Back in 2019 I signed up to take part, for the first time, in the 2020 British Quilt & Stitch Village Show which is held annually at Uttoxeter Racecourse in Staffordshire. Needless to say it got postponed due to Covid and was rescheduled for 2021. With Covid delaying it yet again it was rescheduled for 2022 and will finally be launching in three weeks time on the 22nd of April.
It’s been such a long time coming I am so excited at the thought of getting back to exhibiting again after all this time! It’s also going to be great to see the other exhibits…..online exhibitions are better than none but you can’t beat being up close and personal to really appreciate other people’s work.
The show will be on from 10am each day on the 22nd , 23rd & 24th of April with lots of fantastic exhibitors and traders eager to help us replenish our stash! There is lots of free parking and the site is wheelchair accessible. The show offers a warm, friendly atmosphere, displaying plenty of embroidery/quilt exhibits (group & competition), and work from textile artists and Feltmakers plus a variety of traders and fabulous workshops.
If you are planning to visit please stop by my stall and say hello. Unless there is a last minute shuffle you will find me in the Premier Bar, these are just a few of the pieces I will have on show.
Where did January go? With the lifting of Covid restrictions and things starting to get back to normal the time is passing in a blur. It’s terrific to be takings bookings for classes once again and I’m looking forward to working with new groups this year. It’s also going to be great, after two years of cancelled exhibitions, to be showing my work at the Quilt & Stitch Village at Uttoxeter in April and the Big Textile Show at Leicester in October.
At the Waltham Textile group we normally have a biannual exhibition of our work but, due to Covid, it was cancelled in 2020 rescheduled for 2021 and then had to be cancelled again. It’s now been confirmed for August but in the meantime I’ve sold my main “Leaf” themed piece made for that show so recently made this mixed media “Monstera” to replace it.
I bought a 40cm x 80cm canvas with the intention of painting Monstera leaves on it and then adding a 3D Felted leaf. After drawing a template onto paper and offering it up to plan the layout I changed my mind about painting onto the canvas. It’s not something I’ve done before and the surface appeared to be a bit too textured for the look I wanted to create. Instead I sketched the leaves onto a piece of white cotton fabric, outlined them with an Inktense pencil and added a little shading. The aim was for very simple, very smooth, perfectly formed leaves looking more like curved metal than the foliage on my cheese plant. I think this was influenced by the very smooth metallic looking Tyvek seed pods I’ve been making lately.
The Monstera in our lounge looks a bit neglected, to the point that I couldn’t bring myself to photograph it for this post! Its been with me for more years than I can remember, moving from house to house, and I thought it would be nice to make a piece of work inspired by this plant….or should I say the plant it used to be!!
I don’t consider myself a painter but I do like painting on to fabric. If you need to paint precise lines a good tip is to use aloe vera (by far the cheapest) or acrylic medium instead of water when applying acrylics on fabric. This keeps the paint where you want it to be and avoids it bleeding into other areas. I managed to get a tiny bit of black paint on the lower section of the fabric but stopped short of starting all over again when I realised the felted leaf would cover it up!
My paper template for the painted leaves was 13” x 18” so to make the felted leaf I multiplied by 1.4 enlarging it to 18.5” x 24” to allow for shrinkage. Layer one was a very yellowish green Merino (might have been lichen but not certain). Layer two was a combination of various shades of grey with the yellowish green running down the centre. This was topped with a layer of dark green Merino and Ireland Viscose all around the edge and snippets of gold Viscose down the centre. These images don’t give a true representation of colours but you get the gist.
After wetting out I measured the fibres and found they had spread to approx 20” x 27”. At the fulling stage, every now and then, I put the original template on top to check for size and ensure I was keeping to the right shape.
Once it had shrunk to the correct size it was left to dry. The next stage was to add wires to the back of the leaf so it could be shaped. This could possibly have been done with directional laying of the fibres and lots of fulling but I wanted the option of posing the leaf once it was attached to the canvas and wires are a good way of doing this.
The wires were spaced out and attached on the reverse using a zigzag stitch which also formed the veins on the front side. You can see that bright yellowish green colour on the reverse of the leaf. Once that was done it was just a matter of cutting into the felt to form the individual leaves and the characteristic little holes of the cheese plant before attaching to the canvas.
No, not my final show! This is the final show from members of the now defunct (CCN) Contemporary Craft Network. The group disbanded in 2019 but five of us have got together for one last time to exhibit at the beautiful Sam Scorer Gallery on Drury Lane in Lincoln’s Cathedral Quarter. The exhibition is free admission, open 10am – 4pm and runs from today until the 20th June. (There is a sixth person mentioned on the poster but unfortunately Andrew had to pull out at the last minute)
We set up yesterday and it’s looking great! There are two feltmakers, myself and fellow IFA member Moira West. There are two glass makers, Kevin Wallhead and Kate Sell, and two mixed media artists, myself and Christine Plummer. The nice thing is that although some of us share a passion for the same medium/craft, everyone of us has a totally different approach and a different style. When combined this has resulted in an interesting mix and what we are hoping will be a very successful show.
If you are reading this and you are local, or even further afield and fancy a day out in Lincoln, it would be great to have you visit. There are lots of other attractions in the area including a wealth of independent shops and bars, our fabulous Cathedral and Castle, the Little Red Gallery, St Martins Gallery and Harding House….all within walking distance of the Sam Scorer Gallery. With the exception of today and the 18th there will be a different artist on duty all day every day so why not come along, see their work and learn all about their craft.
