Crazy Quilted Bag and exhibitions

I called this piece The Crazy Bag Lady because it was such a mad dash to finish before a deadline. What a wild rush!  Now that I'm calmer I'm rethink the title, so you may see this piece with a new name in the future.

I hope you enjoy the photos of the front, back and all the sides.

Materials: cottons, silks, velvets, lace and upholstery materials.  Some pieces old others new, some hand dyed and some commercial.

Embellishments: beads, lace, rick-rack, buttons, silk ribbon, cording, floss and various threads.

Techniques: machine pieced and hand embroidery and fancy stitched.

Making the background.

Working on the front.

Embroidery and embellishments.

Making the lining.  I added a small pocket and label on the inside before finishing.

Finished size 9.5X11.5X2.5

This piece will be on display at Love Field  Airport in Dallas Texas, September 2024.

I hope everyone is having a beautiful and creative day!!

MaryEllen

Spapshots of Dragonfly Island, construction information and updatesThank you tp everyone at

I wanted to thank everyone at the ArtCentre of Plano for allowing me to be part of the Threads of our Lives exhibit.

It was a wonderful experience!

When I first posted about my piece Snapshots of Dragonfly Island the post was quite short. Today I wanted to explain a little more about how the piece was made.

This piece is composed of nine seperate squares.  Eight squares depicting the details of the imaginary Dragonfly Island. The one larger center square is a view of the full Island from above.   The piece is 18.5" X 23"

Below are some photos of the work in progress to make that center square.

I started with a mass of wool roving, lose threads and tiny fabric pieces, which I wet and worked like I was making paper.  The blob that was formed was very lose and with no shape.  I flattened it out on a piece of  watersoluble webbing and machine stitched it to create a workable textile.

After this was piece was washed and dried I had a base that I really loved.  I was now ready to add my embelishment and embroidery stitches.  First I stitched this piece down on a base fabric and then I went to work.

When I was done with the handwork I finished the piece by turning the front edges to the back and covering the back with a backing fabric.  From there I worked on the other eight blocks all of them are also heavily detailed with stitch and embellishments.

The handwork on the piece took awhile but I loved working on it! I hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of what went into Snapshot of Dragonfly Island's creation.

This piece is now on exhibit at White Chapel in Southlake, TX  throught November 11th.

I hope you are  all enjoying a wondeful day!!

MaryEllen

Wild Grapes

Just a quick look at a piece I made for the the Dallas Area Fiber Artist show Wild: Persetives in Fiber, witch is running now through August 10th.

This piece was based on a series of photos I took in the fall of wild grapes growing along an old country fence lines.  Below are a few of my inspiration photos.

I finally settled on one photo I really liked. I did some digital manipulations to photo and then copied to fabric.  After the image was copied to the fabric I continued doing  manipulations to the image.  Below is a photo of the image right off the printer and startng to make additional changes  before stitching.

As well as stitching directly on my image I did areas of stitching that mimicked the original image. In these embroideried areas I tried to make the design in a different scale.

The photo image and embroidered images are both collaged into the finished piece with a mix of interesting fabrics.  The surrounding fabrics are very textured, left raw edged and also hand embroidered and embellished.

This was a fun piece to do.  I enjoyed experimenting using  photo in the piece not just as an inspiration for a piece.  I have lots of ideas And, as always I love the hand stitching and using lots of embellishments.

Thanks for stopping by.

Have a great day!

MaryEllen