Challenges completed...

For Rosemary 

Painted lutrador with hand stitching. Applied on top voile and painted Japanese silk paper. Embellished with hand made beads and machine stitching.

Rosemary’s colours were vibrant and and such fun to combine.

For Debbie

What a challenge !! How does one define russet? How I struggled with this combination, to the point of nearly giving up. Russet means such different colours to so many people, so I do hope Debbie will like this piece even if its not quite up to the original brief. Russet to mean means apples so that was my starting point. Then to look into how a russet colour is achieved - purple and orange/who would have thought. So the base fabric seemed to fit the bill, I added painted lutrador, voile ribbon, fussy cut apples, and skeleton leaves, and finally machine stitching. 

For Margaret

Copper and yellow for Margaret. This immediately said 'bling and shiny' so a good starting point for me. The background was painted paper lutrador - ironed very carefully onto ready bondawebbed black felt. Painted scrim attached and hand stitched, then glued gun shapes [made by squirting glue shapes onto water] then colouring them and hand stitching down. Hand made ‘beads’ and colours plastic added as a final flourish. This was not an easy combination of colours as the yellow was difficult to blend in.

For Sue

Grey and green for Sue. Know Sues love of recycling I found a piece I had entered into our very first Textile Maids exhibition down at Heartlands, several years ago now. So with brush in hand the piece truly transformed very quickly. It takes courage to cut up old pieces but after a strong coffee I thoroughly recommend it. Sue I know loves seed stitch so this and cross-stitch were added. The piece already had the green shapes and small piece of hand painted silk so I added washers to emphasise the grey colour. I swore at this piece but actually truly enjoyed its recreation.

For Jane

Turquoise and gold. Anything blue and I’m totally in my element, not that it always works but I just love blue. I had a wonderful piece of fabric I had been saving for years - haven’t we all several pieces!!!!! I added merino wool, painted Japanese silk paper, and painted wet wipe and then free machine embroidery. I also had tucked away a hand made cord of wool, slubbed knitting wool land silver thread, just seemed the right place for a final touch. 

This whole ‘project’ has been such fun and certainly challenging over a long period of time. I’ve learnt a great deal, how to mix russet for one!!! But also the main thing for me is that we all see colour so very differently and for those with a colour blindness how different their world would seem to us - or would it, I wonder????? Its like the dreadful question I had to tackle for my degree - What is Art, oh my dear life, in this instance What is colour. ?

Thanks for reading. 

Jenni