Category Archives: city and guilds

Busy Week

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It’s been another busy week but unfortunately not in a creative way, my day job has been going more than a bit crazy. It’s been as much as I can do to make myself eat something before crashing into bed each evening. This weekend I have really thrown myself into textiles to make up for an otherwise rubbish week. It has been a very productive weekend though…

Mr TB was out on a stag night on Saturday so I put the evening to good use, watching trashy TV while applying wax to an apron I rainbow dyed with blues and greens that morning:

This is the batik pattern I have been doodling, it’s taking a surprisingly long time, 4 hours so far and I’m only half way finished…

I plan to over-dye this with a deep purple and then spray with plasti-dip spray to waterproof it so I have a felting / dyeing apron (no more soggy felter’s middle for me!).

I have finished a couple of C&G “samples” that I started last weekend, the assignment is to explore natural wools with a view to creating a wall hanging but to my mind these pieces are too large (approx 40 x 60 cm / 16 x 24″) to be samples and I like them as wall hangings in their own right:

Do you remember this piece of ice-dyed felt from a few weeks ago?

I turned it into a bag, this is the front flap: 

Inside the front flap:

I plan to do a lot of hand embroidery on this piece, mostly blanket stitch around the edges and bit of embellishment on the front flap. If I can get it finished in time I will submit it to the Yarns in the Cathedral exhibition in May.

And finally, some blue tits have been showing a lot of interest in the bird pod I hung a couple of weeks ago. I can’t decide if they are nesting in it or just stealing the cat fluff I put in it as welcome present…

Linking up to nina-marie, off the wall Friday

Commissions

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For my last City and Guilds assignment I needed to work with a client to develop a scarf to their specifications, in true Teri tradition I didn’t stop at the one scarf needed to complete that assignment, I ended up creating 3 scarves for different people, all with very different results but interestingly very similar colour schemes. This has been a brilliant journey, and a lot of fun working with some good friends to develop their ideas and realise them into felt and fabric.

The first one was for a good friend, unfortunately she’s a bit photo-phobic so I don’t have any photos of her in her new scarf but I was so pleased with how her scarf turned out that I sought out some more “clients” to work with, and found 2 more willing guinea-pigs.

This is the first scarf, it is a reversible snood with a button to help mould the hood to the head when up. She wanted something warm that would offer some protection from wind and rain in purple / fuchsia pink.

This is the silk side:

This is the felt side showing some of the silk hanky decoration:

A better photo of the silk hanky decorations, these catch the light beautifully:

Having enjoyed the process of working with someone else so much, I went in search of my next victimclient, Juliet, a friend from work volunteered her services.

She wanted a  floaty, decorative scarf. After looking at some samples and finished scarves she selected nuno-felted silk. After lots of discussion (and I think some influence from Tam) we settled on an infinity scarf design.

This is Juliet wearing her new creation:

My third guinea-pig was Tam, another friend from work. She was quite clear from the outset that she wanted an infinity scarf, after looking at a selection of dyed fabrics she settled on the purple stripy cotton scrim (visible as the lowest fold in the photo) with wool in purples and reds with some orangey-red silk hankies for decoration.

I’m really pleased with how they all turned out, all very different and hopefully a reflection of their new owners’ personalities! Thank you all for helping me to complete this assignment, it has been a lot of fun.

Linking up to nina-marie, off the wall Friday