little Venus

For the Stitch Club workshop by
Christi Johnson
(making a soft sculpture talisman)
I re-made the Venus of Willendorf.

The little statuette of this a woman was excavated in Austria in 1908.
Between 25.000 and 30.00 years old, with her lovely hairdo, big boobs and belly

we can only guess and speculate what purpose she had,
but many think she might have been a symbol of fertility.

With her size of a good 11 cm,
my Venus is almost the same size as the original one.
That one was made of oolitic limestone,
a kind of rock that was traced back to northern Italy.
In the rock are many tiny particles even of shells,
so I thought my little seed stitches were perfect for that !
Similar looking figurines are mostly made of ivory (mammoth tusk)

Making the first stitches

After making the front and back I could sew them together
leaving a small opening for stuffing.

The original Venus was coloured with the sacred red ochre
but mine is much more colourful
just like the "look-a-like" Nana's
Niki de Saint Phalle made so many years ago ! 

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 !