Surface Design Challenge Submission

This is one of the Surface Design Challenges that I received and completed a few weeks ago. The theme is flowers and everyone is to submit a post card sized section for the project. I hung the background and pinned all the submissions on to it, in order to give me a feel for what colour I wanted and where I wanted to place my submission. For some reason the dandelion came to mind and I thought of flowers at their final stage. I have not done any free motion embroidery for some time and thought that the time was now. So I drew a basic dandelion fluff pattern on tissue....sandwiched it between two layers of water soluble stabilizer, hooped it in a narrow embroidery hoop and off I went. I hope you actually are reading this because I've learned something doing this...NEVER...NEVER...use tissue. It was complete murder getting it all out. Silly me...I could have just drew it on the water soluble stabilizer and been done. Lesson well learned. I had never used water soluble stabilizer before...but of course I had it in the studio for years.

I drew the head of the dandelion with an air erase pen on fabric and painted it with Lumeire paints.

The next step was the fluff to be overlaid on top of the painted stem. I used Sulky silver embroidery thread in the top and bobbin of the machine so that it had a little glitz. I really love sparkle. I then added silver glass beads, which does not show up in this picture. In hand you can see the added depth and of course...sparkle.

I painted the leaves freestyle...not having a clue really but what the heck...caution was already out the window and the tunes were cranked...I was at home in my element and loving it.

The final step was adding the tiny seeds floating away. It's called the end and is placed as the last block. I had fun doing this one and felt so inspired just playing around with some new techniques.

Here's the background with all the submissions up till mine. Four more to go.

Poppy Cock

During the Christmas season I was temporarily blocked out of my studio in order to set up a bed for family coming home for the holidays. I have a real problem when I don't have my studio to turn to and subsequently I couldn't stop thinking about what I could work on the minute the studio was back to being open. I had 3 days in the studio and I wanted to make the most of it. On my design wall I had a 2nd background that I had pinned together when I was making "Cock of the Rock". I figured that this was a great place to start so down came the background for "Poppy Cock". It took me a full day to play and tweak it until I was happy.

During the tweaking period, I had my daughters transgender kitty wanting attention...smack dab in the middle of what I was working on. Of course I'm allergic to cats...so anyone that knows anything about cats...knows that this was par for the course.

It took me another day to quilt the background. I was having trouble with my sewing machine and it just wouldn't work with the gold metallic thread that I really wanted, so I had to make do with a gold coloured embroidery thread. Still ok but not exactly what I wanted. On the 3rd day I worked on the rooster. In this picture he has no legs and I really wasn't happy with his wing.

I painted his face...OMG...I was so happy with his face. During the delicate painting of his face I had a surprise...transgender kitty decided to jump on my back because I wasn't paying him enough attention. So there I was hunched over my rooster, pallet in one hand and brush in the other, thinking OMG, if kitty jumps down on my work surface...all those little LOOSE bits of fabric feathers...are gone. Then of course my back got all itchy from the claws that went into my back and I was done for the day.

I finished stitching down all the feathers, added his feet, touched up the legs with some paint and he was essentially done. So now I'm contemplating beading this piece like I did with "Cock of the Rock". I know I'd really like it to be beaded but it would take months of work before I was satisfied. So he's not totally done but he's done for now.

Creative Embellishments

This was the beginning of play. Needle nose Pliers, fun foam and a stamp. I cut the fun foam into a circle shape but I didn't like how the edges looked so I pulled with the pliers until I had the ruff looking edges that I wanted.

Then I heated the fun foam with my heat gun and embossed it with the wooden stamp.

Added a little paint.

Painted the ATC as well for a background.

Then I added some thread goo to one and a background of painted and melted dryer sheet to the other.

Then I thought that adding some of those spare pounded copper pennies to the centre would add some interest &voila some ATC's ready to swap.

