What I did yesterday - chiffon sandwich, Waste not Want Not bag and Bay leaves

Photo heavy post - Having vented my frustration yesterday - I decided to make something - so I made another large piece of Waste Not Want Not 'chiffon sandwich' fabric and turned it into a bag.  If you have never made a chiffon sandwich - this is the recipe....
You can use any fabric as a background so long as it is cotton and not too thick - I use up old curtain samples as they are a good size - however on this occasion I joined two pieces together, then applied some Bondaweb

Next step is to take one of my many bags of scraps - including threads and chop them up

Until I have a largish pile of chopped up stuff - this is them scattered over the cotton background

 Cover this with a layer of chiffon - this time I used twinkle nylon instead as it gives a nice shimmer - next step is to stitch in both directions with a basic pattern stitch (easier to show from the back)

Then blast it with a heat gun - this melts the nylon and helps keep it all together - you can just see the melting - right side of the photo below

 

This was then turned into a large bag - which I will now try to see on Etsy ! It has two outside pockets and one inside for a mobile phone (or whatever)

Bay leaves - last summer I had to give my Bay tree a bit of a trim and as you know I hate to throw anything away so I dried the leaves. Now I have a very large quantity of dried leaves and although I use them all the time in my cooking I won't be able to use up all the stock I have - SO if you would like some FOR FREE please let me know and I will post you some.

New Work

Sorry it has been a while since I last wrote but I have a) not been well - still, b) its been too hot and sunny to work and c) I have been busy :-)

I have had two wonderful weekends away with my lovely textile art friends - the first weekend was with the MEG group in Salisbury. The second was a long weekend (Friday to Tuesday) with the group Textile21 where we were in Kingcombe.

So what was I doing? Firstly making more of my Waste Not Want Not products - I now have Mug rugs, brooches and bracelet/cuffs -

 

NEXT - I finished off stitching on the Doors piece I have already shown you - then I started work on a Zentangle version of my Doors piece - its A3 in size and as you can see is still a work in progress.

 FINALLY - I started another piece - it is much bigger and although it has started off in the same method  - as I work on it, it may change.  I can only show you the work in progress at this time as it has a very long way to go.

I chose two of my favourite door photos and cut them in two sizes - arranged them in a pleasing design, then doubled, mirrored and off set it.

The textile background is still in the Wendy Dolan technique of white on white fabric then painted, although I have found online that this technique has been used for many many years by loads of other artists so its not just Wendy's technique. Anyway - white on white then painted in a delicate violet and azure blue.

 Here I have just started the stitching of the design outlines.

More Waste Not Want Not Items and finally some new work

Still not too well but hey that is not going to stop me at the moment :-) . My range of Waste Not Want Not items has grown again - I now have a range of note cards for sale in my Etsy shop

 New Work - As some of you know I often spend a Saturday working on my textiles but at the home of Jane Lemon - she is so inspirational, encouraging and I love her to bits.  Recently we discussed the fact that I am currently having a bit of a creative block (mostly because I am not well). Well a while ago we had a discussion about the fact that I am not very good at design for textile art pieces so Jane volunteered to teach me!! So I took some of my hundreds of pictures of doors to her one weekend.  We cut and arranged the pics into a 'design'.

 Then I had to trace it and fill in with tonal values to get the idea - my 'homework' was to transfer the design to calico ready for the next session.       When I got home that time I remembered I had been on a course with Wendy Dolan where I had done a nice technique of building fabrics, painting and stitching - ending up with these:

So I thought I would build up this new design in the same technique.

However when I got to the painting stage my colours were meant to be more gentle and bluer..  They came out a little too bright

So I left the piece (sorry no photo of the whole piece) until yesterday when I took all of the stuff to Jane.  Although my blue piece was OK and I could have just continued to work on it Jane took the scissors to it!! With my blessing, of course.  I remember letting Val Campbell-Harding do the same to my work in the past!!

We then rearranged my new work and added the work done with Wendy - in to the piece below - it needs a lot more work yet but at least  am doing something!!

 Here are a couple of close up pics of new new pieces - lots more stitching to go.