Friday, 9 January 2009

Tiree

This is a felted, embroidered and embellished piece I made for my Dad.  It was inspired by the colour of the sea on the lovely island of Tiree, the outermost of the inner Hebridean islands here in Scotland, and one of my favourite places.

I decided to try a free-er, more organic feel to the boundaries of the piece, so I took my Dad's advice and tried working to a roughly circle shape.  I made the felted base with my embellisher from all sorts of different fibres - wool roving, Wensleydale locks, angelina fibre, bamboo fibre, tencel fibre, silk tops, silk throwsters waste, cotton nepps, silk fabric, cotton scrim, muslin, and I also trapped 3 tiny cowrie shells from Tiree onto the surface in pale organza.

Then I embellished the surface felt further with all kinds of things.  I used lots of different threads (rayons, silks, chenille, slubby, fine, cottons, linens) to give more texture, by couching and hand embroidering in bullion, French knot, feather, chain, stem, running and sorbello stitches.
French knot stitch and one of the cowrie shells
Bullion stitches and couching
Feather stitch and chain stitch

I also added some needlelace pieces in wave-like shapes for extra height and varation.

Needlelace pieces
I used a 12 inch wooden embroidery hoop to frame the piece.  I really enjoyed making it and choosing how to embellish it.  The only difficult thing was knowing when to stop!



4 comments:

Country Rhodes said...

Nice. Really cool. However, can't hep but think you are getting slightly distracted from a battleship grey projec tthat you've barely started, Tofto.
x

Kate said...

Hah! I've been working on that today, in fact! No blog posts about it until it's finished though, so you'll just have to live in suspense :P

Rosi said...

I love the colours and textures. It's a beautiful piece.

Rosi

Kate said...

Thanks Rosi!