The Kantha Revolution

Posted on August 30, 2013 by ruthlane under hand stitching, journals, Kantha, level 2 stitch class, Sketching

I spent most of the morning cleaning up my studio. I forgot to take any photos until half way through the process as it was quite a mess.

Here it is after cleaning half of it up.

And after getting it mostly straightened out. My color notebooks are waiting to be sent off for review and the box holds all the pieces that will be hung at the Waterlilies exhibition next week. I’m excited to see my class mates again. They will be here next week for the opening of the show on Thursday. If you are in the Whitefish area, stop by The Purple Pomegranate on Thursday from 6-9 pm. I’ll post photos here next week to show you the exhibition.

Here is “The Kantha Revolution”. I got all three pieces matted today. You can barely see the matte as it is only 1/4″ bigger than the pieces.

I think they look good as a triptych so I will probably donate all three pieces for the auction.

The background was done a long time ago when we played with soy was with my local surface design group.

I have gradually added the Kantha stitching over the last couple of years. This is the only one that has satin stitch added as well. Which one is your favorite?

I also added a sketch of a seed head to one of my previously painted pages in my sketch book. The photo that I used to sketch from showed the seed head in green, but I liked it in brown on this background. Thanks for stopping by and if you’re in the US, I hope you have a good Labor Day weekend.

Color Homework Finished

Posted on August 23, 2013 by ruthlane under hand stitching, journals, Kantha

I worked most of the day competing my homework for Level 1 Color Studies. And it is finally finished.

All of the pages just barely fit back together. The first comment from Dennis was “This book is heavy.”

I was going to use this as the cover but decided to use the original one instead. I put this one in front of the section on color wheels.

This is the page on painting neutrals to match a photo. This was really difficult to do and get colors that are similar.

This section is about finding paint chips to match an object. I had a hard time with this exercise as well because nothing really seemed to match.

The other problem with this exercise is that when I printed the photo of the object, the color wasn’t even close. I fiddled with the first photo to get it to match the real color. I left the purple vase photo as it printed out so it looks nothing like the paint chips.

I enjoyed this exercise. I mixed and painted a variety of colors that I thought worked. Then I put them into a color scheme. I also found some fabric and threads that worked.

Then I made two more color schemes. One with more blue violet and one with more green. I like the one on the right best.

After I finished the color notebook, I cut up a large Kantha piece into three squares. I am going to lace these and then they will be in an auction to raise money for a new exhibit space at the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts.

Progress

Posted on April 10, 2013 by ruthlane under hand stitching

I have been stitching on the paisley book cover and I’ve made a fair amount of progress. That’s mainly because I’m doing chain stitch which is fast and using #5 perle cotton. The heavier thread makes a bigger statement and it really works well on felt. Smaller stitches and thread tend to sink in and disappear.

I’m enjoying working with these bright colors. Now I have to decide where I’m going from here. I don’t think I have enough thread to cover the entire cover so I think I need to find the book to go inside to see how much of the “front” will be showing.

It takes quite a bit of thread to do the detached chain stitch in between the rows of regular chain stitch.

New Look

Posted on April 8, 2013 by ruthlane under Felt, hand stitching

I’m jumping up and down and waving madly! Are you there?? I hope everyone has followed me over to my new site here on WordPress. It made sense to me to have everything in one place. Now I have my store site, The Felting and Fiber Studio and Permutations in Fiber all in one place. I am still working on some of the pages here and I’ll be adding more photos and fixing up the tutorial/video page.

I did get a bit more stitching done on the book cover.

It is starting to look more like a paisley pattern. I would really appreciate it if you would go over and like my new Facebook page if you do the Facebook thing. You can find it here.

Refashioning a Bag

Posted on April 7, 2013 by ruthlane under hand stitching

Sometimes at the store, I have items that just don’t seem to sell well. If I’ve had them for a long time and they won’t sell even if they’re marked down, I try to get creative and do something to make the item sell better. That is what happened with this bag. It is a woven bag and originally was a “backpack” bag. It had the straps sewn to both ends so it could be worn as a backpack. The way the straps were attached, I was able to cut them from the bottom and then just tie them together to make a longer strap on the bag so it can be worn over the shoulder. Then I added those orange crocheted bits that I showed you last time.

Here’s the bag now. I added more texture and it definitely brightened it up. I used blanket stitch to attach the middle ring portion to the bag.

Here’s the back. It kind of has a floral feel to it but not specific flowers.

Here you can see the weave, it’s got great colors and the crocheted bits really bring out the orange lines. Now to see if it will sell. I have at least 5-6 more of these bags, not all the same shape and colors but if this works, I may embellish the others as well.

Ruth Lane Art

Experimenting with Arts Endless Possibilities

Category Archives: hand stitching