Text in Textiles day 2

Another 9am start!

Julia had invited us to send photos of our work from day 1 and of previous work which we discussed.  Hearing Julia's comments about my work and other people's work was really inspiring.  Even when your work is totally different from another person's work, hearing suggestions for the way forward for them often sparks ideas for me.

On this second day we concentrated on using dissolvable fabric.  I handstitched 'in fetters' using backstitch and then went over it again with chain stitch.

 

 

The result was too heavy and thick for where I intended putting it on the smaller collage. So instead I wrote the words on tissue and chain stitched the words directly onto the fabric.

In conversation with Julia, she suggested I might add musical notation.  I drew the notes on acetate and laid it over.  Although the placement is random, the sizes are too regular so this needs more thought.

I also tried laying the acetate on top of the larger collage.  As before needs more thinking.

As I said at the beginning, hearing suggestions both for your own work and others, sparks ideas.  I have at least 3 ideas for pieces about dancing in fetters beyond my original idea.

This is one of the ideas based on the nonet I wrote.  I was thinking about making the links with wrapped cord but Julia suggested I might make it with metal chains.  Interesting.  A visit to B&Q looms!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

 

 

Text in Textiles day 1

At the weekend I did a Zoom workshop taught by Julia Triston called Text in Textiles.  Julia lives in Denmark so was working on Central European Time which is an hour ahead of BST.  So 9am here was an early start.  I haven't been dressed at that time for quite a while!!!!!

I got everything ready the night before.  Not usually so organised!!

We did a variety of warmup exercises.  We also made paper collages

and fabric ones.

We had each been asked to choose a word or a phrase to work with.  I chose 'dancing in fetters'.

I wrote dancing with a wide chisel nibbed marker on fabric.  I put mistyfuse on the back of the fabric and then cut it up into 3cm squares. I bonded these randomly on the fabric collage.

I wrote dancing on a piece of tissue and stitched it with straight stitch, using black embroidery thread.

I haven't shown you all the things we did as teaching is how Julia earns her living.  If you're interested in finding out more go to Julia's website.

I'll tell you about day 2 in my next post.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice.

Grand Canal

Amazingly, I have finished another piece.  I went to a Studio Day at Littleheath this week.  I wanted to catch up with the Maps & More work.  At the last workshop day I had pieced the canal section and then at home I had pieced that into the background fabric.

This week I added very narrow satin stitch lines on the sewing machine.

Back at home I trimmed the whole pieces ready for binding.

 

 

I used a piece of fabric printed with the same breakdown screen in a different colour to cut binding strips.  I machined these onto the right side.  Then folded them over to the back and hand stitched the binding down.

Onwards and upwards!

I still have lots of fabric and bits and pieces I made during the process sessions.  We have two actual workshop sessions left although I suspect that I won't use everything up.

I still have fabric left from the Maps Summer School in 2022 despite having made several pieces!

There was only one hanging book - just photographed twice!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice