Photo Play

Another one of my textile inspired groups is Stitchin Fingers. This group is such a wealth of information with it's member list of over 2,000, & has specialized groups covering all kinds of textile inspired topics. A while ago, I joined another one of these groups called "Digital Designers", who chat about & play with graphics programs. This morning, with thanks to this group, I have been playing with Photoshop and all it can do. I have used Photoshop before, but mainly for cropping & resizing photos, & sometimes rotating & straightening them. Once, I had to change some pics to black & white for a particular purpose & found that very easy to do.

Some of the book pages I made a few years ago used images I had manipulated in another photo editing program, but it's been a while. Back then I learnt about layers, and this morning I have learnt to take the layers to a different direction, and about things to change within each layer itself.

My play this morning has taken this pic of one of my begonias,


to this...................

My mind is boggling, and all I need now is time to play more. Many thanks girls for all the inspiration.

Regenerate & Recycle

A different shaped page this time, this one for a book called "Regenerate & Recycle".

I started with a pile of plastic rings, the kind that come from milk containers & soft drink bottles once the seals have been broken. I dumped the rings on my scanner to create a pic, which was then manipulated a few times in my photo editing program. The final image ( which looked nothing like the plastic rings any more) was printed onto white polycotton & then layered with net & organza & FME'd.

Pansy Passion

My "Pansy Passion" page was for a book called "Purle". I had thought of using the iris flower for inspiration but settled on a pansy instead. Once again I played with a lot of photo manipulation. The pansy pic went through a number of effects including distortions, rotations, stretching & adding twirls. The final image was printed onto textile transfer paper, ironed onto white cotton, then embellished with layers of shot organza, net, chiffon, FME & a button. All was appliqued onto yellow felt.

My Fuchia Page

Fuchias were my inspiration for the book "Nature Enfolding". This page was more about playing with photo manipulation than anything else. I used one photo, then cut two different sections from it to make two different images. Both images were resized to make them the same size, one was manipulated using the effects - texture - polished stone menu, while the other had the background removed just to leave the flower by itself. The two images were then combined, printed onto white cotton, then FME'd.

Fragile Fragments

"Lace - A Frragile Textile" was my page that I created for the book "Fragile Fragments". Lace is my other passion, and though it appears fragile, if it is made correctly it is quite strong, and will outlast most fabrics that it is attached to.

For this page I chose a lace doily from my collection that I bought at an op shop. (The aim was to reproduce it one day) . I then scanned it, cropped it, added 3D effects, embossing effects & printed the final image onto seeded homespun. Digitized flowers, lines of stitching to reflect the shapes in the doiley, & stretched lettering were stitched into tulle which was then overlayed over the doiley image.

Interplay

This is the page that I made for a book titled "Interplay".

I'd been having fun playing with a photo program & all the effects that could be created, so believe it or not, this started as a photo of a nodding violet. I used two different effects, one after the other to get the base image, which was then printed onto textile transfer paper and subsequently ironed onto fabric.

The image was then used as a background in my digitizing program to design swirls of stitching. These were stitched onto net, which was then appliqued over my base fabric image.

Certainly something different for me, but I was having fun with photo editing programs.

Another Time Another Place

Now for the pages that I created for this book RR.


This one was for a book titled "Another Time Another Place, " and my inspiration was water & the coastline. I love the coast, & hope to retire there some time in the future. So the coast was my "other place" & retirement my "other time".

I started with a postcard of the Great Barrier Reef, scanned, cropped, manipulated, then printed onto textile transfer paper & ironed onto white cotton fabric. The flowers were made by trapping threads in between two layers of sheer fabric, then machine stitching in the flower shape to trap the threads. The "Sun, Surf & Sand" has been digitized.

I was proud of this page & it was like nothing I had ever done before. It was my first attempt at using the transfer paper & I learnt lots about editing needle points in my digitizing software.

Loopy lage - Page 5

This page came from Toni Valentine who used Photoshop to blend layers of a photograph. The image was then transferred to pelmet vilene using image transfer paper. Pieces of digitized free standing lace were added.

By the time this page was produced, I had already played with the same type of image transfer
paper on a page that I had produced for someone else. I have pics of those pages too, so I'll post them at some stage too.