playing around with surface pattern....

these images are part of a study on tea shops and cafes that I undertook for my BA in Textiles, where hearing threads of conversation made me think of beaded strings, the background layer was acrylic pallet knifed onto paper, the colour mixed to emulate tea, I then set about building various layers with Photoshop, just playing around with some of the exploration work I had undertaken in my sketchbooks

I had sketched, with ink, many the chairs I had found in the tea shops I had visited

wanting to see what blue looked like to balance out the 'tea' colour

gingham had shown its face in several of the tea shops  and so went on to appear  in my images

the original background before adjusting it with Photoshop

something else about Tea....

Yep, its Tea again, here is some surface pattern I derived from cups, teabags and strung teabags, the pattern being suitable for fabric, i.e. kitchen blinds, wrapping paper, place mats and ceramics as per the teapot below. These were originally worked onto A1 paper. I wanted something a bit more geometric for a change.

I cut a few stencils based on china cups from my own collection, also a couple of different sized square stencils,using a roller with emulsion, acrylic with a white gel pen

same process different stencils for the strung teabags....

this time just the square stencils

I thought I would quite like a teapot with the square pattern.....

from source to surface pattern............

here is a page from my Fish Board sketchbook.....

the starting point is the photo (bottom right corner) which came from an old Aquarium magazine

this would be a pattern I would consider using for interiors

A3 sized page with ink, acrylic, watered down emulsion, plaster filler and cotton thread, there is actually some texture here, created by mixing the plaster filler into the acrylic paint for the heads of coral

never feels quite finished until there is a little thread involved somehow......

the early bird catches the worm!

I made this drawstring bag a while ago for the lovely Lizbet, for her allotment seeds. I did forget to get a photo of the complete bag, showing its wonderful dragonfly lining and still intend to so at some point but thought I would share it anyway! For those who would like to have a go at making this bag I do produce it in kit form.

beady googly eyes fastened on breakfast

I've drunk the tea and started to make at this point

for the bird and floral side of the bag I have used recycled fabric for the applique

I drew the bird on with fabric pen and carved my block for the dragonfly lining

I did use predyed fabric for the lining but used my dragonfly block with fabric dye to block print my surface pattern on it

I used the machine to stitch the bird's body on but for it's feet and some of its details I hand embroidered with cotton. The worm was done by hand too, again with cotton thread.

the strip across the bottom was a lovely little piece of vintage fabric that I'd found, so special to me that I found it hard to use it but Lizbet is worth it. I used mismatched beads for the worms eyes for a suitably worried look

the flip side of the bag has more appliqued scraps of fabric with a bit of machine embroidery for added detail, I went for a hollyhock look

a painted necklace for my Limited Edition Sketchbook 2012

for this page I referred back to the newspaper cutting on the first spread, imagining all of the jewels on that special occasion, the black velvet as a background to their glimmer.

my necklace's rubies were in fact daubs of nail varnish, the gold chain and velvet background being acrylic paint

a bit of fun with calico......

I love working with calico and these are some little clutch bags I made a while ago. 

First I dyed raw calico with good old Dylon, some black and some turquoise, in the washing machine.

Second  I created a very basic floral surface pattern which was then heat transfer printed onto the blue dyed calico, using it for both lining and appliqued embellishment along with a few black beads for the flowers centers. These bags measure 28 x 16 cm.

Black bag with appliqued flowers. The fastening cord is strips of claico rolled and machined stitched.

Another particular favourite of mine is contrasting lining.

Floral Turquoise lining of black bag

Blue Bag with crocheted cord and button fastener

black lining in the Blue Bag

original floral drawings for the heat transfer print

some of my sample records showing a little of the  transfer printed cloth laid over the original transfer print

thank you Embroidery Magazine!

I was very excited to see a piece of my work included in the Embroidery Magazine in the
'Schools Out' section. Tea, the social interaction around it and its associated paraphernalia were my inspiration and I thought I'd explain the processes I used.

I came to see tea shops as social capsules, exploring them in my art journals and on loose large scale mixed media work, utlising stitch, paint, pastels, fabric, collage, tea, block printing, paper and fabric manipulation, one outcome being the piece of mixed media on calico above, the starting point for this being the cups motif, 'drawing' on the calico with tea, I also used Markal Artist Oil Paintsticks before embroidering with cotton.

I then photoshopped the image to create a repeat pattern which I had digitally printed onto a fairly heavy cotton in several colourways.  (I was thinking about an interiors fabric at this point) I took it a step further by highlighting just one rose in silk thread satin stitching. The size of the embroidered rose is 9cm tall x 10cm wide.

The buzz for me throughout all my work is amalgamating the past and present, combining both traditional & contemporary methods and examining the correlation between historical issues & of humanity.

For anyone who creates textile based (and arguably other genres) think about a subscription to Embroidery magazine, please don't just think traditional although the historical pieces covered are also of great interest and extremely useful as both inspiration and a sound source for written work. Anyone interested in contemporary methods would be depriving yourself to go without. I miss Fibrearts which sadly has fallen by the wayside but Embroidery helps heal the pain of its loss! Embroidery Magazine Nov/Dec 2011

I've finished my Sketchbook 2012 and its ready to be sent back to Brooklyn!



summer afternoon

thoughtless pain

me

why do we do art?

Sketchbook 2012, surface pattern and how I get there, strange but true...

for this study on Englands North West Beaches and after looking through my 'stash', this time my old photos on card, I just collage things together trying to emulate how I feel when looking/touching something, memories, can be anything really and then I enjoy looking at the collage

I have to say my work area can get a tad messy, not always but somehow for any sort of collage work it just seems right. I like to get everything I may use in front of me and in this case it was household emulsion, (you can't beat those tester pots), ink, acrylic paint and an unusual stencil.

I decided that I wanted to create my own abstract interpretation of my collage and so concentrated on the sand, pebbles and sun elements. To represent pebbles I made a small piece of random crochet and then stencilled paint through it.

It looks a little lifeless at this point

After using ink and gold acrylic paint I have achieved the effect I want. I would see some of this design finding its way onto fabric and may even use it in the production of a silk scarf! After a bit of Photoshopping of course.