New ideas for the new year

At last my brain has jumped out of its Artists Block - I had been struggling with making a Book Cover at the end of last year, tried lots of techniques and didn't like anything, it all looked so dull, that's why I took a long break from it. I think sometimes your brain freezes up and has to take a rest.  Then I spent some time recently with my new camera, and found that I really enjoyed pictures where the main focus e.g. flower bud, stood out sharply from a soft-focus background.  This gave me the idea to try for this effect in textiles, so I tea-dyed some white cotton sheet from the Op Shop, to get a fuzzy background, and looked for a sharp bright colour to embroider with.  Here is the result - or at least the first part of it.  This is a letter T, almost finished.  Working with french knots, I used mostly doubles, some singles, and some loopies.  So I got lots of texture into it.  It is DMC perle cotton no. 5, thicker than I originally wanted to use but once I started I loved it, had to use a chenille needle for the thickness.  I love the colour, I wanted a beautiful bright blue to contrast with the background.

French knots on tea-dyed cotton sheet

©Christine Linton

Then I went to a natural-dye workshop at Pepper Street Art Centre, with Lizzy Emery as the tutor - who I first met as the tutor of a basketry workshop in December.  Multi-skilled lady!  We used mixed berries for red, onion skins and acacia flowers for yellow, the bark from the ironbark tree for brown - today I will show you the yellow.  I used cotton voile.  If you look at the left near the top, it looks like a frog leaping downwards.

cotton voile dyed with onion skins and acacia flowers

©Christine Linton