SerenTex meeting

 

We had a very good meeting as usual and above is a little taster of what you will find on the SerenTex website.

London

 

This is the Albert Hall in London. The choir, Cor Maelgwn which my husband sings with, took part in the 1000 voices concert. It was a wonderful concert.
Friday evening my husband had booked us seats to see Les Miserable because he'd been unable to get seats for Mama Mia which he knew I really did want to see. He did this 2 months ago without telling me and it was a really nice surprise.

 

Here is the choir before the concert started while people were still walking around. They surround that wonderful pipe organ. We were not allowed to take photos during the concert because it was being filmed.

 

Here is Marble Arch early on Sunday morning. Who would have thought that the London Marathon was just beginning a very short distance away.

 

This is the side view of Marble Arch with the lovely shadow of the tree on the wall.
I did spend a very short time at the Victoria and Albert Museum and managed to see the Hat Exhibition which brought back so many memories of hat wearing occasions. I also had a quick look at the Jewellery Gallery. I bought a book on this exhibition at the V&A Book Shop and 2 small Indian printing blocks.

Doodles and Owls

I was reminded of this mask I made years ago when the task for a new Doodle Day Yahoo group I just joined is owls. The mask is from one of the stories of the Welsh Mabinogi and is about a beautiful maiden made out of flowers who was turned into an owl for deceiving her husband.


When I doodle it's usually some curves of the wrought iron type or leaves on a tree and I found it more difficult to doodle on a set topic. But I will make and effort to doodle whenever I can.

Embroiderers' Guild North Wales weekend

Before I start to tell you about my wonderful weekend at Plas Tan y Bwlch, I'd like to thank friends for their comments on the last two posts as I don't think I'm going to have time for personal replies this time.


The weekend proved to be as exciting as I expected it to be with a wonderful tutor like Alison Mercer. Go and have a look at her new website as soon as you can and you will have a real treat I promise.


My finished books.
Over the weekend she gave us so much information and tuition on making a variety of handmade books. We started on Friday evening by making concertina books, then followed Perfect Stab Bound books and Perfect Bound Books on Saturday, with Butterfly Books this morning. I did my best to keep up with the young ones and did manage quite well until this morning when I failed to complete my Butterfly Book. It's part done and I hope to finish it this week.


I think these books were made by Heather and shows the Butterfly Book I failed to finish. I will post more images when I have time.

I shall show you some of the wonderful work done in the other two classes later.

Plas Tan y Bwlch

This afternoon I off on a course at Plas Tan y Bwlch, a learning centre in North Wales with our Embroiderers' Guild group. i'm taking a Book making course with Alison Mercer as I have done more than once before. She is very inspiring. Alison is a tutor at Coleg Menai in Bangor and also an artist in her own right.



These are some of the things I need to sort out to take with me and as you can see, they are rather red biased. My intention is to make a journal called 'Mainly Red'. This is a project I'm doing with a group started by Dijanne Cevaal, but as we are all such busy people it's taking time before we have anything to show. Hopefully after this weekend I will have done quite a lot of this project.


This is the beautiful ATC that arrived yesterday from Sue (Bleiweiss) and below another lovely one I received from Rosaland Hannibal.


I always try and include URLs in my posts, but as I'm rushing this morning I won't.
'See' you all in a few days. BTW there's a new post on SerenTex and you will find most of the websites from this post in the sidebar.

Lutradur

This is what we did with Lutradur at SerenTex this afternoon and I'm going to share the method with you. It's another very simple exercise which beginners can do.
The piece of fabric I made is large enough to make a postcard and a couple of ATCs.

You will need -
A sheet of white polycotton
Backing such as wadding or felt
A piece of Lutradur 30g. (all these the same size)
Prepared sheets of paper painted with Transfer Paints
Aqurelle pastels or Inktense coloured pencils
Spray bottle of water or paintbrush and water
Stamps and black acrylic paint on a pad
Iron and ironing pad
Parchment to protect the pad and iron

With a very hot iron colour the Lutradur by placing parchment on your ironing pad then the sheet of Lutradur covered with the painted sheet upside down on top and another layer of paper to protect your iron. Iron carefully, checking often in case the Lutradur melts. You can move the painted paper around on the Lutradur to eliminate any white patches.


Now stamp your white sheet of Polycotton as you wish using a piece of foam or wadding covered in black acrylic paint with a tiny amount of water added with a stamp of your choice.


When this is dry, colour in whichever parts of the design you wish, then spray it all or use a paintbruch dipped in water over the pastel marks. This will spread like watercolours.



I love the effect where the paint blurs and spreads like these leaves. this is something I intend developing and using for other types of textile work.


This is the one I started yesterday and the Lutradur was laid over the coloured fabric. and the 3 layers pinned together, and then stitched with free motion embroidery. I like to add a 4th layer, a nappy liner at the bottom. This helps to make the fabric move smoothly when machining.
I was not happy with it at first because it looked a bit 'twee' and delicate, which had not been my intention, so I placed another sheet of painted transfer paint upside down over the top to add further colour to the Lutradur. this is much better. now using my 4x6" frame I find the best placing to make a postcard and ATCs.


