faces (2) and community stitching

After a quiet birthday,
with some very sweet presents,
there was time for more faces for Emma Cassi 's workshop.
Sometimes things go smoothly "with no effort at all"
sometimes you struggle with even the smallest decisions.

My third "mask/face" brooch was the latter.
Up until I found the translucent shell shape sequins
in a very cheap box in my stash . . .
after that it all went well, so funny !

I called it a "Fire Keeper"

(though many SC-members said it reminded them of a fish !!)
Hmmmm at least a fish with an attitude
that's for sure !

And because they are rather small
(and I had more choice in beads and sequins)
there even came a fourth one.

This one I called "Gilgamesh"
Though he wasn't a very nice person to start with,
I was very fond of the illustrations of Ludmila Zeman
(Czech by birth, now living in Canada)

*

This whole month I have also been busy in ROTTERDAM with a BIG
community stitching project
it is called :

DRADEN  VAN  ONS  NEDERLANDSE  SLAVERNIJVERLEDEN

(I put in the link for our province Zuid-Holland
you can also find the dates and address we are working there !!!)

Other cities where they are working on this HUGE wall hanging are
Delft, Dordrecht, The Hague, Leiden and Gouda.

This is the part for Dordrecht and Rotterdam.

There were other participants, but we could always use more "hands"

for stitching, felting and embroidery, not difficult work but very rewarding !
Together with Gerine I supervise the work there, also with the 
all-over coordinator Caroline Grootenboer
The 7 meters long part for us, has been stretched on a big frame.

The work to cut out a part of the big pattern
and filling it with pieces of fabric, felt of making embroidery stitches
had to be for us to try (and experience difficulties) too !

So : homework !

I think it is very special being able to participate in this project !

friday faces

Just two small faces to show :

the Emma Cassi workshop of Stitch Club
was masks / faces in beads.

They "should" be bigger,
but I liked the brooch size more.

(on to the next one !)

more transparent

 The dear Emily Tull came by in Stitch Club again.
I love her work and her workshops !
She is a very talented "thread painter".
This time the subject wasn't (a part of) a portrait
but a fish : a sardine, or any other fish
(or any other subject)
This time I chose a hummingbird because they also
have iridescent colours, much like fish scales.

"Violet crowned Woodnymph"

Amazing these tiny colourful birds, who sadly only live
on the American continent.

Working on water soluble with tiny snippets :
very fiddly !!!
But in the end it was worth it !

*

In the garden the first shift of colours "

the YELLOW aconites, WHITE snowdrops and the LILAC crocuses are gone

 

and the first bits of BLUE arrived !

I LOVE spring !

aconites

I finished the aconites for the
Stitch Club workshop by Vinny Stapley.

A nice memory of early spring
for the winter time when no colour adorns up the garden !

transparant

The new Stitch Club workshop by Vinny Stapley
is with tulle, lace and photo transfers on organdie.
I only have cotton organdie in a very dark purple colour
so that wasn't very useful.
But I do have thin cotton (not as transparant as organdie !)
and I do have very thin silk, so making the transfers
wasn't that big a problem in the end.

I don't have any old photographs
so my garden will have to do for inspiration.
Winter aconites are the very first flowers
that announce that spring is near,
even before the snowdrops are seen !
Last year I also took them as inspiration, so why not again.
Making the transfers went really smooth
and even cutting them out wasn't too difficult.
But then, after a laid out the design came the stitching
(no photo yet)
and that was horrible : like stitching in thin air !
In the end I took the tulle out of the hoop

to stitch around the edges
pfffffft !

To be continued !
(giving my fingers a bit of rest first)

last february day

On this last day of the shortest month
seven planets in the sky
and a new moon.
(sadly at that moment there were clouds here
though much later there was a beautiful clear sky)

A good moment to show the last Stitch Club workshop
by Darren Ball that I finished,
It was meant to be with a vintage photo as inspiration
but I don't have those, so I chose something else :
good "old" Maisy
(by Lucy Cousins)

My collection of old pictures, we used to adorn the little rhymes with
in the poetry booklets little children (girls) used to have.

