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Fabric Collage Landscape Part 4

Fabric Collage Landscape Part 4

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This is the last in the series of posts about the fabric collage landscape that I have been creating. If you have missed the prior posts, just click on the links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I began working on the foreground by fusing the green fabric to the foreground and creating some rocks.

I used a dark purple fabric for the shadowed parts of the rocks. Then I created some paper patterns for the sunlit areas. I wanted to try and get the perspective and shape of the rocks correct before I cut any fabric. I only had a small amount of the light purple fabric and didn’t want to run out because of poor cutting choices. So I kept refining the paper pieces as I went along.

Once I had the rocks started, I began stitching the trees along the near shore line. I used cut up bits of dark green fabric and then stitched over them. As I said in previous posts, the fabric shifts around and so I wasn’t able to be precious about placement of the fabric. I think this is why it looks more natural because I didn’t have a lot of control over where everything ended up. You can see in the photos above the progression from left to right of the trees and then added a few more moving into the foreground. I actually probably should have done the ground cover first but I didn’t think of it.

So then I added in the ground cover. The part that is further away used a duller color and I used a piece of cheesecloth that had also been rusted. So that gave the rusty color which I think really adds to a more natural look. I kept testing the rocks as I went to see how everything was coming together. I also added a brighter green ground cover in the center foreground where the rocks are sitting. Again, it was a combination of chopped up fabric, thread and yarn.

Next was to create the rocks with fabric. The center photo shows how I added a sheer layer of painted nylon organza to achieve shadows on the rocks. The right photo shows all the rocks completed and fused down. Now on to add stitching details to the rocks.

I started with a dark grey thread in the shadowed areas of the rocks. All of the stitching is done with free motion machine stitching. Then I added black thread as the rocks definitely needed more darkness. The last thread I used was a light purple thread for highlights. I did go back in in several areas and add more grey to get the effect I wanted.

The last step was to add greenery to the rocks on the left. I used chopped up fabric again and carefully stitched it down. This was a bit tedious as the pieces of fabric were jumping around all over the place but I managed to get them all stitched down.

So finally, I have a finished fabric collage landscape. It was a lot of effort and took a long time but I am pleased with the results. I am still contemplating what to call this one. I am planning on framing it with a matte board and black frame. Thanks Antje for giving me the “push” to create this piece. I had a great time working out how to do it and I think I will be doing more of these in the future.

Fabric Collage Landscape Part 2

Fabric Collage Landscape Part 2

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Continuing on with the saga of the fabric collage landscape, I am steadily working my way down the piece.

I added texture to the mountains including threads, yarns and bits of cheesecloth.

I then stitched the bits down with free motion machine stitching. The trickiest part here is keeping everything in place but I just didn’t worry if things shifted. I kept going and moved things back as needed and just got it all stitched down.

I decided the grey cheesecloth was a bit much on the central mountain and added more brown cheesecloth on top. Then I stitched that in place.

Then I discovered that I didn’t like how the orange cloud and the distant mountain were so much alike. I tried stitching some darker thread on the mountain first and that helped.

But I thought it still needed a bit more attention in this area, so I added more blue stitching into the sky. I didn’t want to eliminate the orange, I just wanted more distinction between the sky and the mountain.

Next up, the central mountain needed a bit more detail. So I stitched some vertical dark lines in place. The trick is to add enough detail to get the impression you want but not to over do the distant mountains. The detail needs to be less here than in the foreground of the picture. (I just noticed that I must have stitched this part before I stitched the sky but you get the idea, I hope.)

 

Next up, I put the green mid ground in place and worked on the water. The sunset reflection had felt a little dark so I place a piece of light blue fabric in that portion instead of the blue green going all the way across. I then added a blue purple sheer fabric covered with a red sheer fabric. I messed around with the edges to make them look more natural. You can see here on the left if you look closely that there is a straight line going down the right side of the sunset reflection, that is where the blue green fabric butts up against the light blue fabric. I cut that edge in V’s so that wouldn’t catch my eye so much. I also played around with foreground fabric to see how it would eventually look with more green added at the bottom of the picture.

