Bobbles and Mini Poufs

I've been stitching and knitting all over the Christmas holidays and most of my January submission is nearly complete.  For the hand knitting I've been experimenting with ways of creating more surface texture by using different knit techniques as well as mixing different yarns and attaching fabric strips and ribbons to the knitting.   

I've been hand knitting using an adapted Little Butterfly stitch, Daisy stitch, clusters, couching and intarsia to create samples in line with my themes of windows and spiders.  Playing around with scale and 3D ideas, I've knitted some mini poufs inspired by some of the pattern ideas from the fantastic Norwegian website www.pickles.no (who are even are kind enough to translate all of their patterns into English too!).

Machine knitting is still continuing well too.  I've re-visited one of my initial pieces and knitted it again in colours that are more in line with the rest of my samples, with the intention of creating more of a collection, rather than pieces that don't look as if they belong together.  This is a mass of small rectangular machine knitted pieces between 6 and 20 stitches wide, some short and fat, others skinny and long all knitted in various 3ply or less yarn.  Then they have all been individually attached to a second piece of machine knit to create a mass of knit.  I've intentionally left the cast on / cast off yarns attached which fall naturally together.

Bobbles

End of term is in sight!  Today I've been working hard on my final selection of stitch samples ideas and I've been creating stitch swatches, testing out my thoughts and fabrics.  All appears to be going well, the samples look related to both the print and knit; so with a bit of luck there will be some continuity when I submit this project in the new year for review.  Living room is covered in black and grey fabric, fluff and threads.  My last personal date for machine sewing is the 16th December when I finally give in for Christmas and will clear the decks for the tree and festive stuff.  Still hand knitting though, I finished this bobble sample last night and I've now started my intarsia house knit.

Knobbly Spiders

Whilst I'm on a blogging roll, I thought I'd add an update of some of my machine knit experimentations.  It's been years since I used a knitting machine and I have to say that I am just loving it!  I had a not so friendly and rather camera shy spider living in the garage and he inspired me to attempt to create some knobbly knitting:

What can you do with three words?

I've been very remiss and not updated my blog since starting Uni.  Its all been a bit full on to say the least and I've been settling in and working on designated projects and visual exploration through my three allocated words:

• FRAGILE
• URBAN
• TRAPPED

I've been exploring ideas associated with houses, roofs, windows and doors, spiders, cobwebs, ellipses and diamonds amongst other things.  I've been working on Textile Visual Studies, exploring visual language as well as an introduction to Textile Techniques: having now completed screen printing workshops, knitting - hand and machine (and I liked it so much a bought a machine thanks to Ebay!) and of course, my favourite stitching.  Fantastic inspiration by guest speaker Alison Willougby http://www.alisonwilloughby.com/ has totally inspired me and I've been encouraged to do some hand sewing by the girls.  So I've now created a long list of ideas to choose from.   We've got a big hand in after Christmas for print, knit and stitch.  I've finished my print, having established that I will never be a printer, but here is my most successful print, hand painted procion dye onto fabrics.

The Big Knit

I've just finished knitting my hats for the Innocent Drink people for their 2011 The Big Knit initiative.  I've now knitted forty hats in total, the second batch are all the same format, knitted in either stocking, garter, or moss stitch and embellished with a crochet flower.  This time the colour scheme is bright and lairy with lots of clashes.

Grand Grotesque Parade

This week I've found myself working on a local arts project, helping out at a community workshop making masks; as well as embroidering and painting words on banners for the Grand Grotesque Parade; part of the 2011 Bournemouth Arts by the Sea festival

 http://www.thegirls.co.uk/section105788_423515.html. Unfortunately we're away on the day of the parade so won't be able to take part, but I've enjoyed the opportunity of participating, even as a small contributor, on this massive project, with lots of embroidered text and fabrics as well as meeting Zoe Sinclair. I'll add a link to the photos once the parade has taken place.

Summer Assignment - Final Drawing

I am very relieved that I have now completed the summer assignment!  I struggled to find which item I wanted to progress, as none of the remaining sketches and ideas seemed sufficient in their own right.  As a result, after my first attempt to create a set of images from the barn near our holiday cottage in the style of 'Paper Dolls' by Jacqueline Groang; I reverted back to one of my initial thoughts to create a booklet style submission.  I've probably cheated here, as I have included several holiday items in one piece of work.  I've tried books before, with limited success, and this one is OK but I would have been happier to have taken this forward with some type of stitching or additional embellishment, but I have stuck to the brief.  The pages include the re-cycled barn images, along with some sea life, old apple press, and days out in North Devon.

 

Summer Assignment - Fourth Drawing

Nearly there!  This next submission is an observation of Sibsey Trader Windmill in Lincolnshire.  The Mill is a working Victorian flour mill, one of the few six-sailed mills remaining in England, built in the typical Lincolnshire style in 1877 with its onion cap top design.  What struck me most about the mill (and which is probably very obvious) is that is is created by multiple circles: the tower, the sails, wrought iron balcony, mill stones etc.  My drawing endeavoured to capture the circular elements and they are presented here in gradually descending sizes to represent the grinding to grains into smaller and finer elements, ultimately flour.  Initially I created this with randomly spread circles of varying sizes, but I felt it worked better in a more structured style.  I have left this image as black and white, as the windmill is with brickwork painted with tar, and the sails and balcony all white.

