This September I participated in the Perthshire Open Studios annual event after a two year break. In previous years I have always opened up my home studio for visitors but this year for the first time I decided to join up with other artists in a High Street pop-up venue.

The Property Shop in Kinross was transformed into an art and craft gallery providing a showcase opportunity for participating local artists. We had paintings, printmaking, digital art, photography, jewellery, drawings, textiles, artists books and more. 

Photos were taken by fellow participant Sylvia Breslin of Sylvan Photographics

The pages are made from an old shirt that I bundle dyed with beetroot and found objects. It is stitched and embroidered with tiny machinery parts and the small pages are made from printed organza. I designed the supports in the shape of an old treadle sewing machine and they are laser cut from thick card.

Observational Drawing unit was fun, instead of just drawing with the expected implements we were encouraged to draw with stitch. This is a seed pod, drawn freehand with the sewing machine, silks and threads added, and then painted and distressed

It's been a long time since I've posted an update but in the meantime I've been busy completing my final modules and in June I received my HND Textiles qualification. It's been a lot of hard work but a lot of fun too, I've loved every minute of it.

Look at all those Units on the detailed record! Phew! I know I did them all but it seems an incredible amount when listed like that. It really was a very busy two years! The photo might be too small to read so here are the Units completed:

Graded Unit 1 ~ Graded Unit 2 ~Art and Design Project ~ Creative Project for Artists and Designers ~ Digital Imaging Project ~ Observational Drawing Portfolio ~ Printed Textiles: Advanced ~ Surface Decoration for Textiles: Advanced ~ Textile Techniques: Advanced ~ Textiles for Commission:Advanced ~ Design Semantics ~ Designing and Producing a Fashion Garment: Introduction ~ Digital Imaging ~ Fine Art Textiles: Introduction ~ Life Drawing ~ Millinery: Introduction ~ Observational Drawing ~ Performance Costume: Introduction ~ Portfolio Production ~ Printed Textiles: Introduction ~ Professional Design Practice ~ Surface Decoration for Textiles: Introduction ~ Textile Techniques: Introduction ~ Textiles for Commission: Introduction

In addition I managed three other major achievements for which I am incredibly pleased and grateful, they are:

1) The dress I designed and made being included in the Fashion Futures Fashion show at the closing ceremony of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games 

2) The Nine Trades of Dundee Tailor Trade Award

3) An unconditional offer for a place on the BA Design and Creativity course run by Grays School of Art, Robert Gordon University.

I start on 1st September and am really looking forward to it although I know it will be an incredible amount of work, full time, 5 days a week!

So, to catch up on my update I'll post up some photos of my final semester. Unfortunately I have no photo of my finished dress but here are pictures of the paper design

The Module was 'Advanced Textiles for Commission' with a live brief to design and make a dress to be entered into a competition to be included in the Scottish Textiles Academic Group's venture 'Fashion Futures' - a fashion show to be part of the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games 2014 to held in Glasgow. The inspiration was to be taken from the V&A Museum London and the department I chose was 'Ceramics'. 

I made a sleeveless shift dress with a soft white cotton fabric. The zigzags are in a green ombre-dyed cotton appliqued on with an invisible machine stitch. I decided to make the wiggly lines by free motion machine embroidering in a mix of black, grey and silver threads. Finally, in embracing the 'less is more' school of thinking as encouraged by my tutors I left off the white flowers altogether. I was a bit reluctant to begin with as I had several ideas for hand making the delicate white blooms, but in the end I have to agree ... the finished dress doesn't actually need them.
You can watch the fashion show on BBC at the closing ceremony of the Games on Sunday 3rd August, I think 6pm.

Next, a few photos of the Graded Unit.The theme was 'Urban Elements' and I chose 'Bridges'
 

Next, 'Textile Techniques'.  We spent a lovely day on the beach at Broughty Ferry, Dundee sketching and mark making for later development into designs. Following are three of my final pieces for portfolio:

And finally, a few selections from my 'Printed Textiles' portfolio. My inspiration was piano keys, organ stops and music scores, but the printed designs are very abstract. A mix of techniques including masking, collograph, lino cuts and screen printing:

If you've read this far, well done and thank you for your interest and support. I think you can see how much I've enjoyed the last two years and this is just a very small selection of my work out of the huge amount I seem to have produced!
I'm thinking of putting some of my samples up for sale so please contact me if there is anything you've seen that you like. I can also offer prints of originals which would of course be a less expensive option. Or what about cards?

