges.



As you see the beads are made from book pages .I then hand stitched with some slips of silk added in places. The symbols were the starting point and also looking at samples from the past in which I had stitched and included paper beads. I will post pictures of the samples next time. Sometimes its hard to remember where you started and keep track of how ideas come together; and equally of how they disappear at other times.

Indecipherable

On and off over past months I have been using some marks which I saw in the snow as inspiration as I thought they looked like some unreadable lettering. Here are the photographs which I took.

Some sketchbook pages.

Some of the stitching related to the imagery. Next time I will post the most recent piece. I think there is a link both to book making and the general pleasure at the moment in including words and lettering in textile pieces.