Village People

The Surface Designers had a workshop day the weekend before Thanksgiving. These workshops can be anything you like...no rules...just have fun and be social...I love it. This time one of the members did a demonstration on Self Portraits. Now I've been playing with this idea for a very long time. I keep taking pictures of myself...not a pretty site...so they end up being deleted because you know what they say "a picture never lies"...I have to ask WHY the HELL NOT!! I for one would love some lying in that department. lol
At first it was quite intimidating but I just loved what she had done. She had such fun doing it and I was drawn to several of her compositions. I also just loved the peaceful...non stress of them not actually being self portraits but rather expressions..."green with envy"..."bruised"...my personal favorite. So I sat back and watched everyone for a little bit and started drawing. I'm much braver after I've sketched it...although I'm not a drawer of any kind it just makes me more comfortable with the movement I'll be doing on the cloth under the needle.

So these are my "Village People", of course they're not done. I have to add hair and whatever else to finish them but I just don't like the fact that I haven't posted in a while. It's just so hard to find the time to do everything we'd like to do. They were done with stitching using black thread to give them a more sketched look. Then you add water colour anything...paint, crayons or pencils until you feel that they have enough. Then the next step is to add the hair and embellishments...which I haven't done yet. Now the "Village People" are watching me on my design wall. Thanks Pat, I loved the demo...very addictive.

Surface Design Continued

This is another section of the 2nd Surface Design Challenge. I started off with a piece of wool from my stash and started painting it. I painted this fabric before and just love the texture I get. I also love the green that I get because the background is dark. I used Lumiere paints again...which I really like at the moment.

 Then I textured it a little with sequin waste and Citrine Lumiere.

 I added some Burnt Orange along with some Pearl X powder and paint. I started second guessing myself and thought...oh why did you add the burnt orange. But my husband encouraged me to continue and so I did.

I added freestyle flowers in Grape Lumiere and Pearl X powder to give it a little glow. I forgot to get an overall picture of the project but the green, orange, hint of blue and flowers were already a theme in some of the other blocks and I was working to continue the overall composition. The black outline was done with dimensional fabric paint. Again to complement another block that had a thick black outline on the flowers. I really like the way the fabric glistens but the picture doesn't capture that detail.

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.

Surface Design Semi Reveal

Yesterday was Semi Reveal day. Everyone brought the designs and we were able to refresh and get excited about the progress. Now remember this is a Round Robin Surface Design, so we have two weeks where the project is with us in order to complete a section. So in two weeks, whether you're complete or not, the project must move on to the next person in order for them to get sufficient time to work on their section. Some sections can go together very quickly and others will take longer to complete. It all depends on what artist design you decide to do on the section. I found that sometimes ideas came quickly and then others were really cutting it to the deadline before something came to mind. I think that two weeks is just a little too quick for me. I'd like to have about a three week time frame. I have a lot of interests, work and family and other groups that I belong to, so the stress for turning them out in two weeks was just a bit overwhelming for me. I am learning to work faster so that's a definite bonus. I just don't have the time to over-think anything and that's a really good lesson. Sometimes we can over-think something to the point were it seems as though it never gets done. But if you have a timeline...there is no time to pussy foot around. Just "get her done", has to be the mind set of the studio when working on these projects.
I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Surface Design Reveal

Last weekend I met up with the Surface Design Tribe and was completely overwhelmed by the ideas for the next design challenge. After we decided what our next round robin project was going to be we had a show and share of what the members had done since our previous meeting. The eye candy just had me hovering above ground...no rest for the wicked right. It was so exciting. Our group has now expanded to 12 members so the next installment from this group will have 12 blocks rather than 10. The fun has begun again, but for now, here's the pictures of the reveal.