Lots of Leaves!

Fiiiiiiinallly finished embroidering all my leaves! It took me days and got a few funny looks from the other people at bingo when I was sat there with all my leaves but they're almost ready to be sewn together tomorrow, just got my water soluble ones drying...
























#leaves #handembroidery #machineembroidery #bingo

The end is (sort of) in sight...

I've been sewing and sewing and sewing my feathers and dont really seem to be getting much further which is quite frustrating. I have to keep telling myself that it's the embroidery taking so long and once I've done the base colour there's all the highlight/shade to do which takes longer but after a few hours sewing (where you have started to smell something a bit funny which I can only assume is the machine overheating...) and you look no further on it's a bit disheartening. Oh well, I've gone 1 wing all done and am sort of, almost, nearly half way through the other one...

I have had to find ways of entertaining myself so the slowness this is progressing doesn't make me eat too much chocolate and I thought I'd share my smiles for today - this was as I looked out of my window when I was writing this and the 2 seagulls looked like they were stood on the edge of the window (I think the funny smell the sewing machine was giving off has gone to my brain a little bit...)

 And this was just a pretty sky - look how blue it is!

#feathers #myna bird #sewing #machine embroidery #seagulls #sunset

Myna Bird Wing

So the last week or so I've been chained up to a sewing maching and have sewn and sewn until I made a wing. It took a very very long time but I think it was worth it.
It started off with this...

And, after many hours of hard work, turned into this...

(inside of wing)

(outside of wing)

 (wing detail)

 (compared to the drawing I was working from)

I think it turned out pretty well for a first attempt. It's not prefect, I need to make the feathers bigger so you can't see the calico where I sewed them together and stuff but I'm still quite impressed with myself. I think I deserve a hot chocolate and an episode of Vampire Diaries don't you?

#wing #embroidery #machine embroidery #myna bird #vampire diaries

Little bit closer...

I was talking with my tutors and have decided to make my collar a little differently, I'm gonna buy a vintage collar and put my butterflies on that so it'll look a little bit like this...

Camberwell Beauty

Had a very exciting friday, I made a pretendy neckpiece base for practice. I used plain cotton for the top and layered chiffon over plain cotton for the collar. That bit didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped, mainly cos I'd been ignoring the fact that chiffon was quite so see-through so its ended up with a big hem so I'm gonna try overlocking and, fingers crossed, that'll work better.

Then I sewed and sewed and sewed and made some beautiful Camberwell Beauty Butterflies...

This one is is organza with free motion machine embroidery

This is a photocopy on acetate that I machine embroidered the detail on.

 

I loooove the organza one, I was so excited I didn't wnt to look at it while I was sewing the bottom wings on which I think is why it went a bit wonkey lol. The thing is though, because the fabric is so light and the embroidery is so heavy, the wings just fall. I think that when I've gont a lot together I'll be able to put a little stitch between the wings and that'll sort it.

The acetate one actually worked a lot better than I thought it would which was quite a nice suprise. I might put the occasional acetate butterfly on to keep the wings upright.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho...

It's off to sew we go...
Spent yesterday dyeing and today sewing, what fun. I've been playing with Organza, Chiffon and Crepe de Chine and these are some of the beautiful colours I've come up with...

Except I found out after I'd spent all day sewing these wings that chiffon sort of shrinks and wont stretch back into the proper shape no matter how hard you try.

Hopefully the organza will work better.

OK, so I officially love this course

To be honest, it's been pretty touch and go at times - especially when they make me draw and I spend forever at college and dont seem to get anything done - but theres times like these when I'm too happy and can forget all that because.......I've finished my floral bag!
(I even had a cookie as a reward lol)

 I was so excited I had to have a little dance around our sewing room! I think I love my carnations most and not just cos they're silk! I do like my butterfly and daisies too, especially the ones on the strap.

Well, thats been my excitement for the day, if I get this excited about my cushion and tea towel I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it :)

Dun dun duuuuuunnnn.....

Final collections are all complete! WOOH! I've spent most of the day in the print room, freezing, gluing stuff to foil so I can finish them...

Anyways, here are my Embroidery ones:

These were done on cotton sateen (apart from the first one, that was some kind of wool that wasn't very nice to use) and have been done using various hand and machine stitches as well as some applique and dyeing.

And my printed ones:

These were done on habotai silk and cotton sateen using various procion and acid pastes, discharge pastes, pigments and some foiling. (The first 4 are silk and just look so nice, I think I have a slight obsession with silk - I did loads of work in AS Level with it too)

 

 I know they're a bit small but I think if you click them they get bigger and you can have a proper look. If they dont and you really want to see some more detail then just say and I can put them up big!

The end is in sight...

My third and nearly final embroidery sample! The little cup at the bottom took me forever to do cos it's all hand sewn and I wanted to cry after I bondawebbed the leaf on cos the iron made an awful mark on it but it's not that noticable any more so yey. Don't have much to do on my other one either so that can be on here soon...

Final Piece Numero Deux

Finally finished my second final piece for my embroidery collection! Tra laa!

And, since I actually quite like this one, I've got some close ups of my fave bits for you...

Hope you like it too :)

Machine Stitches

We started our Embellished Surfaces project today and I got to play with free motion stitches on the machines, I was quite excited!

This is just a free motion stitch on Calico using an embriodery hoop. I quite like how sketchy it looks as I was copying from a drawing.

This one is machine couching - you use embroidery thread at the bottom so you have to mess with the tension - and it makes this lovely raised, wrapped effect.

Finally, we have normal free motion stitches but this time in colour. This has been sewn with Stitch and Tear behind it so the Calico doesn't pucker. I decided to leave some areas just with the veins sewn in so the detail wasn't lost and I think this is my fave piece from today :)