I then stitched the water into place. I wanted the water to have minimal stitching and texture so it would appear flat against the rest of the textured landscape.

Then I added the green mid ground pieces and fused them down with the iron.  You will notice that there is some white in one of the green mid ground pieces. The original photo that I was inspired by had snow in the mountains. In the end, I decided not to have snow in my picture so that will be covered up soon.

Next time I will show you texturing the green mid ground and some changes I ended up making to the water. Luckily, this is a forgiving process so mistakes can be covered up pretty easily.

My latest makes and a competition!

My latest makes and a competition!

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So what have I been up to lately? Well this and that! I finally joined facebook a year ago to promote my work and workshops.  I also opened up my Etsy store, so I have been a bit busy.

I have been lucky to also receive a few commissions.  A lady asked me to make her favourite, a dragonfly! Well it’s good to step out of your comfort zone and try new things isn’t it.  Luckily it was well received and here it is finished and then a picture when Gloria framed it.

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I have a few fairs coming up including a two day fair, so I need to up my stock.  I really love making a wet felted picture and free motion sewing it.  I didn’t have any sheepy ones so here is one in its fluffy stage and then onto the sewn version.

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Because of the upcoming shows and dare I mention the C word – Christmas. I thought I would make a few similar snowy cottage cards, with the view to getting them printed onto cards as I have done in the past.  I put them on my facebook page and asked people which one they thought I should use as the card.  Votes where across the board, but I have chosen one.  I won’t say which I prefer, but which one do you like?

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Finally I have a little prize giveaway going on on my fb page.  I want to get the following picture printed onto cards also, but I need a title!  If you would like to contribute a title that would be wonderful.  The persons who’s title I choose I will send a card to them, a small prize maybe, but it was made with love!

Fabric Collage Landscape Part 1

Fabric Collage Landscape Part 1

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I was inspired by Antje’s post recently about creating a fabric landscape. I have had this on my list of things I wanted to do for a long time. So thanks Antje, for giving me the push to get it started. I have piles of hand dyed and commercial fabric. Many are just small pieces and scraps and I thought this would be a good way to use some of them up.

First I needed to find some inspiration. I looked through my photos of Glacier National Park and I wanted to create a landscape featuring Hidden Lake where we had hiked several years ago. Sadly, that was one of the years that we had thick smoke in the area from wildfires so my photos were not impressive. So I googled images of Hidden Lake and found one I liked to use as inspiration.

I used heavy interfacing as a backing and then started putting together my sky fabrics. In Antje’s post, she didn’t mention anything about fusing the fabric down as I would normally do so I decided to just wing it. I added threads over the top and then started stitching.

I started with light blue thread and stitching across trying to catch all the various elements down. I switched to a darker blue thread and then to two tones of orange thread. It was a little frustrating as pieces moved as I went but I just kept going.

I had less control over where each piece of fabric was and that made it less “perfect”. But that’s OK because I was trying to see if I could do a piece that was more “abstract”. (Not that I ever get too abstract.)

Then I started finding the mountain fabric colors and giving them a trial against the sky. I did put fusible on the backs of the mountains so I could iron them in place before I added the “texture” on top.

I continued to play around with a variety of fabric pieces to get the mountains the way I wanted.

Then I moved on to the green mid ground. On the left, I am trying the fabric I might use to see if it is the correct value and color. Then I cut out pieces to the correct shape for the mid ground area with trees.

I realized at that point that I would need to place the water before I attached the green as there was water on the left hand side underneath the green “fingers” of land that stretched into the lake. So this is a trial for the water.

Then I needed the reflection of the sunset in the lake. I tried a piece of cheesecloth on the left but it was a bit too pink and also too textural. I wanted the water to feel smooth against the textures of the trees and foliage. So I found a couple of pieces of hand dyed sheer silk organza and gave them a try. It’s looking better but still feels a bit dark in the reflected area. I also tried the green in the foreground. It’s looking more like a landscape but I still have a long way to go. It takes a lot of time for the trial and error of finding the right piece of fabric for each portion of the landscape not to mention the time spent stitching.