The idea for the medallions of fun foam came from the book Creative Embellishments by Sherrill Kahn. I saw the book at a friends house and just fell in love with the way this artist made her pieces glow with paint. I'm just starting to paint so I have just never seen such beauty and certainly didn't know how to create that look. So I thought that I would give a section of the book a try. I can't wait to try the air dry clay section. If you're interested in pimping up your  art work, this is the creative book for you. Just a beginning but I really like the outcome. I really hope you give it a try if you haven't already.

Surface Design Beginning

This weekend I had to finish my Artist Trading Card sized, surface design so that it can move on to the next person in the group. I seem to be having difficulty finding the time to work on my projects now that I'm back at work. I no longer have the luxury of creating when I feel like creating. So now it's down to a time crunch thing and I find that I feel as though I'm working because of the deadline rather than feeling inspired to create. I usually work on a project until I hit a roadblock and then I move on to something else while my mind mulls over the next step. I spent hours in the studio but a lot of that time was uninspired so I'm not completely happy with the turnout. But it must move on...so here's the picture.

El Grande Worry

This piece all started with a commercial that I thought was very funny...

I was so excited about making this piece that I was up in my studio painting at 5:30am so that the paint would be dry when I had more time. I started with painting a plain white Tyvek envelope, using gold, brown, rustic red and emerald green, Lumiere paints.

Then I painted a left over piece of cotton batting, brown and gold, as a back drop for the Tyvek. I cut the Tyvek into random pieces that I found pleasing and pinned them to the brown and gold back drop.

Then I got really nervous because I'd never done this before. So I thought that I would practice on a piece of Tyvek that I had in my scrap pile. I pinned it to a scrap piece of cotton batting and put some tear away on the back to give it some stability and also to give my hands more room to hold it while sewing.

Then I started stitching using a Sulky embroidery thread for the top and a neutral cotton thread in the bobbin.

Because my sewing machine automatically sets the tension depending on the thickness of the piece under the needle...I had to use a stiletto that my husband had just made me. This helped me keep my hands away from the needle and also help feed the Tyvek through the machine. I really liked the results so now I was ready to start on my original back drop.

Again, using the stiletto as a guiding tool, I stitched until I was happy with the integration of the Tyvek to the painted cotton batting.

Then I stitched the backdrop to a burlap rice sack using jute from the dollar store. Painted the title using rustic red Lumiere paints...El Grande Worry...and then attached my rope worry doll.

My worry doll is about 7" tall. She's made from course rope that I bought yesterday from The Art House Studio in Kitchener. Then I wrapped the rope with jute from the dollar store. This made her very stiff and you could actually pose her. I added the raffia hair and clothing from my stash and she was complete.

Quilting Arts inspiration

Recently there was a free download from Quilting Arts, "Essential Embroidery Stitches" and section #4 was particularly interesting for me. Section #4 'Reverse Applique & Bobbin Embroidery with a twist' by Yvonne Brown. She uses tissue and cloth to get the most amazing texture as a backdrop to reverse applique. I didn't have all the supplies in order to do the applique but I knew I had the materials to do the background. I had an afternoon of play and created one sample and one piece that I'm still thinking of adding a little bit of red to...I'm still contemplating where to add the red...so it's possibly unfinished.

In the first sample I took canvas and painted both sides with simple, watered down white glue.
Then I added the white tissue paper and painted it down with more of the watered down glue. While it was still wet, I painted it with Lumiere Halo blue gold paint. According to the article I was supposed to let it dry for 24 hours...but I'm really impatient and wanted to take it that night to one of my quilting groups...so I put it in my food dehydrator and voila it was dry very quickly.



Sample #2 was started with canvas. I painted both sides with the watered down glue and then I inked it. Once the ink was desirable, I added dried flowers from my garden and seeds that were no longer germinating. Then the tissue layer was added, painted with the watered down glue. I then put it in the food dehydrator for it to dry. I didn't like the tissue being too white so I rubbed ink over the tissue where I thought it was too white. I then burnt the edges and painted Dorland's wax medium over the tissue. Dorland's is a wax, like encaustic, that can be used cold and then heated.