Wednesday 5 November 2008

Free Motion Embroidery - WOW! And A Quilt Back

These are the things I made at Ken Smith's "Into the Woods! - interpreting bark, lichen and fungi in machine embroidery" http://www.bennett-smith.com/WorkshopsCourses.htm This is the link.

I thoroughly enjoyed the four days spent with like minded people. Robyn at Sewknit was our fabulous host for the workshop.



I especially liked making the bark ...well all of the bits really.The techniques are quite interesting and I can see how I can utilise them in applications for my art quilts and my soft sculptured dolls.





And it made me upgrade my three week old sewing machine to a Bernina! "The things we do" (that was my husband speaking, so read it with some rolling of the eyes!) LOL!



This is the sum total of my work after 4 days - need to make some more bits and mould the bark, add the bits onto it and then mount it on something so it can be hung up. I am quite happy with my effort really.




This is a box of real lichens that Petah bought into class - it was great to compare with what we were doing.









This is how my bark piece looked after about 6 hours work - would you believe - I hope I get faster with practise.










And on a quilty note - this is the back of a customer's quilt - a beautiful dusty rose pink cotton sateen - with an all over butterfly pattern which is very popular at the moment. It is hard for people to pick patterns as I have over 80 to choose from at the moment and always on the lookout for more. I have recently had a slew of custom quilts to do before Christmas - I wouldn't mind being on the receiving end of some of these quilts. I see some beautiful work every day and am really enjoying the challenge of quilting them.

Of course the quilting actually looks better in the flesh - my camera skills are very limited - point and shoot!



Cheers for now and happy quilting
Jane

1 comment:

cat in tassie said...

Looks like you had a good time at the Ken Smith workshop. I've only ever heard good things about him.

Does this mean you'll be posting all kinds of different art quilts on your blog in the near future? LOL

cheers
cat