Penland On a Foggy Morning: finished !

I'm shipping it off tomorrow for the Penland School of Crafts Annual Benefit Auction.  Now, I just hope it sells 😁!

Title: Penland On a Foggy Morning

Size: 5"x7"

Materials:  Digitally printed cotton, marigold (from Penland) ecotransfer on silk gauze, gilt metal purls, Gilt Sylke Twist, Valdani variegated cotton floss and metallic machine thread.

More on the process in my previous post here: Penland Process

Here are some photos of the final piece: 

  

 

Finished but not framed yet:

And a process picture:

 

Penland On a Foggy Morning: work in progress

I've started a new piece,  Penland On a Foggy Morning.  I'm using a photograph that I took at Penland last fall when walking to class from my cottage.  I digitally printed the image on linen canvas.  Then I layered it with a piece of silk gauze that I "dyed" using an eco-transferring technique with marigolds from Penland. On the bottom third of the composition where the area in the image is covered in moss and ferns, I have gone in and removed areas of warp or weft in the silk gauze and moved some of the warp and wefts around to graduate the opacity.  I wanted to play around with changing the transparency of the gauze and trying to capture the fog through the fluffier silk threads of the gauze and how the tension changes as you stitch it.  By moving the remaining threads around after I removed surrounding ones, it created a really interesting texture and reduced the visible grainlines of the gauze.

For the stitching, I am only using basic stitches--straight, chain and back stitch.  I'm focusing on color mixing and really trying to use my stitches in a looser and more expressive way.  The threads are all Valdani variegated quilting threads so they have a nice sheen to them.  I cannot quite figure out if I like the quilting thread or the embroidery floss better for thread mixing.  I love the sheen of the quilting thread and it seems to sit on the fabric more proudly.  However, the embroidery floss blends a bit smoother as the strands stick together more and work more cohesively together.  The jury is still out and I think it may just be a situation where one is better for some projects and the other is better for the rest.  It is definitely something that I'm wanting to test more. 

I will be adding in some metals and lots more stitches so this piece is just in progress!

 Before any stitching or fabric manipulation.  Here you can see the imprints from the marigold eco-transfer and I've overdyed it with a tea stain so it's not too white.

These are some of the colors I'm using and the stitching so far. 

Lighthouse Landscapes

Recently, I've been playing around with color mixing, contemporary goldwork and mixing it all on digitally printed fabric.  For this piece, I started looking at lighthouses in North Carolina and Prince Edward Island.  I have always loved lighthouses as I grew up going to the Outer Banks near Cape Hatteras all the time.  In my research of lighthouses on Prince Edward Island, Canada, I found the New London Lighthouse and loved the quaintness of the lighthouse and the drama of the beautiful coast in the background--seriously there are some amazing photos of this lighthouse!

I started by roughly watercoloring a piece of cold press paper with a "land" area and a "sky" area.  I wanted to keep the watercolor loose so that my stitching could add the detail.  I then scanned it in and had it digitally printed on a cotton/linen canvas fabric.

Once I had my canvas, I experimented with different fabric scraps and decided on this beautiful silk and metallic tweed/brocade I bought this summer at the Silk Society in London for the body of the lighthouse.  The roof is created with leather kid.  Pearl purl is used to define the details of the lighthouse and create the balcony and mica bits were used for the windows.  For the sky and the grass, I used long straight stitches and Valdani thread and mixed in some cutwork. 

Overall, I'm fairly happy with this piece. The only sad part about it for me is it photographs a lot heavier than in person.  The silver I used in the clouds shows as gray here but in person, it is just glimmers of silver and the grass is not as dark as it is showing. 

I really enjoyed working on this piece, and I think that this idea has a lot of potential going forward.  It was a great challenge to try and create a lighter feeling composition with goldwork materials and to mix the color mixing techniques with the gold materials.  Even more exciting are the ideas I have for future pieces!