Portraits

I have been doing a small online course with Kate Thompson. Botanical portraits. Ecodying on paper, making skins of images, adding botanicals . Trying out.

The image on the left of the little girl is my grandmother Bessie Suez Iliff ( née Graham) . The  name Suez is because she was born in the Suez Canal on board the boat Coomassie as her father my great grandfather was the captain.

Red Cat

I really loved stitching this small picture of a red cat , blue jug , yellow daisy. Inspired by the works of Janet Bolton. I have started clearing and cleaning in my studio and have a big box of scraps. So all pieces were dragged out from there.

The Eyes Have It

Today I’ve been stitching eyes. Firstly as I have been following the TextileArtist.org challenges. This third one is with Emily Hull and it’s all about stitching an eye. The first point Emily makes is to observe. Really look at what you are drawing and then putting to stitch. So this is my Emily’s left eye. I took a close up photograph and then looked closely at the photo. Little white reflections, pink bits and the eye lashes going in all sorts of directions, unlike what you’d expect.

Much harder than I’d thought it was going to be. I really had to slow down and still needs more to get other lines and more fill in.

The second eye is this wee doily which had the three tiny eye lets already in the centre of it. They looked to me like a face two eyes and a rounded surprise mouth. So just worked with it to give a more kitch style of face.

A bit creepy now that I look at it in a photo. I think I will add some black fabric to the back of the eyes.

Pin doll

It was a joy to spend time this afternoon of Good Friday 2020 making this small pin doll using a pattern from @annwood. She offered this free pattern this February for her second annual scrap festival. Ann offers some patterns as well as others she finds online to share. All with the plan to use up scraps. They are used , but with such small amounts I am not sure that any space has been noticeably cleared.

I had all the scraps, lace, braid, felt, wooden face bead and wool roving hair stashed away somewhere in my studio and today it all came together. Quick and easy to make. I sewed her completely by hand.  Not sure if I can now stick pins in her though.
The wooden bead was probably a clown face bead , not sure at all where I obtained it from , but I think it looks ok with this little pin doll. Not sure if I planned to make a clown as some time.

What I’m doing now

Right now it is officially the first day of the school holidays. Usually for me this time is spent trying to relax after a stressful and busy term, flitting from one thing to another such as cleaning, tidying, cooking, trying to relax, mending , finishing projects as well as trying to engage my creative mind to producing something that I really want to develop.
So now I find I’m already there, this enforced time of isolation and staying home has meant I have slowed, my mind is clearing and open to new ideas.
So this is what I am working on now. I acquired all these white or off white squares from a friend @merodybuglar who was collecting fabrics to make a postage stamp quilt. She was given these whites so maybe she doesn’t want white in her piecing. So I’m randomly piecing by hand, eye balling the small maybe quarter inch seam. These are then tacked down using Jude Hill’ s method of treating seams to be flat. I have really held and touched gently each of these squares. Mostly about 2 inches square. Larger ones were hand stitched over paper , to make octagons. Smaller ones or random shapes went into the wee joining squares.

I am not sure where it’s going. I might dye these two pieces when stitched, together in a plant dye pot of avocado, eucalyptus or onion skin. I might hold on to them until I can get to an indigo pot to dip them in. I might embroider words or symbols on.
The brown heart is from some ecodyed  cotton , folded using origami technique and then cross stitched closed. Not meaning for it to go here but it does look good on the squares.

More scavenging

This shows steps 5 and 6 on my scavenger hunt quilt following online instructions of Heide Parkes.
Step five was the moon at the bottom. There were several conditions with this including colours that reflect being a night or a morning person. So being a morning person I chose a greeny yellow that indicates the beautiful freshness of a new day. The long curling  frond is the tail feather of the lyrebird. This addition needed to reflect an animal or nature which has some meaning for you. I have always felt an affinity with the Australian Lyrebird. They are shy, they take on board others songs . My Aunty Joan lived in Churchpoint in NSW and had lyrebirds in the wild bush of her ‘backyard’. This is in the 1950’s and 60’s. I inherited a book The Lore of the Lyrbird that was written by a naturalist.   ( not sure of his name ) . She wrote to him all about her backyard elusive visitors and he sent her a signed copy of his book. I also recall the special moment of seeing one in the wild while walking at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains.
It was with the addition of these two items that I went from simply enjoying the process to actually liking my quilt.