claire-elizabeth

 


This is actually my first embroidered uterus piece! A few summers ago, two I think, my friend helped me to hang up my drawings, embroideries (which were on T-shirts at the time) and paint a mannequin and in return I promised she could have this piece! Some how, after assessments using it as a reference and so on I've managed to keep it from her for an astonishing amount of time and so recently I decided to rework it a little so that it was in a frame and could be hung up properly! All that's left now is to finish the edges. It feels strange to look at it cause it's so different to where I am now. Back then I thought that was a lot of stitching and was a bit more, experimental with using appliqué and paint and pens on my pieces. (you can see more detail of that under the cut) Also it's hard to demonstrate this in a photograph, but it's so much bigger than I would even think of working now, although I imagine I did it that size to fill the bottom of a T-shirt.

Also I've got an interview up at hearthandmade blog here I really like the way that it's been presented and I think this blog is becoming one of my favourites to browse daily! The variety of different work is really exciting! 

 

Since putting my organ pieces on etsy, I've had a few requests for commissions which is what I've been working on recently. The piece above is one of my favourites as it's a bit different to my normal pieces! It's for a lovely lady and the concept is personal to her, you can read about here The drawing above is a sketch for the piece and I'm excitedly awaiting the arrive of the frame she's supplying in the post! So a slightly different image and a new frame to work with! 

I've also got a remake of 'golden child' which is almost finished. I don't like for two pieces to be the same though so I'm going to add some tiny cross stitch details to this I think as I've been enjoying that recently! 

I feel a strange re-connection with my organs now. It makes me want to continue working with that theme. Especially with making these golden pieces, I want to remake like a special series that's over-the-top glamour. Full on sequins, sparkles and beads. It seems like some kind of sign as parents went away and came bag with a paper bag full of metallic threads for me...

I've also been drooling over Cornelia Hesse-Honeggers work. I saw some of her pieces in the flesh at an exhibition about Chernobyl in Barcelona a few years ago and couldn't find where I noted her name, luckily for me a friend came across it and posted a link. Stunningly detailed! 

Can you guess what it is yet? Or at least what it's hopefully going to be! I've been getting into my knitting recently after joining London's Stitch n bitch group one evening I felt rather inspired. I was quite excited that I managed to make my own rough pattern for it and make the wings one piece for each side of it rather than two seperate bits (I hope that makes sence!) and hopefully once I've finished the other tail wing and the body I'll be able to stitch it all together and fill it, it wil somewhat resemble a plane! I'm thinking of making some embroidered embleshments on it too! Once it's finished I might think about making a whole fleet of them!

I have decided as of this week I will have to make a concious effort to update this more regularly. I enjoy updating I just need to re-organise my timing and things, subsquently I have rather alot of things to update so there maybe several posts today. I've finished two new aircrafts one gold and one blue. I'm having longer gaps between the making of each of these and I think it's because I'm not entirely sure about what I intend to do with them and I'm also starting to feel that having an aircraft trapped in a frame isn't how I invisage them... although I kind of see them as little, shrine is the wrong word completely but I can't think of the correct one, devotions maybe is better, to planes. I mean I'm not intending for them to be replicas or anything, on to the blue and gold...

 

I found this on my computer a little while ago and thought I'd post it! It's part of an animation project I did on house work, it's my washing line! (i'm not sure why the black line at the edge appeared when I uploaded it)

I forgot that a few weeks ago I went to the RAF museum! I took lots of pictures with matthews camera and have finally uploaded them! There was SO many planes in each room it was exciting and gave me lots of little random ideas. It's weird, I have trouble like outputting all my ideas if that makes sense and I tend to write things all over the place, rather than in one place, and so I forget things. I'm currently working on trying to make a knitted aeroplane. If it works I'm gonna make a few, I don't know why I just didn't feel like sewing (which is very unusual) well. I think maybe it's that I just felt like trying something else. I painted some canvases with a 'base' colour so they're sitting in my room ready to be worked on. Also in the pictures in below like 'painted lady's' on planes, I get like weird ideas (painted lady's: tended to be pictures of the wives of the pilot apparently. Which I thought was funny as they are quite slutty)  But I like the idea of making cross-stitch pieces of all the little bits you find on planes, the images, the text, the symbols. Yeah so random things I have to try and remember and perhaps peruse.

In other news. I'm going to be featured on heartlab on hearthandmade which is exciting! I had so much fun answering stuff and was really chuffed to have been asked. I also did a studio space thing for poppytalk which was also fun, so if you want to read my rambles they should be there at some point soon I imagine!

Just a quick update because I just noticed it's been a ridiculous amount of time since I last updated! I had my interview at bath a few weeks ago and... I got in! Which is very exciting and defiantly something I'm looking forward to. An MA in textiles is just, I'm not sure how to describe it I think I'm mostly excited about the focus on textiles because a small part of me slightly regretted not doing my BA in textiles, although I really enjoyed my actual course.

