Weaving Threads and Ribbons

A piece of hand-dyed fabric in oranges and yellows, and a pack of mainly orange, pink and purple threads was the inspiration for the playtime I had today. I attached some lengths of ribbon to a piece of water soluble fabric, then wove the threads and other ribbons through. Some of the threads varied in thickness, which added to the randomness of the grid. I then stitched up and down the short lengths to stabilise it, and allowed it to distort the grid a little more. Circles stitched over the top hold it all down.

It's all I managed to do this weekend. The call of the glorious spring weather and the garden proved too much. Who can resist being outside when the garden is at its best? The ornamental peach is contrasting beautifully with the blue blossoms of the Blue Pacific bush right beside it
I just love peach blossom. Cherry blossom is good, but peach is so much better! I just love that pink....

Playing with hand dyed fabrics

I've been playing with more ideas for bookcovers. This one is very similar to the blue one I made a while ago, which I ended up sending to Denmark as a gift for my mother-in-law's birthday. However, this green fabric (one of Lisa's gorgeous hand dyes) "spoke" to me, and it wanted to be the background for some flowers, so that's what it became...



More flowers - it must be the spring weather and the beautiful deep pink blossoms on my peach tree that are inspiring me. This one needs lots more handstitching, but I rather like the way it's shaping up. All the fabrics in this one are Lisa's hand dyes. The flowers are made from some of the trimmings that she was going to throw out! I'm so glad that I rescued them.

Stamping

The book that I received for my birthday, "Finding Your Own Visual Language" suggests cutting stamps from plastic erasers, as an exercise in finding shapes that appeal to you. I've cut my first two, with a craft knife, and with a fair bit of difficulty. On my first one, the edges seemed very ragged. So I was sure that it was going to be a reject. I inked it up and stamped it, and was very surprised! The ragged edges actually seemed to suit the shapes. I need to do more stamping with it, and look at a lot more variations and combinations than I have here, but this is my first page -



The next one I did doesn't appeal to me as much, but I think the design has possibilities -



I took these to show a work colleague, who has now lent me a set of lino cutting tools. I tried them on the eraser in my desk at work and it was so much easier than the craft knife, which has to be "jiggled" so that each line is undercut in order to remove the pieces of eraser. So I'm off to try some more designs!