Geometric Piece & Gardening

As promised I am posting the finished geometric piece I have been working on. I feel there is a lot potential for further designs using this technique so this is how I will be working for a while.

Close Up.

I like the dimension of the relief of this way of working. I also like working with both sides of the embellished felt.

Gardening in July.

Well, the last week it has been sweltering, I don't know how I have been coping with the heat as well as working in the garden but it has been worth it once you look at the results.

Van Gogh eat your heart out, beat this for a sunflower picture.

The Californian Poppies have been wonderful this year and I was so thrilled to see this little gypsophelia pop up beside; this was a favourite of my Mother's so I look at it and think of her.

Many of the flowers in the main border self seeded from last year, this is what I like, flowers for free. That lovely cottage garden effect.

I love Morning Glory.

I spent two days tending the strawberry beds, boy did they need tending. Weeding, and training the new runners, I was shattered, I finished 9pm the other evening.

Graham's beloved pumpkin is doing well, should be a good one ready for Halloween.

Last but not least, this is only the second year that I have grown garlic. I have two trays full, like this drying in the greenhouse. We have two crops of onions, yellow and red. Our tomatoes don't seem to be suffering from that awful blight that plagued us last year so lots of pasta on it's way. Must get back to work. BFN Tricia

Flower Pin Cushion challenge and work in progress.

These are the drawings I made for The Flower Pin Cushion Challenge from my Challenge site. The Challenge was to make a pin cushion with a stylised/geometric/art nouveau design to it. The first one above is of a Love in a Mist flower.

I then went on to make some studies of various other flowers, foxglove, penstemon and aquilegia. I became quite interested as always by the division of a circle, I found myself looking at the back of the aquilegia and noticed how the petals are divided. I then made a simple pencil drawing but the final design ended up to look much more like the water lilies on my pond, so I went along with that as it seemed to work very well. Not absolutely satisfied with the end result but I am quite pleased with the colour considering that I don't usually like working with bright pinks. Strangely enough I am more pleased with the green around the pink which I added a little silk to as I felted it.

Work in Progress.

Ok, as you can see I am back to my circles. I love geometry!

Being still quite new to the embellisher I am still experimenting with it to see it's possibilities. The piece of felt below was made by using up scraps of mainly brown felt, felted onto a wool blanket that I dyed a nice shade of pink. I then felted some chiffon headscarf material on to the back of this which was a combination of blues and golds and pinks. The beauty of working this way, I feel is that I make a piece of felt and then not only does the work from behind give the piece some nice unifying colours but also once cut into the shapes I want to use, I find that I can then use both sides which are slightly different but that compliment each other, as I hope you will see by the smaller pieces I have placed over this one, see below.

I hope that you can see the subtle change from the front and back. The back is the chiffon material and it is the smaller piece. I have done some machine embroidery onto this fabric and purely by accident in a way the rayon which was in the bobbin which was a shiny cream thread inspired me to embroider with some silvery thread around the outside of the top circle. The lower, larger circle is not so distinct and has a bronze shiny rayon machine stitching on it.

Here is a close up so that you can make out the differences between the two layers.

It is going to be very much a layered piece with the material alternating from back to front being used.

Another close up, this time of the petal features.

I haven't got all the petals motifs finished yet but you can see the idea of how it will look when it is finished

Well, I can honestly say I am now working in a manner that I am happy with. I feel that I need to make a series of these. So I hope to post some more and I will place the finished article here when done. B.F.N Tricia

Brillante Weblog Premio 2008 Award

Today my good friend Judy from http://cjstitchingandblooms.blogspot.com/ sent me this email after she had nominated me and 6 other's for the above award.

Hello Tricia,

Your blog is very deserving of this award, and I look forward to seeing who you pass it on to. I love all your wool felting creations. I have been wool felting off and on for a few years, if you would like to see what I have created in felting you can find them in my OLD blog posts. Hugs Judy

I don't know what to say except a very big thank you, after reading all the other blogs who were nominated yesterday too, I do feel honoured to be in such good company. Judy does so many craft things she makes some adorable quilts and friendship dolls. she is very deserving of this award herself. Thank you Judy, I really appreciate it. Now what am I meant to do? Lets look at the instructions below:

The rules for receiving this award are:
1. The winner can put the logo on his/her blog.

