Finally Some Fibre Art...

I'm totally perplexed by this image. It's a shot
of the back, showing the doodle quilting,
but the piece is backed with BLACK!

I went to our regional SAQA Central Canada meeting a couple of weeks ago and among other things we had a trunk show by Al Cote.

Al is a very interesting and talented gentleman! He explained one of his techniques, which he offers as a class, and it sounded like a lot of fun so I'm giving it a try. I can't be sure I'm doing quite what he described, but if not, it was a great springboard to get me back to my studio.

These are a few of the pictures I took while working on the early stages of the piece. Hopefully I'll have more to share soon.

Eye Think Eye'm Addicted...

Here are a few more sketches of eyes...

...this will be it for a while so that I can actually get some of my favourite drawings done in thread sketches.

Oh Baby, You're Hard to Capture!

As I said in last Wednesday's post, I think I prefer drawing older, wrinkled people's eyes, but I wanted to capture some babies and children too.  I'm finding them so much more challenging with their perfect, smooth skin.  I just don't have as much to draw to get their mood on the paper.

Sometimes Wrinkles Are A Good Thing...

I'm back today with a few more drawings of eyes...

As I continue drawing these close up sketches of eyes, I'm finding that my favourites are the older people with all of the lines and wrinkles in their faces.  They've got such interesting character, and all of those lines seem to make it easier to capture their expression and mood.

It's All In The Eyes...

In addition to all the doodling I've been doing in my art journal lately, I've been doing some drawing in preparation for machine doodling of more eyes. If you're interested, you can see some of the eyes I've already machine sketched/doodled here and here.

Have you ever noticed how many fascinating faces there are out there?  I find myself looking for interesting faces everywhere...in my own collection of photos, in magazines and newspapers, and online...

I can't tell you how much fun it is to sketch close ups of eyes, and then just sit at the sewing machine and draw them in thread...it's becoming a bit addictive!

Here are a few more sketches I've done:

I can't wait to make some time for sewing so I can get these done in thread!

Machine Doodling 'Celebrate Who You Are'...

Last Friday I posted about how I created the beginnings of this piece which I've called 'Celebrate Who You Are'. Today I want to show you the next steps in this on-going 'work in progress'.

Using an off white thread, I stitched the lines from Sue Pelletier's Loose Woman #1 stencil over the image on the fabric.  I intentionally used a very loose stitch line, going over each line two or three times, to create a very 'imperfect' doodled line in keeping with the text on the piece.

 I outlined the text boxes and loosely traced over the text.

Here are some close up images of various parts:

 

And the finished focal piece in it's entirety.  I plan to mount this element onto another quilted piece, and then add some hand stitch and maybe some beading.  Hopefully I'll be able to show you the finished piece in the near future!

More Thread Sketched Faces...

I am having so much fun with these eyes/faces.  There's nothing as fun as doodling with a sewing machine!  Here are the next few faces I've finished.

I can't wait to get back into the studio to do more!  An idea is beginning to brew in the back of my mind for how I might use these in a larger piece.

And Along Came A Spider...

Well, it's finally done!  Each time I did some hand stitching on this piece, more ideas for additional hand stitching just kept popping into my head.  Ultimately, I've done way more hand work on this piece than I had initially expected to, but I just love how it turned out.  A bit of machine quilting/doodling and a few finishing touches (hanging tabs, embroidered binding and the fabric covered hanging rod), it's finally time to hang it and move on to other things.

I should tell you how it got it's name...I kept thinking it would be Indigo 'something', but nothing came to mind that made me happy.  Then one day, while looking at this section my husband said it looked like a spider web. I had done a lot of hand stitch in the darker areas, leaving the light lines created by the string or elastic bands that had bound the fabric during the indigo dyeing process.  They did indeed look a bit web like.  And then I saw the spider just sitting there (see him in the red circle?).  I did some machine stitching to further bring out the web and then hand stitched over the spider to make it pop.  So you see, one day the spider did literally just come along!                                                                                                                       

BTW, Michelle, the fabric was adhered to the hanging rod using the transparent Paverpol.  There, I've finally used some of it!

Finishing The Painted Bag

The paint is dry and it's time to do some free motion doodling on this painted piece of material (click here to see how it was started)!  I decided to use black thread. Using the circles as the centres of the flowers, I machine sketched petals to create simple flowers.

I got so carried away making the bag that I forgot to take pictures of the process.  As it turned out, this layered, painted fabric is just too stiff to work for the fortune cookie bag.  It simply didn't have the flexibility to fold as it should so I decided to leave it as a small clutch.

 

Machine Doodling on White...next steps...

I finished the next stage of this piece (you can see the first post about it here) so that I'd be able to take it with me and work on the hand stitching while sitting in the hospital with my aunt.  I used Tsukineko ink in black and spring green.  When using these inks on fabric, they need to be heat set with a hot dry iron!

The next step is to add lots of French knots in the green and then decide what to do with the white areas.

Machine Doodling on White

I was doodling on paper and suddenly thought 'what if...' so I used my light table to transfer the design to some white fabric and then I machine sketched over my pencil lines with black thread.  My plan is to do some painting and then hand stitch to add texture.  I'll share as it progresses...