Wednesday, 29 October 2014

My first art work

To start off my creative journey with embroidery I went and shopped around for stuff that was easily available and things or material I knew names of and how it worked or how to use it . I bought lots of embroidery thread, printed fabric for beginners, a little more advanced design printed on fabric for painting and embroidery.

I made a draft piece of fabric to practise different stitches that I am trying to master. My first completed art work is a cross stitch design. It took way too long and however long you work it seems you have barely done anything. Although I must admit completing the project gave me so much joy and satisfaction it was totally worth it. I was doubting myself that I might leave it incomplete and its not my cup of tea but it so totally is, my confidence is at an all time high. Here is the picture

cross-stitch project

The other designs I tried with different stitches. I used mainly chain stitch in this project ,a little bit of back stitch and in the centre of the design I have used a herringbone stitch. The embroidery in its many stages:



Its unfinished because I ran out of embroidery thread but I plan to complete soon.
For the second project I used satin stitch for the design below:



 Oops ran out of thread here too.. :/
 Again I used satin stitch for the yellow flowers but I used two shades of yellow.(Its barely showing in the pictures)
 Now for the pink motif I used a weave stitch in the centre and then satin stitch again.
 For the final motif, I did it with a long and short stitch. I completed it in two parts the centre part was done first, although I did think of doing a different stitch for the outside but nothing came to mind so I completed it with the same long and short stitch just with a different thread colour.
The most difficult part I found was deciding the stitches to do for every motif. As a learner I was aware of only a few stitches to begin with and even though I searched the net endlessly and found beautiful embroidery work and amazing blogs with tutorials but I couldn't figure out if the particular stitch I liked would look good on my embroidery pattern. So I just did what i thought looks good, hope all the potential readers also agree.
Please do leave your feedback , good or bad I appreciate it as it will give me a different perspective at my creations.
P.S Sorry for the bad pictures I am working on my photography skills and on getting a better camera than my trusted phone.

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

The dream in transit

The creative dream has been in transit since its inception. I wanted to do a lot and start creating amazing artwork however reality has kept me away. Of course I did a few project from Pinterest but didn't get instant success.So here are a few pictures of my "DIY" project that went wrong.
The recycled newspaper basket weaving project.

This project was going great till I reached the end when the rim went completely haywire and I got an unequal finish to the top.

I was doing this other project, its a haldi-kumkum box (turmeric & vermilion box an Indian traditional requisite) Most Indian women keep silver or brass containers for the same but I came across some wooden ones intricately decorated and decided to do some myself as a trial.
I had a brilliant idea for the design so I sourced the material and applied a generous coat of white primer to the wooden containers. Someone suggested that I use acrylic colours and I did however once the paint dried it just started to peel off.  Here are the pics..



But c'est la vie and life goes on so I am removing the entire paint off with sand paper and going to start all over again.