New materials

 I've been experimenting with learning Fair Isle knitting recently and I've decided that I'd like to have this as a Winter project. In the meantime, I wanted to make some bright and summery textile jewellery, so here's a sneak peak at what I'll be working on this week!

 I've been gathering off-cuts of Liberty print fabrics from Ebay (this is a new brightly coloured batch, I love them!), as well as hand embroidered tray cloths, and I'd like to combine these with lace and other up-cycled materials. I also wanted to add some extra colour and I'm excited to have discovered these Permaset Eco Friendly screen printing inks. Looking forward to getting to grips with these- I've just started making some handmade stamps using wood blocks and fun foam (more on this later in the week). I'm also going to an embroidery class later this week as I'd like to include some hand embroidery. It's going to be a busy week! 

                                                 

Hand embroidered Tray Cloth

I'm planning to patch strips of the different fabrics together

Back to my roots

I'm currently looking through images of my work right through from when I graduated nearly five years ago, up to today (can't believe it's been five years!). I want to create a photo timeline with them for the Open Studios weekend to show the journey of my work so far. To be honest it's as much for my own reference as my visitors- I want to look back to my roots and re-affirm the philosophies of my work!

So this is where it all started! For my graduate collection I made three knitted hangings (each about three metres long) based on the theme of Make Do and Mend, combining knit with unexpected recycled materials, including glass, meat hooks, plastic food packaging and household paint, to name just a few. My aim was to utilise these unwanted materials and re-purpose them into something beautiful, and this is a philosophy I still work to now.

Knitted hanging embellished with recycled materials

This may look familiar- I embellished one hanging with strings of knit covered beads
embellished with recycled materials. I took this idea forward and developed my first collection of necklaces!

I collected glass bowls, jugs etc from charity shops and broke them into pieces with a hammer 

(very therapeutic!) I attached washers and wool and then hooked these onto my knitting machine, actually knitting them into the piece 

I'll share more images from my creative journey with you as I continue in my retrospective endeavor!