Last C&G Sample and Colour Display

This is the last of the Samples Project I'm able to share with you. Today was the last working day at College and I really only went to prepare my display, which took most of the day to mount!! This sample was meant to be of manipulated fabric techniques, but I confess, I didn't finish it and get to that part. I've posted this one before to some degree, but here it is in the full line up. The sources were a sapling opposite our flats and a bird table I found on-line. Here we have a pastel picture of the two together, then a collage using painted papers etc, and then the sample which is worked in over-dyed threads (yes, GAST and WDW) on a fabric painted background. A bit lurid and makes it look springlike when it's meant to be autumnal, but it could be worse!!

Below is the Colour Module display that I've done for the College end of year exhibition next week. The photo was awful as my new camera just won't take indoor pix without blurring them horribly. I couldn't manage with the old one - having to hold the battery door shut - in the middle of the studio etc. DH is getting me a lovely new one that will take pictures in dim light and all sorts - great for museum collections where photography is sometimes allowed, but lights are low and flashes a no-go. I just got this pic to show it all together. I think I'll try and take a better one when I bring it home and can use the old camera on it, but you can see how I put in white mounts for most pieces and also used some other colours of card and paper to tone in with the artwork and samples etc. Do you think it works?

So, that's it for City & Guilds for me for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure if I'll go back after our year away and re-start as the whole programme is changing and, whilst it seems somewhat less work and not too bad, I just don't know. We'll see.

Now that's out of the way, I can get back to some of my 'regular' stitching. =)

Some more artwork

Nothing stitchy to show just yet, (although I really must get on with some!), but here are some more of the art and design pieces I've done for my C&G work. Hope you like them at least a little bit. :) Paper-based art isn't my forté, (mostly as I don't do enough of it to develop any real level of skill), but I quite enjoy it anyway, which is the main thing.

This first one is a pastel painting of the centre of a flower which I did to be part of my colour resolved design work investigating tones and tints. This was the tints one - pale colours with 'white added'.

This one, obviously, is a collage of the Taj Mahal using fancy and metallic papers and card. The idea from here was to reproduce it with manipuated fabric techniques (part of the 'Texture' module) in trapunto. This was the one I tried to do using silk paints, but where the silver and clear guttas let me down to a mortifying degree and, after wasting a couple of hours on painstaking tracing of the outline - twice! - I had to throw the whole disaster into the bin in despair as the silk paint leaked through every single line of gutta! It didn't do that with the gold of the same brand, but the silver and clear, with their huge applicator openings that forced me to apply it with a paintbrush, were hopeless. I was, if you'll excuse the pun, gutted!

This last one is a piece of art nouveau jewelry which was to be reproduced in beads covering a large-ish button (just about an inch in diameter). It's drawn in pastel pencil, which I seem to do a lot better with than regular pencils of any type or colour and, I must say, I'd rather like a pendant like this!!

Coloured Broderie Anglaise Sample

One more sample done.=) Sadly, I can't find the source image at the moment as my laptop has died (we think the motherboard has gone - RIP Laptop!) and it's on there rather than the PC I'm posting from right now. Once I can get at the laptop's hard-drive to take my files, contacts and bookmarks off, I can add it in here, but for now I'll have to just present the pastel painting of the source photo, which doesn't look too much different from the real thing, and the stitched sample. This time we have a broderie anglaise piece worked in colour (as opposed to the traditional white on white) and on a piece of fabric that I dyed back in Decemeber.

Here also are a drawing and a collage of Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, UK, where Zeferelli's 'Jane Eyre' was filmed and which also appeared in the 2005 film version of 'Pride and Prejudice'. This was work for the first sample in the 'Texture' module, although I got no further than a total of 3 pieces of art for that!


Neither are spectacular, but the shapes are generally OK. I think the drawing is really lacking depth of colour in the main - the walls are too insipid, but I seem a bit short of serviceable grey shades of pencil, other than standard graphite. Art materials are one of the many things that are cheaper in Taiwan, so I'll stock up a bit there - and probably get a new laptop there as well.

Before my laptop did totally die (after 2 'sick' periods), I was able to do some pruning on my blog and deleted over 80 posts that were really saying nothing and editted probably as many. So, about 30% of it has now gone, which should make finding stuff and reading back for new visitors that much easier.

More art and stitching photos to come soon as I have also been working on the autumn tree sample and have taken photos of some other design/artwork that I've been doing for the C&G and will post that in spates with stitching WIPs.