Taming my Magpie Mind

That's the title of a talk that I'm supposed to be writing - I have until tomorrow teatime to finish, as I'm teaching on Thursday and invigilating exams on Friday. So what better time to write a blog post!!

Apologies, etc etc, as usual for being rubbish at keeping the blog up to date.

Here are some photos of a few things that I'm talking about. This little collection is where the rot set in...where I learnt to use materials and techniques I would never have dreamed of...where the flood of ideas started...why my mind now needs taming!!

My first ever piece of machine embroidery, before I started C&G. I did this with Wendy Dolan.

One of my early C&G pieces. Detest the colour combination, but oh look! Are those holes burnt through with a soldering iron....??

A box (lying on it's side here). Can you see my name? And can you also see those beads, stitched onto the edge?? I think this is where the "difficult bead thing" started....

Little textured piece - with embroidered wire spirals, obviously (RHS, look carefully).

Grated crayon and cling film. Uh-oh....

OK. Should start to get worried now.

Grating silk on a cheesegrater and poking stuff through the rips?

Or just burn some more holes in things...

Ah! These look faintly normal - beaded tassels, stitched completely on the sewing machine...those difficult beads again...

So why not incorporate "difficult beads" into a cobweb felt scarf covered in the little blighters. Yes, every bead was stitched by machine, including the fringe.

This is where the laminating started....(Yes, we need a laminator. No, not for the office).

With added handstitched "netty" bits, copper shim, wire connections, and galvanised wire hoops (they've definitely featured in my work since I made this!)

What happens if you are playing with stitched laminated bits and pieces and also volunteering in a charity shop? You take the tag gun home and use it to connect your laminated embroidery, that's what you do...

If he wasn't worried before, Mr G was definitely worried now...

Ah! Paper! How wonderful, something else to collect...

including those brown paper grocery bags, oh, and sticks. Obviously. Must have sticks.

And wire! Yes! Do more with wire...

So I did...looks a bit like my recent beaded wire fish and leaf, made earlier this month:

That's all for now! 

If you'd like to come to the talk, it's with the East Kent Embroiderers' Guild branch, near Canterbury this Saturday. Details here.

Metalwork

I'm being a bit slow with the blogging, for which apologies! Without further ado, here are some pics of class work from last week.

First up, we have been busy making collages with sari silks, foils, and any other glisteny sparkly textured bits we could lay our mitts on:

Carole

Morag

Jan

Libby

Fiona

Maggie

This last piece of work belongs to Rosa, our newest student, who was a bit taken aback when we started the session with "how to heat copper tiles over a gas hob". For some reason she came along expecting to stitch?!

Anyway, we put the copper to one side and made a start on her first strippy collage. The idea being to investigate all the automatic patterns our machines will do, to warm up both machine and our own creative muscles, practise using transfer foils, and create a background for further embellishment.*

And those who were itching to stitch on metal started a simple sampler with feed dog up/normal presser foot, and feed dog down/free machining. Here are some in progress:

Sue

Jill

Di

Kathy

These are all stitched with 0.002" copper shim on felt - you must use a thick-ish background to absorb the sharp pointy bits of copper created when the needle penetrates the metal (but it doesn't have to be felt). This also protects your machine bed from scratches.

Fiona laid some organza on top of her tiles before stitching then blasted it with a heat gun - so effective!

*for transfer foils in large quantities at reasonable rates I am selling them on Facebook at Frugal Foil - if you are not on Facebook but would like some, just email me. Plug over!