Some sketches with possible choices, but in the end I decided on Maisy.

Some extra tulle layers and some machine stitching finished it off.
(though I'm not totally happy with the stitching
and working on the machine)

On to the next work !

10 grams (un-perfect)

February is nearly at an end and last Wednesday
we had our zoom-meeting with the
UN-PERFECT 10 GRAMS group.

It was a very special challenge this time
because we sent a flat piece of pre-felt
to another member of the group
and she had to use that for the "Carnival" theme.
I had to send mine to Germany,
and I got one from Switzerland.
(that last bit wasn't without silly troubles about import duties !!!)

You were allowed to add some fibers of your own
so in the end my piece weighed 12+ grams
(but : I used ALL of the pre-felt I got !)

This is the pre-felt Kelly sent me
(with also some dots on the other side)

Carnival is for me most of all the Summer-carnival parade
in Rotterdam, with lots of swinging and dancing brightly
dressed people.
Especially the big headdresses are impressive,
so that's where my inspiration came from.

The finished piece.

The process.
I cut strips and turned some around, the off cuts of the points
were later used for small balls at the end of the tying strips

(hmmmm "wearable")

And this is what I got back already from Silke

For her carnival means clowns with their red noses,
their funny trousers and their
BIG SHOES !

I divided all colours in two
for two perpendicular layers in the pre-felt
(I forgot to take a picture of the finished pre-felt
but the spacing of the colours was more or less the same in both layers)

So, not an easy task this time but all worked out well !
The sad thing was though, that during the "zoom" I heard NO sound
though all the others could hear me . . .
(grrrrr)

25 - 1 - 25 , pomegranates and doves

January is nearing the end
but I've been busy stitching on a new Stitch Club piece,
a workshop by Dijanne Cevaal
For many years now I've seen her work,
but never was able to do a workshop with her
(until now !)

The lino printing was fun !
I had all the materials at hand so that was no problem, just finding a design
A book I was reading solved that.

Finished, but not yet mounted on a canvas (30 x 30 cm)

I did a try out of my first prints on tea bags
and that gave me the fun opportunity to flip them over
because the print was on both sides nearly as good.
The piece of fabric I choose was too white so I painted it
with the textile paint I bought last year in Rijswijk.

Hmmmm a bit simple those four separate prints

Then  solution was cutting more prints to make a kind of border,
some of the lino and some of the thicker soft blocks.
The good part of using the blocks is that you can cut out
the shape on the outside as well !
That's handy if you have to make a weak print twice :
because you can place it at exact the same spot.

There was only one rather big problem :
I did the stitching with perlé thread (8) as Dijanne had suggested,
but my hands didn't like the difficult process of pulling
the needle through the fabric . . .

That's why I changed to the thinner perlé 12,
less impact of colour but much easier to work with !

Well, I still had my doubts about the polka dots fabric
until some sweet Stitch Club member told that they reminded her
just of pomegranate seeds !!!!!
Ohhhh . . . YES, why hadn't I thought of that myself !
And the pink colour ? Also pomegranates !

a bird and planets

It took quite some time,
but finally my bird is finished.

a kingfisher :
once seen as a blue blur sweeping over the nearby water
but now in all is beauty on the wall.
(20 x 20 cm)

What a lovely STITCH  CLUB workshop it was by
Yvette Phillips.

Not only a great textile artist but also a good teacher !

 For the first time I followed her lead
and put the fabric on stretcher bars in stead of in a hoop, before stitching.
At first I wanted to work on plain coloured linen
but in the end I found a suitable fabric in my stash
(though I used the backside !)

step by step
with my loyal phone always near !

(this photo came from the "Forth Rivers Trust" in Scotland)

Sad to say that this Alcedo atthis is, like so many other creatures
on the RED list !

*

Today, or rather tonight,
there was a special occasion in the night sky !

In the east, a beautiful bright full MOON
"at seven a clock" a bit down was MARS

between "one and two" much further away was JUPITER

and then in the south west was the lovely evening star VENUS
with, just to the left of it SATURN !

(haha, I tried to take some pictures
but judging by the lack of them here, you know I failed)