Module 6: Chapter 1 - Making marks

Life always seems to have a way of taking over in the summer months and never more than this year! It has all been good but has definitely kept me away from my sewing machine and my computer. Now things have quietened down briefly I've finally managed to make a start on the final module of my City and Guilds Certificate in Embroidery.

I have to admit that I've not really been looking forward to this as machine embroidery is definitely not 'my thing' and I've been dreading having to do a whole module on the machine. However, I am excited by the topic and by the proposed final piece of work and I'm hopeful that by the end of the course I shall have learned to enjoy machine embroidery at least a little!

For this first chapter we were asked to take photographs of sky and sea and, having read the module through briefly before my two holidays in Scotland this summer I was prepared and had lots of images to choose from.

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In addition to my own photographs I looked at work by Van Gogh and Turner. Van Gogh paints lots of stitch-like marks which are a gift to anyone working in textiles.

 

 

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Turner's paintings are always very atmospheric, and I was intrigued to learn that he used watercolour techniques whilst working with oil paint in order to achieve this, and again uses complementary colours, albeit in more muted tones than Van Gogh.

 

 

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Finally I tried a few samples on transparent surfaces.