Sold! Fib #358

Louise bought Fib #358 on the opening night of the Designing Women exhibition "Dimensions". At that point I hadn't embroidered a signature on it so last Tuesday while Louise, Margaret and Julie were visiting I did that. I also promised to give Louise a copy of the Artist Statement for it. This is an incredibly difficult work to photograph because the greater part of the work is white silk on white cotton stitched with a grey-white thread. Texture brings the work to life when it moves gently in an area with plenty of natural light. In real life the white bars stand out quite a bit - but this texture does not photograph well. I'm looking forward to seeing Fib #358 installed in it's new home.

Christmas Decorations

I have just made these 2 decorations for swapping with others in the Designing Women group at our last meeting for the year. Both were made up as I went along. The hexagonal paper and beads decoration was made by painting one side of several red card hexagons with gold paint. Then I made a template hexagon for the placement of the holes for stringing with the beads. I pieced the holes by using an awl and with a protective mat on the table.

The star was made by nipping off the sharp ends of 5 satay sticks and holding them temporarily together in an over/under/over fashion with sticky tape while I tied the points. Then I tied several strands to make a pattern and make it more secure. I made sure I tied all ends at the points of the star so that I got a fluffy effect at each point. Once I had a pattern of threads I twisted a few extra strands around them to make them thicker. I twisted a few strands of gold thread around all the threads and the sticks, and last of all I tied some extra strands at the points to make them "fluffier". I quite like the subtle, almost natural look of this one. Painting the sticks first and using red thread with gold highlights would work well too I think.

ATC's

Yesterday at Designing Women we swapped ATC's. The burgundy and tan set is my set of 20 before swapping. I made a stamp using a block of wood to which I glued some foam shapes. The fabric is silk that was rust-dyed at a friends house last month. Then I hand embroidered each one using 2 strands of cotton with the aim of making each one unique. I put my signature, website and blog address on the back by printing onto T-shirt transfer paper. The edges are finished by trapping a thin embroidery wool under a satin stitch.

The multi coloured set is what I received from the swap. Not everyone finished all 20 cards on time so those who swapped this weekend have only 12 so far. The rest will be swapped as they are finished.

I enjoyed making these. So much so that I made another set! Not sure who I'm going to swap with though...

Artist Trading Card Preparation

Designing Women are going to swap Artist Trading Cards (ATC's) in July. So I need to make some. So far I have ironed some heavy interfacing to the back of some of the rust-dyed silk I created at the WAFTA "inspiration" workshop a couple of weekends ago. I have 19 that have interesting marks from the stitched shibori resist and 22 less interesting ones. I'm not sure how many we're going to need for our swap but I thought it would be good to have a few on hand so I made up as many bases as I could from the fabric and scraps of interfacing that I had lying around. The final size is to be 2.5 by 3.5 inches so I've cut these 3 x 4 so I can cut them to size once I've decorated them. I've stitched around the edges just to make sure the interfacing stays in place while paint/stitch or whatever. I'm planning to use the stamp I made with circles on it for some of them. I may add some gold or glitz to the ones with the less interesting background. I'm planning to emphasize some of the marks with stitch on the ones with a more intersting background. I have decided to put my website and blog address on the back but I haven't decided how I'm going to do it yet. I may print on t-shirt transfer paper. I may actually get a rubber stamp made up with my logo on it as well. Or I may just opt for the good old-fashioned pen and ink method :-)