From Bark to Art

Here is a pair of shoes I contributed to the Artcloth 2 Barkcloth project. The project is a collaboration between textile artist Bobby Britnell, and shoe designer Janet Middleton of Star Child Shoes. For the project, each contributor received a piece of barkcloth, which they then adorned. On return they were made up into a pair of baby shoes in the same style available at Star Child Shoes.

After a break, more shoes are now up for auction, the proceeds going to Water Aid in Uganda. There are many more shoes available, if your interested, have a look here.

Responding Trees

This is a collage I've just completed, as part of an arts programme I am involved in. The collage is in response to The Tree, a painting by Giacometti.

My response is about connections. Family, grids (think Milton Keynes), lines (creating grids). They all link together, and actually when you begin to research your family tree, you very quickly realise how we are all connected.

The collage, therefore,  is constucted from squares of paper and, reflecting the angular appearance of the painted tree, the small sticks represent the lines.

A little bit of paint to blend it all together, and Hey Presto.

Friendship Tags

Friendship is such an important thing, don't you think?

 A friend is having a difficult time at the moment, so I am creating a series of tags for her. With some positive thoughts, to remind her that she is supported, they will be posted at random times. More interesting than a boring email message, and much more fun I hope.

As they are travelling by post, they are mainly paper, not too much relief. But some are a bit more 3-dimensional, with a few sequins, lace and the odd bead or two.

Loving Wire

A very enjoyable afternoon was spent this weekend at a workshop with Love Wire.

Unusually, I actually managed to finish something. A spoon to begin, to familarise ourselves with all the techniques, and handling of the wire.

Start by curving the wire into an oval shape for the bowl of the spoon and twist the wire to create the shaft.   Curve the remaining wire to form the handle. Wrap wire around to complete the bowl of the spoon and the handle.

For the hooks, bend the wire into the shape. Wrap more wire around a plastic tube to form the central loops. Wrap to hold it all together and bend the hooks up.

 

And some hearts for some finishing touches. Bound to come in handy.

Spoon for Dotty

The hat for the Mad Hatters Tea Party is on hold, the Spoon for Dotty,  has taken over. Jo May Percussion is travelling the country playing spoons and holding fund raising events during the month of February. The beneficiaries are the Dorothy House Hospice near Bath, and this is my contribution.

Paper mache (my favourite of the moment), painted silver, the handle has a length of string encased between the layers to represent engraving.  The bowl of the spoon has part of a dainty necklace stitched to ribbon around the edge. No reason particularly, it just seemed to work for me.

Creating Every Day!

Well sort of.

I do things every day, technically its creating, but I somehow don't feel that anyone would find the back of the jumper I'm knitting at all interesting. But hopefully you'll like this...

This is creating for the joy of it, and also I have joined the Creative Every Day challenge. It folds up concertina style, is stamped embossed, painted, adorned.

These are the three tags. Its not following the theme of the month, but I have an idea for that, and hopefully it will materialize very soon.

Absolute Heaven

The publishing of this post is a bit premature, but now the day has gone, I had to remove the post about the jumble sale quickly.

So, I hope you like this....

No yet finished as you can see, this is a piece I was working on during an Angie Hughes workshop.  Its also posted on her facebook page. So fame at last, albeit in a minor way.

The dyeing, printing, stamping, bleaching, foiling all done, just the stitching to do.  And the most enjoyable day. What more can you ask for, 2 full days of uninterrupted creativity with very pleasant company. Absolute heaven.

 

Embellishing Day Out

S

Well Happy Bloggers,

At last we have our broadband sorted and can resume blogging. And what else is there to do on this cold, snowy Sunday?  Well plenty, but my preferred choice is stay in the warm. This is my street, early this afternoon.

Some brave souls have ventured out, and I have even had junk mail delivered today. But onto more interesting things.

Yesterday, I attended an Embellishing workshop ran by Pauline Verinder at Cottenham. And a very enjoyable day it was too. One of the ladies in my sewing  group, kindly organised the whole thing, and we went by minibus. It was a bitterly cold day, so we were glad to be in a lovely spacious and warm room. And here are some of my samples.

We started by laying out fibres, wool in this case and blending colours together and then embellishing on a machine to hold it all together. This piece was later used to cut out shapes and applique them onto another background, which I am not showing here because I don't like it.

We only used our embellishing machines, no other method was used although obviously, you add stitching, beading etc. if you wish to later.

Our second piece involved wrapping a frame, laying fibres over the top and then embellishing to hold together.  You can use anything for this, yarns or fabric and you don't have to wrap a frame, you could just lay the materials down and embellish. But you would then have to bear in mind that the materials would move about a bit. Or even a lot.

Next we incorporated shirring elastic as our base and embellished over the top, using yarns and fabric strips.  I have used muslin and a very hairy yarn for this sample. It was rather too lacy for my taste, but only because I could see too much of the shirring elastic, so you will see on the reverse, that I have added some chiffon.

So there we have it, if anyone out there has indulged in some embellishing - that's needle or dry felting, if you are not familiar with the term - I would love to hear from you and see your work, so please get in touch.

 Happy creating.