Drawing with Stitch

I'm trying to re-engage with the textiles techniques I used to love so much, but marry them with the sewing and art that I make. I don't want each of my practices to be a separate entity, but part of the same creative process and hopefully produce some mixed media pieces over the coming months.

With this in mind I have been attending some textiles workshops and experimenting at home. I'm progressing with my Batik fabric. I added a second layer of wax over the top of the pale blue dye and dip dyed in a violet dye. However the colour was rather weak and the over-all effect wishy washy. Idecided at the last minute to use the machine dye that John had bought me at Christmas. I took the fabric out this morning and I'm really happy with the results. I had used a mix of beeswax and paraffin wax. these melt at different temperatures and this has had an effect on the way the dye has penetrated the fabric. The blue under colour is not really visible, but there is a distinct layered effect. some of the lower temperature wax has washed out, leaving just a little to be ironed out later. I'm hoping to turn this fabric into some sort of garment. Your suggestions for suitable patterns would be appreciated.

Yesterday I attended a machine embroidery workshop at Weave in Lynemouth and run by Donna Cheshire. You can see some of Donna's work over on her website. I haven't done machine embroidery for years and years and the last thing I wanted to do was cut out neat shapes and applique them to a nice fabric and satin stitch around the edge. I wanted to create pieces that reflect my drawing style and use the machine as a new way to draw.

Pelment Vilene, watercolour and machine embroidery

Donna brought along her Bernina, which is a simlilar model to mine, so it was useful to work out how the techniques would work on my machine. I now have a darning foot, so more experiments will be forthcoming.

Emulsion image transfer, watercolour, angelina fibres, net and machine embroidery

We worked with several methods. Painting and stitching onti pelmet vilene. This is very thick and an embroidery hoop is not needed to support the emboidery. this is a poritive in my eyes as I find emboidery hoops a bit strange to use.
We also worked into water soluble fabric. this is useful for adding lacy or detailed pieces to work.
My favourite was applique and stitch, I kept this very loose. rather than attaching the fabrics with bondaweb, I applied them and manipulated them as I went along. using a range of coloured thread to embellish my design. which was based on a painting I completed some time ago.

Cotton dyed fabric, applique, silk fibre paper and machine embroidery

I'm hoping to incorporate these techniques into some 3D designs in the near future.

Textile treats

My applique bird

I have been very fortunate to be able to attend two fantastic Textile workshops this week. Both organised by Creative Futures at Weave maker space. This is a fab resource just 5 mins up the road from where I live, but this week is the first time I've had opportunity to use it.

On wednesday evening I attended a workshop on silk paper making and bondable fibres. This was run by artist Wendy Ann Sranger. We experimented with making paper from a range of silk fibres and embedding different objects between them. The process was quite quick but it did take a while to dry. In fact my thicker piece took until Saturday morning to be completely dry.

Working with wet silk fibres

Angelina fibres, net and silk fibres

We also worked with angelina fibres - which i have used before. the process is quite simple. you just layer the fibres and other items and press with an iron, making sure the fibres are between non stick baking paper so they don't stick to the iron.


On Saturday I attended a full day workshop with textile artist Mandy Pattulo. I had seen some of mandy's work at local exhibitions and was intriqued by her processes. She gave a talk about how she approaches her work and what is important to her. Throughout her career as an artist she's been interested in tyhe use of quilts and the area of the UK we live in has a rich quilt history.

These are both examples of Mandy's work. 

She shared with us some of her work, you can see some more examples here.

We then learn about one of the techniques Mandy uses and used it to make out own applique on a piece of vintage quilt. We used a finger turned applique method. I was quite surprised how quickly I could do this. Our designs were then embellished with embroidery. I could certainly see myself using some of these techniques. especially when we do our school community quilt later in the academic year.

My applique bird

I'm looking forward to the next couple of workshops in about three weeks time.

Flower Applique Skirt

While watching the Great British Sewing Bee last night I was reminded of the Skirt I refashioned a while ago. Stuart, one of the contestants, refashioned a skirt with flower shaped pockets and free motion embroidery. This is similar to how I created this skirt - but it didn't have any pockets on it!
You can find the original post here.