ATC HELP!

How do you finish the edges of your textile? ATC's?I've been working on some for the EG meeting on Saturday and I just can't work out how to finish off the edges!

I will photograph them but its for a secret swap so can't show them till I've swapped!

Other thing thats stumped me was coming up with suitable ideas for that scale!Abstract definetly works better in this situation.

So, my question to you is:
How do you get your inspiration for you textile ATCs, and how do you make them? I can't see how to layer fabric ones to make them stiff or edge them or anything! HELP!

Latest Challenge

I've finally found some inspiration for my latest Textile Challenges piece.

The idea is that we all take the same theme, the three same basic ingredients, and then work our own piece from those details.

The theme for this challenge is Windows and/or Doors and the ingredients are; Paint, Fibres and recycled/found objects.

Thats our starting point.We can add to the ingredients but am a bit stumped as to where to start. I have my inspiration which is a photo of the nearby gatehouse of one of the nearby gatehouses of the York City Walls:
I just don't know where to go from here! Its getting very frustrating!

Thankyou.

I just wanted to say thankyou to everyone who took the time to contact me in regards to my post about my Poppet.
Please let me assure you my reasons for wanting to lose weight are purely of my own making.
its all about reboosting my own self confidence and the fact it will be benifical to my health.

My self confidence seems to be busy somewhere else half the time and things ranging from my social life, to my appearance and even my art skills get focused on to the point of me being unable to see things objectivly any more. The poppet is an effort to remedy this! I've also found a picture of me I like and am putting it in my wallet.

This is it :

It was taken about 2 years ago now, before the sciatica left me bedridden for several months and made me gain more weight. If I can get back to that I will be content.

My little Poppet.

PLEASE NOTE: This post contains some of my personal religous views. I am a Pagan.

While looking at Dotee's blog (for she is the queen of the mini art doll!) I saw her tutorial on making the most adorable little art dolls.

While I plan to make some like hers, I suddenly had the idea to make myself one, a Poppet if you will.

A Poppet is a sort of spirit doll as well as being a term for a small child or doll.
In some parts of the UK is continues to still mean this though it has also been adopted to describe a doll used in magical practices - BUT this is catagorically NOT a voodoo doll.

They are used for healing and for luck, or are at least in the circles in which I am involved.The use of Poppets is an age old practice, the poppet itself is similar to a luck charm only much more powerful.

I've made myself a Poppet to aid me in my weight loss. I have an ongoing battle with my weight which makes me miserable much of the time. My beloved reminded me that he finds me beautiful whatever size I am but it makes areas of my life ranging from my confidence to my love life and exercise very difficult.

This poppet is to remind me of my purpose in losing weight.

I chose lovely but thin purple cotton fabric as it is a) my favorite colour and b) it represents Spirit, Progress, Success, and the Breaking of Bad Luck.

The shape is a basic doll shape and represents how I feel about my figure.


I did one of my beaded polymer clay faces as I wanted the serene quality it conveys and I am terrible at drawing/stitching faces!

This is one side of the poppet while still on the frame. In the central cartouche is the following:
The serene face. I need to come to deal with my weight and learn to be serene about it.

A heart to represent Love. This is rather important. This is what is behind all other things that this poppet represents and is what will hopefully drive me to succeed!

The spiral represents Rebirth - not literally, but losing weight and regaining fitness and the activeness in my life is a rebirth of a kind!

A symbol that represents losing weight.

The bottom symbol resembles sex. An odd thing to include I hear you wonder, but any of the larger ladies who read my blog will understand how weight can impact on your sex life!

This is the other side of the poppet while still on the frame. This represents the sort of figure I want to achieve. Basically I just want to achieve a healthy figure, not get particularly thin!I LOVE my curves...i just wish they were selected curves and not the running theme for my entire figure! It has the symbol for weight loss in the centre of it.


These two pictures show it made up into the completed poppet. I've done a beaded hanging loop (not visible), and stitched a dragonfly charm to the bottom - its become my sort of symbol these days! I also did a beaded trim around the seam.

The project was stitched in Rajmahal Art Threads in shades of purple. I couched the Raj threads to the surface using two shades of DMC. This was the first time I've done couching and I am rather pleased with the effect!

I also did couched beading for this project which is a good technique for items that aren't really going to be used that much.This is more of a visual object - Something for me to look at when I feel the urge to give up dieting!

Look what I got in the post!

Mary B, I will bring the felt melt pieces I've done to EG next month!

I have flu :( I appear to have aliens hatching creatures in my sinuses and my nose resembles rudolphs...and joints i didn't know I have ache!

