Browsed by
Tag: patterns

Inspiration Photos

Inspiration Photos

Comments 6 comments

The photos of the felt piece I was going to blog about today didn’t turn out, so I thought I’d share some photos I took recently for inspiration. I was up early enough to enjoy some morning sunshine in the back garden, so took lots of photos of anything which caught my attention. The first thing was these little wild geranium flowers which grow everywhere in Spring:

They look nice, but they are really invasive and have a pretty unpleasant smell. I know lots of people hate Dandelions, but I’ve always really liked them. I had no idea the centres looked like this until I got a camera with Supermacro settings:

The next thing was this little glass cabochon. I used it as a weight on a stencil a few weeks ago and it got flecks of spray paint on it:

I’m not sure what this plant is or even if it’s something I bought or something which found its own way here, but it’s another thing whose detail is lost (to me, anyway!) without the Supermacro camera setting:

I’ve taken photos like this before, and I’m pretty sure I’ve shared them on here. This is a leaf from a teasel plant. I love the way it looks when it starts to die/decay:

I love the texture of Sage leaves, especially when they are young:

I’m not sure what is clinging to the ‘hairs’, but here’s a cropped close up:

If any botanists know, please enlighten me! The cat who has adopted us joined me in the garden, she enjoyed rolling around in the dust. She has nice patterns and markings anyway, but the sun seemed to make them more obvious. Even though this is really soft, it reminds me of a hedgehog:

I took this photo because I really like the soft hair behind her ears, but when I looked closer at the photo, I noticed that on just one small part of her head she has lots of different types of hair/hairs:

I only took this photo because I think the cat’s chin is really cute:

But when I looked closer, the fur seemed to be in a kind of pattern, kind of like the pattern of Sunflower seeds or a Dandelion seed-head. I’m not imagining it, am I?

I took these last photos a few weeks ago at the park near the well being centre. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve shared photos of these trees here too, they’re at the entrance and always make me want to photograph them. I thought it was interesting the way the clouds matched up with the trees.

This tree has a really unusual trunk, it seems really fibrous:

There’s a tree behind it which has really interesting seed pods, at least that’s what I think they are! I thought this might be something which Ruth might find inspiration in:

I don’t often sit down and plan a project directly from the inspiration photos I take, but I’m pretty sure the textures, colours and patterns influence my work anyway. Do you take or collect inspiration photos? What do you do with them? Please feel free to use any of these photos for direct or indirect inspiration.

Playing with Fabric Scraps

Playing with Fabric Scraps

Comments 15 comments

Hello again. I know its been a long time since I’ve posted and I sincerely thank everyone who has contributed to the blog in my place.  I definitely feel it has enriched our community and broadened our scope.

Because of health issues in our family, I haven’t been doing much creative work.  But managed to do a little fabric manipulation with fabric scraps.  I had bought a book a long time ago by Ann Small, Layered Cloth, The Art of Fabric Manipulation. Anyone who knows me or followed me knows I love texture.  I was intrigued.  Plus it was something I could work on a little at a time.

Like  everyone else, I collect all things fiber and found a stash of five fabric pieces I had bought at a thrift store. Perfect, but I needed one more for six layers. No problem.  I had an old Egyptian cotton sheet laying around I had used several years ago to make small pillowcases.

I wasn’t too concerned with colors, but it worked out fairly well. I cut five inch squares out of each cloth. They are different weights of cotton and or blends.

My first sandwich. Excuse the shadows the light wasn’t very good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The book gives many examples of patterns.  I was really excited to experiment. I started in the middle and using the width of the presser foot to make the next row.

I assembled a variety of tools, not knowing which would work best going through five layers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The blue scissors proved to be most useful on most of them. Although my hands were not happy with me.

If you look closely at the pic above on the right, you’ll notice how stringy the one corner is.  This is because it was cut on the grain.

For the next five sandwiches I alternated fabrics and designs.

After stitching and cutting, I roughed up the samples to get them to open up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After being washed and dried.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The circular design was difficult to cut through the layers.  I had to use the seam ripper to open it up far enough to get the scissors in and hope I’d get through the first five layers and not cut all six. The finished piece is very thready even after washing twice, dried in the dryer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the following one I decided to slash squares. So I used a piece of  stitch and tear  to draw my pattern then stitched it to the sandwich and followed the square pattern. Again I had to use the seam ripper to get started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After stitching, slashing, washing twice and drying, here is the result. I found it interesting that not all squares opened, but every other row did creating it’s own pattern.

Here are all six of them together after they were washed, dried and trimmed.

I have to say the pink is my least favorite, but it was a fun project to see how different each pattern turned out.  I’m sure using different fabrics and perhaps even using a tie dye type fabric you can get some really fun outcomes. Have you ever tried this?

I’m not sure what I’ll do with them now.  Any suggestions?

Trying Commercial Prefelt

Trying Commercial Prefelt

Comments 25 comments

A couple of weeks ago, Zoe from Heidi Feathers kindly sent me some prefelt samples to try out. I don’t have a massive amount of experience with prefelt, I’ve made my own a few times for specific projects, and have tried a couple of thicknesses of plain white Merino prefelt as a base for a few things. We’ve talked about commercial prefelt on the forum a few times, wondering things like whether it keeps its shape well, is it thick enough to use for surface design, etc. I had no idea so I was looking forward to trying it out.
For the first piece I made, I used a couple of layers of Merino tops, then did a very basic ‘weave’ using strips of prefelt, silk  and cotton gauze:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI didn’t do anything to the prefelt pieces, just laid them out. As you can see, the silk didn’t attach to the prefelt in a couple of places because it is quite firm and there aren’t any visible loose fibres.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn my opinion this is definitely a good thing, I’d much prefer a prefelt to be firm with definition, and when using with fabrics which might not attach easily, you can rough up the prefelt where you need it, using an old toothbrush or wire dog brush. For the next piece I tried out, I used the same ‘mirror’ idea from the Studio Challenge and repeated patterns either side of an imaginary line across the centre of the piece. I started with two layers of Merino for this too, then just cut a variety of oblongs, triangles and squares in matching pairs and added them to the top in a random reflective design.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI really liked the way this turned out. It gave me confidence that a more complicated pattern would work well, keep the defined edges and shapes without distorting.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe last piece I tried was just a little test using some scrap pieces. Left to right: Some geometric shapes; a piece that I rolled between wet hands; a piece I dampened slightly and coiled; a piece I twisted with some Merino top; a piece I twisted on its own; some very thin off cuts I laid out or twisted and another prefelt/Merino top twist.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI took this on an angle so you can see  there is some thickness to the shapes while still firmly attached.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThanks a lot to Heidi Feathers for the prefelt, who are also doing a generous giveaway and a Meet The Supplier in a couple of days, so please check back on the 28th for that 🙂

%d bloggers like this: