Started working on a new kit!

Hello! Just wanted to share something I've been thinking about for ages but finally started to bring to life on the weekend.
It's a new blackwork sampler kit, something a bit more contemporary this time, but nice and easy for you first timers. Here's a sneaky look at the design stages...

New: In my Etsy Shop!

Hello there folks! Just wanted to let you know that my Stumpwork green man was now up for sale over at Etsy! Go check it out and grab yourself a famous little bargin!

P.S. I've just started working on a new blackwork kit... details coming soon!

Here we go again...

Hey there! Things have been a little quiet again because i've been packing up my workspace (and the rest of our stuff) to move house.

 On saturday we are moving from the countryside, 4 hours west to Melbourne. It's going to mean big, exciting changes for us, and will put me in a better position to be inspired and create more with my work. I've already been looking at crafting groups to join and upcoming markets and exhibitions... And i can't wait!

New: In my Etsy Shop!

This little gem just went live in my etsy shop... Recognise it?? Yep, it's my Nowa Nowa Nude!

Now purchasing this piece will not only make you the coolest person in town, it will also help you do your bit for charity. You see, I lost a dear Aunt of mine to Cancer last year so in her honour $30 of the sale of this piece will be going to a Cancer charity back in the uk. So, what more could you want?

You want the option of putting it in a frame or to hang it straight on the wall, I hear you say? No problem. Already sorted for you. the piece is already mounted onto foam board ready to go straight in that frame of yours, but it also has a thread toggle on the top so you can hang it straight onto that renter's hook!

So with that taken care of, and compleatly free postage to anywhere in the world, what are you waiting for!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR... or February Already?!?!? Yikes!

Hello Everybody!
I can't believe it's February already! I see that the last post i made was way back in October, around the time of the Nudes Exhibition. Well, since then I finished a piece of work I started for the Arists in Action and then had to hang up my needles, while I took on more of a role at my day job. Then all of a sudden it was christmas! This month we got some great news and we will be moving to Melbourne at the end of the month. I'm so excited!

As things start to pick up with my embroidery again I have relisted my Blackwork Tudor Rose kit on Etsy. I am also going to add some pieces of work on there too, which I think you might recognise! During the year I'll be adding more designs to the shop, along with some pieces of art for sale, so keep an eye out!

I also have some classes lined up over the next 2 months, details of which I'll be putting up on the classes page.

So i guess you want to see some work then, hey? Well here you are! This piece of blackwork was worked from a photograph called "Peek-A-Boo" and was given to the friend who took the original photo.

Nude: All finished and ready to go!

Wow! I can't believe it has been a month since the last time I posted on here... But to be fair it's been pretty busy in my world. Deaths, Promotions and a long To-Do list have filled up my days over the last month but in preparation for the upcoming Nowa Nowa Nudes exhibition next weekend I wanted to show you my entry fully finished and ready to go.

I only hit one snag with this piece, when i had to replace some net thanks to an over excited cat practising her parkour skills in my workroom and putting her foot through it. But we can keep that between us, right? Sweet...

So the first thing I had to do after i had finished all the stitching was cut back the second layer of linen. All of this has to be carefully done as you don't want to cut through the net or any of the stitching you've done.

 

the pictures don't show it, but the linen is cut right back to the stitching so there is none flapping about. This is going to make the skin seem more white as the coloured backing fabric won't show through so easily. Then I had to turn it over and start cutting the linen to reveal the net...

 A few tweeks here and there (I did mention my cat...) and it was finished! I decided to choose red to go behind her, not just because red is my favorite colour but also because I thought a nude pin up should express passion. I'm pretty pleased with the outcome and I hope the judges at the exhibition are too!

ARTIST TRADING CARDS: 
Sending someone a mix tape...

Some of you will know that I got into running an ATC swap group on the Hand Embroidery Network at the beginning of the year and we do swaps that run over 2 a two month period. For those of you who don't know an ATC is usually 2 and a half inches by 3and a half, and for our group has stitching involved.   The September/October swap theme is 'music' and after much deliberating I was reminded of my teens when I used to make mix tapes for my friends. I've also been a bit nostalgic for cassette tapes lately so this design was a perfect fit for me.

