exploring the mystery of nature with painting & embroidery & mosaic
I’m still obsessed with grasses and tall flower spikes. I don’t think it’s going to go away any time soon. There are so many texture and colour combinations to be explored and every time I go for a walk I see something new – some little seeds or speckled leaves, or textured pods. I’ve spent …
I only found out about “World Embroidery Day” from the Mahila Community on facebook a few days ago – it was started last year by the Swedish Embroiderer’s Guild Broderiakademin. Here is the Embroidery Manifesto (PDF file in English – opens in a new window). I love the emphasis on peace; in a turbulent world, creating …
Stitches are like plants: they grow organically if you let them, springing forth from the fertile ground of furrowed fabric. Texture upon texture, like blades of grass and stems of weeds, clashing and clustering, bending, weaving and tangling, the threads begin to create their own landscape. A wayside border of adornment that casts its own …
The weather has been so warm and sunny recently (hip hip hooray!) that I’ve been feeling the need to use lots more yellow in my textile experiments – to be truthful the urge to use yellow started last year when we went to Andalucia and were submerged into a wonderful world of sunbaked olive groves, …
In recent days, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (not always a good thing!) but this time it’s been helpful. I put all my recent finished work up on the walls and took a look at it, noting down thoughts and feelings and thinking of ways to take things forward and make improvements – …
Today I submitted my offering to the Open Exhibition at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham (MAC). The submission process involved being filmed holding the piece of work which felt rather strange but kind of nice. There will be four curated exhibitions over the summer plus the final open exhibition at the end which will …
My first ever published embroidery tutorial has come out in the summer edition of Workshop on the Web! I’ve chosen to do a two-part article on one of my favourite hand stitching techniques – bokhara couching beloved of the makers of Suzani which I adore – do have a look at the article – and …
Here’s an update of my peacock embroidery. It is proving one of those embroideries that never seems to be quite ‘right’ somehow. It started out life as a very tight drawing of a peacock which I painted in inks on silk habutai, having done that it looked dull and contrived so I spread a load …
[wpg] I’ve been planning a large peacock embroidery involving the whole peacock not just the imagery of tail feathers. I started out drawing it out carefully but the composition didn’t feel quite right, I went ahead anyway but after I started painting it out in the silk, the feeling continued and the imagery felt stilted. …
I feel like I’ve come to the end of this particular poppy piece; “Large Poppies” and it is now ready for stretching onto a box canvas. The piece was painted on silk then machine embroidered using free machine technique basically “drawing” with the thread. There is a LOT of stitching! I especially enjoyed doing the …