Weeds can give us drugs - Irene MacWilliam

12 x 24 inches 30 x 60 cms
I am using the same technique and fabrics as in my other pieces that I have already posted. I used steam a seam light for the various bits of the foxglove; as it is repositionable this made it fairly easy to get an arrangement that pleased me. Al the fabrics are painted, dyed, stamped etc. I am still not sure what I think of this series, some days I quite like them and other days I feel dissatisfied, I think because they are not in the usual strong colours I tend to work with. I am aiming to do 6 pieces to these dimensions although I will be switching to a new theme for 2014.

Weeds - Children Make Daisy Chains

Another piece in my series on appreciating weeds. 12 x 24 inches or 15 x 30cms

I screen printed a child on an a mockup of the green earth and blue sky. It seemed OK but a tiny bit pale so I added a bit more grey and printed the children using my own handcut stencil on my actual piece. Horrors they looked far too dark. Left the piece for a few days and then decided to overprint the children with a paler shade of grey. I did this by carefully placing the stencil over each image and then placing the screen to add the additional fabric paint. They were apppaling like plasticy extrusions!! They looked worse each day, then a friend suggested covering the piece with organza. In my unusual fabric bag I found  a sheer organza with flowers and leaves so applied that to the children but it was such an improvement. Not sure if it was the answer but I added the daisy plant, looks more like the button daisies than the wild ones but I have had positive feedback about them so will leave it as it is.

The sky and ground were made with stencilling, dyeing, sun printing etc. The green daisy band and binding were sun printed. This will make my third piece posted – I only started half way but I am working on another piece and hope to have six in this collection so if it is Ok with members I will post them as I complete them.

Now to get my head around thinking of something for 2014. Posted on a gloriously warm day in December, unusual for here in Northern Ireland. 

Irene MacWilliam - Nettles Support 40 Species- theme- Weeds

I thought I had this piece finished a few weeks ago but I was not very happy with it. Every day I looked at it and I knew that the nettle looked rather uninteresting and wrong. Here is a detail of it. I had bound the edges and got the sleeve on it.

I realised I needed to add more interest to the nettles so I free machine stitched to try to remove the flat look. I was not worrying about being realistic as if there were a light source. As the stitching was added after the piece was finished it looks strange just having this stitching showing on the back but I do not care, it would not satisfy any quilt judge. 

and here is the complete piece. It is 24 x 12 inches or 60 x 30 cms. I am a lot happier with it. It is unusual for me to be working with pale fabrics. All the fabrics in this piece have been dyed or overdyed and then painted, printed by various means with home made stamps and sun printed except for the leaves of the nettles, they are polycottons in 2 shades. the home produced fabrics were then cut and reassembled and cut and reassembled. The lower part is quilted with buttercup leaf shapes to keep to the theme of Weeds.

WEEDS - theme of Irene MacWilliam

Weeds are useful

In the past few weeks I have been making fabric to the weed theme, sun prints, lino cuts, printing, painting etc various weed leaves and text .

I had a vision in my head but it did not look correct when I laid out the various bits. I cut them up and laid them down as a background and printed the text on some of the small squares. It looked lovely but I wished to represent some of the weeds so I free motion stitched in a dandelion, daisy, corn poppy and a nettle. It looked messy and the drawing did not show up enough. I free motion zig-zagged over the drawn weeds. Now everything is just one big muddle, fine if you are prepared to peer and pick out the elements; however it looks dirty, not fresh and wonderful.

The back of it looks not bad so I decided to leave it exposed just for my own interest and perhaps for use when teaching.

I think all my background pieces were too strongly coloured or maybe I needed to leave some areas blank for my drawing.

I am determined to find my way to my vision of showing the value of weeds through textiles. Much thinking needed. Just as I am writing this text a new approach has come into my mind. We will see.