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Click on graphics to enlarge them. Due to the success I've had this year completing quilting blocks that I started in the 1990s, I decided to go back and complete some miniature petit point projects for dollhouses and finally complete my second and third dollhouses. These are some miniature quilts I designed in the Electric Quilt software. I have been experimenting with printing them and I can make them large enough for a single bed, but no bigger due to the constraints of my inkjet printer.
I bought the standard version of the PC Stitch software and have been entering motifs there to finish charting a miniature petit point rug in 22 count. It's going well and is much faster than trying to draw and move motifs on graph paper. This is the rug as it has languished for twelve years. I have the floor stained and stencilled and the rug will fit in that space. The little girl doll for this room is called Margaret and that is her log cabin dollhouse that I built from a 1:144 scale kit from Northeastern Scale Models ten years ago.
I discovered a new technique for miniature rugs in a magazine where you use French knots and embroidery floss to stitch a pattern. These little rugs look and feel like full-scale hooked rugs, it's amazing. I am currently working on an abstract design that uses silk and cotton floss, some of it hand-dyed by me. The dollhouse is my second one and was one I won in a raffle from miniaturists Judy and Jim Henry here in Ontario almost 11 years ago. Jim built and painted the exterior himself, and then I was to do the decorating. I'm glad I didn't get it finished ten years ago as my new idea is to turn it into a celebration of abstract art, because Frances, the doll who lives there, is an artist. Her little girl is only six but she's really interested in architecture, so I'm doing houses on a petit point rug and printed quilt, and perhaps I'll frame some architectural prints for her walls. In short, this house will reflect my own interests and passions!
I liked the French knot technique so much that I started looking for inspiration in my art books and then online for doing up another one. There isn't much around concerning abstract art, and it takes a really good artist to pull it off. I was fortunate enough to find one, so I wrote to her explaining what I wanted to interpret her art for and she has given me permission to use her art as the basis for this project. Her name is Angela Porter and she is from Wales. I found her page at DeviantART under the name "Artwyrd" and my jaw just dropped with delight, she does some wonderful work. She also has a web site and does textile art and jewellery as well as artwork in pencil, pen and ink, pastels, oils, and watercolour. http://www.artwyrd.deviantart.com/ http://www.artwyrd.co.uk/ This is Angela's original art Kandinsky Inspired 3 and my circular version, that I adapted after spending some time fiddling in Photoshop. I just LOVE this piece of art. I will go away for a few days and come back to and it always fascinates me. Many thanks Angela for understanding what I wanted to do and how inspiring I find your work. Not all artists are like that in my experience.
I designed my own Lenormand fortune telling deck in Photoshop with some vector and raster clip art from my extensive collection.
There is a picture of the finished deck on the Gallery Two page, but I will leave the sample cards up here. I printed two copies, one for me and one for a friend in England.
This is a photograph of the new Rumi Tarot by Nigel Jackson, with some beads and cabochons I am going to work up into a bead embroidery inspired by this card deck. I love the green, blue, lilac, and fuchsia colours and the deep red.
This is a small sample of the layout, inspired by a clip art of decoration on Islamic architecture in the city of Bukhara. Some of the cabochons I am using will supersede the detail in the decoration. The larger ones are a malachite/lapis lazuli mix and green aventurine.
I liked these engravings so much that I made a matching necklace and earrings with some handmade beads and botanical engravings.
Here is a detail of the lampwork beads and the botanical beads. The pendant is one I got in a gift exchange years ago; I think it is black agate. I've used some Picasso Stone and some Snowflake Obsidian to complement the engravings, as well as black crystal bicones and matte glass beads in black. It feel gorgeously elegant to wear.
I was fiddling around in the Quick Cards 2 software recently and made a small deck with antique Dover engravings and woodcuts.
I am making a quilt that I started while reading the book Ulysses by James Joyce with a group. I have since carried on to read the book alone, but I am still working away on the quilt, which I call The Bloomsday Quilt. I've done a layout of it in my Electric Quilt 4 software. The lower left corner is going to have a hand painted fabric poppies and foliage appliqué that I am designing based on the Art Nouveau designs of Eugene Grasset.
In this photograph I have some of the blocks laid out on my dining room table. The secondary patterns are going to look great, capped off by some red and orange poppies exploding in the corner.