Creating an Envelope Book

Posted on by under book making, collage, painting

Our local group’s challenge this week was to create an envelope book. Paula showed us how to put the envelopes together. We were actually supposed to collage the pages but I didn’t end up doing much collage work.

I decided to paint my envelopes first. I did that with watercolors and high fluid acrylic dark brown paint. I used a variety of threads, cheesecloth and plastic wrap to get the various organic designs. Afterwards, I had to iron all the envelopes as they got very warped from the liquid applied. The glue also didn’t hold well and they all started to come apart.

 

Here is an example of one envelope after the paint dried and the envelope was ironed.

I then put the book together. You slide the flap into the previous envelope, fold the envelope back in the opposite direction and then just keep adding another envelope until you have a book. In the right hand photo, you can probably see that the envelopes haven’t been glued yet. I had to glue them all back together and then glue each flap into the prior envelope. That way the book holds together. Now on to embellishing.

This is the front cover. I added some paint pens, markers and colored pencil. Always fun to see what you can find in these very organic looking designs.

Here’s another set of pages where I added some collage elements on the right hand side. The darker grey torn paper can be lifted to see what’s underneath. The plan is to add some poetry to the blank papers that I am adding in.  I’m still working on finishing the book but I’ll show you more next week.

Stay safe!

 

Five in a Row

Posted on by under Color, Level 3 Stitch

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you some color studies I have been creating. I finished the last one and thought you might like to see all five of them.

Here is the last one that has more black and white and less of the other colors.

And here is a photo with all five in a row. I tried the different colors in many different positions trying to decide which ones looked the best together as well as the overall progression of color. This was the combination I liked best so far. But that could change depending on what method I decide to attach them together.

These were fun. I don’t use the automatic stitch choices on my machine much. It took a bit to figure out how to do only one or two stitches and all those other fancy functions that I rarely use on my machine. But it was a good learning process.

I hope you’re staying safe. I am staying at home and yesterday, my art group met by Zoom. We had a great time and it was easy. If you haven’t given it a try, Zoom is well worth the look.

After The Snow

Posted on by under applique, Level 3 Stitch, machine stitching

I have seen a lot of people recreating famous paintings online. So I thought I would give it a try with an applique piece. I used Paul Klee’s Before The Snow as inspiration. I had printed the photo of the original out in black and white so that I could see the values and the shapes better. It has been several months since I printed out the photo and I knew it had something to do with snow but I didn’t remember the title even. So I started thinking it would look good in a combination of blues and purples.

I used a hand dyed fabric for the background, covered that with fusible and then added tulle and sheer fabric.

Here I have added the clouds and the foreground plants.

Then I added the tree. So it was definitely looking snowy. And then it snowed here, which isn’t that unusual in April but when you’re housebound, the cabin fever seems to increase since it was too cold to even go outside in the garden. But I was celebrating the snow with this new piece.

Then I added free motion machine stitching. I tried to keep the stitching fairly simple and just give a little bit of line definition. So then I decided to go back and look at the original photo in color. Imagine my surprise when it turns out that it’s Before the Snow and it’s in fall colors. But that’s OK, After The Snow turned out as I had been seeing it in my mind’s eye.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you’re staying well.

Back to Color Studies

Posted on by under Color, Level 3 Stitch, machine stitching

I thought I wasn’t going to have much more time for color studies. But all of a sudden, I have loads of time on my hands; as many people do at this point. So I am pretty sure that I showed you this first color study. It was done when I was working on all the rest.

I liked the concept of this one and thought it would be fun to make a series. I would use the same color scheme but emphasize a different color with each study. These are all 6″x 6″ and will eventually be connected into some kind of book format. I’m not exactly sure on how they will connect yet or which order they will be in.

I emphasized blue violet on this one. All of these are done on a heavy stabilizer with fused fabrics and automatic machine stitching. These are all inspired by some photos that Antje kindly sent me.

This red orange one is really bright, isn’t it? But I like how the stitching looks like doodles.

And another bright one that has a yellow orange emphasis. Looking at these, it might be interesting to cover these with a layer of sheer and perhaps burn back the sheer to reveal just a few bright areas. Food for thought anyways.

This last one isn’t stitched yet. It is mainly black and white. I have been stitching these one per day so that I don’t get overwhelmed with changing automatic stitches and colors of thread.

Here is one possible combination of pieces together. I also need to work out how to treat the backs of each of these. In book format, the backs will be exposed. One thought was to fuse fabric on the back side, perhaps in the main color used on the front? Still working out what I think will be the best idea for the finished piece.

I hope that you are all staying safe out there. Thank you to all of you who are on the front lines of this crisis. I appreciate your effort and I’m staying home as instructed.

Portrait Applique

Posted on by under applique, Level 3 Stitch

I have been working on this applique piece for over a month. At our art meeting in February, we all worked on portraits. Some of us created portraits with paper collage but I decided to use fabric. That way, the portrait would work for my stitch homework. Having never done a stitched portrait, I learned a lot and found it fun, up until doing the facial features. Then I got a little stressed. I didn’t take very many in process photos.

These were the samples that I did in advance for facial features. I ended up doing an eye that was more like the one on the right. The teeth ended up being put directly on the lips fabric instead of having two layers of fabric with the dark for the inner mouth. That just didn’t work. And noses are hard.

Here she is partially stitched. I used a photo I found online when I searched for celebrities with wild, curly hair. The reason I did this portrait was so I could stitch wild, curly hair. That was my favorite part. None of the fabric was fused down, mistake number one. But it ended up working OK. The mouth ended up tilted too much and I really didn’t like it. So I did some surgery and cut it out and stitched it back down. This would have worked except for fabric fraying. I ended up adding some glue at the edges to keep it in place.

And here’s the finished portrait. I fussed with the nose and the mouth for an inordinate amount of time. They still aren’t the way I had in mind exactly but they’re OK. And it was fun trying something new. If I do this again, I will fuse all the fabric. Maybe I should try one with fused fabric and free motion machine stitching? That might be fun too.

I hope that all of you are staying safe and well in this crazy world. I’m staying at home and I’m finally out of the retail business, so more stitching, felting and fiber art to come! Yay!