I like using blackwork in my ATC's because I can set myself up on the sofa at night and stitch away... and I find the stitching of the patterns really theraputic! A bit of me time, if you like. I like this design so much that I'm thinking of turning it into a kit for others to have a go...

If you'd like to see more ATC's from our group you can see the gallery here.

CONTEMPORARY AND TRADITIONAL MEET: A Nowa Nowa Nude...

Last week i started working on my entry for the Nowa Nowa Nude exhibition (Bein held in Nowa Nowa, victoria, Melbourne Cup weekend). Now, I've always been interested in tattoo designs, and love all the embroidered ones being done out there. Thread Wizard does some brilliant work as does katiekutthroat. But I've always wanted to mix my traditional techniques with these contemporary designs and it just so happens this exhibition allows me to do just that.

The idea behind fine whitework is that it's a mix of technique, stitched white on white, with different layers of fabric. My design will feature stitching on the original layer of linen, embroidered net and a second layer of linen. This will create some interesting depth to the piece.
So the first thing to do is the embroidered net. I didn't manage to get a picture of that, but once it was embroidered I tacked it onto the reverse of the work, leveling it up with the circle behind the pin up. Next up is the stitching on the first layer of linen because this is what will hold the net in place when I cut some of the linen away at the end.

I started on the peacock feathers first, using trailing for the edges.

The feathers were then filled with a mix of satin stitch, chain stitch, and stem stitch to give them some interest. The edge of the circle was stitched with ladder stitch which makes a nice edge to cut away to (this will make sense at a later date).

Now considering I've got a lot going on at the moment I am still managing to see her grow pretty quickly.

For the chair i wanted to do something a little different with my trailing, giving it a little texture so that it appears different from the trailing on the feathers. I also chose to split stitch the chair first and do the trailing over that, which does make the trailing go in faster as I can use both hands to stitch. (the orange thread is helping to hold the net in place underneath until the stitching on the body can be done.)

I'm really pleased with how it's going so far and all the bits that come next.

A Very Newsworthy Class...

So last weekend i was up at Jennifer Bee's again with another of our silk shading classes. It was good this time as we had a mixture of new people doing the kit and some others starting projects of their own.

 

The state of Victoria has seen some amazing rain this winter, and last week was no exception. Where we live in Gippsland we are subject to flooding as the water makes it's way from the mountians behind us, down to the lakes and sea. Jennifer is Based just on the outskirts of Sale, which is usually beautiful farming land, but last saturday the water had broken the banks and filled the fields right up to her back yard.

 

The morning started off fairly interesting as there was a lot of air traffic as helicopters flew over the scene, scopping out the area. not sure what was happening we would poke our heads outside for a quick look, but then head back inside to carry on stitching. It wasn't until around 3pm that we heard this noise get louder and louder... and it suddenly sounded like someone had landed a helicopter in the yard. Turns out they had! Channel 9 News had turned up to pick up their reporter so she could get some footage for the nightly news, and had chosen the only spot big enough and dry enough to land, which happened to be the neighbours back yard!

Interviews...

I've been a little popular of late... I got interviewed for 'Milk' magazine, a very interesting magazine about the gippsland region here in Victoria. Then, while I was finishing up the green man I had put some pictures up of it on Flickr and was approached by urban threads to be interviewed for their blog. They originally designed the green man and I love their site... to me it's a bit like embroidery porn. Anyway, I totally jumped at the chance and you can read the interview HERE.

New stuff on Etsy!

