Made In Jesmond again

At last I have managed to take photographs of the work I did in my last module which will be for sale in the 'Made in Jesmond' shop from 19th April.

 This is my first Tea-cosie and my favourite.They are all made from 
old bed sheets which have become worn
in the middle. This is an ideal way to
recycle the edges.
I feel this design is quite Art Nouveau
in style

My second Tea-cosie is also made 

with recycled fabrics. The appliqué,

is machine stitched and hand embroidered in places.

Below is a view of the back of the

cosie. I felt it was a shame to have nothing on the back. I have utilised the Allium seed head from my branding and the wording from it too. "From lovely old stuff......."

This is my coffee pot cosie and
my least favorite of the three.
I do like the way the back of this one has come out below.
On reflection I would make my
cosies differently, I recently went to a fantastic shop in Glasgow which sells fabrics and notions, called Mandors. It was amazing and I will be going back! I found some wadding there which is for making oven gloves (now there's a thing) I think I will get a better finish with this. I will also sew the lining to the outer in a different way to get a better finish on the bottom.

I will be putting all three cosies into Made in Jesmond and don't know what I will be putting into my new venture as part of Warwick Tower in Carlisle. If I haven't mentioned before, I have decided to rent a space in a building on Warwick Road, which will be called Warwick Tower and will be sharing it with Stuart and Sara the organisers and lots of other like minded people. We will be selling goods we have made alongside vintage and antique goodies. There is a room in the building which can be rented out to hold workshops. I would quite like to hold a workshop when I have finished at college. I will be writing my next blog sooner rather than later as I'm having a great time with my last module.          

Made in Jesmond

We have recently been working on designs for a shop called Made in Jesmond, which is in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne. It sells vintage goods and items created by individuals using vintage or recycled materials.

As part of this module we also have to create a brand for the items we are producing.
I am using the name of this blog as my brand name and this is my logo.

I have found a company who will use my image and text to create two rubber craft stamps. I will use the stamps with coloured inks to make my garment tags and stamp gift bags too.

I chose to find my inspiration, and colour story from the 1950's. The trend I am using is Retro Botanicals, I always seem to fall back on the plants I love for my designs.

I also wanted to recycle or upcycle old fabrics and clothes which I can never bear to throw out. For a long time I have had strips of fabric wound into balls in our loft ready to make a hooky mat and thought it the ideal thing to make for Made in Jesmond, it sits with their ethos so nicely.

From my drawings of an Allium seed head I have created a design, and had to crack on with it quickly as we don't have much time. Hooky mats take forever to make. Here are some photographs of the progression.

We are much further on with it now but still a long way to go.

We had a meeting with Yve from Made in Jesmond and I got the impression she wasn't sure how the mat would go, and when quizzed she admitted that Tea cosies and Coffee pot covers were what she had been asked for. I have considered making lap top covers.

So I have been continuing my development and have created these applique designs today, just trying out some styles and techniques. By bed time though I intend to have a pot cover of some description made!

Catch Up

Life has been pretty hectic and the time has come to catch up and add the work I have done this college year.

The work below was our first module after the Summer  break.

We had to create garment fronts. I have chosen to use the trend, Subterranean.

While on my holidays on Kos I loved the pebbles on the beach and used some of the drawings I did of these pebbles. I also had taken photographs of the stratum in the rocks while on holiday in Cornwall a couple of years ago. These were combined with drawings I did of fossils shaped like a heart.

This is my mood board below, using fashion photographs, pictures from magazines, my own photographs and pebble drawings.

Once I had created my design motifs in my sketch book I decided to tie dye and dip dye some fabrics, see one below.

I used parts of my drawings of pebbles and manipulated them in photoshop, adding colour. I love the scale of the first one below  and the second one I can imagine on a t-shirt.

The third photo shows the garment front.

 Here I have screen printed this design onto some polyester satin and then hand stitched on the pieces of pink silk. 

 This is our favorite, the dip and tie dyed fabric, screen printed with a pebble design and then hand stitched into with a fine running stitch and some satin stitch.

Not the best photographs I'm afraid, but I feel the whole collection is quite 60's looking and lend themselves well to a simple shift dress.

Sophie Grace Productions

Well Christmas has been and gone, I am looking forward to the New Year. 
For Christmas this year I decided to give my husband a drawing of our dog Rowan, as she probably won't be with us next Christmas. He has been pestering me to do a drawing or painting of her for him for ages and I haven't the time at the moment.
Where I work I knew there was someone who could probably do the job so much better than me, and she had just come back from a stint in Australia for Christmas.
I didn't give poor Sophie much notice. She asked for a photograph and I sent her this one which I took years ago, it is a typical image of Rowan. 

This was the result, I couldn't believe my eyes and my husband is over the moon.

If you would like a portrait of your favorite person or pet you can contact her through, twitter@SophieGrace_Art.

Spellbinders

Hi, I've been down to that craft shop again and this time I bought a Spellbinders shapeabilities set of rubber stamps and cut and emboss dies. What fun I have had! I have created this card by inking up a stamp with the Tim Holtz distress ink pens and stamping them onto watercolour type card. I've then cut and embossed them. I have also embossed a flower onto the matting layer which is a cardstock that feels like suede. The die cuts are applied using foam pads. I like to do a bit of squiggling around the edges and this time used the same pens as the stamp ink.

I hope you like what I have created.

Big Shot

I have spent quite a bit of my time in the past couple of weeks in the craft shop at work and in my fabric stash too.
I have had my eye on a die cutting machine at work for a while and decided to buy one and do some card making for a change, I haven't really done any since last Christmas. The Big Shot by Sizzix is quite an addictive piece of kit.
I am also trying to do some of my work placement for my college course in crafting of some sort, be it designing rubber stamps or background papers, also creating cards and scrap-book pages. Here are some of the cards I have made in the few days since I bought my Big Shot.

 For this one I have used a reindeer embossing folder, with some Core'dinations, ColourCore Cardstock, a die cut heart using some Christmas paper from a few years ago with a bow.

 Again I have used the reindeer embossing folder, with die cut card heart and a heart I die cut from some cotton check fabric I've been using for my aprons and bags, with a button from one of my old work shirts. I've finished the whole thing off with a fine liner pen.

Some old bits and bobs have been use from my Christmas box, I love the velum paper with glittery images on it, velum is so hard to stick down without seeing the glue through. I decided to stitch it and think it gives a real homespun look.

I'm a big Tim Holtz fan and have bought his tattered rose die, again I've used the velum and layered the rose up, finishing and hiding the centre with a Do Crafts flower and some Stickles.

I cut out a few bits and took the whole bundle down to visit my Mother. I did a workshop with her and we both really enjoyed it.

I will post my aprons and bags at a later date, thinking of creating a Pop up Shop for Christmas, maybe with some of my peers if they are interested.

Angie Lewin

Hi again, I may be slow on the up-take but I have just discovered recently the designer Angie Lewin. We went up to Kirkudbright the other weekend and I visited every art gallery I could find in this lovely Scottish Border town. There was an expo., in the town hall and I went into the first room downstairs to discover an exhibition of local artists. I got talking to Joanna McLeman Gisbey an artist maker about my college course and my uncertainty about where my work would take me.

She suggested I have a go at Japanese wood engraving and look at Angie Lewin's work in another gallery in the town.

Unknown to me at the time I had already seen and admired Angie's work, took another look and this is what I discovered.

Like Angie I have also trained in Horticulture, in fact I still work with plants. I just want to capture them all in some form of art, maybe this is the way I should go. I love plants and want to re-create them in stitch, print or art of some description.

I have never done lino or wood block printing but would like to have a go.