Our own work

Phew, running a little behind with updates on our activities! Our second May playday had no particular theme, so we were all working on different things.

Bev was doodling, with the idea of making small framed pieces for sale.

I love pattern-making like this!
Carol was working with  more paper serviettes, mounted onto mat board.

This one had been adhered with diluted PVA glue, and then she painted it with watercolour paints.

These ones were laid down over moulding paste.

 They are all intended as the base for future work.

Carol was also cheering up some very basic Masonite clipboards with some paint:

Helen was embroidering as usual:

Nola was painting some bits she'd made from glue and dimensional paint, for her Lost Treasures challenge.

She used her hot glue gun to make some shapes. When she painted them with Lumiere paints, they behaved as if the paint would rub off, so she coloured them with Sharpie pens and then painted over them with Lumiere and Setacolor paints. The first two coins were fabric, adhered together with fusible web and satin stitched. They really didn't look much like coins, even after she stamped on them with Setacolor paints, so she added Pebeo Expandable paint and painted them with Setacolor paints before heating with the heat gun. Some areas puffed to white, so she added more paint and Treasure Gold. Later coins were made from circles of medium weight card, painted with the expandable paint and over painted with Lumiere and Setacolor paints.

We also swapped postcards as usual. Bev's postcard was made from fabric snippets, free-motion stitches and beaded.

Carol made doodle patterns using the programmed stitches of her sewing machine:

Helen's postcard used fabric scraps, pieced together and embroidered.

Playing with paper serviettes

Our second meeting in April was right after Orange Fibre Forum. Usually members come back full of exciting news and thoroughly inspired for another year. This year was a little different because for various reasons, most members couldn't come, and there were just three of us. Our plan was to play around with paper napkins (serviettes) We all have a decent collection of paper serviettes for Artistic Purposes, so we brought along our treasures to swap. The first May meeting was also devoted to paper serviettes, for those who missed out initially.

Carol brought along this postcard for us to admire. It was made in Dale Rollerson's Ratty Tatty online workshop a while back. Carol really recommends Dale's online workshops as great value and full of interesting ideas to explore. The postcard uses layers of the same serviette, a base layer, fused to felt, and then subsequent layers, stitched and frayed. It adds a real depth to the work.
Then we started work. Carol had brought along some mat board offcuts, cut into a variety of sizes, including ATCs and postcards. We had PVC (white) glue and card or old credit cards as spreaders. Nola brought along an old phone directory as a base to glue on. It's an ideal base because, after each time, you can turn the page and prevent glue transferring to places where you don't want it!

When you're working with paper serviettes, it's important to remember that they are usually two- or three-ply. That means there's a layer of printed paper and at least one more layer of plain paper. You can use the serviettes as they are, but you need to ensure that the medium you're using to adhere the paper goes through all layers. Using all the layers results in a more opaque image; using just the top layer allows you to play with layers a little, since the layers below may show through. Sometimes the second layer has a shadow image of the main image, which can be useful. As you can see with Carol's postcard, you can use images from the same serviette, or multiple serviettes with the same image, several times, on top of one another, to achieve shadow or texture.

Carol made this cute cat postcard:

She used a modelling medium under the cats, to make them stand out from the background. The medium takes a long time to dry but the effects are interesting. Nola used the same medium on two similar postcards. You can manipulate the wet medium once the image is added:

This one has quite a lot of texture, especially in the sky for wind effects, but it needed some extra details. She added more layers of the same serviette, to deepen the colours, and some Treasure Gold to tone back the brightness of the colours and pick up the highlights. The wind effects are much more pronounced, aren't they? She also added stronger outlines in some places, to make it look less flat.

For Nola's second one using the modelling medium, she laid the medium down in a grid pattern, before adding the serviette. The grid pattern isn't very marked, although it's still present. It was outlined and rubbed with Treasure Gold, as well.

