Flowers II

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I started today by stitching the leaves first, not straight sailing because there are breaks – a few of them come from beneath a flower. With all the leaves done, I moved onto stitching with turquoise – first the blue yellow flower at the top, next the turquoise centres.

Thread Painting Underway

Then on to working the bottom left flower. I’ve done most of the yellow stitching, although I intend embellishing that further tomorrow.

Thread Painting – Detail

I spent quite a bit of time creating embroideries of small circles for the flower centres  – I’ll use my metal hoop so I can do the embroidery work easily. I want to position embroidered circles on top of the fabric circles at the centres. I suspect that isn’t going to be easy to execute. In any case, I won’t get to that until I have all the other thread painting done. Then I have to decide if I want to do any kind of stitching on the background! I may leave it alone…. I’ve discovered I can’t plan any of this out in advance – it’s all about one step at a time. It’s about improvisation.

Flowers

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I’ve been looking at pictures of quilts by Freddy Moran – large bold background with appliqué collage in strong bright colours. I decided to try something like that.

I set up a black/white fabric background, then began cutting out flower-like shapes in layers and bright colours. Nine large flowers later I thought I needed to connect them in some way so I included a long flowing branch of leaves. Then added a few lighter green leaves (from a floral print fabric) to just finish off the appliqué.

Flowers

Now to start thread painting – here’s where I can use contrasting colours, particularly on the leaves and stem to make them brighter. No time to even start that today – tomorrow, for sure.

Dessert For Easter Dinner

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I got assigned dessert for today’s Easter Sunday Dinner. I thought about it for a bit and decided the Hazelnut Torte recipe from my friend Marlene is an easy but tasty cake. Takes no time to whip up.

(click on the recipe and you’ll get a clear readable, printable single page copy)

Torte in the oven I decided to use the egg yokes (with a couple more eggs) to make a half (more or less) recipe of this delicious lemon curd:

Positively yummy! Tart, yet sweet (next time I’d go light on the sugar – I used 1 cup for a half recipe 3/4 c is more than enough)

Next I made a batch of no-churn vanilla ice cream to put on top of the torte:

Then to top it all off my sister Donna’s “Best Chocolate Sauce” (it really is!)

It’s overkill, I realize but each of these dessert elements is so decadent I couldn’t help but go overboard!

Amazing Quilled Paper Rug by Lisa Nilssen

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Have you ever tried doing quilled paper work – I have done a wee bit and it’s not easy. You need good paper and a ton of patience. Which is why I wanted to share this detail of a much larger “rug” done by Lisa Nilssen.

Quilled Paper Rug by Lisa Nilssen

Take a look at the complete rug and the other detail images on this website: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/04/lisa-nilsson-quilled-paper-artwork/

Here’s what the article I came across had to say:

Working with compact rolls of Japanese mulberry paper in a myriad of colors, artist Lisa Nilsson painstakingly creates anatomical figures and textile patterns using a centuries-old technique called quilling. In her latest artworks Jardine and Gospel, Nilsson was inspired by the patterns of an Islamic carpet and an 8th century gospel cover. The carpet piece alone was nearly 8 months in the making as she created ornate figures of flowers, stars, and other patterns to fill a 27″ by 34″ inch frame, much of which was improvised as she worked outward from the center.

The rug is really amazing.

PS – April 27 2019

If paper art interests you, check out the exquisite paper craft imitation flowers of Mary Delany (1772). At the age of 72 she began working with paper and her work is displayed in the British Museum. Worth having a look. Here’s one example of her accurate flower renditions:

“Sunflower” from the British Museum Collection

First Real Sign Of Spring

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Harbinger Of Spring

First Coltsfoot of 2019

Saw these coltsfoot peeking through last fall’s leaves two days ago – a definite harbinger if spring arriving in NS. These were in a friend’s yard; no sign of any in their spot under the trees near my building. Next sign – forsythia in bloom – likely not for another 10 days.

Fall Day 2007 II

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Finished this morning (well, I still have to hand stitch the invisible binding on the back but other than that, the work is completed). The burgundy batik used in the border/frame brings out the figure – I tried other contrasting fabrics but the burgundy worked best, I think.