I hope you don’t get tired of seeing the process of this fabric collage as it appears there will be several posts to go before it is completed.

Work in Progress.

Work in Progress.

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Last year I joined a group of creative ladies who meet once a month at Waltham Windmill. As well as working on our own projects we have a number of set “challenges” requiring us to work to a certain theme. This week I began one those challenges which is to produces three A4 size pieces of work using just three colours. Each piece is to have one predominant colour, plus a small amount of the other two. The format can be landscape or portrait but all three will be displayed together. The design, techniques and materials are entirely up to the individual.

My first thought was that I wanted my 3 pieces to be joined together and initially I was thinking along the lines of a leaf motif, using the veins to span the gaps between the work. The first design was for a very simple “spear” shaped leaf.

The second idea was to simplify it even more and loose the outline of the leaf. The background would possibly be heavyweight interfacing or Lutradur and the veins would be free motion stitched, spanning the gaps by stitching onto dissolvable fabric.

In the meantime I happened to take my dog for a walk in the woods at Hubbard’s Hills in Louth when I had a lightbulb moment! There were some wonderful exposed tree roots at the top of the hill and I suddenly saw these as being the joining element of my 3 x A4’s. The design now was for a “forest floor”.

I realised that I would need a sturdy backing so I’ve wet felted these using Bergschaf fibres and they will be individually mounted onto stiff card…..at least that’s the plan so far! There will be little background showing on pieces two and three but far more on piece one so I included some thick cords under that sheet of felt to indicate buried roots.

The tree roots above ground have an aluminium wire as their core, wrapped with wadding and strips of medium weight Lutradur before being painted grey.

I’ve started making the weeds using free motion stitch on dissolvable fabric but I will look at alternative materials, possibly Lutradur, to introduce different textures, create more bulk and not least to speed up the weed making process!

The fallen leaves at the base of the roots will be FM stitched on Lutradur. Once they’ve been cut out using a soldering iron and heat distressed to make them curl they will be painted in varying shades of gold.

I’ve managed to get a couple of other group members to send me images of their work in progress…..

Jacky approached the challenge by choosing blue, green and gold as her colours and using the “stack and whack” method to cut them up. After selecting her fabrics they were cut up quite randomly and then machined together in strips. The three sets were then layed on top of each other and sliced through again. The yellow and green shapes in the resulting strips made her think of plant pots and this led to her theme of “neglected pots and plants”. In this piece Jacky has added an appliqué cactus and free motion stitched the neglected straggly plants on the left. This one isn’t far off being finished but Ive been told the other two are still piles of fabric on the workroom table!

Carole has chosen to use a combination of plain and patterned fabrics in her chosen colour scheme of red, blue and yellow. Each of her A4’s feature a different piecing technique i.e. strips, curves and crazy patchwork. Again this is a work in progress but already you can see how individual members are putting their own mark on their work and how different everyone’s finished work is going to be. I will post images of the completed challenges next time.

Sampling Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy

Sampling Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy

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Recently, I got an order from Sulky for more machine threads and a product that I have wanted to test out for a while.

It’s called Sticky Fabri-Solvy. I have used the Fabri-Solvy for machine lace and liked it. But this one has a sticky surface, so you can press it down on a piece of fabric or felt and it sticks. Or you can stick smaller bits of fabric or felt down to it and then stitch. You can also run it through the printer to print a design on it and then use the printed design for your stitching guidelines. I haven’t tried that yet but I’m planning on testing that out as well to see how that works.

Here is a piece of the Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy. It has a backing paper which you pull off to reveal the sticky surface. I did a small square about 6″ x 6″ for my sample. I cut two pieces the same size.

I then cut up some old printed felt in small bits and place it over the surface. The felt sticks down and holds fairly well.