This is my latest post, written for the Felting and Fibre Studio, about my trip to Northumberland earlier this this month in search of inspiration for a piece of work…..
A few weeks ago, after trying to get from one side of my workroom to the other, I decided enough was enough……it was time for some serious sorting out! When you have students visiting regularly for workshops you have to keep things fairly tidy and organised but obviously, for the past year, this hasn’t been happening and so things had got seriously out of hand!
As well as the satisfaction of filling a bin bag with accumulated rubbish, it was great to discover a couple of books and a few samples of rust and tea dyed fabrics, and one covered with stamped leaves/grasses, which I had made a few years ago and completely forgotten about.
I’d been thinking of doing some felted work with the theme of circles & holes, and still will do, but on finding this fabric I knew I wanted to make some small ”circles & holes” combining the rust dye with the leaf stamps. So this is the result, all pieces are in square box frames measuring 25cm. Each hole was positioned to act as a small view finder for a rusty mark.
Having enjoyed making those I followed up with some more leaf stamping…..
…….and rust dyeing. This is all the same white cotton fabric but the grey marks are a result of soaking the fabric in tea before adding the rusty objects. To achieve the orange marks the fabric has been soaked in vinegar. My favourite piece, second from the right, has the grey background (tea) but also the orange marks from dipping the rusty bolts into vinegar.
These are two pieces made from the second batch of leaf printed fabric and that orange and grey rust print. In both of these the circles have been darkened by adding more paint.
One of my favourite workshops has to the Layer, Stitch & Burn which I will be running again at the Alford Craft Market Centre on November 16th. This class teaches a technique made famous by the American mixed media textile artist Susan Lenz.
The title sums it up exactly, we begin by layering our fabrics, we use free motion machine stitching to hold them all together and then we set them fire! OK, so we don’t go quite that far but we do apply heat to manipulate and burn away sections of our work which results in a beautiful lacey effect.
This is an example of Susan’s work
I first discovered Susan’s work via a video on YouTube where she was teaching how she made her “In Box” series. I had only just discovered there was such a thing as textile art and had started experimenting with my own projects, so to see a Textile Artist with a heat tool and a soldering iron was pretty exciting stuff! It inspired me to research further which led me to Margaret Beal and her book New Ideas in Fusing Fabric…..needless to say I’ve had an interest in manipulating fabric by burning ever since!
These are examples of students work.
…..and a few more made by students.
Originally In this workshop we made a square piece of work to fit a small box frame but there is also the option of using this technique to make several smaller pieces which can be used as brooches. These leaf brooches were made using the same fabrics that are supplied for the workshop and the same method but students can apply it to any shape or subject matter.
Leaf Brooch made using the Layer, Stitch & Burn technique
It’s very strange times right now and, understandably, lots of ladies are not yet ready to come back to classes. I’m just hoping that we get enough interest to run this workshop on the 16th……fingers firmly crossed!
It’s been a thrill to have a piece of work on display at the National Centre for Craft and Design and, although the physical exhibition has ended, there is the chance for a wider audience to see the NCCD Art Club show as it’s now available as an online exhibition.
The exhibition was in response to Covid-19 to “unite our community through creativity to help us all respond, recover and look ahead to a new world. Through craft, design, making and performing we’re encouraging everyone to unleash their creativity and improve their health and wellbeing at this time.”
There is a huge diversity of work on display and it’s interesting to see how the different artists have responded to the four main themes which were Inside / Outside, Creative Healing, Joy & Happiness and What’s your daily medicine?
I was thrilled to get a phone call this afternoon to say that my “Shadows” wet felted wallhanging has been accepted by the National Centre for Craft & Design as part of their Art Club open exhibition. It will be on display in the Activity Zone from this Thursday until the 6th September.
One of my favourite pastimes has to be creating wet felted jewellery. I love the sculptural aspect of felting and when this is combined with small wearable items like necklaces and bangles, each one becomes a miniature piece of sculptural, wearable art.
These pieces were created early on during the lockdown when I came to realise that I was never happier than when I was working with lots of texture and a very simple monotone colour palette. In truth I’ve always known this but somehow it’s been amplified with spending much more time in the studio and noticing that the more colourful work was jarring with me!
The Superfine Merino necklaces are embellished with stitch, beading and tiny pieces of Nuno and finished with metal chain fasteners. The great thing about this technique is that each piece is totally unique, you could never have two pieces alike.
They say the longer you put something off the harder it becomes. Well I definitely find that’s the case when it comes to blogging! I’m not a natural “writer” but even so I can’t believe it’s been more than six months since my last post! Note to self….must try harder!!
Back in April I created two pieces of abstract wall art for the bi-annual Waltham Textiles Exhibition. It should have been happening later this month but, as with so many events, will now be taking place in 2021, fingers crossed!!
This first piece will be mounted onto board measuring 50cm x 100cm. Inspired by sunsets it consists of various wet felted fibres, Viscose fibres and a mix of natural and synthetic fabrics. It’s all held in place using machine free motion stitching onto a painted Lutradur background. I love the textures that can be achieved when using this technique and I particularly like adding synthetic glitzy fabrics for a little bit of bling!
Abstract SunsetDetail of Abstract SunsetDetail of Abstract Sunset
This second piece was constructed in the same way. Rather than mounting it on a board, I think I’m going to mount this one behind glass in a black edged 40cm x 80cm frame.
Burlesque – Abstract Wallhanging Detail of Burlesque Detail of Burlesque
Lincs In Stitches 