Sujata Shah shares her "why" with Kim Soper as part of this week's installment of The Creativity Project. 52 interviews, 52 weeks. Don't miss it!
If you haven't tried making fabric scrap twine before, and if you have an abundant stash of fabric remnants, then there's no time like the present.
A Textile Designers guide to the art of Fabric Manipulation to use in simple craft projects
Happy New Year to all my followers, friends and family! I hope it is creative and fun. Last year was very very busy for me and culminated in a two month residency at Atauro Island which was an unforgettable experience which stole my heart. The coming year is going to be almost as busy, but I will actually be in Australia quite a lot more. I hope to be able to build an ablutions shed at some stage this year money and time permitting, as I will have to get a workman to help me do that- having no tools or building skills. I think I have worked out what to do about the skylights in my shed which make it incredibly hot in summer- too hot to work. But meanwhile I have decided to rewrite some of my Travellers' Blanket on-line class, as my stitching has progressed since I first wrote it and ideas have progressed as well. I will be offering this class starting 21 January and it goes for 4 lessons delivered fortnightly as a pdf file. The cost of the class is $75AUS.I set up a private Facebook group to share information and images and I keep the group opne for quite some time as stitching a blanket takes quite some time The idea of the travellers blankets grew from the notion that if you travelled in times past and you wanted to make a memory cloth to record what you had seen you would snaffle fragments of fabric to detail your journey. The idea has grown and the blanket I am working on at present is of sea urchins. Urchins studded the beach on my dawn walks on Atauro island and I love their shape and patterning- so in a sense it is a reminder of those walks and the feeling that watching the sun rise evoked. In a sense anything can be made into a travellers blanket.It is a visual form of story telling which dictates its own pace and reflections. I call them blankets because someone referred to one of my quilt art pieces as a blanket- so that was grist to the stone! Email me if you are interested in joining the class and I will send you further details , how to pay and a materials list. The images are of work/travellers blankets I worked on in 2017. The blanket above was exploring embroidery to encapsulate the idea of communities, in particular indigenous communities which are whole systems of information. The blue travellers blanket is quite large and is a journey through the years of printing and linocutting I have been doing since I began with textiles as my full time work. The piece below is inspired by the urchins encountered on morning walks on Atauro island. There is a lot of colonial knots on this piece!
Using yarn in unconventional ways to make decorations and art is one of my favorite things to look for as I have quite the yarn stash. This idea for weaving on a branch is sooooo cool. The shape of…
The textile industry has changed a lot over the past few decades. There used to be four fashion seasons a year; now there can be as many as 15 to keep up with, depending on what store you’re shopping in. In the past, apparel was made to last. Pieces were lovingly mended and repaired instead of thrown away. Clothes are now often priced so low that it is almost too easy to accumulate more than we could ever wear, and send trash bags full of unwanted items to thrift stores or the landfill. In fact, according...
Happy Monday! We are starting the week featuring an extraordinary textile artist! Meet Vanessa Barragao! Growing up at the seaside, she uses the connection to the ocean as an everlasting inspiration for her artworks. Her work features captivating coral reef environments in which she merges and combines crafts and recycled materials and by employing old techniques such as latch hook, felting, macramé, knitting and crochet she brings life to her unique and luxurious sculptural carpets, rugs and tapestries. Visit her instagram and site for more of her eye-catching work.
Hello there, beautiful people! Today's collection of DIY tutorials is inspired by mother nature and her miraculous creations. Aren't butterflies simply amazing?
Our embroidered felt insect banner would make really cute decor for a kid's bedroom or playroom. Just follow our pattern and tutorial!
Dzisiaj pokażę Wam serię pocztówek, która powstała wiosną tego roku, starłam się by wszystkie z elementów były dodatkowo postrzępione.
It seems impossible that we’re just over halfway through January already, which means I have completed 18 blocks of my stitch journal. top right, January 2022 I worried that it might be a cho…
As I scrolled through Instagram on my phone while I had breakfast (we all do that, right?) I saw that @berry_birdy had put out a fun new challenge. Each May, Lesley hosts the Micro Mini Stitch Along #microminisal where we get to play and create little quilts, no bigger than 8" square. The challenge set yesterday was called "Treasure from Trash". We were to use only scraps that were in our bin. Fun! As my sewing room bin was emptied the day before for bin night, I had quite limited scraps available to play with. I only had little bits and pieces that I'd trimmed when preparing rainbow applique blocks (you can see these in my previous post). With a small piece of batting from a previous project, I started out by creating a background. I placed pieces down to cover the batting and sewed some very "rustic" lines to hold everything in place. Last week, I watched some of the Making Zen video classes and one class was by @southerngals_designs. In the class, Tiffany showed us how she uses the teeniest pieces of fabric, glue and thread to create an eye. She then uses these little eye panels on other projects. I set out by cutting the white piece and blue pieces of fabric to make the basic eyeball shape. The upper and lower eyelids were then built up using teeny scraps, held down with just a regular school glue stick. Once I was happy with the layout, I roughly went over the eyelids and sewed the pieces in place. Now for the fun bit, adding hand stitches. Rather than cut thread to add some little decorative stitches, I used to use embroidery floss regularly and would keep the spare threads which I'd split from the floss, in a little pocket in the floss tub. These were great for this project. I had lots of colours available to use and I had two strands of black. Perfect! I added straight stitches, little crosses and outlined the white of the eyeball in black, which kinda looks like eyeliner. I was thinking of adding eyelashes, but figured I should stop before I got tooooo carried away. I added a small piece of fabric to the back (from my scrap bags) of the piece and sewed right around the edge (rectangle). Pinking shears finished it off. The piece measure approximately 2.5" x 5.5" and I had a lot of fun making it. I'll probably end up using it as a bookmark. This image shows the scraps that I had left over after this exercise. They're now back in the bin... unless another trash challenge is set. If you're interested in the Micro Mini Stitch Along and checking what everyone is making with their trash treasures, you can find it on Instagram by searching the hashtag #microminisal.
Sunday morning I played around with new stones thinking they were going to be grey but perhaps because it is the bleak mid-winter the stones turned a warmer colour. This piece is inspired by Mark's paintings of stones disappearing under water. He is brilliant at that. For both of us scenes like this bring up whisperings of summers spent on beautiful Georgean Bay. For those of you in Toronto don't forget The Artist Project at the Better Living Centre February 21-14, 2019 Mark Berens will be at Booth 506. Strips of plant dyed fabrics soon to become rocks. By Sunday evening I was happily couching away. I have based the background onto an old blanket and it is like stitching butter. The one thing about this kind of stitching is it allows for mind wandering and as I stitched these delicious rusts and browns my mind whispered memories of my beautiful Rusty Pups They are dearly missed As are their antics and adventures. And then as I prepared this post A photo demanded to be noticed So much like my new stones. I have a teacher who always says the piece you start next should always be informed by the last piece you did. Perhaps this means my next piece will have to be seaweed in the colours of my Georgean Bay stones. But I already have soooo many new beginnings just started! But my mind is flowing with ideas on how to go about a seaweed piece. It is so easy to have many ideas isn't it The days just aren't long enough for their execution! I hope you have a day rich in creative ideas.
