Owl Moon

Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

Sometimes I have an idea for a piece of work and I get started and make it right away. More often though it takes a long time (years sometimes) for an idea to become a reality. On our first night in Islay on holiday three years ago we were lucky enough to get very close to a Tawny Owl. It swooped down and landed on a fence post right in front of us as we gingerly drove down a track to what we hoped was our accommodation for the week. It wasn't terribly impressed with us stopping to admire it but the experience stayed with me and since that moment I've been wanting to make a piece about that owl.

Tawny Owl, Islay 2015

Layering up fabrics

Layering up fabrics

As much as I love owls, I've resisted making any pieces with owls for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I only really make work about birds I've seen and been able to observe properly as I want my work to capture a bit of their spirit and to do that I have to get to know them. It's hard to observe owls in the wild as they mostly come out at night and they're very stealthy! Secondly, owls are very popular (I own many owl embellished items myself) and I didn't want to fall into the trap of making a 'cute' owl.

Building up the owl, using my drawing as a template and photograph as reference

Rust dyed silk for owl wings

Starting to add machine embroidery

For our exhibition 'Wingspan' at RSPB Geltsdale Visitor Centre, Mr. Stitches has written a poem about an owl hunting, called Owl Moon. This poem captures the wildness and skill of the owl and inspired me to finally get around to making my owl piece. As I mentioned, the idea for the piece had been in my head for some time so Nick's poem was just what I needed to kick start the process.

Detail: Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

Detail: Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

Detail: Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

I'd found some interesting metallic fabric on a trip to Bombay Stores in Bradford and I knew that's what I wanted to use for the moon. I also knew that I didn't want it to be too shiny so I experimented with layering up pieces of silk organza that I'd dyed with logwood, giving a beautiful deep purple colour. I also used some indigo dyed organza and used some indigo dyed linen as a base as I felt the piece needed a more solid ground than the organza. For the owl I used pieces of organza that I'd dyed with rusty pins as it had just the right texture and patterning for an owls wing.

Detail: Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

Like a lot of my work this piece was built up in layers. As always, I started by drawing and sketching my ideas before I started to play around with layering up fabrics. Sometimes the pieces of fabric come together really quickly and other times I spend a long time arranging and re-arranging until I'm happy. I used running stitch and star stitch to secure the background layers and chose to leave a lot of raw edges as I think this emphasises the wildness of the subject.

Detail: Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

Detail: Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

I then moved on to making the owl. Again working in layers I built up pieces of rust dyed organza, using my drawings as a template to cut out specific areas such as the wing feathers. I then worked several layers of machine embroidery in various shades of thread to build up the pattern and texture of the feathers.

Detail: Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

Detail: Owl Moon, 2018
Hand and machine embroidery on metallic fabric and naturally dyed silk and linen

I'm really pleased with how this piece has worked out, I think that it is starting to marry together different parts of my practice;  the work I've been doing on my feather banners, my bird portraits and drawings and my increasing interest in and experiments with natural dyeing. For me this piece feels like the start of something, as well as the resolution of an idea that I've had in my mind for a long time.

Complete (I think)

Not Lost But Still Searching

A few months ago I wrote about a piece I was working on for The Festival of Quilts this August. The idea was that I would post about it as I went along so people could see how it progressed. This didn't really happen as although I remembered to take pictures I didn't get round to writing posts about them.

Anyway, I finished it last night so I thought I'd post a couple of pictures. The quilt has four layers and has been dyed, painted, machine stitched and hand stitched. The crows were painted then machine embroidered then applied to the quilt by hand. All the actual quilting was done by hand. Today I have very sore fingers.

The top layer is silk organza; the middle crow is sewn on top of this layer and the other two are underneath it. The organza layer is attached to the other layers with insertion stitches.

Detail of the bottom crow and insertion stich seam

Detail of the top crow

Detail of main crow before attachment to quilt

Colour fun

Part of the point of me starting this blog was to encourage myself to get making more and to share my work with people. I also intended to use it as a kind of online journal, recording the process as well as the finished outcomes. So far I've not really done that, in fact it would be fair to say that I've not done that at all. So, I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.

I'm currently making an art quilt (by currently making I mean I've been thinking about it and semi-planning it for about 3 months and have finally started on it today) to enter into the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August. As I said in my previous post I entered a piece in January for a touring exhibition which is showing at said Festival and it would be really cool to have two pieces on show. It would be especially good as the piece that has been accepted, Rise, is small scale and the piece I'm now working on is large but they are both closely related in terms of both concept and technique.

Organza (top) layer

Base layer-there will be another layer between this and the organza top layer

Today I have been making the most of the sunshine and dyeing the fabric for my piece. I'm using cotton muslin and silk organza, both dyed using procion dyes. I've been bucket dyeing and painting on the dyes, with varying levels of success! I've over dyed the main layer twice but I'm happy with the colour now. I like to work with coloured greys, I like the soft, muted tones it produces. I mostly work with blue and green greys as I think it gives a calm and reflective feeling, giving people chance to think about the work. The fabric for this piece is a lovely soft blue, I'm looking forward to stitching it!

Woohoo!

I submitted a piece of work for selection for a textile exhibition way back in January and I've just found out that it's been selected, which is rather exciting for me. The exhibition is called Textile News and is organised by Dr. Gudrun Heinz, the theme this time was Freedom. I chose to look at the idea of breaking free and my piece took the form of a bird rising up and flying free. It is made from layered and pieced organza which I dyed in shades of greys, greens and blues. I then used hand embroidery stitches including feather stitch, blanket stitch, fly stitch and stem stitch to add detail and texture to the piece. It's an important piece for me as it got me back into creating work, giving me a goal to work towards and a bit of an incentive to get going. I enjoyed doing it and I'm now working on a much larger piece along a similar theme and using similar techniques.

The exhibition is touring and the first venue is The Festival of Quilts in Birmingham 11th-14th August this year, it then carries on to Moscow, Prague and Einbeck.

You can find out more about the exhibition here http://www.quiltsundmehr.de/TEXTILENEWS2ENG.htm

This is one of my preliminary drawings for the piece:

Ink drawing exploring the theme of freedom