I finished the embrodiery on my bowl! The photo was taken without flash as you lost a lot of detail with the flash but the colours of the bowl are much brighter and the beads, for the most part are metallic.


Jessica in the states sent me a package of goodies! We'd had a chat a couple of months ago about cornbread - I'd had it when at a USAF friends house and hadn't had similar since then! - and on wednesday or thursday (I had a fever and they days were a bit muddled) this parcel turned up at my door, completly unexpectedly! Not only had she sent me a squishy she had sent me a whole host of cornbread mixes! I've made one so far and some spiced honey butter, which my beloved has been very happily sampling!

I also recieved this gorgeous ATC (My first for my collection!) in the ATC swap part of textilechallenges Felt Melt Challenge. Mine is almost ready to be posted...I haven't been well enough to get it organised....am very sorry!


I will hopefully, as soon as I am fully recovered, be able to do some more stitching, get some things posted and generally get back to something resembling normality - or as close as I ever get to normality!

Update

Arlee did something in a graphics program and sent me a colour adjusted picture which makes it easier for you to see things on the bowl!

Melting Felt!

About three weeks ago Carol invited me to join her textile challenges group. We get monthly challenges using textiles and we interpret it our own way. Some of the ladies have done amazing things - I've only got as far as the sample stage and am not sure where to go now....

This month we have been doing The Felt Melt. This is melting Kunin felt to which you have applied some sort of resist with a heat gun to make a lacy effect. Kunin is a type of acrylic felt. Am trying to find a local supplier at the moment as they only seem to sell wool felt around here!Carol helped me out by sending me some and here are my first attempts! I made mine very lacy.


This was using black felt with purple acrylic for the resist.
This piece is sky blue felt. The resist is PVA glue in an overlapping crosshatching sort of pattern.

This is my favourite piece. Green felt with swirly patterns, again using PVA glue as the resist.

This was using gold acrylic paint and PVA as the resist on black felt.
This little piece is ATC sized. I have a couple more pieces I've done but camera batteries have died again!

I need to make one of these into a ATC but really don't know what to do!

Any ideas as to what I can do with them?

Brooches and Bowls.

Wouldn't you know it? I had the whole weekend planned including some serious blog posting, and what happens?! I end up spending the entire weekend feeling decidedly under the weather!

Anyway I mentioned in my last post about the felt bowl I made at my evening class. Well, here it is! Its made of merino wool tops, was formed over a ceramic bowl, felted and then saturated with PVA glue. Its stiff but flexible and holds it shape well. I've trimmed the edge so its not whispy any more and have started stitching on it.


This is looking into the bowl - the on show surface if you will, its
This is the base of it. Most of the stitching shows mostly here so may sew a net ruffle or something to the back of it.This is a side view to give you an idea of the depth of it.

So, what do you think?


These are some brooches I made. The first one is going to be for my little sisters 24th birthday next week (she doesn't read this so I am safe for the moment ;) ) Can you guess her favourite colour?


This second one I made in purple and violet. It was origionally intended for myself but while at a reenactment training weekend a friends little girl decided it was destined to hers when I finished it so, as it was her birthday that week I sat and did lots of stitching on it, backed it with some commerical felt and then put a brooch back on it. She was very happy! (and her mum plans to nab it as soon as she gets bored of it!)

More pictures soon!

Wooly Bowls

Work is going well (Am getting lots of work done and this makes my supervisors happy) and I've been finding new sources of inspiration for my artwork.

In a recent edition of stitch magazine (the Embroidery Guild Magazine) there is an article on stitched bowls and thats been making me think about fabric containers - bags, boxes, bowls etc.

I have been trying to come up with ways of manipulating fabric to create such containers and trying to think of ways of stiffening fabric to make them.

Can anyone give me any ideas?

I even made a felt bowl at my monday evening class, though I am having to saturate that with PVA and then will stitch on it to get it to hold its shape. Will do a photo as soon as its dry!

The tutorial I found asks for coat weight wool. Unfortunatly my main problem is finding coat weight wool! Nowhere seems to sell it these days. Does anyone know of a source?

More soon!

My TASTal disaster.

Am still fine!Work is talking over somewhat while I get used to being back at work for 8hrs a day (10 if you include the traveling!)

I lasted all of three weeks with TAST! I had such grand plans as well! But with the advent of a 'proper' job there is also the advent of a reality check. I no longer have the luxury of more than an hours sewing time a day - thats if I'm not so exhausted that I don't know what to with myself!

So I have made the executive decision that although I am going to follow the rest of you on your TAST journeys mine has taken a rather major detour!

Shall try and update a bit more now things are starting to settle down.

Am fine!