Anyways that’s that. Above is a shot of some stuff round my desk but the piece in the frame is some screen-printing that actually worked! With a little bit of stitching on, not sure if you can see it that well in that picture but still. That’s pretty much what I've been up too, I've finished a few more aircraft embroideries that I need to photograph too... I've also decided I want to try painting not quite sure how that'll pan out as it is 100% not my fortay at all but for some reason after the build up of nerves before my interview and scary thoughts of what will I do if I don't get in? When I found out I had this urge to paint just sprung for nowhere and coincidentally my mother found an easel at a ridiculously cheap price in a charity shop so I decided it's fate or something…

Well that enough rambling for now.

So greenpop starts today! yay! my page is here. So I thought I'd post a few pictures of the stuff I've got up for sale on etsy, which is gradually growing! It's weird seeing some of the pieces again as I've had them hidden away pretty much from June until last week... on another note photobucket has changed and I don't like it currently as I dislike it when simple stuff suddenly has many options. hmm. 

This week I've been busy re-photographing alot of my organ pieces from my degree show as they're going to be on the poppytalk handmade market - Green Pop! as of this Monday 10th March! It's the first time I've properly used my etsy account so I'm quite excited! Theres a few bits up on there now and there will be more over the weekend!

Well it's not really work I've done recently. It's just my work at the moment is going through my portfolios for my time at University ready for my interview tomorrow. I don't think these will be making an appearance, as they don't really fir properly. It kind of makes me want to do more of them especially as I've got an obscene collection of bus/train tickets as for some reason I never throw them out.. Also I've done a few mini-cross stitch kits recently and in my head I can see some kind of combination of the two. Anyway basically I'd forgotten they'd existed and decided I had to photograph them. The urge to photograph maybe partly because my boyfriend lent me his sexy digital SLR this week to photograph some other stuff… more on that later in the week though! 

( buzz )

 

I've started working on the bigger frames now. I had fun doing tiny little cross-stitches on this one and I quite like it! I think I'm going to keep that up for a little while. I've spent the last part of this week going through my portfolio trying to decide what to put in it and what not too as I have an interview at bath spa next Friday for MA Textiles. I am absolutely petrified about it currently, as I really want to do it, so all fingers and other limbs are currently crossed for it. It's quite challenging putting a portfolio together I decided, as I haven't actually done it in a while. 

( close-up )

 

So this was what I wanted to do with all the transfers I did onto fabric that I posted here  they're only in the first stage I literally just sewed them onto a pink felt backing so the threads are all still loose! I like the planes on pink, I think it makes them more feminine. So they need to be tidied up then I've got a dark grey to go underneath again to set it off. I hoping they'll look quite cute when they're done! Also it's quite fun doing something that's textile-based but has a quicker outcome than my embroideries. Though I bet little embroidered plane brooches could be fun too...

Damn! That took practically a whole day! not quite the outcome I'd imagined so I assume I've made some mistakes along the way. I have a feeling it was not leaving it to dry long enough combined with not putting the screen block stuff on evenly... learning curves woo! I will not give up! I shall try again on friday, although I may practise on paper first I'm upset that I lost precious fabric doing that!

 


I decided to try something new just to see whether or not I like it and if it'll work with my embroidery. A few different people have always asked why I haven't tried screen printing so I'm giving it a shot at home! This is the non-chemical process I'm trying here so 
I've drawn the images on with drawing fluid. No finished stuff yet as I'm waiting for that to try then I've gotta put more stuff on, let that dry, wash it, let it dry... it's taking a little longer than I thought but hopefully it'll be worth it! It's a mixture of aeroplanes and organs on the screen cause I couldn't resist having a look at what both would come out like!

I finished my other coloured pieces over the last few days. I tried sequins on one of the pieces, but I don't think it worked very well. It could just be because the sequins are too big in contrast to the size of the plane though, I'll have to try sequinning on some of the larger ones to find out! 

 The purple people plane is finished! I'm enjoying these little ones, as they are fairly quick to finish for me in contrast to the bigger pieces. I want to do absolutely tiny ones so I can just have them silhouette like but I think this hoop size is too big for that and I can't find any smaller. I wonder how difficult it would be to make hoops…

I've been playing about with transfering reduced sizes of my drawings onto fabric. I'm gonna make them into little brooches I think or something along those lines. I like them cause each one transfers slightly differently so they won't look really uniform! 

 

Look how beautiful the colour of the sky is! The weather is wonderful at the moment! Also I was at the train station and I noticed some planes in the sky so i tried using my digital zoom on my camera to capture them. The quality is amazing but it gives me some different angles to think about! I've started quite liking blogspot since starting i ♥ sewing, so I've made a little addition on there for my planes in flight it'll just be a mirror of the stuff on here pretty much!

 

I used my new board! I think it looks some much better photographing them on it, I'm very pleased! Some more colourful pieces, five outlines and one finished (aside from finishing the edges at least) I should of taken a picture of one of these alongside the bigger frames so the size was more noticable, they are approx. 3inches diameter so pretty small. I'm really getting into these planes at the moment. I want to go and see and photograph some real life planes in a airfield or museum to get some fresh stuff to work from. I'm excited to have a little set to play around with in terms of display too as I've got some ideas spinning for suspending them and things along those lines...