Embroidery Bulidings

So for my artwork I’ve been wandering around the city of Bath taking a look at all the different types of buildings there are here. Taking photos, trying out different drawing and painting techniques but I’ve still always had embroidery in the back of my mind. I feel that using fabrics to construct an image is a technique that I’m much stronger at, compared to detailed drawings or paintings. So I've decided to try out more textile techniques in my art work.
So this was originally a picturesque house on the outskirts of Bath and I thought I’d play around with the colours for one thing since most Bath buildings are made out of the Cotswold stone I thought I’d like to inject some colour and I find the piece more interesting than if I’d tried to use specific colours and tried to make this patchwork like piece exact to the house.
After spending the time hand stitching this (because I prefer the effect of the thicker embroidery thread to create a bold line) I then flip it over and find that I like the back of the piece almost as much as the front. It’s almost like a cityscape and so I think that I’m going to experiment some more with just sewing an outline of a building, using contrasting fabrics and thread.
So that should keep me going for the next week or so, I would also like to start looking into fashion illustration because fashion drawings are what I’ve been doing in textiles and I would like to overlap my work in that way. So I plan on finding a way to link the buildings I’ve been looking at and my embroidery to hopefully have a fashion outcome. But I realise that a final outcome is still way off yet I’d rather do some more samples for now and just experiment some more. So that’s my plan for now!

Article in the Bath Chronicle of me sewing away!

So basically I've started this blog for my professional practise module at uni and just to start this off thought I’d post a scan of me in the newspaper!

Those in Bath may have noticed or even seen that there was a local production of Ben Hur on at the Theatre Royal. There were a few professionals like the costume and set designer, obviously all the staff at the theatre to help out but making the costumes, props and all the actors were all local people volunteering their time for a chance to be part of a professional production so it was a great experience for everyone involved and for me to see the inner working of the theatre and being backstage really excited me.

I've been backstage at theatres before but only small ones back home taking part with dancing shows either being in them or for the past couple of years helping out back stage. But this was something else. Seeing how long it can take to rehearse, 3hours for only one scene at one point!!! 13hrs days and being there for 90hrs in just one week did made me appreciate my 4hour days at uni but it still hasn't put me off a life in theatre because tech week is only one week per production and it nice to see the long hours of work pay off, seeing the actors on stage wearing costumes that I’ve either just assisted with or some of them I made completely and so it was a very satisfying experience.

So I seem to ramble and hopefully that's enough for now but if I can work out how gonna try and put up some photos of some of the costumes I made for the show. So as gossip girl says, xoxo.