Just to let everyone know that as far as the severe storms here in the UK are concerned me and mine are currently all safe and sound!

First day at my new job

I'm working for a computer games company. Its a really good place for me from what I've seen so far. Had a really good first day.

Am off to spend the rest of the evening on the sofa watching TV and trying to get some of my TAST sample done!!!

For Your Information...

Posting may become a bit sporadic for a while as I hopefully start a full time job in the next few days!

While this will cut down on crafting time it does mean that I won't be worrying about money and bills so much and I can afford lots of shiny materials like wool tops and tyvek and fabric paints and...and...the list goes on!

So, hurrah for my hopefully rejoining the mainstream workforce in a non shop floor capacity! (I hate shopfloor retail - my back just isn't up to it!).

EDIT:
EEP! I start my new job tomorrow!! This is a little daunting!

More felty goodness!

This is what I made at Monday nights class.

I'd been thinking about it on the way to my class about what sort of colours I wanted to do and I decided I want to make a piece which is relating to the elements; Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit or Aether.

This piece is Fire.
This piece is Air. I've just realised its also the right colours for the first part of Project Spectrum!

Water will be blues and greens, and Earth will be Orange, Brown and Green.
Spirit/Aether shall be Purple because I am making this and as its my favourite colour am guessing that Spirit is probably purple in my book ;)
Hopefully I will be able to make all three next week if I work really hard!


And these are some felt beads I made which will be made into a necklace for my mum.

Am going to wait till I have all the bits of felt made before I start on this project and it also means I won't get too distracted from TAST!

Experimental experiments!

Over the last day or so I've been looking at tutorials for various techniques and getting up the courage to try them. Well, yesterday I did.

This is my first piece of fabric paper that wasn't a unmitigated disaster! After Arlee was kind enough to answer some queries I had about the tutorial, I set to work and this was the result.
I'll add more paper than fabric in my next attempt but its come out pretty well.I have a interesting piece of netting on the front of it.
I used this tutorial by Arlee at Albedo Design Journal.

This is Clingfilm fabric made using FaeryDi 's tutorial over on her blog FaeryDi's Fibre Feats or "Fiascos". Her's seems to have worked better than mine. Mainly because mine didn't seem to be melting together particularly well. At the moment I have fabric in a clingfilm shell and am not sure what I can do with it as it looks like it will all fall apart if I try to cut it or anything.
She was using Saran Wrap which I'm guessing has a different compostion to UK cling film. I am going to try some different brands of Clingfilm before discounting this technique though.

This is a second piece of clingfilm fabric.

This was made using a polythene document pocket. I cut down the seamed sides, opened it up and put bits inside and then ironed it through greaseproof paper. This is a technique my mum and aunt use.
This is a second piece capturing thread in it. I really like this piece.

Finally we have a Bondaweb Sandwich - If you click on the link the specific tutorial second from the bottom. I find it easier to read by highlighting the text with the mouse - Which is acrylic organza with threads inside with the top layer melted through to expose the threads.
Although a lovely effect I achieved this by forgetting to put the greaseproof paper back on the top and getting melted plastic all over my iron.

Anyone know how to get it off again?

NOTE: All the techniques mentioned that involve ironing plastic/sythetic fabrics etc, need to be ironed through greaseproof paper/baking parchment. All substances that are melted can release nasty fumes that could be dangerous to those with breathing problems.

Anyway, back to work with me! Hope you all enjoy these, and any helpful suggestions at what I can try or am doing wrong are greatfully appricated!

Felt experiements

Well, I started off with these:

Sample ASample B
And ended up with these:

Sample A: Hand embellished with backstitch in black and lilac perle, purple metallic thread and wine coloured wire spirals couched on with purple beading thread. Am torn between putting this in my sketchbook or putting it on the wall!

Sample B I used for Machine Stitching experiements. I have a very basic Huskystar 207 which I love dearly but its somewhat limited in its stitch range.

The first two are using Zigzag stitch on the left and straight stitch on the right.

On the right is using one of the ZigZag options which has large and small zigs and zags. The piece on the left was my trying out all three to make a spiral pattern.Of all of these I really like the effect of the regular zigzag stitch the most.


Well, its felt making class again tonight so lets see what I come back with this time ;)

T.A.S.T Week 2 - Buttonhole

This rather minimalist offering is my Buttonhole T.A.S.T for week 2. There are two reasons for this - a) I got distracted by playing with other fabric bits and pieces and b) I really don't like Buttonhole! Its the one stitch that i get obsessive over spacing etc and forget to enjoy stitching it!


