Tuesday 4 December 2007

Raising the Surface

What a good title - could be used for a book!
Yesterday was another round of pleasure! Christmas lunch for Wessex Textiles in a lovely restaurant in Wimborne. Great to see everyone and I was able to thank Ruby Lever for setting up and manning the Val exhib at the Harrogate K&S. I saw some pics on Julie's blog and it looked great.

Glad you're all enjoying WoW. I thought it was a goodie and I loved the Linda Westerman article and Ruth Lee's shoes. I hadn't thought of moulding Tyvek and can't wait to have a go. My next book is on mixed media stuff and I am having great fun with it - and I've only got as far as gesso.

Great that Aussie Jo has been found - thought we were going to have to search the outback.

Yes, technology is a pain, Chrissie - and we depend so much on it. We have always had a separate phone line for our fax and decided to keep it (even though we get very few faxes) as a back up in case the main line went down. When this eventually happened both lines disappeared and we discovered that we didn't have two lines - just two numbers and two bills! They swear they have fixed this, hopefully we will never find out. Fiona's phone should be back today. Relief.

I was going to talk about the cloaks for the Master of the Rolls doll which were a quickish make on the embellisher. I do like combining stitch with embellishing as I find it needs a contrast of surface to stop it being flat.





This motif is one that I've used many times. It came from a floral wall in the Alhambra, Granada, and I flipped and extended it.






I have digitised it and it pops up in quite a lot of my work. Stitched on felt, it can be cut out without fraying. When I'm in my workroom, I often have the sewing machine chugging away, stitching out some of this sort of patterns so that they are stockpiled ready for the time when I need a quick motif.






I left quite a good border of felt and embellished it to a foiled felt background. it made a good surface. The black surround gives the metallic stitch an emphasis it would lack if stitched straight on to the fabric. Of course, this kind of motif could be free machined in satin stitch, so it doesn't have to be auto stitched.





Here's a detail of a bag made in a similar way.




I'm off to have my hair cut and then over to Fiona to help her sort out her backlog of emails. Quiltwow is going mad at the moment, which is great. Won't be long now until the first full issue.

7 comments:

sharon young said...

Hi maggie
What a scary chap the Master of the Rolls is, he looks unnervingly human!
Love what you've done with the motif, my daughter has just repossessed her Brother Galaxy, which has sat unused with me for about 2 months. They are a bit daunting to use, I had an entry level one for a while and that was easier but I found it quicker to do the FME, probably because I don't do manuals, very well LOL.

Julie said...

Oooooh! A book on Mixed Media! I will be up for that! Keep us posted please.

Carole said...

Hi Maggie: Thanks for the detailed look at how you created the cloak. Great idea to use embellisher around the design-I hadn't thought of that. My sewing machine is over 30 years old so I am constantly amazed at how technology has improved the functionality of them. It sounds like you can just program it and let it run on its own as long as you are in the vicinity. Is that correct? I am goung to try and mix Adirondack alcohol inks with UTEE to see what I get. Apparently you always mix them together before heating, stirring to get rid of alcohol, never putting them in the melting pot until they are completely mixed. Let you know what happens. Carole

Jackie Kirner said...

Hello Maggie,

Your blog has become a small addiction of mine! I'll be very intrigued to see a mixed media book of yours.

Next time you see Ruby send her a cheery "hi" from me, Ian's niece!!
She introduced me to a UK mag "World of Embroidery" or some such name (sound familiar??!!) and thus started me on a path beyond cross-stitch kits.

Now - off to play with WOW Dec. issue.

Penny said...

Hi Maggie, finally printed off WOW and wow! I cant wait to try some of the stuff. Just showed my DH your machine with the programmed stitch and he just shook his head and said we are in drought and you already have two sewing machines and an embellisher set up, surely you dont want one with a computer in it too!

Judith said...

Hi Maggie, my name is Judith Green. I didn't get my log on for WOW for December. Sorry, could'nt find an email address for you.
Thanks
Judith

Wabbit said...

Hi, Maggie! I'm a big fan of your's from the wild west of the US. Yes, Christmas without snow but with palm trees is very odd indeed! Urchfont looked like such fun when I read about it on Sharon's and Sian's blogs. I find myself coveting an embellisher more and more! However, I've just splurged on an Anniversary edition Bernina with the BSR and embroidery module, so I'd better learn to use all it's toys first.
Wishing you and your's a very Happy Christmas and an exciting New Year. Marilyn in Phoenix