Cutting up a piece of work

Last year I did an Art Cloth course at Littleheath Barn with Liske Johnson.   In my last post about it I said I was going to quilt it.  Well I didn't.  It's been on the back of a chair for months and then I took it back to Littleheath Barn and printed on it some more.

I was still not very keen on the art cloth so I cut it up!  And tried out various compositons using some fabric I had bought (and loved) and not known what to do with.

After some thought and a conversation with Sushi who is a quilter I made some headway with it.  Although first I ordered some more fabric from The Bramble Patch.

The fabric on left, whilst it matched some of the images on the art cloth, was too bright so I decided to use the fabric on the right.

I cut some strips and machined them together.

I cut a strip of the strips and machined it to the art cloth and added the strip at the bttom.

 I did the same with the bottom piece and machined the pieces together.

Then I added the pieces on the right.

Sushi suggested I made a binding with the strips and I've just placed it (rather badly) on the cloth to see what it looks like.

Before I quilt it and bind it I want to print some more over the top of the whole thing to try to integrate the strips into the whole thing and hopefully knock back some of the white.

There's a new Art Cloth course starting in February.And I'm going to be doing it.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Jackie Cardy Workshop

At the end of last month I went to a workshop led by Jackie Cardy.  I went with two friends from Traverse - Dia and Cath.   The workshop was organised by Becca from Textile Explorations.

We started with a practice piece.

 After felting and drying.

Then we moved on to pre-felts which I don't remember ever doing before.  We made double-sided pieces.

In the afternoon we moved on to making our main piece.  This is the background.

I didn't take any photos whilst I was adding the pre-felts so my photos skip to the felted piece.

The piece needed to dry overnight so that we could start sewing the next day.

We started machining on our practice piece.

Between my inability to free machine properly and my dislike of the black thread I didn't get along too happily.  I switched to navy blue which I preferred.  Then I moved on to my main piece.

Photo by Becca Birtles

I really struggled with the stitching because I thought I had to get it really accurate and around the shapes but once it dawned on me that it could look more like this drawing I did, I relaxed a bit.

After the machining I started adding handstitching.

I'm not totally keen on the fact that the uprights are slanting so I may cut it up.  I haven't yet but this is what it would look like using cropped photos.

I loved the technique and may start another piece soon.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Textile Tags

Recently I attended a workshop called Textile Tags at Littleheath Barn Studio run by Liske & Claire.  We were encouraged to rummage through their scrap bag to find fabrics to print on.

I chose the pinks and oranges and after printing on them with stamps and thermofax xscreens I tore them up and collaged bits onto a piece of fabric-backed bondaweb.

I did another A4 sheet starting with the blues and neutrals but added some colour when it looked too neutral.

I used my machine both with straight stitch and preprogrammed stitches

Then I machined shapes on the collaged fabric and cut them out.

I didn't like the shape of the one on the right so machined it again as a triangle.

I've still got some of the collaged fabric left.  Not sure whether I will make more tags or do something else with it.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice