Teaching Time!

Now that the shows are over and the galleries are stocked, I'm shifting over into teaching mode once again.  First, I am heading west to Innisfail AB to do a Threadpainting class for a quilting group there.  After I come back home, I head east to run a day long Postcards Workshop in Foam Lake, SK.  While I have all my supplies out and ready, I figured it's a great time to slot in some classes in my home studio.  If you are interested, Postcards will be the afternoon of Monday, November 16 (3 hrs, $30+kit) and Threadpainting will be the afternoon of Tuesday, November 17 (4 hrs, $40=kit).  Email me if you want a spot.  Monika@MySweetPrairie.ca  Monday is more creative and adventurous.  Tuesday is more technical and skill based.  Extra classroom machines are available for a $5 rental to cover maintenance.  : )

Janomes in my Studio

Right now, I'm getting the details prepared for a two day workshop I'm doing in Olds for the Fibre Pot Pourri weekend in the Spring of 2016.  It's a handwork / embroidery event and so I'm creating a new workshop for it based on what I's very excited about at the moment.  ; )  It will be all about going from Sketch to Stitch.  I took out some supplies and sat and waited for inspiration to come.  I thought, ' hmmm....  LOVE this bison photo I took several autumns ago.'

I love the sunlight on them.  And so I sketched it out with some horribly messy oil pastels.

I chose a group of five of them.  I dislike the sky, but I adore the grasses and the beasts in the sun.  And so with that positive experience under my belt, I did a couple more all based on personal photos I have kickin' around...

You likely know that one.  It's the 3 sweet shrubs at Cranberry Flats that I've stitched out many, many times.  I totally want to stitch this one with fat yarns on black.  I think it would be a blast.

My idea is to sketch out natural scenes like they were to be patterns for embroidery.  The lines are fairly thick and lend itself well to stitching.  Then I have all these Noro yarns which totally rock.

With just one ball, you get so many colour variations!  This is how I worked the Birch trees that sold at my open studio.  I'm so excited to do more and share it at the Workshop next spring.

Well.  Writing this post out is enough to inspire me to make more Noro embroideries!  I'm a tad addicted.  Linking to The Needle and Thread Network.  Now off to stitch : )

Have a lovely day,

Another Crewel Landscape in the Works

Thanks for all the well wishes everyone!  I've bounced back.  I lost a week, but got lots of stitching done.  I have been wrapping up the art I showed you on Sunday.  Oh my.  It's a LOT of stitching.  I loved every second of it.  Bear with me.  It's totally experimental.  Here's how it all started.  I had this photo last year on my cell phone.  I took it just before winter came along while heading back out of Sutherland Beach park one morning.

crappy cell phone pic of a beautiful moment

Back at home, I took out my pan pastels and picked out my favourite darks, lights and colours from the image above.  I tried to be loose and impressionistic like I was going for after taking the En Plein Air workshop with Bobbi Clackson-Walker.  (See Bobbi!?  You really inspired me!)

It felt amazing to do this.  I always aim for detail.  This really has none.  As I was painting it slowly. I noticed how the touches of colour off the applicator looked like squares or diamond shapes.  I have always loved geometrics.  I think that is what attracts me to cross stitch or the close up of some crewel work.  If you stitch 'satin stitch' of just a few fat stitches side by side, you get a square or diamond.  I have seen beautiful cross hatched embroideries in very, very old library books with the EAC.  I just love that look so much.

And so.  That is what I was going for when I posted on Sunday.  I was recreating my pastel art with fat yarn and one giant needle.

days and days and days later

It's not quite done.  I want to add some more 'leaning' and movement in the lower portion.  I'm considering incorporating some of the stalks I wisked in for the pastel version.  I have been rummaging through my stash looking for the right colour.  It can't be too distracting.  I love how the blues and greys look within the art and I'm thinking of using something similar to this, but maybe softer.

I don't know that it had turned out exactly as I had planned, but this combination of colour was so exciting to work with.  Likely - it was that bright chartreuse, love of my life.  : )  It just makes that orange highlighting kick.  Kazowee!

Thank you for looking.  I don't know if this is a style I will continue to explore, but I sure enjoyed the hand painting nature of it.

Have a great day!
xo

Linking to WIP Wednesday @ TN&TN

Some of My Favourite Colours

Look at all these yummy yarn colours!  They photograph so well on the black tablecloth.

