#4 Winter Harvest - plan to be completed tomorrow!

Well, I'm having a blast!!!  Was working on this piece today and had a brainstorm.  I have bark cloth (thanks Wil!!) and my tree has bark........so........I took bits of the bark cloth, adhered them to the "tree" and then painted them in.  So far I have done the trunk  (well....in this photo TWO of them are painted in.  I left the other two naked so you could see the difference)  In actuality they are all painted in now.  I'll be adding some to the larger limbs, then some crushed pecan shells (like in Emergence). The pecans on the ground - that is how we harvested them....shook the limb and they fell down among a good bit of twig debri and then we picked them up off the ground - I have screen printed in the black "shadow" of the pecans.  Then I will screen print over that with the brown.  I also have several half shells of my real pecans which I'm thinking about adhering among the screen print ones.  There will also be several tufts of grass sticking up.

So....here it is so far. The bit on the left of the tree is still a bit wet which is why it is also a bit shiny. The top and bottom bits have not been painted in yet.

WINTER  HARVEST

update

The separate artist pages are updated.

Piece 3 - Complete!!!

Just put on the finishing touches!! Whew! Looking forward to your feedback!

EMERGENCE

Here is a close-up of the main branch.  The branch over the textile part is made from bark cloth Wil gave me from Africa. I'm afraid I matched the color for the painted part of the branch so well you can't actually see it in the photo.  The other bit you might be able to distinguish in the photo is that I used crushed up shells from the actual pecans off the tree on my mom and dad's farm in Texas.  The current resident was kind enough to send me a bag of them!!  How cool is that????

The fourth canvas is underway and the fifth (and final for now) has been started!! 

One more poppy

One more poppy piece before the year ends.  I did an experiment with thickened dye spread on a plastic mat and pressed fabric over the surface.  The dye bubbles and moves so it's very upredictable (but fun).  I used some cardboard poppy shapes as a resist.  The left side is a piece of shibori with the same dyes; I used clothespins as my resist.  Poppies are free motion stitched and I heavily machine quilted the background  It's small, only 12" x 12".  Happy New Year Everyone!  Hope I can remember my password..... Wil, can you help???

All Together Now

I have just been looking at the pieces each artist has done so far and I have to say that I am liking the way the pieces look together!! Not one to have worked much in a series or anything before, I can see how this concept is beneficial. Great work everyone!!!

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.

2014

I hope you all had a happy Christmas and are looking forward to a new creative year. But it is also time for some thinking :-). Do you want to work with a new theme in the coming year or expand on your present one? Just let me know and I will add it to the blog.