Summer Assignment - Third Drawing

This is a collage inspired by our visit to Lincoln and the great wooden entrance doors of the cathedral.  I've taken the simple form of the carved wooden door panelling and presented it in two different layers: the first layer is the larger sized paneling which I have painted using a stencil to create a consistent outline;  the inner flowers are taken from cuttings of the city map, of which we had managed to gather more than one, and the flowers are each created from three layers, from the same map area.  The flowers are folded and layered in half and stuck onto each other, attempting to create a 3d layered image.  The map flowers were inspired by the artist Tracey Bush who creates her images of butterflies from layers of various papers from old books, maps etc.  Underneath all of this is a copy of the Magna Carta, which one of the original versions is exhibited at Lincoln Castle.  The Magna Carta is printed onto tissue which creates a more delicate and tactile paper surface.

Summer Assignment - Second Drawing

And here is my second completed offering.  I had always intended to face my demons and include a 'proper' hand drawn sketch for my assignment submission; and this was probably the most successful of the summer's efforts - a line of ubiquitous beach huts at Fisherman's Walk, Bournemouth (where we hired this year's beach hut).  As a single item I felt it was a little 'lacking' and accidentally stumbled upon the idea of juxtaposing my sketch and the many photos I took in the past few weeks with Niall and Ellis of the Lions scattered around the neighbourhood http://www.prideinbournemouth.com/. 

Using Photoshop I extracted squared samples of the lion's patterns and created a simple, paper patchwork.  I manipulated my original sketch by tracing it and removed all the unnecessary scribbles, simplified the lines and embellished the forms and finally enlarged it on the photocopier, and printed onto tissue paper.  The tissue was overlaid onto the lion patchwork to create the final effect;  the tissue reduced and softened the impact of the patches and created a  specific and historical point in time background for the beach huts.

Summer Assignment - First Drawing

I'm bravely putting up my first drawing / sketch in preparation for the start of Uni.  This collage is of my son Niall and represents probably a ten minute window snapshot of his conversations during the school summer holidays.  I endeavoured to capture his main talking points of fish (both fishing with maggots, hooks etc as well as his tropical fish tank), Lego; his newly discovered fashion awareness in the form of Hollister,  his desire for a Long Board (in old terms fancy skateboard) and a fleeting referral to football (well we were out of season).  This was created with a combination of gouache paint and paper collage with some Adobe Photoshop thrown in for good measure.

.....And yes he truly caught this fish on the fist day of the holiday!

Jemima Bunny

Another summer clean up project is my Jemima Bunny which I have made for my niece's Christening, which is also in September.  This bunny has been made from a very old McCall's Craft pattern 3760 which I've had in my stash for many years.  The pattern is most definitely a throw back to the 1980's with vast amounts of fabric used for the dress; so I've tried to bring it up to date at bit by reducing the clothing fabric by half and given the bunny some contrasting fabric inner ears.  The dress, pinny and bloomers are sewn from a selection of co-ordinated quilting fabrics by Modafabrics sourced from my local haberdashers http://www.pinksembroidery.co.uk/index.html.  I'm afraid Jemima Bunny looks a little serious and stern!

Cade Cushion

I'm in the process of finishing off all of my summer projects in readiness for Uni so I can at least start with a clean desk!  This is a gift for my nephew Cade who is sweet 16 this month.  We've named monster 'The Cade Cushion' and Ellis created the design based on her Moshi Monster collection.   He's made from grey fleece with felt embellishments and stuffed with polystyrene balls.

Cookies & Cream

A couple of Smoothie bottles kindly agreed to model a small selection of my Cookies & Cream 2011 collection.

The Big Knit

My one and only follower has complained about the lack of posts on my Blog!  Do not panic, I have been beavering away (as well he knows), and I'm working my way through my draft sketches for my FdA summer assignment and hope to post the final outcomes shortly to my blog (or at least before I go to Uni!).

In the meantime, as a bit on the side, I've been doing some knitting for the Innocent Drink people for their 2011 The Big Knit (see their website http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/bigknit/).   I much prefer knitting little things so I've been knitting hats for their smoothie drinks and my creations will be bought by some poor suspecting persons later this year.  I've named my current collection 'Cookies & Cream' and as you can see in the photos the colour scheme is chocolate themed.  Hoping to move into more lively colours if I get time, I particulary like the knitted flowers with beaded embellishments, I've knitted these 'in the round' with scraps of double knit, which saves having to sew the seam at the end!

Summer Assignment

Here we go!
Create five 'drawings' reflecting places, people and things you encounter during the summer.  Gather all sorts of ephemera to help and inspire you.  Drawings can be figurative, or a series of impressions, shapes and colours, or you can build them up with collage using various layers, textures and materials.  They could also be a combination of these, whatever you feel best represents your interests.

Off to do some brain storming!

Bunting

Still testing out the blog and how postings and pictures look and feel on the screen, I'm also playing around with the screen formats and I have just spotted the labels field too. 

We have a beach hut booked again this year for a week, so far weather has been OK, from a sewing point of view I made some pink bunting for the ballet girls!

Starting Out!

Testing the Blog!