Experiment

Quite a few of you have asked how I transferred the leaf in the last post to the fabric and as it was quite a while since I did it last I had a bit of a play this evening. I have called this a Tutorial, but it isn't really it's more of a hit or miss, but do have a go. It's fun.





The first time I tried this I used Bondaweb. Carol and Sue from SerenTex introduced me to the idea using petals and more delicate leaves.

It's quite a simple method and not new. Below is the method used if you want to save your leaf or petal until you need it.

1.Sheet of greaseproof or parchment paper. (Thanks to Jo for noticing error which I have now rectified)
2.Layer of Bondaweb.
3.Leaf or flower petal.
4.Another layer of bondaweb.
5.Sheet of greaseproof or parchment to cover.
6.Carefully iron on medium heat, preferably without steam.
7.Leave to cool before carefully removing the paper.
8.It can now be used when needed by peeling off the first layer and ironing onto the fabric.

When I went home I had a 'what if' moment and tried these thick and juicy leaves I had. It was more fiddly as the juice was coming out of the leaves around the edges and because they were so thick they separated into two thin layers.

Method with the juicy leaves starts with instruction 2, putting a layer of Bondaweb directly on the fabric without including the backing paper.






These are the leaves I used for my experiment tonight all are fresh from the plant. I understand most of them are of the Begonia family and the leaves are very juicy. I also used white fabric for clarity, rather than the transfer painted fabric I used previously.


As I didn't have any Bondaweb this evening I experimented with Heat n Bond sold for quilters and used for applique. It is not like Bondaweb, it's a little more dense perhaps. This is how it turned out. As you see it came apart in two thin layers and was able to use both with some additional bonding on one of them..


Here is a closeup of one part of the bonded leaf, as you can see the veins have gone.


Here are some more results of my play tonight. The top left corner was the most successful as it was not as juicy as the other leaves. The rose petal was done using Misty Fuse which was ideal for a delicate petal.
Bottom left corner is one saved from the original experiment way back and used Bondaweb.
As you can see from the enlarged image, bondaweb works better, the Heat and Bond leaves a slight deposit on the leaves. But with more heat and some experimenting might turn out well.

Relaxing day

I feel sure I must be the only one in the UK to be online blogging today! It's such wonderful weather compared to our normal wet and cold days. I went for a long walk this morning along the beach at Rhos-on-Sea, so I don't feel guilty about staying in with the Windows wide open to catch the breeze.


These photos are some I took yesterday of parts of the machine that stands outside the Canolfan Grefft Rhuthun - Ruthin Crafft Centre Visiting the craft Centre was the main attraction of my visit to Ruthin in the beautiful Vale of Clwyd, North Wales. But I take photos of this machine each time I visit, finding different angles each time. This time it was covered in cobwebs and I felt it was telling me how important it had once been and how pleased it was that I was taking photos. I have tried to find out more about it as it had 'Rd Kitchin, Warrington' stamped on it, but I'm none the wiser I'm afraid.


I was very pleased to find that Cefyn Burgess was working in his studio and was his usual friendly self and did not seem to mind I picked his brain about the merits of various Embellishing machines. He has such a busy schedule and today for a change he was having a playday and trying out various things on his embellisher. His studio here is well worth a visit.

Rozanne Hawksley has a solo exhibition here until May 31st. It was not the first time I have seen her work, it has been exhibited with 'Art of the Stitch' and also at the 'Knitting and Stitching' shows. I was fortunate enough to find Rozanne herself there and was able to congratulate her on the wonderful work. Lovely to see it altogether in one place. Ruthin Crafft Centre


Now we come to my little efforts the last couple of days. This is a piece of poly cotton that I have Transfer Painted. I'm going to do some FMO and we'll see how it turns out.


This is a quilty for Alis, I have to warn her not to look at my blog if she wants a surprise. This is again Transfer Painted, but this time on Satin fabric. Then I used a method that I haven't used often with fresh Begonia leaves and Bondaweb. Sometimes it works, others it fails. this one I'm more than happy with. It's been finished with some FME and zig-zagged to neaten.

Deganwy Promenade Day

It's another beautiful evening and the sun is on the castle, but I have just noticed that there are no flags on the poles. I must make sure they put them up to welcome Julie who is coming to stay in Deganwy this coming week.


Tonight there was a race in front of the flat. I was told there were 100 runners and I expected to see them like the London Marathon a whole crowd of them together, but instead they came in dribs and drabs like this.


These look strong runners.


But here is the best of the lot, a friend of ours who has taken part in marathons all over the world. He has just looked up and seen me with my camera which made him smile.