Helen was more interested in adhering the serviettes to fabric. She made several  fabric pieces, on calico:

She also adhered one to card:

I'm sure we'll see these again, in works to come!

Carol used the same serviette as Helen to make an ATC background.

She later added a Chinese teapot and cups from a second serviette, but hasn't photographed it yet. It was a good illustration of how these serviettes can be used as the basis for other things. She used the same serviette as the basis of a bookmark:

And here are some tiny cards she made, using the scraps of serviettes as a colour palette. Again these make an interesting background to other media. I hope we'll see what she does with these!

Nola used two layers of a simple serviette to make an elegant book cover.

But, once it dried, she wasn't very happy with it, as it just seemed dull and dirty. So she added some

colour with Carol's tiny set of kids' watercolours, bought in a cheap store. Very handy for taking on the road!

It probably will have more exciting things done to it, but it's certainly a good basis for a book cover.

Nola also liked this image of a Fifties housewife and added it to a postcard base.

The shadow behind her looked ominous, so she added borders of tissue paper to emphasise the sense of foreboding.

I'm not sure it's a postcard for swapping, though!
Speaking of swap postcards, Helen brought along this one for swapping:

She looks gloriously ditsy, doesn't she? The stitching really works to set the mood.

Helen also brought along a book she made, from pseudo-vellum. The paper was coated with Shellac, giving it a gorgeous leathery feel and look.

Meanwhile, our absent members returned, with treasures from their week at Orange Fibre Forum. Maz took a workshop with Barbara Schey, specialising in Dorset buttons. During the week, she made this very clever box.

As you can see, the decoration includes the Dorset buttons, but the box is very cleverly constructed as well. Maz also made a brooch from a Dorset button.

 She has several more underway.

Dorset buttons were made in a cottage industry in East Dorset from the late 1600s. "Cottage industry" is a bit misleading, since it suggests a small scale industry. But as many as a thousand people were involved in their manufacture in the heyday of the industry, when the buttons were fashionable and sold world-wide. Many of the button makers were children but, like the spinning and weaving cottage industries, whole families were employed making buttons. The buttons are made by stitching over rings, these days made of metal but probably bone, horn or other natural materials were originally used. You can see some brilliant examples of different styles of button at the British Button Society.

Beverley was also at Forum, and her week was spent with Isobel Hall, making amazing complex layered media. A typical piece might have layers of Crash with fusible web, coated with Gesso, decorated with soft pastels, layered with Mod Podge, painted with alcohol inks, sealed and then coated with encaustic wax. Or tea stained media with acrylic wax, embroidery, and beading. Amazing! You can see her latest books, with Maggie Grey, Mixed Media: new studio techniques, here and a brief bio on the same site, here.

Bev made this beautiful book in the class:

She made a complicated layered & textured background, and added hand stitching. It's absolutely gorgeous! She also made this handbag, yet to be finished,

This book cover included cocoon strippings made into a kind of paper, tea staining and acrylic wax.

 She also made this sheet of mixed media work for later use:

So I guess she had a pretty busy week!

First April meeting

Our meetings in April were rather disrupted, first because of Fibre Forum at Orange and then by Easter. But we still managed to find a time to meet, although we were few in number. Our first meeting in April brought the unveiling of our second challenge, Lost Treasures. You'll have seen some of the pieces along the way, but here is what was unveiled on the day.

Helen's Lost Treasure was a treasure box, made for her, years ago, by her granddaughter. She had collected togather all sorts of tiny treasures in a chocolate box and presented them to her grandmother. There are buttons, a pretty marble, beads, all manner of lovely little things. It really is gorgeous! Helen decided to cover the box in "treasure" fabric and present it back to her now-adult granddaughter.

Nola struggled to get her Lost Treasures done in time. She's making a journal cover, but it didn't come together well. This is what she unveiled on the day.

She's hopeful of things to come....