I kept adding felt in a variety of colors filling up the blank spaces. You could certainly leave blank spaces if you wanted the result to be more open and lacey.

Once I had all the felt laid out, I then put the other piece of Sticky Fabri-Solvy on top with the sticky side down. I should have left a bit more room around the edges but it ended up working out OK although the edge pieces tended to bulge out and want to jump off before being stitched.

I then used four of my new thread colors to free motion machine stitch over the sandwich. I didn’t use a hoop and it seemed to work just fine. You have to be careful that the edges don’t get sucked down into your machine though. I used a meandering stitch to give an organic feel. I didn’t want any straight lines.

And here is is with all of the stitching done. You need to catch all of the pieces of felt with your stitching to prevent the pieces from falling apart once you dissolve the water soluble fabric.

Then you just stick the whole thing in some warm water, let it soak for a bit and the Sticky Fabri-Solvy dissolves and disappears. If you don’t wash it all out, you can use it to help hold the shape in different positions. It acts like a stiffener. I washed mine mostly all away so there is no residual stiffness. I plan on trying this technique with some sheer fabric pieces too.

Have you tried a new product lately? We’d love to hear your results. Show us over on the forum. 

 

2nd Quarter Challenge – Seascape

2nd Quarter Challenge – Seascape

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I have been thinking about what I would do for the Second Quarter Challenge since Lyn posted about it in April. We don’t have seascapes in Montana where I live and I usually base my artwork on the Montana landscapes. Then I found a book to help with my watercolor painting attempts and found a wonderful photo of a watercolor by Zoltan Szabo’s. The book is his “70 Favorite Watercolor Techniques“. I couldn’t find a photo online to share with you of the watercolor painting.

Here’s the wool layout. I used preyarn for the trees and needled felted it a bit in places to tack it down. I then wet felted the piece. I didn’t full it very hard as the plan was to add stitching and hang it on the wall.

Here it as after felting. Now to add some machine stitching.

I used a dark brown thread and free motion machine stitched the smaller branches. I also added some texture to the rest of the tree. I then needle felted the small flower bits for the fireweed in the foreground.

 

I then started adding stitching to complete the flowers. I used a variety of pink threads. In the center photo, you’ll see that I added dark pink stitching and then tried out some prefelt leaves. I then needle felted the leaves in place (right photo) so that I could stitch over top of the prefelt without it shifting around too much.

And here’s the completed piece. The center photo shows the backing I chose for the piece. It is off to the framers to get a black frame.

Thanks for the challenge Lyn and Annie! I enjoyed creating this seascape. Now to come up with a good name. Suggestions?

 

 

 

 

 

1st Quarter Challenge – Nuno Felted and Machine Stitched Landscape

1st Quarter Challenge – Nuno Felted and Machine Stitched Landscape

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I decided for the 1st Quarter Challenge that I wanted to do another nuno felted landscape. I still have a bunch of hand dyed silk that works great for these. In the spirit of using stuff up, I used a couple of silk pieces over white pre felt to create the backgrounds. I have only finished one of the landscapes but you will see both in the first few photos.

The top left photo shows the silk before felting. I didn’t really have a preconceived notion of what the landscape would be when I started. I thought I would figure it out as it went along. I laid out both pieces of silk over the white pre felt and then wet down and felted them by mainly rubbing. I did a little bit of fulling but left them fairly soft. While I was working, I saw distant mountains and evergreen trees in the pink/orange piece. The bottom right shows that piece after felting. I did decide to pull the edges of the silk around to the back and hand stitch them down to give a cleaner edge.

Next, I decided I wanted to give the feeling of more depth so I decided to add some sheer fabric into the mountain area. I used Bo Nash 007 Fusing Agent. It is powdered fusible. You sprinkle it on and then put whatever you are fusing on top and then iron it. The picture on the left is trying out different layers of sheer fabric and the one on the right is after fusing. Click on the photos to see more detail.

