Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Peaceful New Year with much inspiration!
Instead of sending cards this year I have decided to give money to Isle of Wight charity, Bus Shelter, whose mission is:
“To provide safe overnight accommodation for people sleeping rough on the Isle of Wight”
I’ve been beavering away on some pieces for TRAC’s March 2017 exhibition on the theme of Water. Its a great theme, so many ways of interpreting it. Of course, my starting point was Ryde’s beautiful beaches, but I found my inspiration along the seawall with its rusted gates and waste water outlets from the grand houses above. I took the approach of my City & Guilds work, drawing and sketching, experimenting and thinking – hence no blog post for a while! But then I just had to stitch, so I took some of my experiments and tried to place them together. This piece incorporates rust-dyed fabric, scrunched brown paper, sand-papered denim. I then created a print block using funky foam taken from patterns and shapes around a rusty gate. Stitching includes running stitch over the printing, broderie Anglais, French knots – proper and loopy, couching, and darning. The only thing I have to do now is to consider the framing. When I started this piece, I didn’t really think about how it would turn it out it was just going to evolve. Unfortunately its evolved into non-commercial frame size! I think a box frame is required because of the ‘loose’ couching, but we will have to see.
Addendum: A perfect piece of driftwood was discovered on the beach in Penzance and was tacked to the top of the piece and strung with some cord made with my Kreinik cordwinder – there are never enough opportunities to get that out! Great fun!
Bright & Beautiful 