PFA AUGUST CHALLENGE

 

This month the challenge on Postcard Fabric Art is the colour orange and the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, famous for her large scale paintings of flowers

 

 I researched the images on the internet and found she had painted a few lilies and as I have a lovely potful on my terrace I knew I could use them as my inspiration.

 

I draw these fragrant blooms every year and I soon found some previous sketches to inspire me as well as going out and sitting by the plant to draw straight away. I am also aware of the copyright laws about using other people's images and there was a very interesting discussion in the group about this  issue.  I am very particular about using only my own drawings or photos or my friend's with her permission.

 

 

I love the way the petals curl and their frilly edges.

 

 

I have made a collection of templates that I use when I start a new project to make sure I work to a standard size, whether to fit a frame or a card to be posted.  I had bought a set of plastic place mats at Lidl but found them far more useful for this purpose as they are easy to cut with scissors or a craft knife.  I place them onto the fabric and lightly draw the boundary of where I want to stitch with a pencil.  Sometimes if I'm using linen with a coarse enough weave I will pull threads along the line to be sure I'm perfectly square.

 

 

I made a careful drawing that I could use as a basis for my needlework and made my fabric selection from my collection of organzas, cottons and some vibrant orange jersey given to me by a friend.

 

The base fabric is a plain yellow cotton then there is a layer of pale green organza and a translucent unwoven fabric layer for texture. I cut out each orange jersey petal shape and tacked it on then added a layer of yellow organza to lift the colour and give a bit of a sparkle.  Each petal was then stitched by hand using a red yarn to depict the spots.

 

 

After I finished stitching on the petals I added the white edges by couching on a line of white cotton knitting yarn which gives the flower a bit of life and dimension.  Then I decided to edge the picture with a line of variegated yarn woven through a line of light green running stitches.

 

 

I finished off with the stamens and stigma using various different yarns but being sure to follow the shape and pattern correctly as I had drawn originally.

 

 

I pinned the picture to a square canvas and used a co-ordinating ribbon round the edge to hide the folds and pins and it is now hanging on my studio wall so I can enjoy it while I decide who will be the lucky recipient.

Here is the link to the PFA group page on Facebook, (fingers crossed it works!)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/409001002802381/?ref=bookmarks

 

OCTOBER CATCH UP

 

What a busy month I've had so far! I'm off to England next week so I've been really busy making stuff to take for birthday and Christmas presents.  So here is a catch up of a few recent projects, but some will have to wait till later in the year!

 

Firstly this is the needlepainting I made of the sketch of the river at Chinon using organza, painted with acrylic inks for the water and in the trees.

 

In case you missed it here's the sketch that inspired the embroidery.

 

 

One day, sitting by the sea I was attracted by the different colours I could see in the water and when I came home I got out my fabric and yarns and stitched this little piece. I realised it was the perfect shape for a bookmark so I tidied up the edges and ironed on some backing, then gave it to Joanna who was staying at the time. 

 

 

Since then I've made several and given them away as cards with a simple mount that allows the bookmark to be removed for use ( for those of us who still prefer paper to electronic books!)

 

 

 

My friend Luba has given me so much inspiration with the fabric samples from her time as a fashion director that I wanted to make something special to say thank you.  I embroidered the picture while the lilies were in bloom and then bound it onto a notebook.  She was delighted when I gave it to her last weekend.

 

Here is one of my lily sketches from last year.  This year I sat by the pot, stitching and copying the shapes of the petals and adding the wasp when I realised that they were more attracted to the flowers than the bees were.

 

My lichen embroidery turned into a book cover too, a present for someone special.

 

I found a few scraps of this fun fabric from 'Get Cutie' in Brighton, part of the pack Justine gave me for my birthday.

 

 

I made them into a pencil case for Jimmy to go with the book I made for him in August.

 

 

Here's the book which he loved and drew lots of pictures in when he was here  for a few days holiday.