Then I began machine stitching. I didn’t want to put too much detail in the distance so it was pretty simple stitching. The middle photo shows the first thread I used in the middle distance and I thought it was too dark. It’s hard to tell the difference but I picked out the darker thread and took it down a shade or two on the right. It definitely made a difference to me but it’s hard to tell in the photos.

Next up was the trees. I followed where the blue dye was in the fabric and created the further set of trees with a dark blue green thread. It is much bluer thread than the foreground trees. Then I add in the foreground trees with a couple of different shades of green thread. They have a bit more detail than the further distance trees. Hopefully, that gives a sense of depth in the landscape.

I haven’t decided on a title for this piece. Any suggestions? Have you tried creating a landscape for our 1st Quarter Challenge? If so, you can share with us over on the forum here. 

Heart Cards

Heart Cards

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Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you who celebrate it. I have been working on creating some simple heart cards from felt and fabric in my pursuit of “using stuff up”. My stash includes hoards of printed felt and fabric. So I decided to combine the two with a bit of free motion machine stitching to make some Valentine’s Day cards to sell.

I started with a pile of fabric from orange to purple. I thought it would be good to have some contrasting fabric for the hearts.

First I cut out a stack of felt backgrounds that were the right size for my cards. The cards are smaller than I usually make and the pieces of felt were only 3 1/4″ x 5″. The photo on the right shows one of the pieces of felt sitting on the paper note card. Next I chose the fabric to go with the different colors of felt. I then put fusible web on the back of the fabric with the iron to give the fabric a bit of stiffness. I wanted to be able to free motion machine stitch hearts on without using a stabilizer and I hoped that the fusible would give enough stiffness. I ended up leaving the paper backing on, then stitching and then removing the paper backing.

I then free motion machine stitched the cards. I was using white bobbin thread and didn’t have the tension exactly right but it’s good enough for me. The photo in the middle shows the back of the stitched fabric with a portion of the paper backing still in place. I removed all the paper backing and then cut out the hearts. Then I fused the hearts to the felt and fused the felt to the paper card. Fusible web sure does make things easier.

And here are the cards after I finished fusing them all together.

I put them in cellophane sleeves, luckily I had the right size although the envelope was a tight squeeze. Now they are at the store ready to be snapped up by customers (hopefully). Do you make cards for specific holidays? How do they sell for you if you sell them? Or do you just give them to friends and family?

 

A brief glimpse into the Knitting & Stitching Show in London

A brief glimpse into the Knitting & Stitching Show in London

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This weekend the biggest fibre and fabric-related event in Europe happened right here in London. Every year I volunteer for my spinning guild and, in return, I get a free pass for all days.

Although the Knitting & Stitching Show is mostly about the sales, there’s always a section dedicated to textile arts. Established artists as well as art school finalists exhibit their work every year, so that’s what I’m sharing with you today.

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Let’s admire this larger-than-life crocheted cow by TOFT. They also had a giant lobster and other animals. How many hours went into each?

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The artist Jenni Dutton had an exhibit about her Mother, called Dementia Darnings. You can imagine by the title how poignant each portrait was – we see this woman depicted from a young age to her final, frail days. I was very moved by it.
Look closely – can you tell how each work was created?

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It’s yarn. You can see it hanging down on the portrait above. Isn’t it wonderful? All this hard work, you can tell the artist loved her mother very much. I felt like hugging her for this dedication.

Next, quilts. I’m not a particular fan of the “traditional” ones but when this technique is applied to create something unusual, you have my full attention.

I’m afraid the pictures don’t do these works justice. Both artists are American I think you can feel a lovely sort of vintage US vibe to these images.

Finally, something that made me smile, by Libby Vale.

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Ironing is definitely not on my list of priorities, so I connected perfectly with the sentiments depicted in this board!

There was a lot more to show, but I’ll leave that to my next blog post. I hope you enjoyed my choice of art. Have you ever been to the Knitting & Stitching Show, or a similar event where textile art is shown? Let me know all about it in the comments section.