Tomorrow I hope to show you what the latest looks like.

Easter

This week has been a good one and I seem to be on a roll. I want to do it all, not just one muse seems to have visited me but quite a few of them. My head has been bursting with ideas of all the things I want to do, but of course there's only so much time! Pity, when I have the time all these wonderful ideas will have been forgotten.


I've been reading everything I can find abut Lutradur and I have the great CD by Marion Barnett and Dijanne Cevaal which was so helpful. And my friend Sue Martin in Australia sent me handouts she'd used for a class. Above is my first piece of work with this fabric. I had used it previously as pages for a book, but not an embroidery. This was one of my designs that I printed out, layered and stitched. It will hopefully become a book cover next weekend.


I tested different paints and colours and recorded them for reference. I still need to try burning with a heat gun and soldering iron.


I think this one is ready to turn into postcards or ATC's.



Both these are WIP. Tomorrow I have a SerenTex meeting and it is my turn to introduce something new and of course it's going to be "Lutradur".

The Estuary

We've had good weather here in Wales the last couple of days.


The castle looks striking on a bright morning like this.


Now, are they admiring the view? I don't think so, my neighbour, our gardening expert on the right is in discussion with the Gardener which is why the garden, which is very difficult, being on a slope, always looks so good.


The tide is very low this morning.


But the colours were absolutely beautiful a little later.



What a wonderful time the hang gliders must be having looking down at it all.

The Right side of the Brain

I visited Creative Kismet today and found this video. I found it well worth listening to. Five years ago a friend of mine suffered a stroke which she still has not recovered from, she's still in a wheelchair and cannot communicate. This video has given me an insight into how she must feel. It takes about 20 minutes to play. It is the astonishing story of brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor. She had a stroke and shared her experience at a TED convention. Read about it here, she puts it far more eloquently than I can. Creative Kismet » Blog Archive » Our brains and our energy

Having fun

I've had so much fun cutting up my painted papers to make two collages of a vase of flowers. They had been doing this at a SerenTex meeting which I missed. See it here . Sue was in charge of this one and she suggested making black and white photo copies of the work and cutting them up to make further designs.


There was no need to go and photocopy them when it is so easy to convert them to black and white on the computer.


The computer could cut them for me too using the crop tool, which is so easy to slide around to find the best design. I cropped a few to play with and this is the one I liked best.


I played around with this small image in PaintShopPro9 and got this which I quite liked.


I played some more and got this, which I liked even better.


Played some more again, liked it and cropped it for a better design. I feel sure this one has possibilities.
Below are my Easter cards for the grandchildren this year. These did not turn out well I'm afraid, but Charlie who is 2 loved his, so it was well worth the trouble. the flower card for Amy used a favourite design I created a few years ago.

Texture

A few people have emailed me to ask how I made this textured piece above. So rather than write to each one separately I promised to explain it on the blog. It's really very simple.
I used Baby Wipes which I found in a bargain bin. When I came home I realised why they were there-yes, you guessed, they had dried out. So I opened the box and put the whole roll in a net bag and put it in with the wash. A few days later the roll was dry. Wet Wipes or any other type of cleansing wipes will work just as well. You could save your used wipes in a plastic bag for a period of time, then wash in a net or by hand.

To make a piece about 10" square I used 4 sheets.

Paint the sheets randomly with inks or leftover dyes, which is what I used here and leave them to dry.
Lay a piece of coloured cotton or poly-cotton on a plastic carrier bag, and paint it over with slightly thinned PVA glue. Using the plastic means it will peel off when dry.
Now take your painted Wet Wipes and dip each one in thinned down PVA before crushing the sheets in your hand and dropping them on the wet fabric. Accetuate the creases and folds as much as you can to create the texture, pressing in between each crease with your fingertips to stick them to the fabric. Overlaping the sheets slightly, so they will become one whole sheet when dry.


The next step involves painting the hollows and folds with matching colours of acrylics and metalic paints such as lumiere.
When these layers are dry they should peel off the plastic. Cut snips of organzas in bright colours and punch them in here and there with the embellisher or a felting needle if you wish.


Free machine stitching finishes it off nicely.

More work from the felting class

Here's part of the class at the Gallery in Conwy in action! All busy felting. The quality of my photos here are so poor. Rushing around, I forgot to change the settings on the camera. I'd been taking photos out in the sunshine and also taking clos-ups of various things outside.


I don't think I had a photo of this when finished.




The two above were my favourites, felted by two ladies sitting next to each other.


This one is very successful too and will become a bag. but the one that shamed me is this one! Felted and finished! By one of the youngest in the class who had come with her mother as it was the school holiday. She also completed loads of felted beads and gave me instructions on how to make them. She stitched her bag while it was still wet and below you can see her stitching it and below that, the finished bag. What will she be like when she reaches my age?