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

Back to Vines!

This week has been so exciting! And hectic and so busy but it's been great. I've finally started on my vine piece! I dyed so many pieces of fabric that I did some maths and figured out it added up to 300+ bits of dyeing which I was quite impressed with. They were then cut down, sewn together and turned the right way around so the seams were beautiful and neat and that's the main stems finished!

When I was dyeing all the strips of fabric I did sort of take over the dye lab for a change.

The finished stems! To give some perspective on size some are about 2 meters long and all are this thickness

All that's left to do now is make millions of leaves to cover them. This is something leafy I was working on the other week but I might use some beads for these leaves...

#vines #leaves #dipdye #beads #sewing #silk

Flowers!

In between bits of dye sampling for my vines (still excited about that piece) I managed to make a few sample flowers that might go into a headpiece. I used about half a can of spray starch on them to make them a bit more sturdy but they still need something else. I also got a bit too excited and sewed them together without a stem!

Cotton

Silk



 #flower #silk #cotton #petals #vines

Busy week

This week has been very exciting. Remember the vine piece I showed you that I said you'd have to use your imagination for? Well you wont have to any more! I spent all week rolling paper to make vines, painting them and attaching leaves so I could make this mock up...
My work bay (that I'd just cleaned) went from this...

...To this in about 10 seconds (that's it looking fairly clean for all the painting I did!)

 And it turned my hands into this

But I came out with all these beautiful vines that took up half the studio and made a bit of a mess of the floor but look really exciting when they're all put together

 What do you think?

#vines #fashion #accessory #dyes #workbay

Working, Working...

Time seems to have flown, I seem to have been constantly working and yet dont have much to show for it...
 
Since my last update I've had a few ring commissions which were slightly terrifying to make. The same style as my I&G rings I knew what to do but the fact they were for customers and what if I got it wrong was a bit scary. Thankfully everything went fine and I have 2 very happy customers.

I also mastered Illustrator so I could make a file to Laser Cut. Never been much of a digital person before - I prefer using my hands than a mouse on a screen - so I'm actually quite impressed I managed to work Illustrator.

(Red is cut out, Green is engraved and Blue is Kiss Cut)

I even had chance to work on a few designs, You don't get to see the full things yet but hopefully you'll get as excited as I am at this stage. There's gonna be lots of embroidery, beading, silver, laser cutting and more exciting stuff!

(You might need to use your imagination a little for this one, they are supposed to be vines so if you imagine them covered with leaves and in colour it might be a bit more exciting haha)

#designs #vines #lasercutting #Illustrator #rings #commissions #butterfly #fashionaccessory

Photo time!

Finally up to date with photos of things for you!
 
Here's the printing workshop we did last week:

 

 
 And some ones of my work!

 
 #etching #drawing #butterfly #flowers #leaves