Saturday 23 March 2013

Embellishments

So this week I have been spending a little time embellishing two pieces of felt I made a while ago. I made them both on separate occasions at my dear friend Laura's house when we were having a creative moment, and as we were meeting up for another creative morning, I thought I'd better do something to show the others to prove I've been doing something since the last time we met. The first one was a simple swirly pattern, the size of the circles determined by the size of the finger I wound the wool around:-

I was quite annoyed with it once I had felted it, as the swirly circles I'd created had mostly transformed into hexagons and it wasn't at all the look I was after. I left it for a couple of months before I felt able to deal with it again. This week I could put it off no longer so I grabbed it and started stitching in the hope I could inject some swirliness back into it. It helped a bit but it was still lacking quite a lot of oomph:-

So I took it round to Laura for some second and third and fourth opinions. Everyone was positive but it was still hiding under a bushell. I let it drop beside me on her sofa while we carried on talking, and then we saw where it had landed, right in the middle of a blue hessian cushion, and suddenly it was love...
So I came back home with renewed vigour. I tried to buy a similar coloured board to mount it on, and ended up with an apple green one. I still thought it needed a bit more embellishment of a different style and last night I remembered something Laura told me a while ago and felt like an experiment: if you want to use a thicker thread in your sewing machine, wind it onto your bobbin (as it won't fit through the needle) and work on the reverse. So I gave it a go:-


I think it might just be finished although time will tell. And my five-year-old says it is fabulating, which I take as a compliment.

I have also been embellishing the Valentines' Day kitsch red and pink hearts one I made at Laura's house. The printable fabric I ordered from was wonderful and once I had worked out the message I wanted to print the rest was easy. 


I think I am pleased with it but it's not really my style! I'm not quite comfortable with it yet and it feels a little bit too personal (says she having made an overly-familiar nude!). But having seen one of my favourite blogs Dog Daisy Chains extolling the virtues of Moo card-printing, I am thinking of getting some of my designs made into greeting cards ready for North Somerset Arts Week. If I can get a really decent photo of it I'm hoping this one might sell as a card, and oddly I'm more comfortable about that than I am with the original felt.

Anyway tomorrow we are off to Barcelona for a few days so a bit of Gaudi inspiration might be coming on if the children give me a chance to immerse myself...



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