Inspiration in everything!

I'm often asked what inspires my work.  Well, how long have you got?

There really isn't an easy answer to this as I'm inspired by so many things.  Sometimes I get so much inspiration from one thing that it leads to a series of work.  This was so when I began to see rusty objects over and over again and the more I saw, the more I noticed rust in many other places.   This overload of inspiration lead to two series - Corrosion, which was inspired by the rust itself, and Oxidisation, which used fabric and threads dyed with the rusty items.

       

      

I have always had a great fancy for maps which lead to my series Seen From Above.   The inspiration came from contour lines and map symbols as well as the layout of settlements.  In several of the pieces maps were used as part of the design.

        

 

I haven't worked on a series for a few years now although certain images keep coming back into my work.  Beach Huts make an appearance now and then, together with anything connected to the sea.  This has been since we moved closer to the sea which we visit to walk several days each week.

When I look back in my sketchbook to see where the inspirations for each piece of work have come from, I find that most of all it can be just one image seen on that day that has immediately caught my eye and I see how I can interpret it on the page.  Sometimes literally, other times it just sparks something else.

In the last week my sketchbook has continued, although with only a few pages left, it has become increasingly difficult to take photos each day.  The first couple of days used prints from my stash as I wanted some quick days because I was starting a quilt this week so my time was precious.

My stash included several painted papers that I completed during a C&G Creative Sketchbook course I did in 2009.  Inspiration for part of my work on this course was torn and painted layers so the first page was a piece of one of the papers which started as a print of an image which was rubbed with layers of markal wax crayons and then topped with a layer of painted bondaweb.

I find some of my Gelli Prints are inspiration in themselves.  This next page used a gelli

print which was made with stencil of squares in different sizes.  I felt the paper itself was enough on it's own so I just added four yellow squares.

On Instagram this week someone I follow shared a piece of work which included prairie points
 which reminded my just how much I love them and have often included them in my work.  I was therefore inspired to make paper prairie points from gelli printed paper which I placed onto a gelli printed background.  I added the cross stitches as  reminder that they can be stitched in cloth too.

Another page was a 'naked' gelli print made using feathers and lace which was enough not to add anything to it.

We managed a couple of beach walks this week and found thousands of shells had been washed up in great big clumps.  I took photos of the shells and then manipulated them in Photoshop.  I'm not good with Photoshop and tend to just fiddle with the different effects until I get something I like without remembering what I've actually done, so I find it difficult to repeat anything I like!

I found a little saying about shells that spoke to me so simply wrote it over the shell background.

Using another gelli print, I drew several mandalas which I just love whether I am stitching, crocheting or drawing.

I recently treated myself to some Gelli Minis so tried them out for one of my pages, just using the triangle shape and various stencils, stamps and bubble wrap to add some texture and the highlighted using a white Posca pen.

February is Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Month and because my grandson Samuel was born with CHD I always remember it in some way.  This year I made him star of a page with hearts  and background which were printed using my gelli plate and a foam heart  shape.

Back to using my gelli print stash, this time I turned to my wooden printing blocks for inspiration and printed a design using one which I feel is a peacock design.

And finally for this week, today's design came about while I was thinking about designs for some embroidery I am planning at the moment.   I want to use stylised flowers, leaves and trees so this was a way of having an initial play.   I printed the green for the leaves using skeleton leaves to add texture to the gelli plate and for the background I used a print block I made year ago with card and string to live the bark of a tree.

Chichester Harbour

Now our exhibition is up and running I can catch up on the things I had to let slip as I was hard at work getting work finished.

Chichester Harbour is a place we visit on a regular basis so I became very aware of the variety of activities and landscapes that can be seen, depending on where you are.

 I started by creating panels to depict sailing, the birdlife, oysters which were once harvested at Emsworth, the dunes of East Head, the quay at Bosham, yachts at the Marina, feathers from birds, and of course the water.  

 

I used a variety of techniques for each panel including a photo printed on fabric, gelli plate printing, printing with stencils and machine embroidery and quilting.

 

These panels were then collaged with plain dyed fabric to form a hanging that was machine quilted.  Hand stitching, beads and shells were added to finish

 

   

 

 

   

 

   

 

 

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Dyeing for New Work

Happy few hours spent dyeing some fabric and threads for my next two projects.

