ExTex - The Finale

Well it's over.  A nine month investment into creativity.  9 weekends of learning and playing finished with an exhibition at the Fashion & Embroidery Show at the NEC.

We had a fabulous exhibiton space and many visitors who made super comments about our work. Kim chose a selection of items from each of the 10 students to make up this amazing array of work.   She chose several f mine that were featured in my last ExTex post.

My final piece was a set of books hanging as a mobile.

The books mostly moved about except when I tried to film them!

And of course you can't go to a show and not spend money. Well, my plan was to go and NOT spend money.  But inevitably I did. 

I don't usually buy these blocks but this one had my name on it.

And then! I watched a Hilary Beattie video and was able to do this with the blue foamy thingy.

I'm really looking forward to working with this block.  I'll report back!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

ExTex: Penultimate Post

I hadn't realised it was such a long time since I have written about ExTex.  The last time was Session 4 and next week is the final session - Session 9.

Session 5 was about experimenting with weaving, knitting, needlefelting and wet felting.

The homework was to use one (or more) of these techniques to produce a 3D something.  I made this wet felted vase.

At Session 6 we used Transfer Paints.  I really wasn't enamoured with these but I'm quite pleased with this homework that used the dyed fabric and felt.

Session 7 was a mix of things.  Firstly we dyed fabrics.  At home after I had washed and dried the fabrics I made this colour wheel.

I also tried out the different colours on a dyed background with coloured stitching in the hope it would show how colours react with one another.

We also played with Tyvek and Lutradur.

At our penultimate session we played with Kim's technique of 'Backgrounds & Pretties' made with dyed or painted newspaper.  I backed one of my 'pretties' with painted Lutradur.

And we made beads with different synthetic materials including cellophane and crisp packets.

I've spent the time since trying to complete all the rest of the samples I need for my workbook and which maybe chosen for the exhibition at the NEC in a couple of weeks.

This sample is made from a baby wipe that I had used to clean one of the stamps I made.  It is stitched on to some fabric I had painted on a different course and some bits of painted Tyvek was added.

At session 8 Kim talked about different ways to raise the surface on a piece of work.  I stamped a piece of Lutradur with modeling paste using one of the stamps I made.  Then I painted it with Seth Apter Paper Artsy paints.  I also used some copper paint.  I stitched into it with seed stitch.

A close up

After the NEC show I'll share some photos of the exhibition and my finished piece which is still in the making and I have only 5 days left to finish it!!!!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Extex 5 Session 4

At the beginning of each session we have a show and tell of what we have done for homework.  There is such a variety of things to see as people go off in different directions.

I had sewn three of my six 'panels' and will continue with the other three during the next few weeks.

Session 4: Still Life
We had each been asked to bring three items from home for Kim to set up a Still Life for us to draw and to paint.

Kim's photo

I did these on the Saturday.

On Sunday we had to choose one of them to tear up so I used the picture above and then reassembled it and started to stitch.

Kim wasn't very impressed with the dark stitching up the right hand side and when I showed it to Roger he wasn't either.  I decided to remove it.

One of my issues with work I do is that I often stop too soon.  Sometimes it's because I don't know what to do next and sometimes because I just get fed up and go on to the next thing!  Kim encouraged me to keep stitching and this how it looks now.   I'm looking forward to showing it to Kim today to see if it's done or whether there's more to do.

In addition I sorted out some more of my workbook.   I had taken photos of the 'panels' and had printed them out in case I wanted to work out where to stitch on them.  I tore them up and collaged them onto a page in my workbook.

I cut rectangles from another page so that parts of the collage peek through.

I printed out the photos of the Still Life and put them into my workbook.

I put together some of the torn paper left over from the large picture and put that in the book with a photo of the original.

And photos of the work in progress.

I'm looking forward to this weekend which is about knitting, felting, needle-felting and weaving.

Thansk for stopping by.
Bernice

Plucking up courage or an ExTex update

I told you in my last post about ExTex 5 about the long print I made.  I used a long piece of brown packaging paper, acrylic paints, my own stamps and some dye.

Kim had suggested I ironed some lightweight interfacing on the back and cut it into 6 pieces.   It took me a while to pluck up the courage to even iron the interfacing on.  But I did.

And then I cut it into six pieces.  This makes them a peculiar size.  Just something else to deal with.

Then I was a bit stuck with no idea what to do next.  I can sort of see the big picture of the end result but not quite how to get there.  So I decided to take each photo and manipulate the image.  Here's just one of the set of images on an A4 sheet of paper.

I did something similar with each original photo.  Then I got together some paper torn out of a book of sea poems, some fabrics previously painted in similar colours to those in the photos above, a marine chart and two stamps I previously made of seabirds.  Before I started auditioning bits for small collages on top of the backgrounds, I cut the original pages down a bit.

Still lots more work to do.  Sorting out the collages and how to fix them.  Then stitching!  Probably hand stitching but maybe I'll pluck up more courage and use the sewing machine as well.

I am currently thinking these pages will become a zigzag book but who knows

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice