Vines and Butterflies!

Had a busy few weeks and kept forgetting to update!

First of all, Happy Mother's Day! I can finally post the picture of a little something I made for my mother...

Since last time I've been very busy with leaves. I did some more sewing and beading before cutting them all out (regretted sewing so many at this point) and sewing them onto my vines

(I quite liked them at this stage, they were like a little pile of autumnal leaves)

I also had a play with butterflies. I managed to get all 95 sewn so I could play around with some wire and beads

Not too sure about the beads, I think they look a little bulky and I wanted the butterflies to look very light and airy.
What do you think?
 
We also had a talk from the amazing embroiderer Karen Nicol (http://www.karennicol.com/) about her work. She even came to talk to a few of us about our work and I was lucky enough to be given some amazing advice from her.

 

 #KarenNicol #leaves #vines #butterflies #embroidery #Mother'sDay

Leaves, Beads and Butterflies

Had a busy couple of weeks. It started off with leaves for my vines and embroidering vast amounts of them before some were beaded. Had a bit of a nightmare when some of the tiny purple beads wouldn't fit over my needle but I got a real beading needle which has been a great help.

I then spent a few days in the print room hand painting a few butterflies (so I didn't get too bored of leaves) before they were embroidered and shaped for my back-lace...

I've been using some gorgeous silk organza, silk chiffon and crepe de chine for the butterflies, just need to find something that will shape them nicely.

 

#butterflies #leaves #beads #embroidery #print

Over half way now...

Got my leaf bit finished! How exciting, I'm more than half way finished now which makes it even more exciting.
























Layered with the feathers too...

























Next week is flower week, this will get finished!

#feather #leaves #neckpiece #embroidery

Feathers

I finished my feather bit!




























#feather #embroidery #necklace #peacock

Fingers crossed it works this time!

Been doing more pull throughs (I checked and turns out I did use the wrong fixative, oops) so have re-done my samples from the other day and, hopefully, they'll work this time...

I did some new samples too, they're not finished but you get a cookie if you can tell what they're going to be

#printing #sewing #embroidery #leaves #flowers #feathers

Stitch and Print

Had an interesting week. I've been experimenting with how to make my neckpiece out of fabric and what bits are good to print/embroider etc.
We learnt about pull throughs which is a print technique where you paint dye onto the screen then pull the paste through instead of mixing it all together. I did actually quite enjoy it and it gives a really nice soft effect and tried it for feathers and petals...

Ooh, how pretty and colourful! But then it gets washed and steamed and this happened

It all washed out! Not entirely sure why, probably didn't use the right fixative/the paste was off/didn't steam properly so I will try again and hopefully it will work cos I really would like to use it.

To cheer myself up after I did a bit of sewing for some leaves. They worked nicely and didn't go wrong at the last minute.

 I'd used a water soluble fabric with the leaves so when I washed it away they went a bit gluey and sticky (I've been covered in glue all day after cutting them out lol) but I can shape them and they can look all leafy

#printing #embroidery #pull through #leaves #feathers

New Stuff :)

I've been super busy today (which is like being normally busy but I was wearing a cape :) ), I had quite a bit to do today anyway for deadline on Monday but we had meetings all day which was rather annoying - but I still managed to get some stuff done. Here are some of the things I made from those feathers I was making earlier:

Ta Daaaaa, I do quite like them. They are (Left to Right) earrings, necklace, necklace, brooch, table top ornament.
I've still got a few more at College to do some stuff with and might make some more over the weekend (who needs sleep?) so there's something a bit less expensive than Azadi for people to buy. I showed the earrings to one of the girls in my house and she's already bagsied them for after I've handed in!

#feathers #earrings #necklace #brooch #embroidery #whats the use of wings

Wings...

I've spent the whole weekend locked away in my room in my own little nest trying to finish sewing my wings together:

 hours and hours and quite a few stabs to the fingers later my wings have been sewn together! I do still need to sew the wings to the body and the body together and give it legs and make the cage but I'm celebrating this step anyway. Celebration cake anyone :)

#sewing #wings #embroidery #celebration cake #myna bird

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

Feathers

Had a fun day playing with making feathers, the individual ones turned out reeeeally nice - I really like them - but when I cut them out they ended up with an edge of fabric all around them where I couldn't cut it away so tomorrow I'm gonna play around at dyeing the fabric before I sew them. But this is what I made today...

 I did the body with a brown thread and then sewed the darker brown on top to make the wing shapes before I realised that I was doing them in scale shapes, not feather shapes, so I changed half way though (the ones at the bottom with more definition are how they should look)

#feathers #wings #myna bird #embroidery

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...

Butterflies this time

I know, it's been a while but I've been off researching for this new project - fashion embroidery this time - and my theme is butterflies :)

Moodboard - didn't make me hate it this time which is always a plus

These butterflies are pencil or watercolour.

Now I just need a way of turning them into stitch and make something fashion-y out of them...

Paris prelude...

Ok, I've decided Feb is even more awesome than I thought - Just found out today that 2 of my embroideries are going to the Indigo Trade Show in Paris!

These are the 2 they chose to take which suprised me a little - if I'd had to pick any I'd have chosen my silk leaf prints but now I get to keep them for myself :)

So je suis très excited for Paris now - it's only a few days away, wooh! :) Got to start practicing ma français