This abstract piece is inspired by a picture of a common blue butterfly on a daisy, hence the name. I chose the materials and colours to match, giving it a cheerful, uplifting energy.
Working from photographs, a technique gleaned from a workshop by Hannah Lamb, is very freeing, pushing me to venture beyond the colours I habitually go for. more of this on the way, no doubt!
I enjoyed making this piece enormously. The 3 parts consist of the same number of small pieces from the same pool of 11 plain fabrics. I made the squares seperately from each other, not looking at the ones I made previously, so they came out quite differently. I even made them all in different countries, as holiday projects, so they connect places and moments in time.
Back home, I brought them all together in this wall hanging. To add something special to the piece, I attached flat pieces of rock on 2 of the 3 rectangles, which looks great!
Inspired by the work of Sharon Peoples, I used the technique of random cross stitch to recreate the work "Ceci n'est pas un pipe" by the Belgian artist René Magritte.
the fabric is wrapped around a mount board and I also used some wadding to give the piece some depth.
It fits neatly in the tin in which it is presented.
I hope to have added to the joke the artist intended.
For this small piece I used a spider's web as an inspiration. The idea I got from Sabine Kaner, who often uses patterns and shapes found in nature.
I painted the base calico fabric with watercolour paint. The 'web' is created with different embroidery stitches and appliqué.
I used different kinds of paper for these little sketchbooks : Japanese handmade paper, pages from an old book, wrappers, sketching paper, decorated paper.
The pages are handsewn together with bookbinders’ thread.
The covers are unique designs I hand-painted with water-colour paint, sometimes with added embroidery.
The backs are covered (handsewn) with matching fabrics.
In every book I have all ready sketched a flower.
This is a labour of love and I hope these little books will end up with people who love to sketch, write or collect stuff in them!
(I will show and sell them at this local event on Sunday July 3th : Kunst Montmartre Beveren-Waas in Belgium)
I heard of a dyeing method using milk and tea and decided to give it a try. It’s really easy and gets great results.
What you do is this : make a pattern on the fabric using the milk and let it dry for some days. Then soak the fabric in hot strong tea for a couple of hours. After a while the pattern emerges, because the areas with the milk will dye darker, wonderful!
I'm sure I’ll find a good application for these fabrics in the near future, watch this space!
This piece is my take on the workshop led by Emily Jo Gibbs. It's a composition of layered translucent fabrics, a brilliant method to create depth with colour and overlapping material.
I added a quote by Percy Shelley to suggest the narrative of a cold winter, with some hope that spring will arrive soon. "O, wind, if winter comes can spring be far behind?"
I had a sweater that was still in reasonably good condition but had become too small. I loved its fabric and colour so decided to walk the recycling path here.
I should have taken a photo of the original sweater, but I cut it up before I even thought of that.
From the sleeves I made long fingerless gloves. I cut them from the main body, picked up the stitches with my circular knitting needle and cast off neatly, cutting an opening for the thumb and sewing round it. Really happy with them!
The shawl neckline of the sweater was kind of special so I cut it off in its entirety and made it into a cowl. By sewing round the edge with a nice yarn (Manos del Uruguay Serena alpaca cotton blend) I managed a ruffled edge. With the same yarn, I embroidered some flowers. I added an invisible press stud so it stays well in place. Not completely my style, but I still think it is a successful project and hopefully will make someone else happy.
Then there was the body of the sweater, which I cut into broad strips, sewing them together into one loop cowl that wraps around the neck twice. Again I picked up the stitches, and added a small knitted edge in a colourful yarn (Mayflower Egyptian organic cotton Print). The colourful edge makes this a really pretty cowl, I think!
Now this is a fun craft : It’s easy, quick and has a lovely wow-factor!
First you create a design on the scarf (or just some lines or shapes) with outliner, a kind of paint. Mine was copper.
When the outliner has dried, you fill in the spaces you just created with silk paint, which is a really fun thing to do.
When the silk paint is really dry (next day), you have to iron the scarf, to secure the colours.
Washing my scarf made the copper outliner disappear. I don’t know if that is supposed to happen, but I like the scarf without the copper lines too.
Et voila: a unique piece is created!
with the outliner :
In 2018 (you can read the blogpost here) I dyed some yarn with onion peel. 4 of the skeins, all of a different shade of yellow, I knit into a piece with wide stripes.
This piece I washed on a high temperature and high spin cycle, to get it felted. It worked : the fabric is firmer, smaller and thicker now.
And this week I decided to make it into a handbag of my own design.
I chose a nice fabric for the inner lining. It’s all hand-sewn, because I wanted to do some slow, meditative stitching. The wooden handles fit perfectly, in my opinion.
This project is is a good example of slow crafting: hand-spun and naturally dyed yarn, hand-knit and hand-sewn into a bag. It reminds me that the journey is so much more important than the goal. That it turned out to be a nice handbag is a bonus 😊
This work has an architectural image as its starting point. By editing and reducing the image I created a more abstract design. Out for three pieces of fabric (old clothing) I cut pattern pieces, then started puzzling them together until I got 3 similar and yet very different views. I sewed the pieces onto a neutral background and added some embroidery. That is how this fabric triptych “Dawn” came to life.
Many thanks to Richard McVetis who taught this great technique via TextileArtist.org.
The dried teasels in the garden are a beautiful sight to me. They inspired me to make this piece. It is a textile collage of strips of old fabric samples, pieces of old clothes and a towel. Lots of stitching went into the teasels. Personally, I quite like the frayed edges and the wrinkles. They give some life to the piece, I think.
on a sunny day !
But even on a darker day it feels sunny!
