My grandson Ben came over for the day today and I had decided to introduce him to my new embellisher, seeing as he has a passion for all things 'distressed' at the moment. I thought I would see if he was proficient at free machine embroidery first, as the principles are the same.
As is typical with young people today he had no problems getting to grips with this, especially as he is no stranger to my patient old Bernina. Within about an hour he produced this little gem, with no preparation of course! See if you can see the 'secret hedge hog' hiding in the top of the circle. I like the laughing snails!
Ben was so pleased with his fist efforts he decided to continue with the sewing machine and give the embellisher a miss for today. He thought it would be a great idea if we worked together on a textile postcard. I was to do the background on the embellisher while he did something to go on the top. He decided to do a cityscape and I was to produce the mountains in the background, at night! He didn't want much, off the top of my head.
He was soon beavering away having quickly drawn out his design on Romeo water-soluble fabric. I suggested he work on a layer of net and then he didn't have to worry about joining everything up. This was, after all his first experience of W/S and it can be a bit tricky even for the experienced.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t decide what backing fabric to use and had at least one false start. I finally decided that felt and sheers were probably the best option. I managed to get the hang of it and finished off my piece with a sunset of wool tops.
Anyway, remarkably when we put the two parts together they seemed to work. Unfortunately when Ben finally got onto the embellisher we couldn’t make the net weld to the felt, I don't know why, so we had to resort to bondaweb. Ben gave the buildings a final outline stitching and I satin stitched the edges, and hey presto we had a postcard.
We considered asking if someone would like to swap with us, but at the end of the day neither of us wanted to part with our joint effort!
5 comments:
Congratulations to both of you and especially Ben. For a first time - brilliant . What a lovely way to spend the day. I am quite envious - my grandson always comments and refers to my work as lovely pieces of art work so you two have inspired me and I think I will introduce him to the art of free machining - that is if I can prise him away from the computer.
He is very fond of cityscapes too.
If we have a success we will make a swap. Cheers
Shirley
What a wonderful time you had together! Your finished piece is excellent. Can Ben give me some lessons please? BTW I don't have an embellisher but I understand it won't mesh net. People use it to hold certain fibres until they have meshed together and then pull it off (can't remember which fibres, sorry).
Hi Sharon,
You are so lucky to have interested family- my daughter only does shopping and friends at the moment but then she is 15 so maybe that's why. The piece of felt you asked about wasn't embellished it was a mixture of wool tops, dog hair and an unpicked jumper just felted together. As for net and the embellisher- soft nets eg the metallics will embellisher in quite easily but nylon nets need to be applied by adding some wool tops which will hold it down. So glad to see you're all having so much fun.Chris
PS the ERTF stuff should be with you in the next couple of weeks.
Hi Sharon,Sorry to dissapiont you on the imac puter, but I have a PC,:).
My name is MAC you see, so I call myself (i)mac.
I see that you know my DW (dear wife) she be JULIE (mixed media). Thank you for stopping by my lil ol blog and nice comments, You have a nice blog here.
hwat a superb job the both of you. I can't tell you how much i'm loving seeing Ben's explorations too! The net has no fibres to lock down into the underlying felt so you have to lay a few very fine strands of wool over the top - literally just a few, then embellish them through the net to hold it in place (the wool becomes invisible)
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