New date: – Monday 17th September 1-3pm booking by email below

Button Bracelet by Debby Bird                                         

Making paper flowers with music score  for a very special wedding.There will be greetings cards like this for sale soon through a new charity web site “Cappucino cards”. Some of my favourite images will also be available as cards.

Planning exhibitions for August at Artemis summer inspired silk scarves,embroidered brooches, small stitched pictures  and batiks.

Grant Bradley Gallery September with Gordano Textile Artists “Explorations” I am collecting lost and found items and responding to them making miniature pieces that will be shown in a Printer’s tray organised by the plan of where all of the letters of the alphabet used to be stored.(I love setting myself a challenge!)

I am also part of an online journal group “Inchingalong” check out our gallery from January and the current posts based on the theme “Rhythm”. I am running late every time I want to sew something interrupts me!

wed 18th april 6.30-9.30pm or Sat 21st April Flowers & favours 10am- 1pm. Make unique and interesting table settings, or favours for a wedding or special occasion. Use vintage paper, music manuscripts, co-ordinated beading and make something really different.

If you liked my batik there is a full day course wed11th April still a few places left.

If you can only manage evenings try the course over two evenings,Tues24th April 6.30-9.30.& Tues 8th May 6.30-9.30.

Celebration bunting course 6.30-9.30 Mon 14th May& Mon 21st May.

Rosettes & corsages 6.30-9.30 Mon 28th May

Beaded memory bracelets 6.30-9.30 Mon11th June

Debby Bird, baik leaf, early stages applying hot wax drawing and washes of colour on silk.

Saturday morning saw the Gordano Textile s Artists give a talk & demonstrations to a full room in the RWA, Bristol. My colleagues did a great job, and despite a few technical gremlins with the projector, I think we were able to show our diversity, expertise and the thought that goes into our art work.

The theme was “Leaves” each of us responded to that starting point differently.

I thought for a long time researching leaf shape and what leaves do, then inspiration dawned as I ate a salad!

Leaves do the most miraculous thing, they take the energy from our nearest star and turn it into food for the whole planet. They use up the CO2 we worry about and create life giving oxygen.

Science has developed simple solar panels and only just managed to create a synthetic leaf (2011) there is nothing quite as wonderful as the humble leaf.

source image a cross section of a leaf, traced over with free machine stitch, to learn the cell shapes and flow of energy through the leaf structure.

My art work took a magnified cross section showing the specialised cells that do this amazing job of photosynthesis and I painted on silk using batik to build up layers of colour to show the form and movement of energy through the leaf. batik is so organic and free flowing it felt a very suitable medium to be working in.

Initial drawing to place under the silk.

mid stage batik, several layers of colour wash. (The wax preserves the lighter colours beneath).

 

batik stage detail

The final stage was to ad some relief and dimension to the piece, I used free machine quilting, which emphasises the shapes, and added texture.

free machine quilting, detail

Debby Bird’s, finished piece a batik and free machine quilted peice entitled “Every day Miracles in a leaf”