Saturday, January 29, 2011

Busy Doing Lots of Things

I've been rather busy of late - busy marking student teachers' assignments (a task made less tedious by finishing off the Christmas chocolate biscuits!), busy creating printable teaching resources to go with our story animations on The Treasure Tree and busy creating an embroidered seascape.
To start with I embellished (with the embellishing machine) various merino wool tops, silk bricks, ribbons and yarns onto a washed babywipe.  This is it at that stage:


The waves at the top are the microwaved dyed wensleydale fleece from here.  Then I hand embroidered more yarns and silks on (mainly using lazy daisys, fly stitches and french knots) before adding beads to all represent the fish and seaweed.  (I think I may be addicted to french knots!).  This is it finished:


It "grew" quite alot during the embellishing and is about 50cm x 20cm.  Below are some close-ups of some of the detail (if you click on any of the images they'll enlarge - the occasional cat hairs are added extras not visible except through the camera lens!)



















It's been many years since I've done any embroidery so I did quite alot of unpicking along the way, but I enjoyed doing it and am quite pleased with how it's turned out especially as I had no real plan when I started - I think planning is something I need to work on!

Now I'd like spring to come so I can get busy in the garden.

15 comments:

Mag said...

Lovely colours and details!
I don't think that planning is always a good thing...

I'm trying to get a bit of garden work done now, before everything starts leaping out of the ground, but it really was too cold to attempt anything today.

Gina said...

That is beautiful. I love the colours.

Jo said...

Really lovely. It's nice to see the first photo and then how it changed with embroidery and embelishments.

Anonymous said...

The colours are beautiful in the unfinished piece, and then when you get the embroidery and so on, it just makes it even better. You are SO clever.

Marigold Jam said...

Absolutely beautiful - how clever!

Jane

Fran Hillman said...

Yes, beautiful indeed.

Su said...

Thank you, all of you, for your encouraging comments.

Su

Anna said...

How beautiful Su ~ I can see the swirling waves and fronds of floating seaweed and such glorious colours too. You are a most talented lady!

Yvonne Moxon said...

Its beautiful I love it! just found your Blog I following now...I have so much catching up to do I have been missing so many beautiful things on my baby break.

Iz said...

Beautiful! All my favourite colours, too!

Kim Forman said...

This is gorgeous! I never would have thought to use a baby wipe as a base for fiber arts. lol. Thank you for sharing this. I love the level of detail that went into it.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations for your work, is gorgeous !!!!

Deborah Younglao, Silk Painter said...

This is stunning - gorgeous colors and lines

Sue.felt said...

This is beautiful, just found it on pinterest. I have just bought an embellishing machine and can't wait for it to arrive!

Dianne said...

I just wanted to say how beautiful this piece is! You are very talented. Thank you for sharing your work with us. Best wishes to you.