Inspiration: Sera Waters

I'm finding a lot of inspirational embroidery lately and have found myself sneaking 
off to indulge in some stitchery when I should be doing other things. 

Adelaide-based Sera Waters is my latest inspiration for her meticulous use of 
embroidery and blackwork, but also the quirky 'edge' to her subject matter too.


The 6 pieces below from Waters' "Butchering Series" are amazing examples
of blackwork, where a honeycomb-like patterning of stitches is used to create the 
impression of shading and depth.

Butchering: Rib Eye Roast, 2009

Butchering: Tender Loins, 2009

Butchering: Loin, 2009

Butchering: Boneless Pot Roast, 2009

Butchering: Hack, 2009

Butchering: Knives, 2009

This is only the exhibited work from 2009. Waters has an amazing body of 

work which you can see on her website... so many thoughtful and intriguing pieces.

She currently lectures in art history and theory at Adelaide Central School of Art 

and at Adelaide University. I feel very envious of those lucky students, don't you? :)

My Creative Space - Brooch Swap

My Creative Space meme is hosted by the lovely Kirsty over at Kootoyoo.

In my space this week, a finished brooch for the Flowerpress Handmade Brooch Swap. You might remember it was one of my holiday craft endeavours (also the reason why I've been so speedy in finishing!)

You can still sign up for the Brooch Swap until May 10th and the brooches don't need to be finished until 21st June... plenty of time to follow through!

I'm doing a guest post at Flowerpress tomorrow (Friday 6th May) with a tutorial on how I made my embroidered brooch.

Happy Creative Space Day everyone! 

Happiest of birthday wishes to my darling Little One who is 11 today :)

She has a wonderful wit and a devilish sense of humour... She is fiercely loyal with an unwavering sense of justice, that's my baby girl... 

oh, and she's like a bull in a china shop ;) 

Love you, puppy :)

Holiday craft

The thing I love about holiday craft is the sense of time to experiment; to try out new ideas, a new technique or skill. This holidays I've been playing with a new palette, using embroidery floss to play with colour combinations...

... on an old but much loved design. I've been wanting to make up some more embroidered brooches for a while now. Here's hoping I finish these soon ;)

I also used the holidays to play with form. I tried embroidering without any plan in mind... just going with the flow... but still structure somehow imposed itself on me and I started experimenting with colour combinations again...

My eldest daughter thinks it looks like a Pac Man stuck in bow tie land ;)

There was also a bit of crocheting... going through the motif patterns... starting again each time I found I'd somehow got it wrong. 

I'm full steam into crocheting now (I'll show you soon). I've made some significant discoveries while playing with these motifs and have been using my new-found knowledge to start a new blanket. What have you crafted this holidays? Did you discover anything new?

Inspiration: Maria Ikonomopoulou

I'm not sure 'inspiration' covers it here... I am in love and in awe of the magnificent work of Maria Ikonomopoulou. The exquisite stitches on black + white photography, the irony and subtext in each composition. It's clever and witty and just plain gorgeous! :)

See more on her website.

We're off on school holidays for a week or so... and I could think of no better images to leave on my front page for a while :) 

So excited about the holidays... I'll be doing some reading, crocheting and maybe some embroidery too. I'll be teaching my big girl about taking black + white photography with a fully manual SLR (old school). Next holidays I'll teach her how to develop her B+W films. If you're on holidays too, hope you have a fun time :)

Inspiration: Erin Endicott

I was having a long leisurely look through the beautiful Blue Sky Butterfly Tumblr the other day and came across the breathtaking embroidery of Erin Endicott. These pieces are from her Healing Sutras collection. Erin has applied contemporary embroidery to antique fabrics "as a canvas to explore the common threads that bind countless generations of women". I like this idea... and I especially like that a growing number of people are once again embroidering these days. It makes me want to start a new embroidery project... :)

Inspiration: Anila Rubiku

Anila Rubiku is one of those inspiring artists who thrive on community involvement... Her work encompasses a fascinating cross section of mediums - drawing, embroidery and sculptural installations - which she uses to develop local history community projects with a contemporary perspective. I am just in love with the top image... dreaming of embroidery school ;) I imagine each embroidery hoop contains a new part to a fascinating narrative... maybe about her cultural travels? To find out more, visit Anila Rubiku's website.

via all the mountains

Crafty weekend

Being part of the Commonwealth, we have a lovely little holiday every June called the Queen's Birthday holiday. I'm not sure why but it always comes as a surprise in this family - it's a nice little treat just before school holidays and it happened yesterday. So, what can you do with an extra day to your weekend? Well, my Big Girl and I did some crafting. I have a few projects on the run at the moment but I suddenly needed to do some embroidery... and the BG taught herself how to blanket stitch her pin cushion together. We had fun :) What did you get up to?

Inspiration: Susie Cowie

There are so many talented embroidery artists but I think the exquisite work of Susie Cowie has that wonderful ability to leave one both breathless and totally inspired. I'm midway in quite a few projects but now find myself itching to get back to some more embroidery work. Based in London, Cowie makes her living as a freelance embroidery designer with a portfolio that covers fashion and interiors, costume and prop pieces... (you might have spied her embroidered pillow in the movie Bright Star). I think that's why I'm so enthralled as well... that she can do what she loves and pay the bills too... it's the dream :) Find more of Cowie's wonderful pieces on her website here.

My Creative Space - Another brooch

Playing along with Kirsty's My Creative Space meme today... Pop over to Kootoyoo to play along or have a peek at all the spaces. My space this week has another embroidered brooch in it.

Make Do + Mend: Quilt dress

Sorry I've been a bit absent lately. There's been a lot going on but I have been making in between the chaos...

Basically, I've been making lots of frills. Very simple sewing but so fiddly! The thing about frills (as you probably already know) is that they require a lot of fabric. Average fabric widths tend to be a tad restrictive, but this was great because the fabric I used was from a quilt cover... I know, so naff but I really loved the fabric. It's a light cotton in a gorgeous denim-like colour. No pattern - I just had an idea of what I wanted and began cutting. Maybe it was because I was working on it in snippets whenever I could grab a few minutes, I had more time to think about things before I jumped in... In any case, it was one of the lucky times when things actually turned out (I think)...

I also hand embroidered a flower form on the bodice - now, this was fun... I also made this up as I went along and (unbelievably) it worked...

Tried to take a pic of myself wearing it, and (believably) it didn't work! This still remains a skill I need to master ;) Have a great weekend.

Eureka!

Thank you so much for all of your encouraging comments and suggestions about the tea towel. At the moment I'm *quietly* very happy with how this tea towel has turned out... "quietly" because it feels so strange that such a small addition can make me go from 'binner' to 'keeper' ;) My friend Sally came over - she's an amazing artist and her impeccable eye can zero in on the precise problem with any piece like a heat-guided missile! I get ribbed a lot around here for starting sentences with "my friend Sally"... it usually heralds a chorus of parotting voices as if they've heard it a million times... Well, what can I say - she's pretty good :)

Anyway Ms Sal said that the yellow had faded into the background and all it needed was a touch of the darker grey in the centre of the yellow to bring it forward into the piece without being too heavy. I didn't want to take any more chances with screenprinting so I got out some embroidery floss and started stitching. At first, I intended to do a stem stitch circle as seen in Kirsty's tutorial and then I just found myself adding little sticky-outy bits echoing the screenprinted florettes in the design. Funny, isn't it, that such a small thing can make such a difference?

Thanks again for all the help. I think it was The Shopping Sherpa who said something very similar too :)