I've been craving to do an entire piece with seed stitches, much like 'Where Sunlight Falls'.  This time I will just play around and experiment... see where it takes me.  I'm enjoying the layers and it's beginning (of course) to resemble a landscape.

I'm loving this process.  It's like dipping a brush into several paints and watching the colours all swirl as they are laid down on the canvas.  : )  It reminds me a bit of rug hooking: popping up colours and seeing what you get as you go along.

That's my work in progress.  I stitched all night and then again since 6 am.  I can hear my littlest one up, waiting for breakfast.  I should run!  See you soon,

Work in Progress (pass the mustard?)

I finished this one up.  It was rectangular, but do you think I have a frame to fit?  no.  It's a teeny edge shy of a 5x7" mat.  SO, 5x5" it is.  I have heard that square art has a more intimate feel than rectangular art.  I will make this one again though, because it was so enjoyable, and because I like the feel of the open horizon being longer.

If I'm wrong, I'll be corrected (go for it), but I'm pretty sure these are Mustard flowers.  Here's the original photo I took below.  My version is a little brighter, and simpler by intention.  I love the clean look of it so very much.  It has a very delicate feel.  It was a beautiful scene to begin with.  I loved how the background blended.

I will have this one for sale at my Studio Warming on Saturday.  Most of the art I have right now is small - both threadpaintings and chunkier yarn embroideries.  I'll also have some postcards, snow globes, and art-print greeting cards too.  Please stop by if you are looking to do some holiday gift shopping.  I'll likely deactivate my Etsy shop items for the weekend as I have the cards for sale here.

p.s.  this little sweetie needs a name

linking to TN&TN for WIP Wednesday

Snowing and Stitching

Stitchin' away.  I am still making up some hand-stitch-only project samples.  We had a small dump of snow so I thought it would be fitting to work more on the 'Spirea Over the Snowbank' pieces.  Remember those?  I started them last year after snapping pics from a neighbor's front yard.  The leaves, branches, and seeds were just poking out of a huge bank.  They were fun to stitch out.  I used Sorbello knots for the clove-like seed pods.  Since then, they've just been been sitting in a box.  After finding that shimmery, glowing white nylon embroidery tubular thread (no, that's not 80's slang...) I knew it would be perfect to stitch ice crystals on the snow.

It added just the effect I was looking for.

I did some weird looking stitching in variegated yarns.  They are inspired by something completely different than what they look like.  I'm not even going to tell you what plants these sprung from.  lol  They look evergreen, and so you and I will just pretend they are.  lol

Like I said... this was just a playful experiment.  I really enjoyed stitching the layers: branch over branch (haha they weren't even inspired by branches!).  I really loved seeing how the colors worked themselves out. The contrast is interesting.  Perhaps I'll try out more based on this theme and see what it develops into...

It reminds me of juniper berries.

What else?  I started a more threadwork from the photos I took up on the hills overlooking Jackfish Lake.  This one will be a pretty good size.  I'm hoping to put it into my show at the Centre Galleries for December.

I'm purposefully hiding the sky.  It's a good one.  It's the last little hand dyed scrap I think I have left from Heather Lair.

Gosh I miss her.

I still have moments of having her in my every thought when I am preparing classes or thinking up new ideas.  She was such a wealth of knowledge.  I miss our conversations.  She always had SO much to share.  I wonder if she kept sketch books or sewing diaries.   hmmm.

Well - on that note, I have no idea how to end this post except to wish you a wonderful day.  If you have snow, I hope it lights up with sunshine today!  That's my FAVORITE thing about winter.  So sparkly, so bright, so crisp, so fresh.  Take care!

me.  last winter.

It's Friday. (I finished it!)

It started with a sketch.

The sketch was from a photo I took of a field full of new spring growth coming up in last year's dry, yellow stubble & seed.  I have to find a good name for this.  (Hint, hint!  Your suggestions appreciated.)   It's old & new, spring and fall, future and past - all together in one spot.  As I stitched, I felt focused on the yellow grasses, which really isn't what the photo should have been about if you think about it.  It was spring.  Green was coming forth.  hmmmm.

Here is what I had done as of the last post (three days of stitching):

day three

Some of you asked why I used the grey background.  Hmmm.  I don't really have an answer.  It's a good piece of wool to do a bit of needle felting into.  I've used dark grey before and it seemed to give some depth to the piece.

