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.

Embroidered Dandelions

My love for embroidery still continues and for the past few weeks I've been working on a series of embroidered hoops based on a dandelion design.

The first one was inspired by a wooden block I have which features a dandelion clock.  The ends look just like fly stitches so I felt it cried out to be an embroidery.  I decided to do this on a navy blue background so I could use cream thread so the seed head looked more realistic.

I then moved on to design number two which incorporated fabric in a side panel and one of the dandelion heads.  I chose yellow to reflect the yellow of the dandelion flower.

For this seed head I used French knots at the end of a long stitch.  I did try it with pistol stitch but I wasn't pleased with the result and felt the French knots looked better.

For the final design I printed some of my dyed fabric with the wooden block that had inspired me.  I used discharge paste so the design is quite subtle.  Circles of the fabric were bonded to the background (I used misty fuse to keep it soft) and then secured with buttonhole around the edge.  I used French knots again for the 'seeds' around the circle and used a few long stitches to give the impression of the stalks.   The stems were whipped backstitch.

I've loved doing all three of these designs and have a head full of more!

What I did with snow dyed fabric!

You may recall that earlier this year we were blessed with snow, the first time for some years and as a committed dyer, I did some snow dyeing.

At long last I've used the fabric I produced to make some mats and a tablecloth for our caravan.  The designs were simple so I could get them done quickly and out of the fabric from this year's dyeing I made mats for the table and coffee table.

These two used all the fabric I had so delving in to my stash I found some more fabric that I did some years ago using either snow or ice - I can't remember which!

The colours are much deeper than this year's batch so I don't know what I did that was different. 

For the tablecloth, I used a wooden block to print a leaf design using discharge paste.  I had intended to do this with the first two mats but I forgot to do it!

It was a great exercise as it showed me how different coloured dyes react - some of the squares only had a very feint print whereas others were very clear.   I haven't done much work with discharge paste but I was so pleased with this work that I'll definitely do more again soon.

Another month, another Journal Quilt

For my April Journal Quilt I reached orange and yellow on the colour wheel and although on the face of it there is a traditional look to it, I used a variety of widths for the strips and included some orange and yellow striped strips too.  The centre square is also from the striped fabric.

I used a hand made block for the gelli printing on some of the yellow strips, using string wrapped around a piece of card and using an orange fabric paint.

To finish I machine quilted in straight lines from top to bottom, again varying the distances between the lines to reflect the different widths of the strips.

Block Printing

I have a growing collection of wooden printing blocks which I pick up mainly at shows as I find them lovely to work with, especially when using my gelli plate.

I was therefore thrilled when I received a late birthday present from my daughter Clare which was a kit for hand printing a scarf with a wooded block.   It came from The Arty Crafty Place who we saw when we went to the Sewing Bee Live Show.

The scarf if huge and I didn't know quite where to start and what to do.  I was also worried I'd start and then not have enough paint to finish as the pot in the kit looked very small against the scarf.  After a lot of deliberation and general phaffing I decided to start printing from one end, see how it went and then do the same from the other end, figuring that if I had enough paint and they met in the middle then great.

I worked on my ironing board as I thought that was the printed bit could remain fairly free and have time to dry.  I put a towel under the scarf to give a soft base to print into as well as protecting my ironing board.   I did give the scarf a gentle press as it had been heavily twisted and creased when I unwrapped it and although I preferred this look to a pristine flat surface, I was worried that if it was too creased it would affect the print.

  

My plan worked well and I managed to print about 20" in from each end which left quite a gap unprinted in the middle but I think it looks better for it.  My only problem was trying to make the printing look random - I don't do random so I had to concentrate hard.

I love it and look forward to wearing it somewhere warm!