Wow, it's been a busy few weeks! Lots have things have been happening, mainly for me my time has been spent digitizing some of my original kits for sale as PDF files on etsy. Now, for those of you who know what my original kits were like you'd think that this wouldn't be hard, which is what I was thinking too. However, when i moved to australia I had just had my computer die a horrible death and so the first job was to retrieve the files off my old hard drive. Now, since i have had my lovely new red laptop I have begun using new programs on it, such as 'Open Office'. So now when i open these newly retrieved files they appear all skew-wif (yes, that is a technical term!) and so i start the task of reformatting them all over. Finally I have to re-write some bits as they are now instructions only and therefore I have to talk about materials and such... needless to say this has been a long drawn out process while I'm still finishing off little other bits and pieces and still trying to get my pieces started for the Nowa Nowa Nudes. My first kit is up on etsy now though, and you can find it HERE.

 

Green Man - Finished!!

So I finally managed to find time to finish off that green man I've been working on...

  Creating the stumpwork leaves takes time, bending all that cake wire into the right shapes. And then to attach it to the fabric and cover the wire with trailing...

Once the trailing was all done I cut out the leaves and trimmed back the fabric to the stitching, and then bent the wire so that the leaves took form a bit more. The final step was to stitch them in place on the face.

 

If I could change anything it might be the fabric. Although I loved that I was able to upcycle old school jumpers and a skirt for this project the fabric for the background leaves had a tendancy to fray, even with the couched thread edge. It doesn't take too much from the overall effect of the piece, but I now have a better understanding of the fabric and I still love how he turned out. I think I'll be doing a few more of these when i can and put them up on etsy!

Letting my Inner Groupie out!

Roller Derby. It's pretty awesome. And if you don't know what i'm talking about, it's worth checking it out. Here in Victoria we have several leagues and I just so happen to know a few people playing in them. One in particular is my friend Molly. She kicks ass for the 'Cutthroat Charmers', part of the 'South Sea Roller Derby League'. I've been behind molly all the way from the begining and when she got to play her first bout I made her a hand embroidered iron on badge with her derby name on it, which she proudly sports on her behind!

Once 'Mollycious Intent' was proudly sporting hers I was commissioned again to do one for 'Inkabelle' who wears hers on the back of her team vest...

Today i finished one for 'The Red Baroness'. I have no idea where she's going to put hers, but it will be pretty cool "badge spotting" when i next get up to the city to see them bout!

It's Finally Here!!!

Ever so excited this morning... Buying books over here can be really expensive so I opted to have Amazon.co.uk send me this one in the post. Anyhoo, guess what arrived this morning!!!

Now, the reason why i'm so excited about this is because not only was it written by someone who I was on the Apprenticeship with (Sarah Homfray,), but also because some of my work is featured in it!

Right there, on pages 88 and 89 are pictures of  'Sam' (our family's beloved one eyed cat) and 'Biggles', the very friendly dog of the Watson family, who commission the piece back in 2008. Both of these can be seen in better detail in my gallery pages, but I'm so very chuffed to have them in this book, which on very close inspection, is one of the best books i have read on silk shading. Regardless of the fact that I have stuff in it, i would totally recommend this to anyone giving the technique a go.

W.I.P. Green Man

So I originaly started this because I've been hanging to work on a green man piece for a while. Then it became a gift idea for a good friend who has just moved house... but then i started to get interest about the possibility of selling it... So who knows what will happen to it!
I had also set a challenge for myself to make it out of up-cycled materials, so the backing fabric has been taken from a skirt and the leaves from school jumpers. The stumpwork leaves are wired around the edge to allow me to shape them before stitching them down, which although great, is also very time consuming when you have to bend them into the right shapes first! And i'll be honest, I've nearly poked my eye out several times...

All the background stitching done and leaves applied before the stumpwork leaves go on.

stumpwork leaves added to the forehead and chin... just 4 more leaves to go!

Now, I will have to put this project a side for a little while as i have a small commission to do before the end of the month (which i'll share with you in my next post), but I don't suspect this guy will be hanging around for very long...

My First Blog post!

Hi everyone! Welcome to my new Website and Blog! It's taken me a while to get it started, but here it is! i'll be using this as my base for all things RalRay Embroidery, with frequent updates on things I'm working on and what I've been up to.

So, take a look around, have a nosey, and hopefully I'll hear from you soon!