...three more days of stitch, stitch, stitch....

day six

I love the blending.  This was very interesting to do.  I have to find it interesting right?  How else could I stitch for fifty hours?  I stitched green, then yellow, then green, then yellow, and again once more.  I didn't want to add French Knots for the little spots of brown from the year before.  I decided to add some beautiful wooden beads that Margot had given me.  I laid them out on the piece until I was happy with the placement and snapped a photo so I would remember.  One bounce of the taught fabric and the beads would be sent flying.  (haha - I speak from experience!)

auditioning beads

The whole piece is a blend of wool, cotton, and silk.  I thought the wood beads were perfect!  They are all the right colors in shades of brown and rust.  I spent this afternoon stitching them down one by one.  I stitched them so they would show face out, with a several stitches through each bead.  This will framed quite differently and I want them on there securely.  I think they look better this way too!

done!  (click to view larger)

There you go!  WHEW!  What a marathon.  I can't wait to take it to get it framed.  I like it.  It's kind of impressionistic.  That's challenging for me.

I am glad I challenged myself.

Well.  I should have new work (my usual threadpaintings) to show you next week.  I did have enough art for my upcoming solo show at The Centre Galleries but then sold some in the last few days.  That was so unexpected!  Thank you so very much to those of you who contacted me for art.  : )  After all this I'll be able to start up 2 new & totally fantastic commissions.  Thank you also for that!  One is from the USA, and one is from Australia again.  That will make four pieces of mine over on the other side of the planet.  That's so exciting for me!  Every once in a while I stop and pop my head up out of my sewing room to take a look at how far I've come and it always blows me away.  I pop my head back down and just keep stitching.  : )  Too much excitement makes me nervous.  lol

Have a great November and thank you so much for following my blog.

2013 Prairie Postcards

In 2011, I made a 'prairie postcard' landscape scene for each season.  In 2012, I made 45 more prairie scenes which I titled, 'Wish You Were Here'.  Last week I was inspired to create nearly 30 more!

4x6" art-to-mail (and/or frame)

So here they are, #46 to 72 which is my official 2013 set.  They are my 'underdone' pieces of art (underdone as opposed to overdone).  I like these.

I like that I can make a hundred different landscapes based one straight line and each time I end up with 100 different scenes that are highly recognizable even in their minimalism.

some pretty rayons for some pretty prairie sky coming up...

Enjoy your week as we head on into summer solstice!  Linking to The Needle & Thread Network.

Chalkin' it Up (a short story long)

Maybe you've heard me mention that my mother is a landscape artist.  Her medium is soft pastels.  It's about the only other medium that I find easy for me to use.  I really, really suck at painting.  Chalk is easy for me probably because I grew up watching her.  She never used photos.  In fact my mother hated cameras.  She would tape her giant pastel paper onto a huge board and sit outside on the ground in the wind & the heat with her messy wooden chalk box at her side and do it 'live'.  She would work fairly fast because the weather and sunsets change constantly.  She'd get the sky down and finish the land or bush later in the house.  (Mom always puts trees in her work.) 

So - I chose not to work in pastels.  It was a matter of not wanting to copy.  More likely, it was a matter of not wanting to repeat my mother's work.  If I worked landscapes in pastels, it would look just like my mom's.  Think of the children of rock stars who go on to make albums.  They can't help it - they sound a lot like their parents.  Me - I wanted to be me.  I wanted my art to be uniquely mine.

Fast forward to my 20's.  A colleague of mine was an art therapist.  She passed all her sets of chalk pastels on to me.  Still, I resisted using them.  I tried oil pastels - YUCK.  That was not fun.  I started using charcoal and ended up sketching out a lot of self portraits.  One set of 12 were in the A.K.A. gallery with a group show!  (I bet you never knew that - December 1995.) 

In my 30's I unburied those self portraits to take a look and immediately thought, "Wow! Was I ever messed up," and I threw them out. !?  Yeah.  well...  I was dealing with some personal trauma at the time and no longer resonated with the images.  I did keep photos of them.

Fast forward to the next decade of my life.  The forties.  I still have the pastels in a box in my basement.  I never threw them out.  Good gosh they are TWENTY YEARS OLD NOW!  You know my dilemma with sketching before I stitch?  I've tried pencil, ink, watercolor (epic fail), and settled with pencil crayons (or not sketching at all).  THEN I went to Margot's house and asked her if she sketched before she stitched.  She pulled out her book full of soft pastel sketches!  I was dumbfounded.  How easy would that be for me!?  Why the resistance?   I can manage chalks, so why do I keep avoiding them?  I decided, "Hey Monika, it's time to get over it!"  I got home, hauled out the 20+ yr old pastels and did my first sketch in my pastel sketchbook.  (Yes - I actually have a pastel sketchbook.  Meant to be?)  It's like I want to, and I know I can, but I won't let myself.

