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.

 

A YEAR OF WEAVING

It's more than a year since I reported on my weaving exploits so I thought it was time for a catch up.

Weaving has become a passion for me and I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can interpret the things I see into woven textiles. 

This cushion for my granddaughter Steph's birthday last year was inspired by her geological slides of rock formations which I have already drawn and machine embroidered in previous years.

Kirsty, my eldest granddaughter, was setting up home with her partner Barney so I decided to make them some special place mats for her birthday. The words are their Instagram hashtags and they loved them!

Youngest granddaughter Sarah is a nature lover so her cushion depicts her beloved trees.

My sister Juliet came to live in France last year so her birthday cushion was designed to go with her new red rocking chair.

I have a subscription to the Weavers, spinners and dyers journal and some of the articles are very inspiring, the one about Saori weaving in particular caught my eye.  For this process the idea is to weave using a variety of different textures and making it up as you go along.  I used the colours of my garden as inspiration for this cushion starting at the bottom in winter and going through the seasons right to the walnuts near the top.

Living by the sea is wonderful and every time we walk on the beach I come home with a head full of ideas and this method of weaving lends itself perfectly to these wavy lines.  This was daughter Joanna's cushion this year.

Last year I made Jo a cushion to go with the new sofa she planned to buy for her renovated kitchen.

Just for a change I had the idea of making covers for the cute tins our tea comes in that are far too nice to throw away.  I had a lot of fun working in the strings of beads I acquired in a charity shop at Christmas.  The make lovely pots for pens and crochet hooks too!

This year I made Kirsty a cushion cover inspired by a sunset at sea.  She had taken me on a virtual tour of their new apartment and I spotted that her bedroom was decorated in burgundy and gold colours so I came up with this design.

I knitted the throw in the background using more of my yarn stash, lots of fun working diagonally and knitting in each square as I went along.  It's very cosy with a black velour backing.

I made myself a new shoulder bag from an old plain one with a weaving using some of the lovely blue yarns in my collection for the front.

Steph asked for a bag as well to use for her shopping trips to the local farm shop and I was delighted to make this using some fabulous wax print fabric for the lining.

This wall hanging was inspired by the ripples left on the beach when the tide goes out and I have incorporated some shells gathered on the shoreline.  They are attached to the yarns using a hot glue gun.

Well that's all the weaving so far but I have been experimenting with tapestry after buying an instruction book a couple of months ago.  I'll share what I've learned with you next time.

By the way, apparently Blogger is changing how you get notified about my blogs and in future I think there won't be any email notifications so you'll have to keep an eye out on Colours in the Breizh on Facebook instead. 

A bientot!

 

TREES, TREES, TREES!

Did I ever tell you that I have always loved trees? 

I love to observe them in their natural habitat and to interpret them in drawing and stitch.

We have a deodara tree in our front garden, first planted about 15 years ago that is now nearly as tall as our house.  This year I decided to make images of it for my family Christmas cards.

These first two are free machine embroidered in three different greens on some sun printed fabrics.

This is hand embroidered in thick yarns on to a black linen background.

The background for this one is something I made a few years ago, dyed interfacing that went all crinkly and produced those lovely lines that look like a wintry forest.

Earlier this year during the lockdown I decided to make a little wall hanging from a photo of trees taken at an arboretum I visited with Justine last year, it's woven on a small pin loom.

My granddaughter Sarah is also passionate about trees so I made her a woven tapestry cushion cover with a forest on the front.

Last year I used another photo taken at Winkworth arboretum to make this autumnal tapestry.

This is an earlier attempt at embroidered weaving, it's a bit rough but was useful as a learning process.

When we go away in our camping car I'm always on the look out for interesting trees to depict in hand stitching, done while we're away as a sort of postcard to myself. There are lots more but I'll post them another day.  

Have a very happy, safe Christmas and lets hope for a much better 2021.

 

A DAY OF WEAVING

Last week I treated myself to a day of one on one tuition with Georgette Meyer, a weaver I met at an art exhibition last November.  She lives about an hour away in a pretty house in the countryside with her studio in a separate building.

I was shown around her studio which houses three looms of varying sizes and an incredible stash of yarns in all colours, piles of finished blankets and mountains of works in progress!

Georgette started me on the smallest loom and explained the basics of weaving with 4 heddles, the parts of the loom used to make different patterns, operated by 4 pedals.  It took me a while to get the hang of using my feet to press down on the different combinations to make the designs.  I had to borrow a pair of thick socks so I could easily slip my feet left and right to change pedals.

I was using a boat shuttle that holds a bobbin of yarn to make the wefts, it's easy to change colours in this way as you just lift out the bobbin and put in a different one when you've used up the previous one.

Georgette was a patient teacher and demonstrated the different patterns then left me to play till I got it right!  We added lots of different textured wools and even a twig from the garden.

I couldn't stop smiling all day and even had a little tear in my eye when the chevrons I'd been working on suddenly came through correctly. The day included a delicious lunch cooked by Louis, Georgette's husband and although I was tired by 5 o'clock I didn't want it to end.

Here we are posing with my day's work, a beautiful wall hanging that just needs the fringe knotting and a twig to hang it from to be complete.

 Here it is, now hanging in the lounge at home.

Of course I had to have a go when I came home and I've had a lot of fun on my frame loom playing with my yarn stash and practising the various weave patterns.  I had picked out these colours after seeing a beautiful dawn sky.

Now I'm wondering what to do with these pretty pieces, I haven't got room to make them all into hangings so maybe I'll cut them up to make into cards for birthdays or Christmas cards.  I've got a box full of these hot colours so I've plenty to keep me busy!

UP-CYCLING BOB'S SHIRTS

 

My weaving addiction is keeping me busy and recently I decided I needed to make something to display my holiday stitchpics on.  I wanted to use the soft blues of Bob's old shirts and some green linen from my stash along with some cotton yarns.

 

I cut up the shirts and kept the collars and button bands to use later and started to make strips from the fabrics.

 

I used a rotary cutter on a cutting mat to make even sized strips approximately 2 cms wide.  I found a pale blue net curtain donated by a friend and some green organza to add variety to the collection.

 

I set up the loom with pale blue cotton yarn and started to weave a 35 cm square, luckily it just fitted on the loom although it was a bit tight as I got near the end.

 

Here's a close up of one of the 9 squares I made over a week of afternoons;

 

And here is a square auditioning for it's future role as a background for my favourite holiday stitchpic.

 

I think this is going to turn out well as the colours complement each picture perfectly.

 

I machine stitched around all the edges of the squares to keep the weaving secure, cut away the surplus ends and then machined them together into a metre square.  I used a slice from an old sheet to back the piece and then I used the collars and button straps to edge it.  The collar stands became the loops at the top to hang it to the rail.

 

Here it is completed at last ready for the next step.

 

I have hand stitched each picture to the hanging and left plenty of space for future embroideries to be added.  It will soon be hanging in the hall, as soon as I can persuade Bob to drill some holes in the wall for the rail!