One of a Kind Show Spring 2013 Recap

Back at the One of a Kind Show I received this gift from another vendor -- they are into real insect specimens, and had several of the same varieties of butterflies that I've made in fibre.  We had quite a chat about them.  This top left one is very similar to one I made a while ago.  The cocoons are from luna moths. 

These are from the One of a Kind Show, my booth during setup, the centre aisle feature display, and a closeup of some of my clutches, which were included in the feature display. 

Remember, Remember

I should have noted in my last post that it was the 5th of November - Guy Fawkes day.

Today, the 7th, has been a lovely sunny day. I'm trying to work really hard on things for the Piecework show in 3 weeks time, to which end I picked up some additional shadow box frames today.

The frames are for the silk free motion embroidered butterflies I've written about a number of times, otherwise known as my Psyche collection. I've created an online portfolio of a selection of those and a full explanation of the collection, which you can look at here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More thread

More!

I made a few more of these embroideries. The orange and black one is a better photo of the same one I posted yesterday.

Wednesday morning

Here's some images of that new idea I mentioned yesterday -- hand embroidery on a 4"x4" canvas. I've got some more little pattern ideas to make more of these with since this one turned out nicely. I'm going to start with more in this neutral background, and some in a black background.

Stitch Tutorial

Bullion stitches are similar to french knots, but more elongated.  

Bullion Stitch

Begin with a threaded needle.  Bring the needle up through the work from the back. 

Wrap the thread around the needle several times.  I've done so four times in this example. 

Hold the thread slightly taut, and thread the needle back through the work a small distance away from where it was brought up previously. 

Back to school?

Happy back to school if you're among the students out there!  It feels pretty strange, not going back.  Good, having graduated a few months ago, but strange.  What better way to acknowledge students' first day back than with a little tutorial!

French Knots

Thread a needle with your chosen thread.  I used cotton embroidery floss.  You can tie a knot near the end of the thread if you need to, otherwise just leave a tail on the wrong side of your work.

Begin by pulling needle and thread through the cloth from underside to topside.  Wrap the thread around the needle twice.  

Gently hold the thread slightly taut and pull the needle and thread back through the fabric near the point it was brought up before. 

Once the thread is pulled back through, you have a finished knot. 

Show Photos

I'm back with more! Here's a pair of photos of my set-up from the show, one in the dry and one following a bit of rain.  Saturday, though mostly dry, did have a few short but heavy rain showers. 

 

This is a couple of pictures of booths near mine, shortly after a short rain. 

So, about those interesting people - one of those who stood out was a guy who mentioned he's a naturalist.  His attention was drawn to my machine embroidered butterflies, as he was among several people who thought from a bit of a distance that they were real specimens and wanted a better look.  We had a really neat conversation about bugs, nature, conservation, educating people, fear of certain animals, etc. 

The overall feedback on these was really fantastic.  A member of the Mississauga Stitchery Guild was visiting the show and stopped by my booth.  She was so impressed, she has asked me to come to a Guild meeting sometime to show them and possibly do a demonstration on the techniques! 

Another great experience in the show was a photographer for SNAP Mississauga came by and took my photo with some of my work.  I'll have to check in a little bit to see if anything from that gets printed.

Photos

I've spent some time outside taking photos - outdoors in the shade is nice for photographing work, BTW - trying to improve upon existing pictures of a couple of my machine embroidered butterflies.  I'm finding the bigger ones harder to get a nice image of.

Thursday Post

I've managed to get a couple of good things done today:

1.  Made a little coin purse, with lining.  I goofed the stitching a little so around the zipper is a little lumpy and the lining isn't an ideal fit.  Still, I learned a couple of things while doing it and it should go better the next time I make one.

2.  A loaf of banana bread!  Another experience, since I had to look up the conversions for using a different type of flour than the recipe called for.

3.  I've been making more cards and including some hand embroidery on them.  The results are pretty cute.

You might also have noticed that I added a labels cloud to the bottom of the blog page the other day.

Butterflies

My lovely machine embroidery butterflies as they were in the campus gallery for critiques.  Needs a little tweaking, but not bad! The photo doesn't do it justice, but with it going in shows coming up, why would I want to give it all away?!

Critiques

Last night I installed (with help!) my machine embroidered butterflies project in the campus gallery for our class critiques today.  They will need a little tweaking before installing for our grad show, but overall they look great!  No pictures yet though.

April Showers

It has become clear I haven't mastered the art of daily posting.  Today's efforts revolve around the framing issues, putting the silk on the inside backing and such.  That doesn't make for a very interesting photo.  I need to do more machine embroidering soon, that will give me something neat to show, I think.

Happy Easter!

Just an example of my current project -- a series of these butterflies.  There's going to be 12 or so for the time being.  I just have 4 or so to finish, but then it's a matter of figuring out the other components - the bodies for example.  

My work hasn't used any real bugs, but one site I came across researching for it is this one: 

http://www.insectlabstudio.com/ which is pretty neat.