Stupendous Stitching...

After having seen a beautiful piece of art done by my friend Diana, I took Carol Ann Waugh's online class, Stupendous Stitching.

I started out as the lessons suggested, first making my stitch bible and then I got into the couching and decorative stitching (you can see some of this in this previous post). This is where I just couldn't stay the course...

As is so often the case, I started to stray from the lessons and play around with my own ideas.  I cut away a bit here, machine appliquéd some pieces on there...etc.

I then cut away the two side strips and because I just can't seem to waste anything, they became another small piece that you can see here.

What I had left was then layered over a larger black piece of fabric, hand stitched and quilted to within an inch of it's life, and then I added some beading and buttons on the lower part as well as big, fun buttons on top to create the hanging loops.

Here are a few detail shots:

 

And here is the finished piece:

Pathways

This was such a fun piece to work on.  It started with an interesting piece of handmade paper that was created by wrapping some variagated fuzzy yarn around a frame.  The resulting piece of paper was dimensional and had an intriguing lacy texture.

After auditioning a few fabric choices I settled on some of my purple and blue hand dyed pieces to bring out the colour in the yarn used for the paper making.  I used a duel sewing machine needle to quilt some random pathways on the main background piece and then attached the paper using some more machine stitching.

From there I created some beaded lines that I had going in and out of the various holes in the paper.  Some additional lines of fabric were included and some accent buttons were added to them. 

I wanted an asymmetrical piece, so I added a few more pieces of the hand dyed fabric to create the piece that hangs down from the right side of the finished piece.  They were embellished with some accent buttons, coordinating threads and beads.  Finally, I added some hand stitching, using hand dyed variegated threads, to create some more pathways as well as added texture using the seed stitch and a few cross stitches on the smaller squares and rectangles.

 I love collecting interesting bits of wood when I'm out in the kayak in the summer, and I thought this one was perfect for hanging Pathways.

Thanks for visiting today.

Sneak Peek

 Sadly some sort of a computer glitch has caused all of the images in this post to disappear, and I am unable to correct the problem.  Sorry!
It seems like such a long time since I showed you any fibre art.  Well, it's not that I haven't been working on any, but rather what I've been working on is taking a long time.  I thought I'd give you a little sneak peek at what the piece is starting to look like.  Here are a couple of close-ups of two different areas on the piece.



A few years ago I bought this little package of buttons at the dollar store and there were a few 'rejects' that had only 1 hole, or in one case 3 holes.  That might be a problem for a seamstress or a tailor, but for me it was a great windfall.  Isn't this one fun with the stitching and little beads in the centre to fill that lonely hole.

Hopefully I'll be able to post the finished piece in the next week or so.  I hope I've piqued your curiosity. :o)

Connected By A Thread

...or maybe that should read "hanging by a thread". LOL

Inspired by the 2012 ONN (Ontario Needleworker's Network) theme 'Connected', this evolved as a bit of a journal piece.  All of the felted squares are connected by a path of beads that seems to be wandering about without any real purpose or direction.  Some areas have been cut away to represent things that are falling apart and they are barely being held together by haphazard threads.  The buttons and safety pins are an attempt to further 'hold it all together'.