Monday, 13 May 2019

Felting, Printing and Stitching...

Well, I've neglected the blog for a little while - but that's okay, life's been busy with other things so this is a little catch up post before (hopefully) getting back into a better routine.



PRINTING ON MY GELLI PLATE

Sometimes, with only a little time, it's nice to grab the small gelli plate, some paints and handmade stencils and leaves and just whack out a pile of prints - just for the fun of it...

Always good to have a stash of these to hand for collage, card making...or just looking at! I used some handmade stencils, leaves and bought stencils to get different effects and layers, and used a variety of papers, including deli paper.




Particularly like the hare prints below - I made these using a handmade stencil cut out of  the plastic non-slip matting you can get - the texture of the 'bobbly' surface came out great in a couple of them.







ECO-DYEING

I had a stash of onion skins, a piece of copper pipe, some scraps of fabric and silk and some leaves from the garden...add some alum mordant and some steam and these were the results.  I love this process, and I have quite a little stack of dyed scraps which (one day) I'm going to use for an art quilt...I may also over print them with some other leaves to experiment.




As everything is starting to  grow and bloom in the garden, I can see leaves and flowers I might like to use in eco-printing and dyeing...I'm no expert and don't follow any exact rules, but it's fun to do and I quite like the unexpected results!  More experiments to follow...

FELTING

Well, it was back to flowers in pots - really love this as a subject it can result in something really joyful. 

'In the Pink' was very much inspired by the pink flowers I put on our kitchen table every year to remember someone who was taken from this life far too soon - remarkably, after I shared it on Facebook it sold to a lovely lady who explained that the pink struck a chord with her for a very similar reason and it was  bought as a gift for someone in memory of lost one. That gave me goosebumps, and it would seem that this was a very special sale that was absolutely meant to be...


I love anemones, and planted some in the garden which have been merrily flowering away over the past few weeks - I picked a few of the gorgeous blooms to enjoy inside and they inspired the next felted picture.  I really love how it turned out - the green really pops against the red...keeping it simple, but still playing with those surface textures.  This one has gone to Blue Bramble Gallery, along with a couple of others.

Inspiration from the garden - gorgeous anemones


All framed up 
I may look into having some of these 'flowers in pots' images made into cards, and possibly prints - is that something anyone might be interested in? Will look into further and maybe get a sample giclee print done to see how well it translates!


More felt...

I also made a very large piece of thick felt to use as a seat pad in our kitchen window - this was a lot of work to felt by hand, so much so that after getting it to a certain point, I threw it into the washing machine to finish the job!  Luckily for me, it turned out okay, and after a steam and a stretch is still the right size and shape!  Only thing is, I need to make another one for the other window - think I may have to pysch myself up for that...the finished post-felting length of this if over 1 1/2 metres, so it was a bit of a challenge!

This was made using some beautiful jacob wool tops in their natural colour with some gold merino and silks added for interest.  I had a huge bag of the jacob wool kindly given to me, and it felted really nicely.  There's also a bag full of unwashed jacob wool which has lots of different colour shades in it - I'm going to gradually work my way through that, washing in small batches - I think I'll do a separate blog post about that, as I've not done it before.  If anyone has any tips, feel free to let me know!!





I also learnt that 'Dear Little Robin' sold at Blue Bramble Gallery, so that's lovely news...

Dear Little Robin


ST IVES IN STITCHES

You may recall that my last blog explained the local community project to stitch all the shops in Fore Street, St Ives - well I've made some progress on my first shop - a little way to go, but getting there!





WHAT'S NEXT...?

Well, I will keep going with the St Ives in Stitches, as I have another shop to do yet and I'd like to do some paper collage/sketchbook work as a change...and I hope to be inspired to create another felt picture - the bluebells have been looking so beautiful  lately, perhaps that will be the next subject!  In fact the hedgerows are generally bursting into life, so there will be plenty of nature's treasure to draw inspiration from.



So until next time, thank you for taking the time to read this and feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts or what you're up to creatively...

Best wishes

xxx Tanya xxx