Remembrance Day and Poppies

Thought I should post this today as it is Remembrance Day - a piece I made to remember my mother who loved poppies but also for what poppies represent.

Ostinato

 Ostinato is the name of the piece I made for a fundraiser for the National Academy Orchestra and the Brott Music Festival http://fibrations.org. Fourteen fibre artists from across Ontario created 18 fibre art pieces inspired by the music of Maurice Ravel, Manuel de Falla and Édouard Lalo. The works were shown at concerts over the summer and bids were accepted at concerts and online. Dwayne Wanner organized it as a way to promote the orchestra but also to promote fibre art. He worked really hard and did a great job. He has a great website http://www.dfwannerquilts.com/
Ravel's Bolero inspired my piece - the build up of the rhythm (a persistently repeated motif is called ostinato hence the name) which gets louder and more intense and the thought of Spanish dancers in their hot coloured dresses . My piece is made up of 2 parts: an intensely stitched canvas piece that gets wider and more intense in colour as it moves from left to right. On top of the waves of colour I stitched the notes of the rhythm. You might not be able to see from the photo but the stitching also distorts the canvas so it undulates. I enhanced this by molding the finished piece into waves before I attached it onto the 2nd part - the underlying black quilt.  I quilted images of my idea of spanish dancers and hundreds of circles on the background piece using black thread - very hard on the eyes after a while! For the most of the stitching I used Wonderfil's polyester 40wt thread http://www.wonderfil.net/wonderfilcms/v1/Default.aspx  which worked very well especially considering how intense the stitching got in places.
I enjoyed making the piece and regret not taking some close up photos - no time as per usual as the whole piece took a longer to make than I imagined. 
Wish I knew where the piece ended up.

Halloween

I love Halloween but it certainly takes up a lot of time - carving pumpkins,

decorating with spiders

I got fed up fighting with that horrible synthetic white stuff you make pretend webs with and made a reusable web with see through knit fabric that has webs printed on it and overlaid a felt (recycled polyester felt) web on top. I made the web a bit like making paper snowflakes and folded the fabric in quarters and cut away. It didn't take long to make as I only did 1 line of stitching over the main web lines. This worked out well as I am then able to use the white web lines to poke the spiders legs onto to hold it on to the web.
So now back to work - I have got into the Sassy Little Craft Show 7to midnight  Dec 15th at The Central 603 Markham Street (Bloor and Bathurst, near Suspect Video) and I have just sent in my application and photos to the Holiday Art Market at Wychwood Art Barns for Dec 11th. I'll post links later.

Creative Festival

I visited the Creative Festival on the weekend - I love seeing all the new fabrics and new ideas. Some great good quality flannels which I couldn't resist - 

I bought mine from Flare fabrics http://www.flarefabrics.ca/ which also has a great online shop and they don't charge for shipping! 
I also purchased more batiks that are already cut up ready to be sewn into coaster boxes.

Here is one of the batiks I purchased with a sample of the 2 layers I put inside the batiks. 

One of them is the stiffener and the other is a recycled felt which I add so that the thread sinks into the fabric sandwich a little. I hope you can see this on the green box.
I also bought some thread as I was running out in certain colour ways as I do use so much in each piece. So far I have bought from http://www.wonderfil.net/ as so far I have liked their threads and they are Canadian. Here are some of my purchases from Friday.

Thank you Jason for reminding me that I should crop my photos and thanks to Roz and Geri for suggesting a light box - I have now downloaded a how to and will attempt to make one and hope my photography will improve. Also have to take in my camera as the right hand side of all my photos seems a little out of focus.

Getting Started

So I haven't worked out yet how to create a website using html and CSS so thought I would start a blog instead! This way I can post photos of what I have created so far and sample pieces as well.

Fabric vase and reversible bowl

These two pieces I made for a girlfriend using Austrailian and Asian fabrics as she had just come back from competing in Austrailia - I also loved all the fabrics, the graphic quality of the writing in the asian fabric and the aboriginal symbols in the Aussie one. I use 2 layers of fabric and in between a heavyweight stabilizer. Trouble is that everytime I go to buy more it is never the same weight or quality. I would also love to find a fabric stiffener/stabilizer  that is made from recycled polyester - cant see why that isnt possible as I can buy felt that is made from recycled poly. I also make cuffs using layers of fabric and miles of stitching. I sell them for $35 to $40.

 Machine Embroidered cuffs

The cuffs are made the same way as the vases and I often add wire in the edges so that they can be manipulated. I also add buttonholes so there are more options on how to wear them. Takes me ages to find and decide on the buttons - fun too though. I apologize for the quality of the photos - the light isnt good today so will have to have another go when the sun comes out again. Next post I will show some photos of my new vases and a few of the quilts I have made.