Forest challenges!

We unveiled our latest challenge offerings at our last meeting. Our challenge was Forest and the results were, as usual, very diverse.

Helen created a really clever book, called Wingding Forest. She used the wingding letters for "forest"  in conjunction with images. It came in this stylish case:

Here's the cover:

and pages:

The three-dimensional leaves in the book were made from fabric with an overlay of painted sinamay, which made them textured and stiff. Sinamay is a fabric often used in millinery to stiffen hats.

This one is the forest image that Helen has digitally manipulated.

Brilliant!
Maz was still working on her felted piece, that she made on the embellisher. 

It's going to be a book cover when it grows up. During the meeting she finished the edges  with buttonhole stitch.

Nola finally finished another challenge, her second for the year! She made a handbag from the fabric she was painting last time :

The bag top and handles are from another fabric she painted for the purpose, and then drew lines to resemble bark. She says it has all her favourite features - an outside pocket, long straps and pouches inside to hold essentials like wallet keys and mobile phone.

Carol's forest challenge was inspired by the elves of the forest in Lord of the Rings. It's a very delicate wire and bead headpiece.

She began with the idea of making earrings that would stand above the ear, but technical challenges made her change to a headpiece. I think it works really well!

Bev was still working on her Forest challenge too. She had laid down strips of different fabrics on a base she painted earlier, on one of our painting days.

She's not quite sure what she'll do next!

Our task for the day was to progress a few postcards. Helen was working on a piece of canvas work embroidery, which will find its way into a postcard in the future.

Nola was looking at various postcards. She wanted to add a little colour to this one which has been hanging around for ages.

She subtly altered the colours using her Inktense pencils and now it just needs to be backed ready for swapping. It's another Forest piece - she seems to have a series happening! She also drew lines on some painted pieces.

 This one had some heavy stitching at the bottom, which she didn't like, so she took it out.

She also painted on this one, which had been stitched on before.

Plenty of postcards to come for our swaps!

Maz was working on two postcards she'd made on her embellishing machine.

This one looks like it should be part of the Forest challenge, too!

She was also making some more Dorset buttons. These are so pretty!

Helen chose our next challenge, Let's Go Geometric, which is due at our first meeting in October. She tells us she isn't going to use her trademark rug canvas work, "because that would be too easy"!

A quiet day in July

We had a quiet day for our second July meeting. It was a day when it was hard to get motivated and some people were haunted by gremlins! But we did have some work to show for our day together.

Maz did an ATASDA workshop with Felicity Clarke on the use of her embellishing machine,  in mid July and she brought along the samples she'd made. In this one, they used the embellisher to create a motif in fibres on a felt background.

This sample shows different techniques to make a heart shape. They look very effective mounted together like this.

This one has various yarns and strips of fabric embellished onto felt.

This one uses various kinds of fabric.

Then they were encouraged to try out some of the techniques they'd learned, using some of the materials to hand.

This one has woven felt as the base

This one uses different fibres and ribbons, onto a sheer fabric.

Maz doesn't have any immediate plans to use these samples. They're more for inspiration when she's using her embellisher.

Carol was busy making a bag for her Japanese martial arts equipment. She decided buying a bag was boring, and she could make one that was much more interesting!

She investigated Japanese symbolism before deciding on the motifs she wanted to stitch in Sashiko on her bag.

Nola was working on her Forest challenge. She took one of her painted cloths, which she'd drawn on after painting. It looked like this:

She painted it with Setacolor paints and by the end of the day it looked like this:

I wonder where she's going with this?

Maz was also working on her Forest challenge:

No surprise that she's been working on it with her embellisher! Hopefully we'll see more at the unveiling next meeting.