PFA 2020 JANUARY CHALLENGE

Happy New Year to you all, hope you had a good holiday season. 

I'm starting the year with the January challenge for the Postcard Fabric Art group I belong to where this year's theme is historical centuries.

The first is Ancient Egypt and I have decided to make fashion my focus for the year.

I started by searching out my photos and souvenirs from our visit to Egypt 12 years ago, along with some useful magazines I kept with pictures from the tombs.

I chose this image of a goddess painted in the tomb of Tutankhamon as her dress looked very interesting, close fitting with what looks like a pleated sash.

I decided to make an inscription in hieroglyphics and copied some of the above symbols to hand stitch onto my piece of fine organza.

I used this transparent fabric so that I could mount it on top of  the sheet of papyrus I planned for the background.

I found another tomb painting and using my lightbox I traced some of the outlines onto the papyrus, which wasn't easy because of the ridges in the texture of the grasses used to make this ancient type of paper.

Next I traced the goddess onto a piece of felt that I layered with some red organza to make that reddish skin tone.  I used bondaweb to adhere some fine white linen for her dress and head band, then started to embroider the details.

Her wig is a piece of black felt stuck on and the sash is a length of red ribbon embroidered to depict the pleats. Next I bondawebbed her to the organza background ready for the assembly later.

I was lucky enough to find a piece of Egyptian themed fabric in my stash so I interfaced it for stiffness and made it into a double sided frame to support the layers of my design.  Onto the back I hand stitched the caption on organdie then attached it inside the edges.

Finally I inserted the papyrus and then the organza with the goddess into the frame and stitched the edge to hold them all together.  I really like how the papyrus drawing shows through the organza and I wonder if you can work out what the hieroglyphs say?

INSPIRATION EXCHANGE

 

I had a wonderful surprise this week when Starr White of Wonderland Woods showed me what she has made of my tiny red mushroom sketch.  Here is her beautiful embroidery which really captures the shape and colour of the original. Above is a sketch I did yesterday using one of her lovely forest photos as inspiration. It is on the end papers at the front of my latest sketchbook, newly bound with papyrus inside the covers.

 

 

Starr loves mushrooms and we've both been delighted with our exchanges of inspiration. To see more of her work have a look at her blog Wonderland Woods

 

 

Here is my sketch and the photo below of the original mushroom which is the size of a Yew berry.

I was very lucky to see it hiding in the grass before it got trodden on!

 

EGYPTIAN DRAWINGS

 

Last night I watched a fascinating documentary about life and death in Egypt and I was reminded of a period about 7 or 8 years ago when I spent a winter drawing pharoahs.  I had bought a magazine which turned out to be full of beautiful photos of ancient sculptures.  This first one of Khephren is my favourite and it hung in our hall for many years until I decided to give it to my niece Esther for her 18th birthday as she loved it so much.  Luckily I photographed it before parting with it!

 

 

 

When we later visited Egypt in 2007 I was totally overwhelmed by the buildings, artifacts and the history contained within them and took many photos.  This is a drawing of one of the columns at the tomb of Rameses II.

 

 

We spent a week on a cruise boat and travelled from Luxor to Aswan, stopping off to visit various places along the way.  This is a statue of Thoutmosis III which I saw in the museum at Luxor along with many fascinating items found in the tombs of Toutankhamon and  others.

 

 

This is another statue from the museum, drawn on papyrus which I purchased when I returned home, having seen how it was made on one of our guided tours.  I don't know why I didn't buy any in Egypt, maybe because the shops wanted us to buy their own hand painted images.  I still have a sketchbook and more pictures to scan so watch this space for more egyptology!