Fall Day 2007 – Finished

After I’d stitched the trunks and branches of the trees/bushes, the fused appliqué was easy to apply. Once in place, I decided to edge stitch the small pieces in autumn shades that blended with the leaf colour. I had to think through carefully stitching the shading boundaries on the figure (it’s actually a photo of me, used with David Lacey’s permission) because mistakes would be undoable. So I opted for just the minimum of stitching.

I achieved quite a bit of texture with the fused appliqué and overall the finished thread painted work is more lively than the original photos printed on fabric.

Fall Day 2007 – photo collage

The whole work took much less time than I thought it would in spite of the large amount of thread painting I ended up doing. I started playing with the images on or around the first of April, printed the images on fabric and began the piece in earnest on April 7 – so I finished it in just over a week; not bad.

I’m pleased with the finished art work.

Fall Day 2007

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I’ve worked on this for the last four hours – first stitching in the tree trunks and branches on the left, adding foliage from tiny fabric scraps with fusible web on the back (applied to fabric before cutting it, then stitching branches on the trees on the right. Next, I added some definition to the landscape elements by outlining them. Last I added the figure, fused it in place, then outline stitched the figure and the shading on the clothing.

Fall Morning 2007

That’s as much as I can do for now. What I haven’t figured out how to do is stitch the foliage on the trees and on the ground. The fused scraps are very tiny so stitching around each outline doesn’t seem feasible but I don’t know what to do instead. I have to sleep on that.

And below is the image I started with – background and figure fused.

Fall Day 2007

Sparkly Pink Socks – Leftovers #4

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You’d never know this pair of socks was knit from leftover yarn – the two sparkly yarns blended perfectly and I had exactly enough to do two complete pattern repeats on two socks!

Sparkly Pink Socks

I admit I divided up the yarn before I started knitting so I had some idea how much to knit using the first yarn before switching to the second. IN this case the colours were very similar so you have to look hard to figure out where one yarn ends and the second begins.

No more sparkly yarn in my stash, however; so that’s the end of the sparkly socks!

Sparkly Socks #!

Sparkly Socks #2

Morning Conversation V

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Here it is, finally completed. It looks like I was imagining it – with the help of some permanent markers and coloured pencils I was able to sharpen the men’s faces and clothing just a bit.

Morning Conversation

In the end, I created/modified embroidery stitches on my machine to provide a bit of texture to the hanging plant behind the men and on the bush peeking in front of the sign on the left. The thread painting in this piece had more to do with creating definition rather than filling in areas as it was with the tropical flowers. Nevertheless, it took quite a bit of time deciding just what should be stitched, what colour thread, what stitch size (I ended up using a 1.5mm straight stitch for much of the stitching)… And all within the limitation of being able to stitch just once!

The hand gesture is still obvious, the second man looks attentive, and the shop fronts turned out quite well – so even though I gave up trying to create reflections in the shop windows they have turned out quite well.

I found the framing fabric in my stash – from the Northcott Medici collection I used in the large medallion quilt. The dark fabric makes the sunshine and highlights stand out.

I began working on this piece February 4 – it’s taken me just over 2 months to complete it – a lot of contemplating time involved here trying to figure out how to simplify the image and create the street scene to showcase the men.

Morning Coversation

This is piece #5 for the Parrsboro show – I need still another 5-6 wall art pieces of some sort. My self-portrait on a fall day is up next – I’m still not sure how to texture the background on that piece but I’m sure something will come to me.

Halifax Harbour II – Finished

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Halifax Harbour II

Another textile art piece finished. The second version of the city of Halifax floating above the fog as seen from the Dartmouth shore. In this one, there is more of a sense of the fog shrouding the city.

In this piece I let the photography speak more than I have in previous works. I thought the overall movement of the clouds and the sea/sky balance worked as it was so I didn’t cut this image printed on fabric into smaller elements to situate them within an appliqué background. This image, with a small amount of thread painting stands alone.

I’ve come up with another pair of images that I’m going to compile into a piece. These photos were taken in the fall of 2007 when David Lacey (a NS landscape painter) and I were spending a day taking landscape pictures.

Fall Day 2007

David took the photo of me not on this particular country road but on another close by. What draws me to this roadway is its gentle curving from mid-left to bottom right and the sun/shadow balance and the farmland in the distance. David’s photo of me, taking care to position it correctly, will make the sun on my back fit into the shadows in this landscape. I don’t know yet to what extent I will use the background photo printed on fabric or whether I will piece the background. More and more my photography seems to want to speak out.