Sewing Landscapes!

As I prepare for a show in October, I've been busy, busy, busy, sewing and framing landscapes. Here are a few in-progress photos…

I did this picture last year, but added a few more touches, as well as a linen mat and a frame.

This is an older picture which, again, I touched up and matted, and I will add a frame.

 

I'm sewing some French knot flowers in the foreground here - again it will have a mat and frame.

This picture combines faux suede, cotton and kimono fabric scraps. I'm keeping it pretty simple. 

This is the lace tree from my last post. I need to add a few more touches to this.

I worked for years in art and framing galleries and my experience is coming in handy lately.

This is my trusty hand mat cutter. It does a good job and I have a lot of mat board scraps to use.

There are a few more pictures which I'll show later. The show is October 15, so I'm in pretty good shape. I keep saying that this is the last show I'll do, with landscapes at least. They are a lot of work! What I'm looking forward to doing is more fun things - little stitched sketches, some collages, maybe a doll or two? I do have a little crafty addition I'm working on for this show - I'll post pictures next time!

I hope that everyone who reads this is enjoying these final days of summer.

Coming up - my favorite season:

F A L L

*********

Have a great rest of the week!!

In Creative Mode

I feel like I've been an absentee blogger lately. My head is full of concerns for a family member and preparations for a trip which is coming up soon. On top of that, our arts collaborative is having a show next week, so I am in full creative mode!
This is how I get ready for something like this - I have a large trifold piece of foam board that I tape to the front of our dining room hutch, out of the way of nosy cats. I then lay out possible landscapes, using all of the hand painted and dyed, as well as commercial fabrics that I have in my stash. I had actually spent some time last week painting fabrics with acrylic paint thinned with fabric medium, as well as painting lace with this mixture.

 On the piece below, I used acrylic paint on Warm and Natural batting for the textured pink and purple flower fields - just trying out all sorts of things.

The piece below has a beautiful sky, fabric I purchased somewhere along the line. I think I overpainted the purple on a piece of green commercial fabric for the mid ground and the foreground is felted wool. I'm auditioning some gauze which I may use for flowers in the front.

Today I'm cutting out some little houses to plant in these landscapes to, hopefully, make them more interesting. Then stitching and matting and I'm done! I'll share the final results.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I know it's hard to follow a blog with big gaps between the posts, and I appreciate your  visit! I hope to blog more frequently in the future.

Hope everyone had a great Easter holiday!!

Smiles, 

Judy

New Work

Is anyone finding, as I am, that November is slipping by very quickly? Where do the days go? I'm doing some new work, but here are a few more photos of the pieces I completed recently for an artisan show.

My photos are not great - sorry! This picture is mounted on white linen and 

is made with fabric, hand embroidery, beading, trims and machine stitching.

This little tree sold quickly. I used similar materials on it, 

with the addition of painted green lace in the foreground.

This piece has a lot of machine stitching and hand painted fabric for the sky.

It was framed with a black frame and also sold.

I love purple and this is my favorite piece from this group.

Terrible photo! I must make a little photo booth - I've seen some on Pinterset!

I'm working out a simpler method of mounting pictures and I'll share it with

you soon. Meanwhile, here's a photo of me at that last show. You can see here that 

the linen borders were very crisp, and outlined with black chenille yarn.

Hope you're enjoying your weekend and not too stressed out preparing for

Thanksgiving next week. We are keeping ours simple this year!

A friend of mine passed away this year - very suddenly - 

and I always loved the way he ended his Facebook posts. In memory of 

Joe Donovan, a very sweet guy, I'm going to end my blog posts the same way.

Have a good week.

Smiles...

     Judy

An Upcoming Show

I've been working on some fiber artwork for an event, which is coming all too soon!

I finished up these two pieces, which were also in a recent show for our Arts Collaborative...

"Anne"  machine stitching, applique, colored pencil

"Meditation"  fiber, painted fabric, needle felting, hand embroidery, natural fibers

and I even had them professionally framed for the upcoming show!

I have several more pieces in progress and will share them soon,

Have a wonderful weekend!!

The Evolution of a Picture

Sometimes I begin a fiber picture, get off to a good start, and then  lose interest because I'm not sure where to go with it. Last November I began this one, inspired by some textured fabrics with beautiful frayed edges. I layered them against a hand painted, cotton fabric sky. I knew that I wanted the foreground to move forward, so I tried some suede-like fabric, folded over a thin batting. 

In early February this year, I found the picture in a pile of fabric and gave it another look. This time, I used a green print cotton fabric, once again trying to create volume by gathering it a bit, and added a bit of wool roving in the background to suggest foliage.

Yesterday, I came across this piece again, once again neglected and unfinished - poor thing!! I set to work, attaching a piece of wool to the bottom and pulled out the wool roving I've been collecting for ages. I wanted it to build up the depth of the foreground and add interest and balance to the piece, so I spent some time needle felting with hues of green and raspberry. 

Of course, a little beading always helps to add contrasting sparkle! The weather is so gray today, I took two different photos of the piece in different lights. There is a hint of lilac in the sky, but it's hard to capture in a photo.

I'm so happy I went with the wool roving and love the texture it provided.

Speaking of gray weather, we finally had a bit of snow last night and today. Here's the view from my porch!

Hope your day is going well!

Fiber Art Circles

The fiber arts group I belong to had a challenge a while back - use circles in a piece of artwork.

I immediately thought of Kandinsky's 'Farbstudie Quadrate' and I attempted a fiber version of the work. This gave me an opportunity to use every embellishment I could lay my hands on to try to give the illusion of Kandinsky's painterly images.

I was never happy with it and, in the process of my recent studio cleanup, I cut the squares apart, divided them into two sections and mounted them on black and green felt. That's as far as I'll take this project, but it was a fun experiment!

Wassily Kandinsky - Farbstudie Quadrate

Have a great weekend everyone!

Judy