Vintage - Tag Tuesday

here we are then another tag for Tag Tuesday although I have to say that I did make this one a while ago but its one of my favourites, (I've even named her Flora) and so wanted her to have an airing!

I don't know about you but I sometimes the feeling of history and age in even the smallest found item can give me a real buzz, unfortunately I find it very hard to get rid of anything with a personlaity, the roof rafters are groaning!.

Flora is only 9cm (3 inches) long and almost 5cm (2 inches) wide. She is made with a found photograph, vintage fabric from an old sample book (not mine) and has a couple of wrens feathers (found in my garden) for embellishment. I wish I could make out what her brooch/corasage is.....

Flora may have been Scottish I felt and so added this scrap of old tartan tothe back but nodded to Wales with a tiny daffodil pendant, another found item, a tad rusty but it adds to its charm some how. The other two pieces are from an old earring and an even older bracelet, both bootsale purchases.

and the previous Embroidery Magazine mention for my Textile Society Undergraduate Bursary win

'Voices' a small part of my original art journal exploration


I was quite pleased when a photo of my work was used in the July/Aug Embroidery magazines small article on this years Textile Society's Student Bursary winners and runners up, even though photo for the article was not attributed to me until the Sept/Oct issue.
I felt very honoured and immensely proud to have been the 2011 Undergraduate winner. When my website is up and running I shall show much more of my work as this blog is more about the source of my designs and supplies. The other really important thing about this blog for me is being in contact with other textile minded people to balance the large amount of time spent working alone.

 click here to see the write up on all of 2011 Bursaries winners with my work as the page banner on the Student Bursary page of the Textile Society website

If you are a student you may want to check out the 2012 competiton!

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

is it just me or do cup handles and ears seem very similar?

Have you ever noticed how much like an ear a cup handle is? Perhaps it is no coincidence that we often listen to our loved ones hopes and worries over a cuppa.

some of my 'Thinking of the Forest of Dean' art journal/sketchbook

snap of one of our long ago walks in the Forest of Dean, with one of my children behind the tree, (we still can't recall which one!) this walk was along some of the route I used to take to school as a child myself.

ink sketch of the bluebells

fabric collage onto acrylic wash

this was exploring the view between the trees, how there is often just a peek of what is further down the overgrown path

Twigs from my favourite tree, the Silver Birch. Favourite because as a  child in Canada I had learnt how important this was to the indigenous people of the Canadian mountains, woodlands and lakes. I also love the use of the bark as paper and of how ghostlike the tree is in the twilight. My mystical tree.

Silver Birch Leaves

a bit of paper and paint collage, just for fun!

using arcylics to explore the texture of bark

mixed media

thinking and doodling

my own Bluebell wood