Here is the Alphabet postcard I made for Carol this morning.


This is a wonderful piece of real art I got from Linda this morning. She's called it 'Window on the Moor' and it's inspired by a photo she took when traveling by car on the moors. It's a Mixed Media piece on canvas.


This is the Journal I received from Iris of Three dogs, two kids, one husband, but no sheep!!!!!! this morning and it is just the thing to carry in my bag as it is so lightweight and has a soft beautifully textured cover. The patterns for the journals are Iris' and can be found on her blog here - Mailer Styled Journal

Journals

Here are my finished journals using the fast and furious fabric in my last post. I hope the people who recieve them will be pleased. Did I tell you that I had made a mistake and made 6 other journals previously using paper and stitching? I then realised that this was a swap using fabric, so had to make 6 more. They are now going to be a few days late arriving at their destinations of Canada and USA, but the ones in the UK should be on time as I will post tomorrow.


It's been a beautiful afternoon here and I know you have seen the castle and bridge many times before, but it was so clear today I couldn't resist showing you another.

Fast and Furious

This long piece of fabric was made during the last few days. A lot of work, but all done at a fast and furious pace and such fun. I went into my bits bag and chose a bunch of fabrics in the colours I thought would look good together, ironed them and cut them with my roller cutter into strips of various widths. Out came my threads and I picked the ones that were almost finished, the same with my bobbins. I had run out of bobbins when I needed to use a new colour and there were so many with a little thread left. The strips were laid randomly and stuck down lightly top and bottom with a glue stick. These were left to dry before starting to stitch. I rolled the strip up from one end and used all the stitches I fancied from my Bernina stitches to join the fabrics together. Now that was fun!

You may be wondering what on earth I'm going to use this for? Hopefully they will be used to make covers for the Journals I'm making for a swap with friends from the Surface Design Yahoo Group. A few years ago I made a bag using something similar.


This is a detail of my latest strip.

Good weather

What lovely Bank Holiday weather we've had, the best for a good while I think.


This photo was taken this evening of the Quay Hotel at sunset.


Another photo taken tonight.


The castle in the evening sun and below the castle at 5.30 this morning. It was such a clear morning. If you look at both photos you will see how the shadows have changed.

The estuary at night

Here is the full image that the last piece of work was based on. (It's worth a click to see the larger image)


This quiltie arrived this morning from Pat O'neill. It is beautifully made and the little girl is so angelic isn't she? It came wrapped in that lovely fabric tied with the ribbon.

EG Play day

This is as far as I got with my attempt to create an image in the style pf Gilda Barron. I'm afraid I haven't got the patience that's needed for this sort of work. After cutting a dozen leaves and stitching them down I got fed up and made some stamps to print the rest. The colours in the photo haven't come out very well but I hope with the addition of some fabric bit by bit will make a difference. I took original the photo using flash on a walk to Conwy and the plants came out light and bright. I have always loved this photo, I'll post it tomorrow.


This is Conwy Castle tonight in the evening sun.


This is the Jounal made for me by Annette. The colours of the fabric are really wonderful, but again the photography is not very good. I think after a whole day at a class I'm not much good for anything the following day!

Another good day

It was Play Day for the North Wales Embroiderers' Guild today. If you click on the image above you can see what a wonderful time we all had. There was such a good crowd of us gathered together, all of us keen to create a piece of work in the style of Gilda Barron, guided by Anne Cross who is a member of SerenTex, I'm pleased to say. We all learned such a lot and had the samples of work to proove it.

River course

I took this photo by Llyn Mymbur in North Wales and it was inspired by a Welsh song called Nant y Mynydd or The Mountain Stream in English.


This lake is not far from the first one I mentioned and is at the foot of Mount Snowdon and this one shows the river that feeds the lake. I went looking for these photos because I follow Today's Title which is run by Helen Suzanne heb-art journal and I wish to thank her for such a good idea. I enjoy the challenges and also for her other blog Doodle Day.

Wonderful evening

This evening at the Embroiderers' Guild we had a wonderful talk by Dr Prydwen Elfed-Owens who gave an interesting talk on Welsh Folk Dancing, traditional Welsh costume and customs. She was televised recently on S4C - Cwpwrdd Dillad the wardrobe. I didn't have my camera with me tonight unfortunately as Prydwen was dressed in her Welsh costume and an original Welsh hat which had a lovely story behind it. If you are interested you will find some of it here.

I finished the bag I was making for the raffle 1/2 an hour before I left but forgot to take photos. I do have one of the front to show you though.

