Stitched birds

 I now have coasters of several stitched birds on handmade felt. They are chaffinch, great tit and blue tit. I have just finished 2 new designs; a puffin and a robin which I am going to get made up into both cards and coasters. I am very excited about my new venture and am getting a lot of responses and feedback already regarding my new products. I will continue making bird hangings as I love to get the character of each bird that I stitch. I will probably do some birds of prey next.

I love listening to music as I stich and at present I am listening to Chopin nocturnes. I have just had a good friend make some bird boxes for me, there are 2 smaller boxes for blue and great tits These

boxes are attached to trees in my forest garden. he also made an owl box which is in one of our sheds, Hopefully we may be lucky and have it occupied by a bard owl. Attached are the images of my latest work.

Bird coasters

 I had a very enjoyable time yesterday at the Christmas craft fair at the Corrin hall, Peel. I met so many lovely people including some friends that I had not seen for a long time. As well as selling my usual stitched textiles I brought along my new product lines. I have many good images from work that I have created, many of them now sold. I have had 3 of these printed as quality cards. The items that I am most excited about are the new coasters. they were much admired yesterday, the ones that sold particularly well were the ones with images of birds. As each image is from a photograph of my work I am now setting about to create a new body of work based on birds, flowers and butterflies which can be be sold as the original textile or as coasters. I am hoping that before too long I may have a website up and running and I will keep you posted regarding this.

Computer designs

 I now have a Wacom One tablet which connects to my laptop. It is very easy to design on using the pen. There are many options to use on it including oils, gouache, indian ink and watercolour as well as many  interesting special effects. It is a very quick way of producing a new design and I have uploaded images here of a computer design and a small wall hanging that I have just completed based on it. I also use Photoshop Elements where there are many options to digitally alter a photograph or a textile design. These include shear, twist, wave and zigzag resulting in very abstracted images which can be a jumping off point for a new design. 

Florence

I have done a body of work for a joint exhibition with Maureen Kennaugh to be held in the Hodgson Loom Gallery in the Isle of Man. Unfortunately as with events all over the world the exhibition is now hopefully going to happen sometime next year. Well, it is an opportunity to do some extra work for it.

I have been doing more experimental textile work using a fine tipped soldering iron purchased from Margaret Beale the textile artist who has written two books on the subject. this technique allows one to cut through and fuse layers of fabric which worked very well as a way of depicting the architecture of the Duomo cathedral in Florence. I have also used the historical event "The bonfire of the vanities" which took place in 1497 as a link between the burning of my fabrics and what happened in Florence on that date.

Other techniques I have used include Florentine embroidery and phototransfer with stitch. Below are 2 created using the soldering iron. They are based on images from a bishop's cloak in the Duomo museum and flowers in the Boboli gardens.

Margaret Beale books;  Fusing fabrics and New ideas in Fusing fabric and Creative cutting, bonding and mark-making with the soldering iron. The first book can be sourced second hand.