Still Life Stitching

Yesterday we had snow, it started about 1.00pm and fell steadily into the early hours of the morning.

Today, at least, we have had sunshine which has meant a beautiful bright light as the sun reflects on the snow.

I have been lucky to receive another Sunshine award from http://wychbury.blogspot.com/.

Thanks Paula.x

I have been playing with my fabrics and threads for my miniature still life pictures.

Here is a still life in my sketch book , I may use this for a larger stitched textile piece.

For sometime I have considered how I could make my landscapes integrate with my still life sketches, so now my land is the table cloth, my vase the trunk of my tree and the flowers become my leaves and branches.

I try and imagine that I'm walking in this landscape, as if I'm a character from 'The borrowers' by Mary Norton. This would be so much fun, although not if I got lost in my thread pile!

Time To Stitch

It's half term week so I have been busy trying to finish jobs in the house and also fitting in more time to sew.

I have been making my flower brooches in the evening for a Christmas sale in aid of cancer research.

I also decided I wanted to try working a landscape on a larger scale, inspired by the textiles I saw at The Knitting & Stitching Show.

This size is enormous for me, especially if you compare it to my landscape brooches.

It is quite liberating to work to this scale and I kept standing on a chair to look down at it !

This is at the stage before I have added any embroidery, I have embellished the wool and silk fibers down with my embellisher machine.

My inspiration is from the sketch I made in France and I want to portray the atmosphere of the colourful Mediterranean landscape.

The colours are so vivid and intense in the strong sunlight.

I hope to bring it more alive once I start adding my stitches although I think this may take some time!

Red, White & Blue

I have just been watching the tennis, in fact this is the reason I am sitting in front of the computer,I can't bare to watch any more and I'm now listening.

Murray is playing Wawrinka and it's just gone to five sets!

I picked some redcurrants and whitecurrants today from my parents garden, so we had them for tea with cream and sugar.

I have been making my flowers while watching the tennis, inspired by all the flag waving, lets hope it will continue!

Random Facts and Flowers

Firstly thank you to piccalily&blossom for tagging me!

Tagging Rules
1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog
2. Share 7 interesting/random facts about yourself on your blog
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post, leaving their names as well as links to their blog
4. Leave a comment on each of their blogs to let them know they've been tagged!

Sorry not sure who has been tagged or not, just let me know if you want to join in.

OK here are seven random facts about me.

1.My passion for embroidery started at an early age, watching Jan Beaney on Pebble Mill At One with my Mum.

I was off school with chicken pox!

2.I worked as a manager for Laura Ashley for Eighteen years ( Home Furnishings)
Part time the last ten years to fit in with my two children, every weekend, evenings etc..
As soon as my husband got back from work it was my time to go to work!


3. I gave it up to work in an inner city school assisting in textile and art classes.
Hard work but I get weekends and school holidays!




4. I have always wanted to do an applied art degree, just can't finance it.




5.My favourite shops are vintage and charity shops !



6.I started a lunch time stitch club at school.


7.My favourite programme was Inspector Morse.


Hope that was not too boring!


The felt flowers above will be at a craft fair on Sunday, my friend Jane is taking them to a fair in Rugby.
I am going with my daughter to London to visit my youngest sister, can't wait to see her.


Bye for now.x

Sunny Sunday

Inspiring trees

Brooches

Felt and embroidery

What a beautiful day, blue skies and lots of sunshine.

So I took a few pictures as the light was perfect.

You can see the hand stitching on my felt work.

I also finished off a few brooches.

I must say thank you to Gunnels for giving me an award for my blog, she has beautiful embroidery work.

Have a good start to your week.

Shades Of Purple

We had a very busy time on Wednesday night at my art society.

It was a great opportunity for us all to try out different ideas using texture in our sketch books.

Here you can see I used coloured tissue paper torn and glued down with acrylic paint, inks and pastel worked over the top.

You can see I left some of the underneath papers showing through.

I will develop this further, hopefully!

You can use anything to build up textures, wallpaper, paper towels, sand, plaster the list is endless.

Everyone produced exciting work and all so different.

Here are some purple brooches, as you know it's a colour that features a lot in my work!

My Mum says my bedroom was purple when I was very young, perhaps it is a sort of comfort to me?

A Few Different Projects

Brooches for gallery

Sketch book

Work inspired by Henry Moore

Hi,

Tomorrow evening I'm going to my Art Society, which I love.

So many lovely friends with so many talents.

I am sort of running a work shop on painting with textures, I say sort of because we just have a fun time trying out different techniques and we all learn from each other.

I also made a few brooches for the gallery.

I had a very rewarding day on Monday helping a fourteen year old girl from Somalia who had suffered a terrible trauma of loosing a family member in an explosion and in which she lost an eye.

She is learning embroidery and I spent time with her, showing her how she can use different stitches.

To see her excitement of learning a new stitch and her enjoyment of playing with the threads and fabrics was wonderful.

Hope you have a good week.

New Flower.

I have just finished this flower brooch.

A little different, this time I have used silk in the middle and coiled it into a 3D effect.

The centre stands proud which makes the petals curl up like a real flower, it works beautifully as a brooch.

I put it in my etsy shop today.

Hope the start of your week is a good one.x

Wooly Flower

Today I did some shopping in Leamington Spa, nothing exciting , school uniforms and pencil cases.

I went with my sister, so we had to have a nice cup of coffee out.

I thought you may like to see this brooch which used to be an old aran jumper which I boiled then dyed.

I used this lovely thread from Madeira called lana which is 50% wool.

Hope you have had a good day.

A Flower For My Dress

What a miserable day, rain and more rain.

Today we have been getting ready for our holiday to France.

We are off on Tuesday and I can't wait for some much needed sunshine, hopefully!

So I had a break from ironing and packing to fit in a quick bit of stitching.

I made a flower for this dress, which I will wear with red shoes in the autumn.

I love vintage clothing or anything vintage inspired.

Now I just need to put the kettle on and then get back to that packing!

More Flower Brooches

Hi,

I have just had an order for some brooches for an Art Gallery and a local shop so I have been making these.

This has been between shopping for our holiday and moving piles of washing around!