As always I welcome your comments an opinions and am always up for a critique. Please comment below, I read all comments and emails and always love to hear from you.  

The theme for this project was sea or landscapes. As a class we were taken to Broughty Ferry beach (near Dundee) for a day of painting and sketching. It's a really lovely setting and thankfully it wasn't raining!  Our sketches were supposed to be about mark making rather than representative and I chose to look at verticals and rocks. 

We then used a whole load of different graphite, resists, print, and paint techniques to produce a whole load of paper samples.  I'm not sure that out of the 40 odd I did I've picked the best but here are a few photos:

My next blog post will be up soon and I will post a couple of pictures of my beach sketching/painting day. This 'Surface Decoration' project was combined with 'Textile Techniques' and I will show photos of my fabric and stitch interpretations.

I welcome any comments - I'd love to hear from you :) 

Over the last couple of weeks I've been experimenting with using ink and bleach to draw with. I'm using black ink, and once it touches the bleach it transforms into a glorious golden colour. Using different types of brush, sponging, spraying and drawing with a feather creates amazing effects and I have to confess to being ever so slightly obsessed with this 'new to me' technique! All of the photos below have just happened by chance - nothing was planned.....

All of the above were created on paper, the first three are on plain white cartridge paper. The last ones are on K9 white board and I've combined the bleach and ink technique with drawing with a blade, you can see the score marks which the ink collects and pools into. I've also added some black stitch.  These are based on beach scenes.
Playing with amounts of ink and bleach and the order you put them down changes the way they react with each other - the first ones are very brown and gold, the last few are smoky blue and beigey brown. It's worth experimenting!

Under The Sea - free motion machine embroidery then painted with dyes

Drawing with linseed oil, white acrylic and a graphite stick

I know people are interested in the techniques we are learning are on the HND course. One of the modules last year was Introduction to Surface Decoration and Textile Techniques and this year we are doing the Advanced level. I realised I haven't posted any photos so before I finish advanced level here is some of last years work:

The process was based on drawings we did of sweeties (wine gums, choc buttons with hundreds & thousands, etc), crispy crinkly cupcake cases, make up bags and contents and sewing kits. Making collages, scattering tiny sweets and drawing lots of detail. From these drawings we constructed paper and then textile designs.

We were required to make 20 in all so this is just a small sample. It was a fun and interesting project which I really enjoyed. Comments welcome.

By far the most popular thing I've ever made is the large wallhanging  'All That Jazz' . I could have sold the original many times over but I'm keeping it here at The Rose Cottage Studio on display and eventually will gift it to one of my family members who have their eye on it .... might have to do a names out of a hat though!

Due to its popularity I had the original professionally photographed by Dave Hunt - http://www.dphotographic.co.uk -  who also produced great quality fine art giclee prints for me. I've sold many prints and postcards and still have some available for sale. Now I'm pleased to reveal the latest addition to the 'All That Jazz' range - printed mugs:

The quality of the printing is excellent and the good news is that the mugs are dishwasher proof. I have a good stock of all designs for sale and am pleased to say I've already had an excellent response and lots of very positive comments. 

Coffee, feet up, and listening to Amy Winehouse?  ....... it'll definitely be a better experience with one of these ATJ mugs! 

In most of the HND Textiles classes we work our designs out in paper using paints, dyes and stitch along with other media to add texture. Progress is made by working through our source subject reseach to create around 10 or more different design ideas. These are initially sketches which we then make up in paper. The 'best' ones are used to inform the final piece of textile work. Today I thought I would share a few of my paper designs:

From graphite to bright colour! I love to use vibrant colours but I'd also like to challenge myself by working in monotones. Ballet Russes as a theme was clearly all about colour and movement, but perhaps next semester will see me toning it down a bit ... depending on the themes of course!!