I'm enjoying the metal and wire jewellery course this week. And would you believe there are 3 Japanese women on this course, when I asked if they were related, they tittered!!!
I was holding a piece of copper plate and I missed it with the hammer and got my finger instead - a lovely shade of purple and it's sore too. It's interesting to see what everyone's making - there's even a tiara. I have a few things started, hope to have them finished by Friday and then I can post photos.
I'm starting a course on Metal and Wire Jewellery next week. For those who have no previous metalworking skills (that's me) a demo will show how wire can be manipulated and how by using basic jewellers' tools, structures can easily be created. I'm very much looking forward to it. Hope I make some things good enough to post pictures.
I think that the samples I made at the Stitched Textiles course will lead me down some interesting paths. This first piece is the usual mixture of stamping and Markal paintsticks. I thought I'd rip it into 2 but when I saw that the colours blue and yellow made a nice shade of green and linked it all together. I machined some of it but it's not easy to see in the picture. And finally I made some rosettes with velvet and a sheer fabric, and sewed on some beautiful wool that I found in a charity shop (measures 12x12").
The next two were little pieces I made with limited time on the last day.
And the "piece de risistance" is an image transfer which was quick and perfect (the first timen I've had such success)
This is a piece of cotton backed frosted material, I drew the design of roses using disperse dye and then some FME and French knots (measures 5x8.5").
This next sample is a design rubbed on with Markal paintsticks over a plastic grid then using Bondaweb I adhered a piece of sheer fabric and then silk tops. I finished it off by hand stitching a number of straight lines following the grid (measures 12x10").
I think the next piece is my favourite. Cotton printed with an Indian block and then various sheers wer stitched over it. Some of the design was stitched with FME and vintage laces were applied (measures 11x8").
I've finally got my pictures ready and will post them a few every day giving a little information on how I made them.
I transferred to cotton using a string pattern on a home made block then I added some chunky wool and handstitched black fabric stems (measures 10x11").
That's it for today, will post some more tomorrow.
... full-time all week on Stitched Textiles at the college of art and only 10 in the class. I'm learning new techniques and it's such fun to do something totally new and some of them are 'out of the box'. I have lots of samples but can't post pictures till the end of this week when I'll bring them home. I've finally cracked image transfers onto fabric - and I swear I've used the same technique before and they were useless, but now BINGO.
This year the European City of Culture is Liverpool, and as part of their celebrations they have an exhibition of Klimt's work. So I went down for a couple of days with my friend Annie and we had a wonderful time. I'd seen the more important of Klimt's paintings years ago in Vienna and I was moved to tears by the sheer beauty and brilliance of it. This time was great too and there were different pieces on show including his sketches and it was interesting to see how he went about the painting - a few of his unfinished paintings were on show and although they were sketched roughly, he seemed to work indepth on the faces first.
I needed a couple of days to recover though, not used to all that walking LOL.
I've not had time to post much lately - my mother who is 93 has been living with me for the past 18 months and is now feeling a bit fragile. She asked me to look for a residential care home as she realizes that perhaps the time has come to give up her independence. So we've found a lovely home not very far from where I live and the staff are wonderful, nice atmosphere, and the menus look great with lots of choices. I can see my mother getting the cook to learn Italian cuisine and get the garlic in. And as long as she has her red wine, she'll be fine LOL.
Not sure exactly when it'll all be in place because there's so much to see to, but quite soon I think.
