A wonderful planet

Best wishes to you all for 2023!

My wishes are accompanied by this embroidered piece, which shows four seasons in one day on this planet, full of luscious greenery and delicious clear water. 

The design is my own, inspired by a workshop led by Livia Papiernik. It’s a relatively small piece, 20 cm x 20 cm, but it required a lot of stitching! 

I used silk thread, Jamieson & Smith wool yarn and all kinds of other thread, with various stitches and beads, mostly recycled, some of which I made myself.

Let’s hope for a lovely and inspiring new year!!

Christmas wreath with robins and holly

A simple wreath I decorated with needle-felted holly leaves with beads as berries. Two pompom robins are resting merrily on a branch. For the pom-poms I used wonderful Jamieson’s DK from Shetland.

The birds I made during online speedcrafting with the lovely Helen Robertson from Shetland!

Happy Christmas to everyone 😊🎄💚

Autumnal walk

An autumn walk, what's not to like? I Love all the seasons (though slightly less enthousiastic about winter in February, March I must admit), with a preference for autumn. All these beautiful colours, bright and muted, gave me the inspriation for this stitched piece with appliqué. I used some tweed fabric and some pieces of paper packaging. 

OK, enough stitching and talking now, let's go for that walk!

Christmas speedcrafting

Last Christmas I joined two speedcrafting sessions with Helen Robertson.

On the one evening we knitted an owl:

The other we made a Christmas pudding, which started us chatting about Christmas traditions and food from around the world. We were a group of people from the US, Shetland, Iceland, Sweden, England, Scotland and Belgium, so it got very interesting, we all got hungry and we had some great laughs! This is the World Wide Web at its best!

I used Shetland’s Jamieson’s spindrift yarn.

I gave the Christmas pudding to my little bear, who was very pleased:

Sketchbooks part 2

These sketchbooks are a bit bigger than the last ones I made. I went a bit rogue here and used rather bold colours for the cover and all kinds of paper, like old calenders and other kinds of reused materials. I love bookbinding in this free way, and I think the outcome is fun and unusual.

the making of:

Sissinghurst Castle Tower memory

I find my memories to be a great inspiration for making textile art. In 2009 my family and I visited Sissinghurst Castle with its wonderful gardens and tower, once home to writer Vita Sackville-West. In the tower, you can visit her workspace, which is such an inspirational room. There, I spotted this quote, that has been dear to me ever since : "Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday, and all is well." 

I wanted to make a piece as a reminder of all the lovely outings we have had as a family, and this particular day stood out as an ideal focus point.

The base fabric is composed of a lot of small pieces, old crocheted pieces, with lots of fraying edges. I used machine embroidery and hand-stitching for the castle and wall. I added some appliqué and a lot of colour with ecoline paint.

The vibrant colours of the piece reflect how I remember this day : happily!

The pieces of fabric I created, to sew together into a backing fabric with lots of interesting texture (this is a technique I learned during the workshop I did with Ruth Norburry) :

Europe burns '22

The summer of '22 was extremely hot in Europe and I often find myself worrying about the state of our environment. That anxiety I felt and the workshop I did with Natalya Khorover were the inspiration for this piece. It's a textile collage with embroidery, for which I used some pieces of recycled sari, which give the work its vibrant colours. The stitched words are part of a lullaby ("Goodnight my angel, close your eyes. And save these questions for another day"). Whether to see the words as soothing or as cynical does depend on the mood I'm in, I guess.  

Exposition ahead!

Excited to announce some of my work will be on show at the annual exposition of Kunstcollectief Ysengrin, from 11 to 13 November in Belsele (see the flyer below)!

I’m really glad of the opportunity to exhibit in such a friendly and creative environment. Ysengrin is a wonderful team of local artists, which it’s been a delight to get to know!

Do come along if you’re in the area: apart from a small selection of my own textile pieces, there will be paintings, photography, sculpture, poetry and cartoons! Something for everyone, and you’ll be supporting your local artistic community!

Hope to see some of you there - keep making!

Couching samples

Couching is an embroidery technique in which you lay yarn or other materials across the surface of a ground fabric, then fasten it in place with small stitches.

The possibilities are endless when you start thinking about incorporating this technique in your work and wat kind of thread, cord, objects you can attach to it in this way!

This is the sampler I made for a workshop led by Hanny Newton (she has the most wonderful contemporary approach to goldwork embroidery!) : 

This is my take on a workshop led by Alice Fox  (an artist who works with found, gathered and grown materials) :

 

Anne of Green Gables

Jo March, Lizzie Bennett, Anne Shirley,.... I like these fierce girls with their seeking souls.

Some time ago, I bought this very fun book "Literary yarns, crochet projects inspired by classic books", partly because there is an  Anne of Green Gables pattern in it. I just knew I had to crochet it. So here she is, my Anne with an "e", love her!

I am not so very good at amigurumi, not so very fond of it either because I find it a little hard on my hands and wrists. But, as always , happy with my new friend!

(There is also a Sherlock Holmes, who screams to come to life in crochet!)