Sumptuous Surface Embroidery

Week 1

I decided on a sea scene – Under the Surface – The Octopus’s Garden

I spent hours going through my many books of the subject (this has been a reoccurring theme in my work) and the internet – a marvelous invention these days for thought busting, and some actual shells from my collection and ideas from designs in this theme from the past.

I now probably have tooo many ideas!  I have to choose and make some decisions, which I am not good at.  (I am also thinking of using this as a jumping off point for the “Beyond the Surface” Exhibition of the Q’land branch of ATASDA.)

As for size I think I want something a little bigger than 6”x 4” postcard, possibly to fit in the size of A5 approx. 6” x 8” but not necessarily fill it.

Concept

Seashell, ocean, fish, Pacific, water, wet, waves, holiday, relaxation, living under the ocean, biosphere, bubble, swimming, snorkeling, diving, freedom, boat, sea floor, seaweed, filtered light, green, teal, turquoise, blue, “Cacholot” by Alan Dean Foster, coral

Water + land = watered land = sea encroachment or foods

                      = land under the sea = living under the ocean   -  this will be the one.

What would it be like to live under the Ocean?    An ocean garden,   In a biosphere, fish swimming by, coral walls, seaweed, shells, bubbles

My response to living under the Ocean

Form

Fish in outline, heavily encrusted around his to represent coral, broken up with fronds of seaweed in outline or couching or fly stitch.

Colour, Threads and Material

I chose a colour range of blue/greens. I suppose it is not quite a monotone but they are “my” colours! Again I should break out of my comfort zone, but…..

The threads I chose are from Rae’s Rags, in her hand dyed “Jealousy” colourway, which ranges from blue through to green. From her selection of yarns I chose twisted rayon, sparkle rayon, cotton/rayon, rayon chenille, stranded cotton, linen and a very fine linen, rayon boucle, tubular rayon, rayon gimp.

Then I took a couple of the multi coloured yarns and selected solid colours to match in stranded, cotton, different sizes of perle cotton and stranded rayon.

Finally I went through my stash and found some silk – a very fine commercial 2ply, a couple of heavier weight ones, a skein of my hand dyed, hand spun 5 ply silk and some knitting yarns that would be good for couching.

My base material is a ecru even weave, 28 count.  This I may decide to hand dye or even use something like the Inktense pencils by Derwent, though I will need to increase my range! A good excuse to go to the art shop ggg As if I needed one!

    Spread your Wings and Soar

                          Judy

Let's Start again!

To say it has been a while since I last posted would be a mild understatement!!! As you can see it is over 2yrs since I last posted, and of course Blogger has changed everything!!!! What I have I done since then. Most of that time has been spent looking after mum as her health gradually failed. Eight months ago she had a near fall and had 2 bleeds into the brain. She was in hospital nearly a week and a half. But the fall brought on full dementia. So it has been a very trying time all round. Someone had to be with her all the time. She died a month ago. Derek's mum also died in January this year, so the first quarter of this year has not been a very good one for us.

I have managed to get some weaving, spinning and knitting done. Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish my piece for the Australian Textile and Surface Design Association’s Travelling Suitcase Exhibition for 2012-14 - Marrakesh. My Maharajah’s Garden piece finally arrived home, and is now hanging in my studio.

Easter week I did a Photoshop work shop at Fibre Arts Australia - Ballarat which was very good but rather daunting when the tutor said that we would touch less than 10% of the programs' capabilities!

Now I am about to do an online workshop from Sharon B, (remember I quoted her stitch dictionary when working on the Maharajah’s Garden project) Sumptuous Surface Embroidery.
There is some wonderful embroidery shown there. I have also just received a wonderful book "Crewel Twists - Fresh ideas for Jacobean embroidery" by Hazel Blomkamp, wonderful ideas!

I am saving the best till last! I have two new babies. I lost my last Siamese - Sam - last October. I had to wait until the end of January for my babies to be old enough to come home. I now have a neutered male Seal point Siamese born Sept last year named Kaiko (yes we know Kaiko is a girl's name, but we are not telling him!) and his half sister born a month later, who is a Chocolate Point Siamese named Tamika or Tami for short. They are sooooo beautiful and engaging. They are from Kalinya Siamese in Wollongong NSW Australia

This is our sweet little girl - Tamika

This is our handsome boy Kaiko










And I couldn't finish without a sample from my Photoshop workshop

Hopefully I can keep this blog up to date a little better.

Spread your Wings and Soar

                          Judy

Finished!

At last it is finished and is in the post. So here are the last photos.