I take a breath, let it go, and pull up this photograph.

photo I took from my mom's place last summer

I love that photo.  I love being up in that pasture.  When I tweaked the contrast, those pretty little blues popped out of the green grass.  I haven't stitched this out yet but it is most certainly on my to-do-list.  Why not chalk it up first?  I pulled out the painfully dry and brittle pastels and did my first pastel landscape sketch.  I taped my paged onto a board just like mom.  I went outside to sit & sketch on the ground... just like mom (even though I was working from a photo).  haha  I set out my chalks and away I went.

20 minute pastel sketch

Sweet!  I did it.  It worked.  BONUS - I ENJOYED IT!  It's now up on my design wall waiting to be stitched.  It made me so happy to sketching all the little grasses and blue flowers in the front.  It sets up exactly how I will place my threads.  I love dotting the chalk and then blowing off the excess - POOF - dust in the wind.  I feel like I'm channeling my mother, but that's okay right?  She was my teacher after all.

Fear # 427 conquered.  ; )  I actually look forward to making more!

Jour d'ete - FIN

I finished one last piece before my final trip to the framer's last week.  It's super summery.  I was considering a final winter piece but then I realized I had no flax fields for Winnipeg!  I had some photos from last year that I really liked.  This one has blue and yellow, and a BIG view.

flax on a summer's day, 2012

I was good this time, and I made a quick sketch in my empty sketchbook.  : )

my sketchbook rendering

Next, I put together the fabric and thread for the background.  Let's just say that my thread is getting a work out!  : )

i'll clean up later.  i'm busy.

After a day of threadpainnting / free machine embroidery, I'm getting ready to stitch some flax by hand.

French Knots, here I come...

I ended up taking this with me a couple weekends ago to work on it during the public stitching day with the the embroidery guild.  I'm glad I had the photo and sketchbook along, laying out.  As I sat beside it to do stitch, it sure stopped a few people in their tracks.  : )  Here is the finished piece!

bottom corner detail

I had a hard time naming this one too, so I enlisted my bilingual boy.   "How do you say this?  How do you say that?"  I asked him to translate a whole schwack of phrases.  Finally this particular translation came out sounding just right to me.  In English, it means Summer Day.  (phonetically - jshoor daytay)

Jour d'ete, 2013

I love the swoops and swooshes in this big view.  It's a very happy piece, and one of the biggest too!

i love the way the soft gold threads shine in Jour d'ete : )

I have some news too!  I will have one of my Winnipeg pieces published in the Summer 2013 issue of Fiber Art Now magazine.  (You'll have to wait and see which one they picked.)  How exciting!  They had a call for entry on the topic of Flora and Fauna that I jumped into at the last minute.

* * * Also, Jackie White interviewed me for the CQA blog.  It's now up and you can find that post here.  (Thank you Jackie!!)

Okay - back to work.  See you soon! : )

And Then Came Fall

I took a complete detour on that last piece.  I was a little nervous about the trees, and found myself quite smitten by some of the Cranberry Flats photos from last week.  They are very 'fall'.  The grass is yellow and leaves are orange and ochre.  One photo in particular was fairly boring, but I figured it would be pretty enough to stitch.  So... away I went!

Free motion stitching... in this piece, it seemed to go on forever.  There are silvery bushed below the horizon, and trees along the top.  W was surprised that the more I looked, the more colors I saw.  There grasses were yellow, wheat, ochre, lime, peach, rust...  and it was the same in the tree tops.

This suddenly became much less boring than I had anticipated!  I also feel less afraid of trees and will be confident to go back to the commission.  Here it is so far... 

I've begun hand stitching.  See the rusty leaves in the bushes?  In the original scene there were loads of colorful rose bushes - tufts of low shrubby wild roses all over the foreground, full of fruit with very colorful autunm leaves!  I'm excited with how full of texture this will be when it's done.  Can you see the texture develop in this next photo?  ...something about the way the light hits it...

I'm linking to The Needle & Thread Network.  : )