Latest dragonfly picture

As you may have guessed I love dragonflies and butterflies and inspired by my endless landscape picture thought I would have a go at making one featuring dragonflies. One of my dragonflies is also featured on the Hardingham Art and Textile Groups annual exhibition poster which is on the first week of September.

I decided to use handmade silk paper as a background, something which I haven't had much luck with before but felt this came out ok. I then machine stitched onto the water and for the reed beds before couching some silk boucle as a base.

The reeds in the foreground were made from organza and cut out with a soldering iron to prevent the edges from fraying and some were wired to give depth.

The dragonflies were made using organza and water soluble film before being applied and beaded and overall I am quite pleased with the result. Now to do a garden scene with butterflies.

Mary Crehan Finished Piece

As promised this is the finished piece that I started on a workshop with Mary Crehan last year. It took ages to do and as her pieces are huge she must have the patience of a saint. No idea what I'm going to do with it but it was a fun day.

It was made by weaving threads and strips of fabric through scrim with added hand made paper and machine stitched all over. It was supposed to represent stone but I feel that it would be more appropriate for tree bark.

Hopefully there will be some interesting workshops when the autumn program of the Embroiderers Guild comes out so I have more to show you.

We are also hoping to have a workshop at the Hardingham Textile group with Lynda Monk later this year so that should make interesting viewing.

Poppies

I love poppies from the humble wayside ones that are so delicate and look like silk to the glorious opium ones that come in a wonderful array of colours.

So much so I even had a poppy on my nurses buckle back in the day when I was nursing. I also love Art Nouveau which may be evident from the style of the buckle.

I decided to make a poppy bowl following on from the sunflower in the previous post so followed the same technique of cutting out individual petals in red silk and cotton but felt it didn't really look like a poppy. 

So I decided to just cut 4 large silk petals and arrange them overlapping like a poppy which looked ok initially. However once the dissolvable film was washed off they were very floppy as there was less stitching on them than the individual petal one so had to put on quite a bit of Paverpol fabric stiffener which made it look like plastic. Love the shape and think it looks quite poppy like but it doesn't look like silk at all.

Oh well back to the drawing board.