Finished!

If you have been following my journey with the School of Stitched Textiles Master Practitioner course you will know I was on Module 3.  In my last post about the course, I said I would tell you about my design brief and how I got on making the piece.

I submitted two suggestions both of which were approved.  I chose to do the dress first.

I sort of mocked up the dress on the tailor's dummy and drew a version as well.

The intention was to make a costume for a child to wear at the Venice Carnivale, inspired by memories of Venice.

And here it is:

the front

the back

I shall probably make the other design, which was for a decorative cone, when life calms down a bit.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

More design work

Continuing with my design work and playtime at Committed to Cloth.

My previous post showed me working with squares.  In May I am going to C2C to do Improvisational Pieced Cutting which is basically playing with fabric and a rotary cutter.  So for the latter part of my playtime week, Leslie suggested I played with curved shapes.   I had this photo with me.

Thankfully I realised fairly early on that trying to replicate this photo was difficult and I should just take shapes from it.  This led to these designs.

I took some close up photos of areas that looked interesting.

Eventually we realised that I had been working with the photo upside down.  It's of lifting gear in a a cafe in Savannah.

 On Sunday morning I returned to my comfort zone of small collages in a zigzag book.

And finally my show and tell design wall with lots of b&w photocopies.

I had an unusal 5 day retreat - a mix of play, some angst and some serious self investigation.  More about that next time in Climbing the spiral staircase!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Playing at Committed to Cloth

I have just got back from 5 days of play at Committed to Cloth.  Admittedly I didn't play the whole time but that's a whole other blog post.

After we had all introduced ourselves and Leslie had explained some activities, I chose to make collages using brown, white and black paper, with added touches of red.  I started with 14cm squares.  I had decided I would work with squares because when I was at C2C last year I used circles.

I tried them in a long line and then decided to make 3 more to make a square.

I tried out different layouts.

Then I photocopied the squares 141% bigger.  The problem with that was 141% makes rectangles rather than bigger squares!

I had glued the black & white squares to a backing paper and then I cut it up.  You know I love cutting up stuff.  I tried out the strips in different layouts.

I added small amounts of red to make it more interesting.

I joined all the strips together and was  hoping to be able to have a curly book. 

The paper didn't really want to curl so I went back to my preferred zigzag.

I pinned it to the wall

Then (you know me!) I cut up the long strip into 3 strips.

I don't know what I shall do with this - if anything!  But I know from last year's play that what you see above may well inform something I make later this year although it won't be a replication.

That was just day 1.  There's so much more to come.  See you back here.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice