It's been about 6 months since I wrote a blog so I thought it was time to get together some of this year's weaving exploits.
I spent the summer being inspired by nature and the beach in particular, gathering shells and discarded fishing ropes and scraps of net after stormy weather. I found a way to attach shells to cotton yarns with a hot glue gun so that I could incorporate them into the weaving which includes coloured nylon net from shower scrunchies and vegetable bags along with the washed fishing threads.
The second one is based on orange acrylic yarns and has more shells and a string of beads from old christmas garlands. These two pieces are suspended on pieces of recycled curtain bars.
The shells also found their way into small tapestries.
These particular shells are small scallops I bought at the port and cooked for our lunch one day.
The seashells also got woven into strips wrapped around small tea tins to be used for gifts or pen pots.
The success of the shells inspired me to try adding scraps of tree bark into weavings. It was quite fragile and bits kept breaking off but in the end it worked.
I bought a book about tapestry weaving and wove these tiny practice pieces as I read through the book.
More woven birthday presents for my family and here's my granddaighter's bag inspired by tree bark.
The front features the odd shapes that occur on silver beeches.
I made Sarah a mixed media birthday card incorporating rust dyed and eco printed fabric with real autumn leaves.
My nieces's cushion cover is woven in shades of teal and burgundy at her request in the saori style of ramdom weaving and backed with a gorgeous forest green velour fabric.
This is Esther's birthday card made with an eco printed leaf.
My imagination never seems to stop coming up with new ideas for textile art and now I've found another process to try out, eco printing which I'll tell you all about on my next blog.