Doodling

My dragon doodles are in bits I'm afraid, but I have enjoyed playing and hopefully can eventually have a complete dragon doodled. Below are my first attemps and I'm sure you can see there's quite a lot of difference by page 3. Practice does help.


Page1


Page2


Here is my doodle of New Growth. I must clean the lens of my camera as I had some young visitors yesterday the eldest of the 3 was only 2 and one of them must have had his little fingers on my camera. I only noticed when I had these posted that they are blurred.

My Winter Tree

This is a TREE. I asked my DH if he liked the work and his response, "Is it a tree?" It doesn't do much for your confidence does it? But he did try to redeem himself by saying "Of course it's not finished yet is it?"
He's right there, it's still in progress, it needs some work on the foreground and the dark brown bits need to be toned down. It' all been fast and furious!


This is a bag in progress and this one has to be 'very' fast and furious as it's been promised for Monday. DH thought this would be quite nice.

Italian liqueur

I usually stick to my creativity in one way or another in my posts, but I have to share this with you. I hardly ever touch alcohol as my Serentex friends would tell you, I think most wines taste just like vinegar. I'm sorry, but there you are, so I'm usually a bit of a party pooper.
But when my son, who owns the Tipsy Gifts on-line business (see sidebar) offered me a taste of Lemon Armonia, the award winning Italian liqueur, I took a little sip and I loved it. It's one of the nicest things I have ever tasted. There has been a lot of excitement waiting for the first consignment to arrive. But it's here at last.

Lemon Armonia recently won the Double Gold Medal in the 2009 San Francisco World Spirits Competition on the 31st March 2009.
To be awarded a Double Gold Medal in the Cream Liqueur category of this prestigious competition means that the Lemon’ Armonia was awarded a gold medal from each of the twenty seven judges that presided over the competition.
The judges are experts in the field and come from exclusive restaurants and hotels, international importers and distributors as well as journalists from major US newspapers.

This lemon cream liqueur is made from a traditional Italian Grandmother’s recipe, now proudly produced and bottled by her daughter, grandson and his wife in Padova, Italy.


The lemons used in the process are organic Sicilian lemons, and are hand picked by the producers before starting the elaborate and delicate process of producing the finest Lemon Cream Liqueur you have ever tasted.
The recipe is so secret, only the grandson, his wife and his mother knows how to make this liqueur.
All we know is that only the rind of the lemons is used, and the flesh discarded. The rind is then infused in pure alcohol for a special period of time, and then the lightest and freshest Italian cream is added to produce the final product.
No wonder it's so tasty.

Fast and Furious

I have a new motto - Fast and Furious. I have always been a very careful worker, seeking to be as perfect as I can in all I do. This takes time, and I think that's where I'm going wrong. Things are going to change! My work is going to be more spontaneous and less perfect. Hopefully more creative. Above is my Winter Tree, this is a WIP.


These cards were fast and furiously made.

SerenTex

Today has been a good day! This morning I got on with my tree project and when I took it to my SerenTex meeting I got some good positive reactions, so I can now carry on with more confidence that it's going in the right direction.


Carol showed us a technique she'd learnt from her sister who has been a City and Guilds tutor for years. We used Kunin felt, Gesso and a heat gun to create a lovely lacy sample which can be stitched into. Above is my sample, which I'm very pleased with, but my second attempt did not turn out quite as well.


This bouquet was a presented to me by my friend Sue, for the smallest of favours. They are beautiful and I felt so touched by her kindness. She was going to have a pot of my Rhubarb and Ginger Jam in return for all the rhubarb she brought me, but I left it on the table at home!
I have updated the SerenTex website.

Postcards

 

A quick post to show I have not been completely idle. These are some quick belated Birthday Cards I needed for SerenTex tomorrow. I used papers that I'd made many years ago and punched some flowers and used a stamp with some embossing powder over them. They look better than in the photos, honest! Actually they look better when you enlarge them.

Bits'n Bobs

I can't resist taking photos of the evening sky and the window has to be opened however cold it is and it was cold tonight even though it is May.


I just started making Book Marks for a swap I'm in and suddenly this woman jumped at me out of the paper.


This is work in progress for SerenTex. It's going to be a Winter tree for our SerenTex project, but I'm not sure yet if it's going to work. It will be a mixed media piece using different techniques, but the tree is part made using my Janome Embellisher and the background is going to be made from dyed velvet which will be covered with net or chiffon to tone it down and make it a little greyish hopefully. We'll see how it goes, it may just be another prototype.