Carol lost her Lost Treasure. However, she made this beautiful crochet shawl. Made from man-made fibres from a pattern, Exquisite, from Heirloom Afghans for Baby. She had hoped to enter it in a local fair but it wasn't finished in time.


Carol also brought along an experiment she'd been working on.  It was a dye silk cap, moulded over an Ikea vase and stiffened using floor polish. She notes that it's important to use a shape which is larger at the top than the base, or it becomes a probloem to remove it from the mould!

Busy busy...second postcard swap

Fibrecircle has been quite busy lately but unfortunately, while that means we've done some fun things, no-one has had time to blog about them! At our second meeting in March, we swapped our monthly postcards. This time, we had several swappers - Carol even made two! This one is Beverley's.

Does it remind you of anything? Yes, it's made from one of the samples she did for her Language of Thread challenge work. For both pieces, she was inspired by a technique she saw in a Quilting Arts magazine, of stamping the same image onto different fabrics and then combining them together. She tried stamping with several different media on various fabrics, to get the best effect. Once the two fabrics were combined together, she embellished the stamped image on the postcard with machine stitching. The images on the final work also had quite strong hand stitching. It's a difficult piece to photograph because both the fabric and thread have a sheen to them. The back looks like a postcard, but it has a beautiful hand-drawn element as well, which wasn't photographed at the time. The edges were straight stitched and then satin-stitched with a slightly longer than usual stitch.

Nola decided to use a piece of fabric she'd previously painted as the background to her postcard. It looked rather spring-like so she decided to embroider a butterfly.

The image was a copyright-free image from a Dover Press sampler. She resized and printed the image onto water soluble paper, and used it as a guide for the main stitching. The background fabric was layered with thin cotton batting before stitching. Once she was happy with the stitching, she washed out the paper and added finer details to the image. Then she painted the stitched card with Setacolor paints. The card was a bit floppy so she lined the backing fabric with fusible Vilene. She folded in all raw edges and hand-stitched a buttonhole stitch around the edges.

Maz hand stitched her card on a machine embellished foundation.  She turned the front edges to the back and covered them with a backing piece. The card was stiffened with fusible Vilene.

Helen's elegant card was made by stitching free-standing shapes, joined with fusible web and edged with satin stitch. These were joined to each other and the card background with some beads. The edges were satin stitched. 

                       

Carol made two postcards to swap.  Both used paper serviettes as the basis but in different ways. The first postcard  had the serviette adhered to the backing and overlaid with a mesh fabric. Motifs from the serviette were adhered over the top.

The second postcard used a serviette with the same motifs. The serviette was adhered to the background and this was cut apart and reshuffled. The pieces were stitched back together using a single machine stitch. The motifs were attached to a backing, so they sat higher than the surface, giving a sense of depth. Both cards were stiffened with card and the edges were stitched with a machine buttonhole stitch.

These were a good advertisement for our next meeting, when we plan to swap serviettes with interesting motifs and have a play day with them.

Carol was busy sorting loose beads and stringing them. However, this is just her "loose beads" box - it seems she has a lot more other beads at home!

Helen brought along her canvas embroidery piece that she's been working on for some time.

It really is a lovely thing. She was talking about making it into a three-sided vessel, if she can work out the technical challenges.

Maz was stitching on her Lost Treasures challenge piece. It's a lost treasure because she began it in a workshop some time back, and found it again recently.

The background fabric has stamped images of carafes like the stitched one.

Tricia was continuing her Tunisian crochet.

It's a gorgeous scarf, with a selection of different yarns in deep jewel tones. She also brought along another scarf she'd made:

It's so light and soft, I think we all wanted to steal it!

Helen brought along this treasure to show us:

Nola was playing with books. She's making a book cover for Lost Treasures, but she also pulled out her Round Robin book pages that we made two years ago. Her theme was Sailing to Byzantium, so she was sketching various Byzantine motifs that might work on her book page.

Next time, we'll have the revealing of Lost Treasures!