2021 ROUND UP OF THIS YEAR'S TEXTILE ART

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.

 

ANOTHER BUSY WEEK

 

It's been a busy couple of weeks, getting all my projects finished ready to go on holiday leaving my studio nice and tidy. 

 At Christmas we treated ourselves to a couple of special bottles of whisky and I made sure we chose ones that came in those smart cardboard tubes.  There were two sizes and I cut each of them into 2 pieces of 10 cms to make into pen pots.  I cut out some scraps of fabric to fit and stitched a seam so that they fitted the tube perfectly with a turning at the top.

 

 

I stuck the lids on to the tubes for the bases and spread a bit of glue around the lower part to help anchor the fabric before I turned the tops in and glued them to the inside.  I found I had to make slits in the turnings so that they fitted neatly on to the inner surface of the tub.  I lined the inside with sticky back plastic to hide the cut edges and decorated the base with a length of narrow ribbon.  I hope these will sell but if they don't I've got plenty of pens and pencils to fill them with!

 

 

                                          
                                                                           
   I made another 8 A5 sketchbooks in the double pamphlet style and 14 A6, all covered in assorted fabrics and craft papers and I also printed off a lot of my paintings and drawings to make into cards.

                                       

 

Why am I going to all this trouble you may ask?  Well, it's all in a good cause, my daughter Justine holds a charity garden party every year in aid of her local hospice.  Last year I made a lot of hand bound sketchbooks and did very well selling them as well as cards and gift bags.

 

 

We've already booked the ferry for a trip to England for this year's party and I'm really looking forward to it as I get to see all my family who come to support us and eat the delicious cakes made by my clever granddaughters.

 

Last year we had a dry day and were able to sit outside to enjoy the goodies, you can see Justine's pool house in the reflection in the window where all the teas and cakes were served.  In the morning I picked a huge bunch of bluebells from the copse outside her garden gates and made these lovely table decorations which co-ordinated beautifully with the garden furniture.

 

Here I am with my table of wares in Justine's 'beading shed'. I was also in charge of selling her beautiful hand made jewellery and hardly had a moment to sit down as lots of friends and neighbours all turned out to support our good cause.

 

This is the beading shed looking lovely with it's pansy window boxes.  Justine loves gardening and had produced a lot of seedlings and cuttings for sale all of which sold out.  At the end of the day we had made over £500 for Woking Hospice.

 

Last job of the week was to prepare for the holiday by getting my sketching kit together.  I made a pencil case last year from some odds and ends of fabric which holds all my museum pencils as well as a handful of pens and waterbrushes and a pencil sharpener.  I'll take a couple of sketchbooks, the new one covered in the embroidered fabric and a smaller one that I keep in my handbag for on the spot sketching. 

All that remains is to pack my case and catch the plane on Saturday afternoon so I'll say "au revoir et à bientot!"