You can tell from the colours that it is a watery theme!  One will be inspired by Chichester Harbour and the other will be inspired by photos taken in Iceland by my Thread and Shutter friend Brian Baker.

It's the first time I've set out to dye very pale colours and I'm now worried that they will be too pale.  At least I will be able to dye them again!

Can't wait to get started......

Collage for a change!

Just for a change I have abandoned  fabric and threads and have completed a collage, still under the theme of "Seen From Above".

A few months ago I bought a Gelli Plate so have been experimenting and watching demos on You tube!   For anyone who, like I used to, thinks that you can do mono prints on a sheet of glass so don't need to spend, let's face it, quite a lot of money on a Gelli Plate .... well you're wrong! They are superb so if you need convincing try to get on a course or see a demo in person to be convinced.

Having produced a large stack of printed papers I had to do a collage so used the isle of Portsea as my subject.   We go to Portsmouth quite a bit so it seemed appropriate.

I started by painting an A3 piece of cartridge paper with orange acrylic as the background and then used various printed paper for different areas of Portsea, leaving small spaces in between all the pieces so the orange showed through.  I used the same orange acrylic to paint the edges of a canvas frame and then collaged blue printed papers as the sea surrounding the island.

To use up the left over pieces, I made some cards!

Seen From Above - One Inch to a Mile

I just love "Inchies" and sooner or later I make some to fit with my current theme.  And Seen From Above is no exception.

I started needlefelting various fibres, fabrics and yarns to create a fabric which I then cut up into inch squares.   These were first edged with blanket stitch and then embellished with hand stitches and beads and for some I added scraps of old maps.   The Inchies were then assembled and mounted on old OS maps which in turn were mounted on board and framed.

As some of the maps I used were old enough to have a scale of one inch to a mile, I didn't have to think too hard about the title.

 

 

The left overs were then mounted on maps and used to map greetings cards.

Seen From Above - 58 to 121

This time my piece of textile art in the Seen From Above series is a linear map that follows the route from my house to our caravan on the coast.   It's a journey I take many times and have come to know it very well.

The techniques I have used include hand stitching, painting, printing and applique.  The background was printed to resemble contour lines found on OS maps and then I illustrated various landmarks or features along the route.

 

 

The 'map' was stiffened with Vilene so that it fold up in four sections just like a real map.

Seen From Above - The Village

Last month I gave you a preview of my latest creation which is now finished so can be revealed.

 

 

Made from my own dyed fabric, this is a pieced quilted hanging with the centre of the panel reflecting the layout of the roads in the village which I live.   I had to make a few adjustments so I didn't have too many corners meeting.   This panel was then hand quilted with lines of running stitch in toning perle cotton.  I used the shape of each piece when deciding which direction to quilt.

 

The top and bottom borders were printed with a stencil made from freezer paper.  The two left hand shapes - an oak tree and an anvil - are the symbols on the village sign; the centre house is the outline of my own house; and the two right hand trees reflect the woods that border the village.   These two panels were then quilted with seed stitch using random dyed perle cotton.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

Two small quilts

I'm making the most of the free time I have before the Christmas rush arrives!

I've recently signed up for DMTV and have been inspired by some of the videos I have watched.   If you have never seen or heard of these excellent videos, have a look at Design Matters website which is run by the very talented Linda and Laura Kemshall.

I have long been an admirer of their work and inspired by their use of quilting which is often much more dense that I would ever do!   I also love the printed fabrics that Laura sells under Fingerprint Fabrics.  I have purchased some in the past at FOQ and have recently bought a couple of pieces of map fabrics for using in my "Seen From Above" series.

One of the videos I was inspired by was about using your own printing blocks to create first papers and then fabrics to use in collage.

So using the map fabric - an old map of London - and some simple stamp made with foam blocks, I created two collages in my sketchbook which I then translated into small quilts using my own dyed fabrics which I had printed.   The use of a rectangle for the stamps was to reflect the buildings which would be seen on a map of a different scale.  

On the first one I quilted around the rectangles and then bit the bullet and did some much more dense free quilting on the map area.  I left a couple of areas unquilted for variety.   As with my earlier quilt in this series, I quilted the title of the quilt on the right side which I intend to do with all my creations in this series.



Seen From Above - Suburbs I

     

For the second one, I again quilted around the rectangles first and then machine quilted vertical lines over the map areas.



Seen From Above - Suburbs II

     

Each quilt measures about 12" x 16".