On the rows we have;
Top Row L-R: variagated height buttonhole, high low button hole, short buttonhole, tall buttonhole.
Bottom Row L-R: Whipped buttonhole, Two rows facing each other like a zip, slanting buttonhole and two varigated height rows of buttonhole back to back.
In the lower part of the section we have a buttonhole bar in the top left corner, some buttonhole wheels, a button hole flower and on the extreme right a woven buttonhole wheel - the only part of this weeks T.A.S.T that didn't get me stressed or annoyed (I cannot explain why i don't like this stitch, it just doesn't do anything for me!)

It takes up a third or so of the fabric section on the frame so to save fabric I will fill the rest of this sheet with Week 3's stitch. Onwards and Upwards!

The reason i haven't started T.A.S.T. yet is.....

I started playing with thread on one of my felt pieces. It started out like this:



So far I have done 3 black perle double spirals, some lilac perle stars , some metallic purple lines and lots of metallic purple spirals. Its backed with a piece of muslin to stop the threads pulling through and to give it some extra stability.

Am really enjoying this medium!!I love the way the thread pulls down the fibre making it even more textural than it was.
Full detail:
Detail of top left hand corner:
Detail of middle with black spiral, metallic purple lines, and metallic purple spirals.
More metallic purple spirals.
I WILL get started on T.A.S.T. ASAP!

Inspirations

There are two blogs at the moment that I am finding really inspiring!

They are Dianne's FaeryDi's Fibre Feats or "Fiascos" and Carol's Postcards and Stuff.

The first of these is FaeryDi's Fibre Feats. One of the things she's been doing is some very interesting 1 inch square pieces, some textile tags, and some fabric charms! Lots and lots of purple !
I really like format of the 1 inch square pieces!

Postcards and Stuff is wonderful. I think Carol is doing the stitched textiles C&G I am interested in doing. This piece on felt and tyvek is interesting as is this range of pieces. She does really interesting stuff manipulating the fabric with a heat gun.

Presents!

This is the very nice crocheted hat my friend Tinks sent me last week. It is incredibly warm and even more comfy! I really love this hat!

Its sitting on top of the new printer I bought with my Christmas money (BF's printer is dying and mine gave up the ghost some time ago). Its one of those fancy Printer,Scanner,Copier all in one types. Thank god for January Sales or it would have been way out of our league!

Textile Techniques - and the need for people to teach them

This is a bit ranty and I don't apologise for this at all.

So, whilst pottering around on blogs recently I've come across some techniques/materials that really interest me. Felting is odviously one of them!
Some of the others are Needlefelting, Heat Setting Fabric, Using heat guns on fabric, Using embossing powders, fixing dried hot glue shapes to fabric. using glue as a resist for batik type work,Tyvek, free machining and free motion embroidery(is this the same thing as free machining?).

Trying to find information on some of these isn't easy. Its like the information I was trying to find on Fabric Paper - The craft magazines feature them but those same magazines cost around £10 ($19 or so USD. They are all American Import magazines. The UK craftworld at the moment seems stuck on knitting, cross stitch and scrapbooking) - and thats money i need for the materials.

At the end of the day I DO have a limited income (though I am trying to do something about this) and therefore I rely on the willingness of others to teach for the sake of sharing a skill. This seems to be a dying art.

Back in October 06 Rissa did a wonderful post on her blog called Each one, reach one, teach one.
This very simple saying completly sums up my own ethos in regards to education and teaching ( I think part of this is from my Quaker roots) that people with skills should pass them on to those willing to learn. My willingness to learn is overflowing but I can't find people willing to teach!

I can't afford to do my C&G and therefore that route is cut off from me at present. My felt making class was only booked due to some money I recieved at Christmas.

I know I shouldn't but I rely on the willingness of people to share!

Rissa highlights how crafts suffer from fashions the same way clothing does.

Trying to find books about creative textile techniques is hard and the few that the local library have are either missing or have waiting lists that span months. The textile craft section at Borders has been relagated to one bookshelf and they are no longer getting most of the american craft magazines in.

Another problem I've been having is that like a lot of people, I learn by seeing, by visually experiencing a procedure or technique. In this essence, pure text instructions are wonderful but are more likely to go in if they are accompanied with pictures.

The stupid thing is I would happily create tutorials for things but I'm still trying to get access to skills I want to learn!

Excuse me while I go and suffer from creative frustration....

(Please note, I know people are willing to teach these skills for money, and that is their right. I am just saying that there are many willing pupils out there who just don't have the means to learn that way.)

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On a seperate note, I am yet to start the Buttonhole T.A.S.T. for this week as I spent last night helping cheer up a friend who is in the midst of a post breakup low. Hopefully I can get to it later as I need to start embellishing on my felt samples as well!