Embroidery, Workshops and Weaving!

After enlarging photos of Koko and Kaiko and taking tracings and doing a little touch up drawing I ended up with an outline to use as a base for a work of Sumptuous Surface Embroidery. Using Encrustations for the dark points, I have thickly worked one paw and am moving along the tail.  I will have to work carefully on the face! I’m still not certain how to work it.

I drew the outline on even weave linen and decided on the colours and thread, and of course had to buy more browns, as brown is not one of “my” colours!  I made a start on the embroidery by embroidering the light colour of the back and front in a very tiny fly stitch. At a distance it looks like a thick outline stitch, but look carefully and the outer edge of the stitch looks like hairs sticking up with a solid inner line.

My thread stash!

My Encrustations

At the moment I am once again doing one of Sharon Boggon’s workshops, this time "Artists Studio Journal – A Designers Workhorse”.  Actually we are into week 3 which is very hard to believe! But it is going very well as usual.

My Journal page for my Journal Workshop

My new Louet Jane 27” loom arrived on Monday, can’t wait to get a warp on it. I bought it from Liz Calnan and Marie Clews, from whom I received excellent service. I am soo glad that Marie almost fully assembled it for me.

What am I trying to weave at present?  60/2 silk, which is driving me up the wall! It is for Christmas decorations for an Exhibition at the Johnston Collection (Fairhall in Melb.) for Christmas 2014. I have set it at approx 65 epi for a finished width of 16". I wound it on to my 18" Noble loom, but thought for once to check the number of heddles, before starting to thread! I wish I had done it before I wound on!  No way would I have enough!! So then I very carefully re wound it on to my old table loom (after doing some hurried repairs and adding over 500 heddles to it!!!!) only to find that the loom was not up to it, I could not get a shed at all! Hence my new Jane ggg.
I have backed the old loom up to my floor loom and threaded it onto that, using its back beam as the back beam.  Although I am now getting a great shed on most shafts, many of the threads that stay down when the others are raised are very loose!
I really don't know what to do with them. I have threaded a straight draw on 8 shafts and am weaving a 2/2twill.

My next project today will be trying to work out what the problem is!!!!

 

This material was supposed to be ready to make a Christmas Decoration to enter in the Geelong Show but of course……

I did have a remnant of suitable material and I made  a Christmas Bell out of material woven from 16/2 cotton warp and weft and 20/2 silk pattern weft in the Star of Bethlehem overshot pattern.The top is encrusted embroidery with fine commercial silk as well as some of my very fine spindle spun silk. It was an entry in our local show a couple of weeks ago, and is to be part of an exhibition where our guild along with other art groups in the Geelong region are decorating a National Trust house this Christmas.

Spread your Wings and Soar

                          Judy

Sumptuous Surface Embroidery

Week two

This is the design we have finally decided on – one shell and the waves. I have transposed the design onto 25ct Lugana even weave. Now for the real fun. I am going on a long bus trip tomorrow, so it is too good a chance for some sewing time on the bus.

The top of the waves will be low relief blending into high relief in the lower half. The high relief stitching covering all the lower half not dividing the waves into their individual components. The low relief upper portion will show each wave outlined in a lovely silk lightly variegated from light to dark green, and each one in soft save greens and individual stitches in each section.

For the shell I have a lovely greeny/blue variegated stranded cotton and a bluey/mauve very fine boucle for the ridges.  I have also found the thrums from my Ikat scarf, most of which will be great for this. It is 20/2 silk

          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