My First Series!

I am almost done with my first series, art work series to be precise.  This is something that I have been trying to get myself to do for a long time.  This series began as a long single wall piece and I decided to make it into three separate, though very related single pieces.

The title of the series is Love It Forward.  I have used many of my own hand dyed fabrics and sun printed fabrics and stitched the majority of the pieces by hand.  all of the embellishing has been done by hand.

(click on each photo for close up shots!!)

This is Love It Forward I and it is currently hanging on my studio door at Artful Dimensions Gallery in Fredericksburg.

In the pictures that follow you can see some detail shots of the hand stitch work on the various pieces.

When I stitched on the backing I also added a few bits of Free motion Embroidery work on the machine.  You can also see the beading that i added to the sun prints.  these sun prints were done with a wonderful old plastic place mat.

Here are Love It Forward II and III.  They need to be backed and have a hanging sleeve added and then they will also go to the Gallery. 

    

I really had a a great deal of fun stitching and adding beaded details to these pieces and hopefully someone who visits the gallery will want to take one or all of them home!  Why not think big!! As the first Love It Forward was hanging during our March First Friday event , i have gotten  a lot of very positive feed back about the piece and folks are anxiously awaiting the second and third installments!! Off to stitch!

Collage Books-Samples for Classes

This book has been in the making for quite awhile. My intention is to use it as a sample for the Collage Book Classes that I am teaching at Liberty Town Artists Studios in Fredericksburg as well as the classes that I am offering in my home studio. When deadlines have loomed, the book has been put on the back burner, this has happened far too often!! But now I can finally say that it is in a finished enough state, without any internal journaling, to serve it's purpose as a sample! Another project off of my To Do LIST and on to my TAA DAA LIST (must continue to thank Michelle Ward for this marvelous phrase!!)

Again, this was a stash busting project and the covers were fashioned from the legs of a pair of my husbands jeans! Everything else came from my collections and junk mail that arrived at the house. Below you see the back of the book.

I have also integrated lots of my monoprinted papers and fabrics, hand stitching fabric paper, fusion paper, old buttons, fabric scraps and any bits and pieces that arrived on special packages from friends. It is these items that make such a piece special and so personal.

Below you can see spine of the book. I used buttons to anchor the waxed linen that was used to stitch the signatures into the book itself.

The book also contains pieces of old linens that might have been damaged in some way, scraps of fabrics left over from other projects, undersheets from stamping or spraying papers for other projects and anything else that sifted to the surface of my art space. If I liked it and it fit, in it went!!
Below you can see that I used a piece of a linen table runner as a large pocket on one of the interior signatures.I topped the torn edge with a piece of fabric paper that I folded and stitched down.

The spine of this signature below was created using a used drier sheet that I had painted with acrylic paints.

In several places I used bits of trims and fabrics to sew to pages . The fabric portions would form the spines or folds of each page. I made lots of use of my sewing machines to attach things and to add textural interest. In several areas I added layers of paint over the stitch.

THese are just samples of some of the spreads in the book. The book contains three signatures of eight pages each and I put the whole thing together using a simple stab stitch binding with buttons on the exterior spine to hold the waxed linen in place.

Now to spread the word aboutt eaching classe in my home studio!!! That will be the real work part of this project!!!! Feel free to spread the word for me, especially if you know of anyone in Virginia who has an interest in having fun ,learning lots of neat techniques, exploring the "What IF's," AND creating one of a kind books!!!!

Stitching of a Different Sort

Several posts back , I shared some experiments that I did with acrylic paint, canvas fabric and old letter stickers form my scrapbooking days. (See post here)
Since then I have been working on individual bits of those painted pieces treating each one as a collage element to be used on a larger piece. I have been doing all of the work by hand. I am always so anxious to get to the Hand work part. It is so relaxing and quiet and infinately creative. I have layered fabric and trims,buttons and hand made beads and combined them all with stitch. You can see some of the finished bits above.

I have also been working on several other projects that I can only let you peek at for now. They are underway for various publication opportunities so I must keep them under wraps for now. Here are a few peeks!

As you can see they all share the wonderful textures created by stitches. They also include many of my own ahnd painted fabrics and papers. For me, these are stitches of a different sort, in all sorts of places!!!