A Round Robin, Some dye work and a walk in the woods.

Ok, I'm tryng to catch up. This is only a fraction of what I have been doing lately but it's all I've got pictures of as yet.
This picture below, is a felt background which has been made as a base for a Round Robin that is taking place on my challenge site. The idea was to make a felt background based upon the theme of Landscape. Once we have made the background we will post it to the first person on the list. Eventually our background will make it's way back to us after everyone has added their own bit of stitching etc.. I am looking forward to seeing how this works, it is the first time I have held one of these, if it goes well we will probably repeat it on another theme.


This next picture shows, not very well because of the light, apologies, but this is the big bag of fleece I have been dying. This wool is all from local sheep, infact some of them are in the field behind my garden right now. You wouldn't guess the dye is from a drink powder, Koolaid. I experimented and mixed the colours,
The reason why the colours work so well is because of all the citric acid in the powder, it helps it to cling to the wool fibres. Sorry the picture doesn't do the colours justice, as it was taken in artificial light. I've still more to do, but I have some silk to spin first.

It's been a really funny time lately for our family, we had some wonderful things happening with my Grand daughter but we also had some pretty awful times too. This has made it all rather stressful and tiring so today I decided it was time to take some time out. I went for a short but beautiful walk in the woods.

The colour is just starting to turn here in the South of England.

The light through the trees was so beautiful.
I took loads of pictures, I haven't had the time to go through them all properly, but I am hoping to use some of them for inspiration on my landscape work. That'll be on the next blog. Bye for now 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