Things with wings

 

Hello everyone, can you believe its April already? Well I’ve been very busy last month since I purchased myself a brand new sewing machine. Ive never really been much of a sewer but recently I visited a local art centre where they were holding a art quilts exhibition, plus spending more time in a good friends studio who is also a fabric artist (she creates amazing works  of art using fabric and free motion sewing ) that I got totally inspired to have a go  I’ve really caught the bug as this is a totally new medium for me and a huge learning curve  well you know me I love to learn new things sew, get it?  so this is right up my street.

This months theme is birds and things chosen for us by the lovely and very Rachel. I thought id combine some of skills to create this tiny mini art quilt. I also thought as it knew this would take up much of my free time to combine it with a tag journal round I belong to where and so I made it to fit the current journal

Let’s start at the beginning. I two Pieces of white fabric and sprayed one of them thoroughly with water until it was completely wet. Then using my Inktense pencils from Derwent I added colour to the fabric . I loosely added colours to represent sky, sun, and greenery. This was only to be the background so I wanted it very lose and watery

Towards the bottom I added grass and foliage like stroke, this was more of a guide for me rather than to look realistic  I loved the freedom of this and actually really enjoyed getting messy.

 

Next I added some brusho to intensify the colour and I think it added a lot more depth.

On top of the brush I added a Brusho Sprinkleit in pearl which adds a wonderful shimmer to the colour.

By now it was absolutely dripping so i laid  the second piece of fabric I had cut on top to absorb some of the water and paint.

 

I can use this in another project. I totally dried off both pieces. And then ripped them up across the smallest part i.e.width not length.

I chose the pieces I wanted to use and backed them all with Heat and Bond so I could adhere them to my piece of batting cut to fit the size of the tag. The bottom piece I added more foliage with the pencils. I loved the bottom part, it looks like reflections in a still pond to me.

Once I was happy with the composition I ironed everything to stick it down. I was too far gone enjoying myself to pay much attention to the composition really and actually made a hug mistake by breaking the sky with a line of hills. However, I went with it telling myself it was a bank of cloud hugging the hills.

I stitched this on the machine using free motion (something I had never done before) I definitely practice first.

Next I worked out what was going to be on my foreground I knew it had to contain fungi and something  with wings so decided on what and then went through my fabric stash which to be honest isn’t huge at all so I was quite limited. However, I decided on which fabrics I wanted to use and stuck them to the heat and bond. I drew the images I wanted and then cut them out and ironed them in place.

Then using a variety of machine embroidery threads and free motion I added some textures and lights and darks to add interest to the piece.

Once I had finished machine stitching I decided to add even more interest with hand embroidery, (again something completely new to me) to all you seasoned sewers out there please forgive novice attempt I was learning on the job sew, so  (another pun) to speak.

I started with some french knots, added some chain stitch and then did some straight stitch here and there. Lastly I created a long tailed tit in Procreate and printed it off the size I wanted. Then cut it out so I could photograph it in place.

 

Now I had my final composition I added a few leaves and photographed it all together. I would have liked to have been able to add more spring like items to my composition but unfortunately my garden isnt yet showing signs of spring. Let’s take a last look.

Thanks for visiting and come back soon

hugs Debs xxx