2. Link to the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.

4. Put links of those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the people you’ve nominated.

Well here are my nominees, I can say it has been very hard to decide, but for me these are the blogs that I feel really deserve this award:

http://www.artbybethrobinson.com/

http://suebleiweiss.typepad.com/sueb/

http://hebartjournal.blogspot.com/

http://malinaplass.blogspot.com/

http://thefabricofmeditation.blogspot.com/

http://postcards-and-stuff.blogspot.com/

http://doreeng.blogspot.com/

http://www.blissfulexpressions.com/fairywebmother.htm

I have nominated 8, I am not going to tell you about these blogs as I do beleive that the fun is to explore for yourself, I hope you enjoy your journey into their lands as much as I do.

Tif Challenge June: Stories

I want one.
Well, you can't do for one and not the other, it was always the same when my daughter was growing up, now she is grown up she isn't jealous of her brother anymore but my grand daughter had a bag from me last month for doing so well in her gymnastic's competition and when she saw it my daughter said those three little words. "I want one"
Of course it had to have her name on it too, just like my grand daughter's. Well, I did have some fun with it. I used my new toy; the embellisher. Well, I didn't have a pattern, I started with an idea of making it somehow geometric. I began with squares with the idea of a patchwork.
I used some lovely linen which I bought at a fabric sale recently, on this I embellished some silk from behind. The effect I wanted and managed became very soft and furry a little like faux suede. One of the silks is an orange shot silk and I noticed by embellishing this a lot the colours of the orange almost seperate as they are weft and warp after all. the other silk was an old hand painted silk scarf. the effect was amazing, it was like creating a new fabric.
Here is a close up of the silk scarf needle punching that I did from behind. I embroidered her name and the surround of this oblong in my own hand spun silks
I used curtain rings and a cut down chop stick for the clasp as I liked the wood with the linen. I also used the wooden curtain rings to attach the strap.

There is a story behind this bag. I have always been interested in symbols and symbolism. I think sometimes I almost think in symbols. As I was making this bag I was thinking how difficult it is when you live so far away from family. My daughter lives up one end of the country and we now live at the other end. I know at times she would like her Mum and Dad to be near by, when things go wrong it would be nice to be able to help each other.

Well, this made me think of how I felt when my own Mum passed away. I was trying to come to terms with feeling very lost, we had been so very close for many years. This feeling of being lost I remember articulating in one sentence, I can remember saying to someone, "it's as though I have lost my compass and I have no point of reference anymore."

I felt I put something very special into the design of this bag because the circle and lines around the circle symbolise the points of the compass but I have also placed some of them to one side. It's like saying we may not be near by but we are still here. We live our seperate lives but we are still part of the same family. All the squares in the bag fit together and this symbolises a kind of unity even if we are apart for much of the time. I am going to tell my daughter to read this when she receives the bag as I am sure it will hold a lot of meaning to her too.

Well, I may be late with my June Tif Challenge but better late than never.

Back to my roots

Well as we start to eat our way through this seasons growth I began to think of things that I did when I lived in Kent and when I was studying art, oh many moons ago now. Well, I have been walking up and down the garden a lot lately watching the veggies grow, subconsciously, I kept looking at the colour of some of the greens we are growing. I know I have seen them all before but I kept thinking how lovely. Then it reminded me that I once did a whole project based on colour theory using the humble cabbage as a starting point.Some of these greens are not even green in places I know this often happens, I can't tell you why, it's as if some of the larger leaves lose some of the chloraphil and it's almost like when autumn comes, it's usually the larger flatter leaves nearer the base of the plant that turn a beautiful colour.
Even the green ones are beautiful with the light behind them, showing the all the veins in a wonderfully architectural way.

It's when the leaves change from green to yellow and then to red that it fascinates me. Oh how I wish plant dyes were stable. How to reproduce these colours, colours of nature, colours that we can easily overlook if we don't take time to stop.
How beautiful are these?



Ok we know our onions!

yes we grow allsorts, I just love vegetables, but that's me.


we grow flowers too, in the front half, but talking about flowers, I heard somewhere that in the states, they grow runner beans just for decoration, I wonder if this is true, what a waste, they taste so good too.



Our Marrows are on their way, or if I get impatient they will be courgettes.


There was point to this blog, before I got carried away with my veggie pictures. Well, back to my roots is simply symbolic for me, I think as an artist I need to go back to creating and not worrying who it's for. My daughter says I won't compromise but there again she sees things from a business perspective. I don't make good art when I am thinking about who is going to buy it, so instead of trying to please everyone else I am going to be true to my artistic nature and please myself. I am going to study nature and colour and textures and what aesthetically pleases me, if someone buys it great, but if they don't at least I'll like it. so back to my roots means to study, research and enjoy. We'll see what comes of it and time will tell if I was right.