Barkcloth to Artcloth Project

I have made a rather last minute contribution to a decorated piece of barkcloth for the Barklcoth to Artcloth project. - a collaboration between Textile artist Bobby Britnell and shoe designer Janet Middleton to promote awareness of the 'Hands Up for Uganda' Charity. The idea is to for various contributing textile artists & enthusiasts to create embellished pieces of Barkcloth from Uganda which Janet then makes into shoes (art shoes not functional). These will then be exhibited  at the forthcoming ICHF (International Craft & Hobby Fair). You can find out more about this, and see some of the inspired creations here on their facebook page.

Sian Martin (my tutor) has asked Distant Stitch students to all contribute a feather which will  then be applied to a embellish a piece of the barkcloth, and here's my little offering. I used a piece of my hand dyed cotton which had a bit of patterning that looked featherish. I used stitch and tear to stabilise it so I could free machine the feather shape - Lesley's October workshop was handy for this!  Then I cut it out, leaving plenty of edging around the sides and particularly the tip so I could fray this back to the stitch line. It's about 9cm long including the frayed tip.

It's a shame I wasn't more aware of this project earlier (had my nose to the grindstone so been a bit oblivious to what's going on around me!) - this is a great idea and it would be fab to submit a Stitches Coven group effort wouldn't it? There's still a little time as the final pieces do not have to be in until the end of January 2014. What do you think ladies - can we all make a little motif over the christmas period? if so what motifs shall we make?

 

 

 

Fabric Printing Roller from The Painted House

Stumbled across this useful tool today and I think I'll give it a try soon.  Anyone already used a 'printing roller' from  this company?  Have you got any advice for me?

I really love what they've done with these simple yet sophisticated cushions.

There are many different patters to choose from and some I see having lots of potential for adding further embellishment to, limited only by your imagination really.

Right, must get back to my bookkeeping now that I've had my fix of textile design!

This is how the company presents the process:

Machine Embroidery Explorations with Lesley Thomas

Our October workshop tutored by the lovely Lesley Thomas of Itchy Fingers Textiles group was a great success. Here we were encouraged to ''unleash the creative possibilities' of our machines by trying numerous machine embroidery techniques.

Lesley proved to be a rich mine of creative ideas and useful tips and techniques, and it was great to be able to spend a whole day playing with our sewing machines - a luxury we often can't afford :)

Here are a couple of  of the samples I made with free machine embroidery which is great for making line pictures.

The sample on the left was made by sewing over a magazine image, so the image you see is stitched with the bobbin thread. This would be a great technique to use from your own photos printed onto thin copy paper.

The sample on the right of a somewhat fanciful butterfly was drawn freehand using a Pilot Frixion pen before stitching. The ink disappears with heat and was removed by simply ironing.