Textile Art from the Sea, a sea urchin memory

I had a wander on the beach the other day and found a sea urchin skeleton, virtually intact but oh so fragile. I'm ashamed to say I didn't have my camera with me but was able to do some quick sketches and then some work in my sketchbook one home again. I then felt compelled to try and recreate it in textile, using wire to make the frame I then stitched torn pices of raw calico onto the frame with black embroidery cotton. It's about the size of a large satsuma and I find myself  handing it quite often and I'm feeling a slight compulsion to make a sea of my own out of hundreds of them. Thankfully though it doesn't smell like the real thing.....

for another piece of Textile Art from the Sea go to May 13 2011 below......

somethings keeping me busy

In a continuation of my honours work around tea, the activity and its associated paraphenalia here is a section of a piece I'm working on at the moment, its a represetation of  a busy tea shop in Lytham St Annes (although it could be a tea shop or cafe anywhere) and of all of the conversations going on around me. Some of the conversations were obviously emotionally charged whilst others very low key and laid back. I am only on the second stage of this piece.

The overall size is 45 x 62 cm this section being 7 x 9 cm. The digitally printed cotton is a combination of two of my sketches and I am embellishing areas of the surface pattern to represent the various conversations overheard on my visit. I won't be posting the while piece here until I've finished working on it.
so far I've used cotton and silk embroidery threads with ink but have plans for the application of other naturals and organza with probably a further injection of colour with either dyes or paints...watch this space!