Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

 Background: Seam  are a contemporary textile collective based in Bath, England. We are emerging and established embroiderers, printers, knitters, weavers, dyers, fashion designers, eco-designers, makers, artists… …who want to make textiles that are irresistible, and find their way onto your body, into your house and onto your walls. We share a commitment to pushing the boundaries of our craft and making high quality objects realised in the hands and thoughts of the maker. We hope to make a sustainable living from textiles, work locally and bring textiles into contemporary focus This month, all textile artists are enouraged to share their love of textiles and respond to  30 different textile prompts for on  Instagram  during September. You can respond to as many of the prompts as you wish, this could be only a few or it may be all of them - with the hashtag #SeptTextileLove   Here is my first week of #SeptTextileLove  Days 1 & 2 - Introd...

Details of 17 &18 #100pinpoems Days 17 and 18 of #The100DayProject , I decided to stitch the wearable  pins rather than collage them with paper and/or fabric.  I diverted a little from my original plan for the 100 days.... I free machine embroidered them on my sewing machine - a very simple, quick and easy technique of drawing with thread. The technique involves moving the fabric from side to side or up and down,  while the machine is stitching ( with the feed dogs lowered). While the needle and thread are making the marks on the cloth, it is the control of the movement which ensures the marks go where you want them to. You don't need a fancy machine - just straight stitch and a bit of practice.     Sometimes, I work from a photo I've taken but I have also been making very quick sketches and working from them.  They are only a guide to follow, so are not meant to be accurate or artistic.  Sketch for 18 #100pinpoems  ...

I am really hoping that a bird in a nest and a set of wings with a butterfly might be considered signs of "spring". At Tag Tuesday , the theme is "Spring is in the Air" so I am hoping that these two free motion stitched tags might be acceptable.  The stitching is done on my Bernina 550 machine - straight stitching, free motion - with the feed dogs lowered and a "darning" foot. I usually don't  draw first, but with both of these I did make pencil marks to delineate the positions of the person and the bird in the nest and the placement of the wings( below)  These two are also in the series of 29 for #29 Faces online challenge to create a face every day in the month of February. 

As most of my blog readers know, I am completing the #29 Faces Challenge - this challenge is to create a face a day for the month of February - any art medium.  I chose to stitch faces, using free motion machine stitching - basically it means sketching with a sewing machine by moving the material around while the machine stitches. ( different from the computerised machine embroidery where a design is pre-determined and completed automatically)  This week I have been monitoring the speed  I use my sewing machine as my sketching tool  during the creation of the stitched faces, experimenting and using different ratios of speed - hand:foot - some of the results have been good and others not so fantastic.... my aim is to get better control, so it seems to be a matter of coordination,  too - a bit like rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time.  I referred to another stitching blog ...  Expert advice from Tigle...

Here is a video of all the dolls in the Art Dolls Only Black and White Challenge... Just press on the image above to begin - only 2 and a half minutes of fantastic dolls!  And here also are some images of the doll I submitted for the challenge. It has been created from fabric which was made by putting black and white cotton scraps  side by side and stitching over them in different directions with different stitches on my sewing machine. The face is stitched free hand on the sewing machine.  To do this, lower the feed dogs on your machine, put your fabric tightly  in a hoop ( optional, but safe) and "draw" with your needle by moving the fabric in the hoop as you stitch. If you are a beginner, you might like to put some coloured pencil marks down to guide you, but I find by doing it freely, the faces are never the same and although they are not symmetrical, they do have some expression. 

I am very happy to be included in the 2019 workshop program at Studio CC. There are still places available for this creative workshop -   Now only  one day : 22 June 2019.   Please go to the  Studio CC website   for registration information . 

Lots of stitching - I am not sure what this technique is called but I learnt this at NCEATA - Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists, where one of the members, Aileen  demonstrated how she creates such interesting fabric from scraps. 1. Small scraps of patterned and/or plain fabrics are placed side by side on some iron-on  interfacing. 2. Iron everything down to hold in place. 3.Then use a decorative  stitch  on your sewing machine. Use a matching colour of one piece of fabric, stitch over it, going off the edges over the adjoining pieces. 4. Change the thread colour and stitch again, choosing one of the adjoining pieces of fabric. 5. Then stitch again ... repeating the sequence over and over again. The first project I made was a piece of fabric large enough to cover an A5 size note book. Then I tried the technique out on smaller pieces for tags I also tried a variation of the technique. Instead of  using bits of fabric...