A close up of a section.














some of the embroidery







my three layered .... thingie gg


















Some embroidery and beading

The Art Board

Ta-de-la! here is the finished hanging

Now what am I going to have to post about?gggg

Spread your Wings and Soar



Judy

Still Working!

I am still working hard to try and catch up with my textile art project for the Maharajaha's Garden. I have done the shibori shaped and dyeing and some of the embroidery on the base piece, I finished the weaving last night, as I haven't been able to sit or stand long enough to do any, and most of that has been done in the last couple of days. I then dyed it flat and then pulled up all my shibori lines and steamed it, didn't get to bed until 12.30 this morning. Now I have attached the weaving to the back piece and there is still more embroidery and beading to be done. It needs to be in the post by the 29th at the very latest!!!!!

I'll add a few photos of the process. Hope I'm not boring anyone ggg

The silk all tied up for shibori dyeing


While dyeing

After dyeing and untieing

Some threads and braids pinned down ready for couching

The woven piece all pulled up after shibori shaping and dyeing.

Woven piece all stitched down

close up of weaving



Some embellishment done with the hand felting tool

Spread your Wings and Soar

Judy

The Work Continues

The work on my exhibition piece is going rather slowly. I took a tumble at the weekend, ending up flat on my bum. I felt everything concertina and now have a very sore back. I can’t sit at the computer for any length of time so this is being done in bits and pieces. I was so sore on Monday that my physio couldn’t get very close to me, so gave me some exercises and will see me first thing in the morning!

I have done a little sewing on the background of my piece, but I can’t manage the weaving. I’ll have to find a lower table to put my loom on, but I haven’t felt like doing much.

Before all this happened I found a great resource for embroidery stitches:

Sharon B's Dictionary of Stitches for Hand Embroidery and Needlework
http://inaminuteago.com/stitchindex.html

She has every stitch that has ever been sewn I think. Between the site and my many books I think I have worked out the embroidery I want to use. But I must get going on the weaving I have only about 3” done.

While the piece is an actual work in progress the design is also changing somewhat as I go along. It is always exciting to see how the creation will turn out. It’s a bit like this post, I was going to talk about something completely different but I guess that can wait for another time.

I bought a pen style needle felting tool and am thinking of adding some embellishment with that. I have been playing with some of the shibori silk off cuts and some wool fibre and some silk fibre. I found a bit more resistance to some of the silk. Anyway it is interesting, I am wondering if there is much difference in the over all effect between the needle tool and an embellisher machine?

Spread your Wings and Soar

Judy

Christmas Time

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and all your dreams came true. Ours was very quiet but nice. This year has just flown by and December seemed to fly by about 10 times faster! One minute we were at the beginning of Dec, and I was thinking I had this and this and this planned for then, then and then (ggg if you follow me ggg), but all of a sudden it was Christmas week!!!

I am taking part in the Australian Textile and Surface Design Association’s Travelling Suitcase Exhibition “The Maharajah’s Garden” 2010 – 2012. The finished item needs to be in by Feb 1st! and a size of 40X60cm/15.7x23.6in. The basis of my design will be shibori, both dyed and shaped, with a strip of woven shaped shibori. My background fabric will be silk twill; I did some sampling with fine cotton.




The first photo shows the cotton all tied up, some areas have beads of different sizes and buttons. The lower area is stitched shibori.

The next photo shows the underneath.

All tied up and dyed.

And underneath, and the next two show close ups of several areas.

I have just finished tying up the silk twill, I hope to dye it today.

I also hope to get the very fine silk wound for the warp, later. Luckily I still have the end of the cotton warp on my sample loom from the Shibori workshop with Catherine Ellis I took last April. So I will tie the silk on to that. The weft will be silk and polyester. The polyester is needed to hold its shaped after it is steamed. It should only take a couple of days to weave. I will attach that to the silk and then quilt and embroider the top to batting and a backing. I am still trying to decide if I will do a pale base colour immersion dye first and then paint different colours on, or just paint the colour on! Seeing how the first or second dye goes, I may retie it and re-dye it again.

Well I’d better get off here and get working!


Spread your Wings and Soar

Judy

My Dad




I have sat down to write this quite a few times over the last month, but have done something else, anything else.

My dear Father died on the 25th May. There was really nothing major wrong with him, his body just seemed to gradually shut down, it started early this year but accelerated after a fall where he hit his head and ended up with half a dozen stitches, towards the end of March. He was in hospital for a month and then came home for a week and a half.

Moira and Derek were especially wonderful in looking after him.

Spread your Wings and Soar

Judy

www.nuthutchcreations.etsy.com
http://www.geocities.com/geelonghandweaversandspinners