Adding some bling

I have been teaching from my home studio for a year now.  I thought I would enjoy it, but have been surprised at just how much I love it.  Part of this is due to experimenting and constantly challenging myself to learn new things to share with the students, but it is mainly due to the students themselves.  They are lovely - so inspiring, experimental, enthusiastic and (mostly) with a great sense of humour.

One of my lovely students, Pat Grant, has just been on a Colouricious trip to India, which she greatly enjoyed.  At the last meeting of her Certificate Group, as well as showing us the amazing photos from her holiday, she gave us all a little goodie bag of textile things as a little gift.  I told you I had fabulous students.

My bag of goodies

Inspired by the bag, which to be honest contained things I would never normally chose to work with, and also by others in her group who just seem to produce work at a fantastically quick rate, I decided I need to make something using all the bits in the bag.

The contents of the bag

I thought blues and purples would go well with the contents, so I made the backgrounds on firm sew-in Vilene, using transfer paints.  Having cut them to size, I then did the 'easy' bit first - printed on top of it using the little print block.  It was a lovely block and the repeats worked well.  I initially tried silver acrylic, but my silver (from The Works) was too watery and didn't show on the blue.  So I used black.  That showed up!

The first piece

I then stitched on the gold braid-ribbon.  This is the part that challenged me most.  On both pieces I ended up stitching into it with other colours as I struggle with 'bling'!  As I was trying hard to use sparkles, I added some sequins on the first piece and some small beads from my own collection, before finishing it with the giant silver tassel.

The second piece

I decided to add more detail on the second piece, and added some hand dyed knit along the bottom.  More ribbon was added to tie it in and make a more cohesive piece.  I attached the mirror to some chiffon using a shisha embroidery stitch and then stitched that in place.  

I'm not sure that these pieces are very successful, but it was really good to try something so outwith my comfort zone!  I have a collection of beads and bling, but I never really use them as they don't feel obvious to me, so it is a positive learning experience to use them, although I may not be using them again for a while!