Weaving and woven vessels exhibition - wow!

This week I went to an exhibition by Megan Walsh-Cheek, who has been working on some wonderful experimental weaving.  Unfortunately most of my photos didn't come out well, but Megan has kindly given me permission to show her work here, and one of my favourites did photograph well:

weaving from Megan Walsh-Cheek

What I liked so much was not just the variety of materials she used, such as fabric and lace strips, as well as yarns and threads, plus sticks of various kinds, but also the fact that she wove around the shape of the sticks, so that when a stick curved, so did the weaving.  She also made some fantastic vessels which can be seen on her etsy shop, see below.

The exhibition has now finished, but you can see the exhibits on her etsy shop here, it is lovely to look at them again.

Hand embroidery artist Tom Lundberg

I have been looking at the work of Tom Lundberg, in a book called Hand Stitch Perspectives, and on his website.  I like how he does so much work in small scale, but very densely stitched.  Fascinating to look at close up.

Victoria and Albert Museum

Anyone for a browse of beauty?  Go to the website of the V and A.

Hand embroidery threads

I'm back to hand embroidery again, and just discovered this web page in which there is a link, down the left hand side, look under "Resources" and you will see DMC Colour Chart listed, where you can access the full colour range of DMC threads, in glorious colour.  8 pages of them.  It also has stitch instructions - I had been looking up Vandyke Stitch, which was referred to in Jan Messent's book "Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery" - a wonderful lavish book with textiles you feast on with your eyes.

I have been working on an embroidered panel "Cootamundra Wattle" for the Port Community Art Centre SALA exhibition, at the Black Diamond Gallery in Port Adelaide, starting 24th August - can't show here until after the exhibition, and that is a contemporary, freeform type of embroidery.  Impressionistic.  I haven't done anything else like that by hand and really enjoyed the freedom - though machine-embroidered plenty of freeform - my hand embroidery previously has always been traditional like this:

Fletcher the 2nd 

Back to bread tags

I've been doing some experimenting for a book cover, with Puff Paint.  One of the things I tried out doesn't look anything like a book cover surface, but definitely reminds me of a birds nest.  It is on a base of cotton fabric, then I put on some thread waste - glued with PVA.  Next I added dobs of Puff Paint, in yellow and blue.  Bread tags, most flat but some already made into bead shapes, were added where the puff paint was, so it would puff around them when heatgunned.  A sprinkle of silver and blue embossing powder topped it off.  When the paint was dry, I heat gunned it to curl the flat bread tags.  Well, mostly the flat ones wouldn't curl because the paint held them in place - but the fibres in the thread waste started to smoke!  I quickly stopped because I didn't want a fire and made a mental note not to heat gun fibres like this.  It is actually too thick for a book cover but the texture does remind me of a birds nest.

Bread tag nest 

©Christine Linton

Flowers into art quilts

Just discovered this beautiful website http://wildflowereurope.org/ which any flower lover will enjoy - there are various themes, countries, locations and so on.  I found out about this in BBC Wildlife magazine, which has such an interesting website, full of information on all kinds of wildlife - highly recommended (by me).

Dare to Differ Art Quilts

Yippee!  My entry has been accepted in the Dare to Differ Exhibition in September.  I have long admired the entries in this exhibition, which has run every year since 2011, and feel honoured to have been accepted. The idea is to make the quilt something different, hence the title, and for some pix of some previous shows, look here.  This exhibition is run by the SA Quilters Guild.  The exhibition opens on 24th September 2013 and runs till 21st October, at Gallery M, in Marion, South Australia.

Beaded Paisley

I have been working on a new interpretation of one of my paisleys.  Working on lilac satin, I used knotted thread which I couched for the outlines.  I tried to double-knot, that is, tie one knot on top of the other to make a larger knot, along the thread but could not always tee-up the knots so some are only singles.  This thread is a full 6-strand DMC embroidery cotton thread in pink.  I couched with a darkish mauve, single strand.  Then I infilled the centre with a variety of sequins to give a good pattern effect.  I echoed one of the sequins by adding five of the same to another area, then a leader sequin at the beginning of the outline at the top.

Beaded Paisley with couched outline 

©Christine Linton

While I was looking online for some like-minded paisley fans, I found this page, which is quite a different style to mine above, but lovely and interesting in its own right.