Week #18 - Hoop Dreams

Lately I have been seeing more and more embroidery hoops popping up as clever little ways of displaying different kinds of textile work as well as just being used as a fun way to display different scraps and pieces of great fabric.

So, I've been thinking and dreaming of different ways I could put my skills to use to make a few display hoops, and I came up short as I decided that patchwork and hoops may not go together (although since then I've re-considered that decision).

In the end I thought I would give a simple embroidery stitch a try (with the knowledge that any more than a few stitches would cause me to lose all patience) as well as try my hand a free machine embroidery, another skill I've been meaning to pick up all these years.

So I attempted a little cross stitch, and although what I ended up with may not resemble any actual type of stitching (I think the canvas was too fine a weave for what I was doing), I think these little faces are pretty darn sweet.

I did my second little project on the sewing machine, after being oh so bored from cutting out triangles for actual bunting, I decided it would be much easier to do bunting this way:

I just applied my triangles with steam a seam bonding web, and then freehand stitched around them roughly. I'm pretty pleased with the results, given that the entire time I worked on it I was terrified that I'd get my fingers caught in the needle.

A darning foot is now number one on my to-buy list.

As always, these items are up for auction on ebay, to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Please spread the word and help me raise more funds for Macmillan!

Oh and by the way, I just realised I'm official past the 1/3 way point in the year - that's 18 crafts down and 34 more to go!

illustrator hater

With all the amazing tools and techniques now available in photo and illustration software packages, everyone can transform their photos into digital art within a few short clicks. In some ways these editing suites have opened up art and design in amazing new ways, but the luddite in me acknowledges that these programs now instantly and effortlessly perform artistic process which craftspeople have been doing for years and years.

There is something amazing about taking a process once done by the skill of a good eye and a steady hand, and turning into a effect which takes milliseconds, but there is also something kind of sad about it.

As such, I'm always trying to find ways to mix new fashioned and old fashioned art and craft techniques... which is what brought me to making fabric and paper portraits.

With facebook, flickr, and other sites which let you publish photos online, we all have access to the photos of our closest (and sometimes not so close) friends and family. I love all the ways that you can digital transform these photos, and then quickly print them - but I've been looking for a way to take the ditigized moments and turn them back into something which is textured and tactile.

Thus enter portraits like these;



After first editing images and printing them, I can then turn a posterised image into a set of layered fabrics or paper... the possibilities are really endless, depending on what materials they use - and its a beautiful way to preserve your favourite digtal images in a way which does not require access to a computer or the internet.

here are some of the gifts I have made for friends, family, and customers...

a present unveiled

I am so excited to finally be posting photos of this quilt... Although Lazy Crafternoons often produce things you want to show off and be proud of, you have to keep mum about the things you make which are going to be gifts.

I've been sitting on this work for a while now, waiting until my friend's wedding day when I can let the secret out.

I took this photo a few years ago during Autumn, and was inspired by the way the leaves looked scattered across the patchwork-like tiles.



I actually took this photo, to show off how enormous the leaves were, but when I stood back and looked at the image, it reminded me of a quilt.

With the help of some quilting skills once imparted to me when I was a child, by my great aunt and a heapload of internet tutorials, I have up with a way to interpret the tiles into a patchwork, and then came up with a leaf design which I could patchwork together and them applique to the quilt.

Since it was my first endeavour and I was a bit unsure of doing the acutal quilting, I enlisted the help of a long arm quilting service to finsh off and bind the patchwork. I just wanted it to be perfect, and didn't trust myself to not to ruin it in the quilting process after all my hard work on the front and back.




The back is done with a single wide stripe and a few leaf cut outs so there was an alternative to the busy top... and in one of the leaves I wrote my friends name and their marriage date with fabric pen.



Working on this quilt obviously took more than just one lazy crafternoon, and although my work was inspired by the original photo, it was also fuelled by a wide range of inspirations, much of which came from the quilting forums on craftster.com ... hopefully this quilt can be one little addition to the vast array of works out there, and add to the collective pool of textile creativity!

smoke rings remain...

Since leaving life in the big smoke, it seems that London seems to be constantly on my mind... not necessarily in the sense that I miss it, but I think the city became such a big part of my life, that every new experience I have in Manchester is seen through a comparative 'London Lens'.

Of course, living in London is not just a part of life - Living in London becomes your life... its an amazing beast of a city that sweeps you off your feet and carries you away with its fast pace and pulsating life... so its only natural that now that I have left it, I still notice the imprint its left on my mind.

Leaving London didn't just mean leaving the city behind, it also marked leaving an amazing friend and flatmate - and a turning point in both our lives. I moved north to begin my new studies, and she took that giant leap into property ownership... so what better way to celebrate her new digs, and commemorate the end of our London life than to make her a housewarming gift.

As I become increasingly obsessed with paper and textiles, I was inpsired by some art I saw at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair where one of the artists took a long sheet of what looked like postal wrapping paper, and painted and stiched designs of a skyline into it... I took that idea in a different direction and created a little piece inspired by the view from our former Battersea abode.



Ah yes, I spent many a day knee deep in craft supplies looking out over the inconic Battersea Power station recovering the energy I spent in London while expelling the creativity that the city inspired within me.

The craft is made of a combination of papers and threads, all handstiched together and layered to represent a number of inconic pieces of the London Skyline - can you recognize them?