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.

I'm B A C K!!

I know...scary, right?

Anyway, here is where things stand as of today and my series for this year.

I'm totally reworking the concept for Pecans so I've nothing to show yet. BUT....

Since I no longer belong to SAQA...I'm moving that series here to Free Spirit as well.  This has been one long time in coming series.  Trying to find the best bits to accomplish what I want to end up with has been a challenge but now all the parts are here and we are "off to the races"

A bit of history - Several years ago, Wil was visiting and wanted to see the decorative manhole covers in Nicollet Mall, downtown Minneapolis.  OK....I had never even heard about them! But we found them. I had just done some work in lino printing and as soon as I saw these covers, I thought how cool they would be as lino prints. Found out who the artist is and she graciously gave me permission to use her work to translate it into lino prints for my own work.  Her name is Kate Burke. You can see the original manhole covers she created HERE.  They are all representative of something associated with Minnesota.

And here I am.....

This one is not completed as yet but I thought I would show you this stage in the process anyway. This one is entitled "The Hunter".  Wolves are a bit part of the ecology in Minnesota and I just happen to adore them. So I started with this one.
In a few days, I'll post the steps on how I got here to this point, but for today...this is where it is.

"The Hunter"

The concept is the manhole covers, cut out of the sidewalk where they reside. The final canvas will be larger (this is the only blank one I had handy - 18" X 18")

I'm so gratified to see it finally come together.  I'll catch you up and then keep you posted on the progress.  This "brick surrounded manhole cover" will be stitched onto canvas and then stretched onto the frame.

The next step is to decide what color/design/whatever to do the canvas so as to compliment but not distract from the cover.  I'm totally open to suggestions......HINT! HINT!

New Member Introducing myself.

Wil has asked me to write a bit about myself so here goes:-

I live in Northern Ireland not very far from the capital city-  Belfast.

I have been involved with textiles since autumn 1985. I regard myself as both a Patchworker/Quilter and an Embroiderer. I belong to both of the Northern Ireland guilds. I have no experience of making traditional patchwork as I never wanted to follow someone else’s pattern and ideas.   I really enjoy free machine work.

Every year for 27 years I made a large wall hanging of world events, last years -2012 - is waiting for me to make the final panel. I have lost interest in them. There will be no more when it is finished. You can see them all on my website.  They have had solo showings when there were 10, 18, 19 and 26 of them.

I am happy to use any technique that fits my thinking. I prefer to work from an idea rather than working from a photo or image though of course I will use visuals to help my design ideas.

I freelance teach and give talks on my work.

I am a bit apprehensive about joining this group as it seems such a big commitment to say I will make 6 pieces within a year to the same theme. Although I have various themes that I have worked on the actual pieces are seldom made one after the other, they may well be years apart. However this will be a new challenge to me. 

I have selected the theme of weeds and while we have lovely sunny weather here I am furiously making prints to use in this series. 

I look forward to being part of this group.

Zebra

While I was with Kelly last month, we did not have just fun, but we were also very active. During those weeks I completed 2 pieces for my lines theme. In the previous post I have shown Ghostflowers and here is Zebra. Okay, the name is not very Original, I know :-). A couple of years ago I made another quilt based on a zebra. And that one focussed on a specific part of the animal. Click on this link to see a picture of it. For this quilt I used commercial black and red fabric and white silk noir. The pictures of the zebra's are printed on silk organza. Size of this one is 25"x41".

Ghost flowers

Another quilt in my lines theme is finished. I dyed the background fabric a couple of years ago and quilted it last month. The size of the quilt is roughly 40"x40" so this took a lot of hours of machine work. Next step was to cut out and applique the ghost flowers. For this I used a pounded fabric, another oldie:-). And this is how it looks now.

Here I am (still)

Hello my fellow artists. I know I haven't been around here much, seems enough time in one day spent going through facebook, and my other online research (I do some every day looking for greeting card companies to send my art to and galleries and markets).

This Summer I will be very busy at various African markets here in London as I do so love making  my African art. These are all small pieces that I can sell cheaply at these markets.

Have a wonderful week arting.

Jazz Singer - May 2013

Here is the most recent painting- mixed media and collage.. It is the largest picture I've done and it was great fun working on

it.