absolutley loving: free embroidery drawings

It's something i have always done but these couple of days i feel a new energy to keep going with it. It's lovely when i start adding colour and seeing the drawing come to life cannot wait to frame them in contrasting colours to add colour.. and to obviously hang them up in my room/future house! Today after work i drew with stitch a photo of London from my birthday weekend away. It's a lovely landscape image in St James Park on the bridge with the London Eye in the background. We had a lovely time, and the picture brings all the memories back!

i particularly like the london eye and its carriages as i have used fabric to give it a quirky edge!

great idea: sewing mine and jakes adventures into personalised pictures

Today i had a free afternoon whilst Jake was at work i had some time for myself. I've had a busy week camping away with friends, and this weekend i will be working and then i'm off camping again with my family!!

I had a great idea that i could document mine and jakes life together through textiles, with where we have been together. When we move out together, we would have some bits to add to our walls to make it our own personal space. Not only would they mean something to us but because i've made them, it would make it that more special to think that we've got something indivdual and unique to share with everyone. It's like my interpretation of how i saw that day even though i have worked from original photographs. I really enjoyed doing this and will continue too do so!

 cromer seaside

our feet in Jandia

Jandia

Instagram of photo above.

-There will be more to come!

Embroidery!

I really enjoy hand embroidery and although it is VERY time consuming,i have made time around working part time to hand stitch into some of my printed fabric...

These photos are close ups of my work before i added another layer on top of this: thermochromic dyes. I wanted to create texture within the prints which i think i achieved with a variety of stitches including chain and long stitch.

This is what my printed/sewing piece looks like, i don't like it as much now i have added the thermochromic dyes onto them. However i do like how it has enhanced the texture of the print, as it shines through subtly (body&neck) but i don't like how the colour is more purple than pink so contrasts with the print and stitch colours!

Close up of embroidered flamingo.

I trialled this piece out with a very contrasting mint green, which i thought refreshed the whole piece and made a statement piece, however now that the thermochromic dyes have been put on i think it does dull it down now.

This is just a cotton sample with pigment dyes and hand stitch. But i think it works well, better than previous due to the colour (i feel) brings out the print more, and they work together to accentuate shapes rather than flatten or dull bits down.

Close up of feathered textured stitch, building on the idea of layers not only within drawings and samples but now within stitch also. I will definetley continue to play around with this idea, i'm thinking plastics to layer on top of a print. This then makes the fabric slightly waterproof, enabling me to use hydrochromic dyes!

Wish me Luck!

Machine Stitch.

I haven't blogged in a while that's because my work has been full of accidents; i haven't managed to produce some inspirational or successful work which has made me really unmotivated which i hate in itself! Friday 27thApril - i experimented with sewing into different materials such as tissue paper, codatrace, acetate, fabric and bin liner. This sounds like alot of experimenting-but the outcomes were not so great!

This is just free machine embroidery onto fabric, the tension isn't great on it as you can see the bobbin thread coming up which in turn dies create a nice texture adding contrasting lines.

I then applied a sheet of bin liner on the top, then a piece of acetate and finally a last piece of bin liner to mould it together. This was quite succesful as i managed to create layers (feathers and bird connotations) and trap the embroidery stitching within it, making it slightly waterproof as the acetate lay dominant on top!

You can't really see from this image,as it looks basically the same as before; you can just make out where the plastic is due to the little holes it has naturally created around the stitching. This was quite an interesting experiment working with materials and stitch and i would like to have a go using hydrochromic dyes on it.... (note to self).

The reverse to this piece was also quite interesting due to the impression it left from when it was in the heat press. The detail has been captured perfectly right down to the indivdual stitches and texture. It is very different from the front of the fabric due to it being white on white with just the pattern to characterise it! But i prefer it; it's simple and neat and very delicate looking.

I also managed to squeeze in a little observational drawing in oil pastel with some left over paper that had leftover dye on, i thought this added colour and character to it.

I used 3 different oil pastel colours to capture movement and so it is easily portrayed. I mimiced the scale in a photoshop picture so as she got closer she also got bigger! I quite like this where all the drawings come together as one!

Sewing & Drawing

Today i really wanted to get a bulk of work done but due to wanting to be a perfectionist i didn't get as much as i wanted done, even though i haven't stopped!! Art does take a while though..

I previously printed onto some large paper with my bird feather print so thought today i would use them to draw my birds onto them!

gouache and oil pastel!

gouache, beak is oil pastel

looking into different perspectives and sizes! all gouache. The duck (right) is my favourite due to the lovely colours!

closeup of the duck

there i really focused on the marks not necessarily on the colour

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this is just paint on the tin but thought the colours and the way they are composed really showed and reminded me of a swans beak!

After doing some of my drawing i stopped for lunch,afterwards i thought i would change what i was doing to keep my mind interested and alert!

I decided to sew onto some flocking paper froma previous print. the texture was really interesting so by adding masses of stitch would change the property of the way the material behaved!

This was actually really time consuming but i love the outcome! Its very delicate as a surface but due to the flock being quite rigid it gives the drawing a certain kind of stiffness to it !

For the past few days i have been working on my 4th hand embroidery piece it has taken ages, here is an update to what it looks like!

for this piece i'm trying to focus on the marks within the use of stitch!

long stitch and chain stitch!

beading and french knots!!

Here is some of my beadwork i've done before just a trial piece and also to try and show feathery textures...

Hopefully tomorrow i can do some continuous line drawings onto some more large paper and my sketchbook is in dire need of looking good! it's a bit of a mess right now....

Jess x

30th March 2012.

This was made using hand embroidery and a embroidery hoop. I worked on this for several hours! It doesn't look it; but a lot of work went into this.I usedmostly long stitch as i felt that suited best the texture of the birds feathers! I really like this due to the vibrancy in colours & it looks life like! (which is what i tryed to achieve as it was an 'observational' drawing. I much prefer to draw with a needle than i do a pencil or paintbrush!

This swans head was made completley on the sewing machine using free embroidery! The amount of thread i used!!!! I feel though this gave a great weight to the fabric as i covered every bit (even the white!) i find that white on white works well as the texture then becomes important and obvious,which is an aim! i used indian ink to fill in the black thread as it didn't give as big of a statement as this! i quite like the outcome as it looks slightly cartoonised due to the colours not quite blending but the simplicity and delicacy of the threadsreally capture the softness of the swan!

The repeat pattern on here was a combination of hand embroidery & machine free embroidery. the beaks were done using hand embroidery to give a flash of colour and to make a bold statement, wheras the free embroidery black thread worked to outline the silhouette. The swans in these dont contain as much detail as the previous two as my main idea for this drawing was to focus on colour and the idea of repetition.

I was really suprised at how long they took but i had fun making these quirky drawings...more to come i expect and hope:)

hopefully once they come back from submission i will give these to my family :))

jess x