 

 

And finally my new hat.  No, I'm not planning to wear it in public, it's part of my fancy dress costume for Justine's party in November.  The theme is games and I've chosen to go as the black queen chess piece, hopefully I'll have some photos to share with you when I come back home in a few weeks!

 

I've prepared my sketching kit and a few yarns and fabrics to be working on while I'm away and I'm even hoping I'll be able to pluck up the courage to do some embroidery on the train to Paris and then the Eurostar (with Justine's encouragement).

 

SUMMER AT HOME

As most of you probably know already we live in a seaside resort on the north Brittany coast and this is the best place to spend the summer holiday months with all the festivals and fireworks going on every week somewhere or other.

 

I was sitting on the beach one day gazing at all the beautiful blues in the sea and realised I had most of the colours in my yarn and embroidery thread collection so I set to and made a few of these long narrow pictures.  The thicker yarns I couched onto the linen background as they were too thick to stitch with and I especially enjoyed sculpting the clouds and waves with a fluffy white wool.

What to make of them?  A perfect shape for a bookmark so I gave a couple away and turned the rest into cards with a slot at the top so the fabric can be easily taken out to use in a 'proper' book!

 

 

A friend came round to 'play' one afternoon bringing some of her fabric scraps and we set to with yarns and threads.  This is my effort and I'm still waiting to see Julie's when she comes back from a trip to England.

 

The lilies in the garden came into flower again in July, delighting me with their wonderful fragrance.  I was interested to see that the white ones particularly attracted wasps rather than bees and added one to this needlepainting I did using some crinkly cotton.  What a lovely afternoon I had sitting by the flowers, stitching and breathing in their perfume.

 

My granddaughter Sarah got her exam results during the holidays and I stitched another of my sun prints for her as a congratulation card.

 

What could be nicer than sitting in the shade of the parasol on a warm afternoon, stitching a portrait of my darling sister Rosi.  This is from a photo from 1979.

Mum got the same treatment too, a copy of a sketch of a 1985 photo where I pushed the colours a bit!

This is the start of the embroidered portrait quilt project I want to make over the next 2 years to celebrate the life and family of my mother who was born in 1919.

LILIES, LILIES, LILIES.

 

In the spring I bought a bag of oriental lily bulbs and planted them in a few pots to put on the patio for the summer.

 

The first ones to open were the pinky red ones which grew very tall and gave a wonderful display for a fortnight till they started to change colour.

 

The white ones were a couple of weeks behind but they did give me a succession of gorgeous blooms to draw in my sketchbooks.

 

As you can see I've used several different media to depict these fragrant flowers.

 

I found out this week that the local Mr Bricolage store stocks the Derwent line painters and took the opportunity to buy a white one which works quite well on this tinted paper.

 

The museum watercolour pencils were good too in this, one of the first drawings I did.

 

As I got used to the shapes and curves of the petals the pictures began to give me an idea for my mother-in-law's 90th birthday card.

 

This final sketch was drawn on one of the end papers in my maps sketchbook no 37 as I had run out of pages!

 

 

This week when the doors were finished I finally found the time to get started on my new picture.  I found a pretty piece of lacy fabric to use as a background and then built up the image using scraps of different colours for the leaves and flower petals.

 

It took three afternoons to machine embroider my lily for the birthday card.  I mounted it on a piece of green card and folded the edges over and then stuck it onto a bright pink folded card ready to be finished with a message on the inside. 

 

 

After a couple of days of looking at the picture on my desk I realised that it needed a little something extra in the bottom left corner so I made a drawing of a Red Admiral I have in my nature stash.  I traced the image onto a piece of stiffened fabric and coloured it with inktense pencils and acrylic paints, then sewed a body in black wool to give three dimensions.  I stuck the butterfly in place using fabric glue and stitched the feelers to complete the picture.  I think it looks pretty realistic, don't you?

Fortunately mum has no access to the internet so hopefully she won't see this till her birthday party in September and if any of my readers know her please don't show it! 

We're off for a couple of weeks camping at the weekend so I'll see you later with hopefully another batch of new drawings from our travels.