New Fabric Swatches

Fabric above showing all the swatches and close ups below of ten of them.

Flower Drawings

Parallel Pen Drawings

I've not used my parallel pens for sometime, the ink all gone so I gave them a good clean and put in new cartridges. Above is my first practise sheet after cleaning.

Parallel pens are made by Pilot, the nib is made up of two parallel plates between which the ink flows. Nibs of different sizes are available as well as coloured cartridges. They are used for calligraphy but as you can see I use them for drawing.

I coloured this rose in with watercolours.

I coloured this rose in with Letraset Aquamarkers.

Sketchbook Pages

Collage and drawing. The man and urns were cut from wrapping paper from Rhodes.

I love the pictures in a colouring book I have {Secret Garden by Joanna Basford}. I started this drawing by trying to copy one in the book, but it was so complicated I just did my own thing after a while.

Landscape and Horse

Quick paintings using a big Chinese paintbrush and acrylic ink.

Allium Seed Head and Drawing - Birds and Snails

I love allium seed heads, I also like the reflections it's made on the surface on this photo.

More drawing practice in a new sketchbook.

Collage - Vintage Series

Painted background, vintage advert

Collage - Vintage Adverts

Some of these old flyers are quite amusing.... height increased for 5/-.... I could do with that

Collages - Shoes and Crazy Whist

I was given a pack of replica vintage papers which I decided to use in collages

WIP - Squares on Brown and Whitework Peacock

One of the items I started recently is the above. I had some upholstery samples lying about waiting to be put to good use. I'm hand stitching them on with running stitch. I may put fancy stitches on after....not sure yet.

I've also had this piece of linen in my stash for years so I decided to do some white stitching on it. I decided to use a page from lovely colouring book [Secret Garden by Johanna Basford] a gift from a friend for my birthday. I printed it on Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy and stuck it to the fabric. 

Since starting it I have had a few problems:

my stitching is not very neat nowadays

I had to print the pattern on more than one page [I enlarged too] and I am finding the edges keep lifting especially where they meet

the needle keeps getting sticky so I have to keep cleaning it with isopropyl [rubbing alcohol] 

 I won't see what it looks like until I've finished it and rinsed the solvy off

 keep changing my mind on which stitch to use

It will take a long time to stitch!

Fashion for Ladies - 1920's

Collage, painted background. 

The two ladies dresses on the right were made from used envelopes.

Fifty Shades of White

I used all kinds of fabrics to make this, lace, doyleys, fabric samples, old tablecloth, embroidery samples, handkerchief, vertical blind samples etc

They were all hand stitched [running stitch] to a white background fabric.

I think it looks better in real life but you can get a better look by clicking on the images.

I'm thinking of making a cushion cover with it unless I come up with another idea.

Experimental - Marbling and Stitched Paper

I stuck torn bits of painted papers onto lutradur [or evolon?], then free machine stitched a bird. I drew the bird on the back and stitched it on the back which didn't work too well - the white shows through. The other stitching ie the plant I stitched topside which worked better.

I had some wallpaper paste left over from decorating so I did a bit of marbling, both on paper and fabric. Click on photo for closer look. They looked great straight after marbling but most of the colour washed off when I rinsed them, so not a very successful session. Some of it was poor choice of paints I think.