Portraits

Further to our "faces" day in January 2015 - Ruth encountered an artist who combines textile and portraits. She says "Harriet Riddell does machine embroidered portraits from life, with no preliminary drawings – just diving right in!  Her website is http://www.harrietriddell.com/

"She had been round India with her machine (and has a book out) – wonderful vibrant portraits! "

Also, when Margaret was doing a portraiture course last year, she gathered some images of portraits done in textile - you can see the collection at http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/faces-in-stitch.html, with a further selection at http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/more-stitched-faces.html . This is Emmy, by Laura Pierce -

"Girl with Poppy Fascinator"

Another face worked on at the January workshop, "Girl with Poppy Fascinator" by Ruth Robinson, who writes:

"Girl with Poppy Fascinator" came from a collage done at Diane Cox and Sue Dove’s Artful Rugs workshop

in Penzance last year and started out as a large rag rug on hessian. After the workshop, finding the scale too large, I started again on a much smaller version, working with a punch needle.

We spent a whole day in Sue’s studio playing with glue and coloured paper pieces torn from magazines,

initially making abstract collages (a new experience for most of us and very liberating!), before working on another collage each which would be the inspiration for the rag rugs we would be working on during the workshop and, as it turned out, for many months after!

First finished face

At the January meeting we made up for the tutor having to cancel by continuing with the topic for the workshop, portraits. It was hardly a race, but first to finish was a visitor from Germany, Karin, who sent these photos soon after she returned home -

When she showed her daughter and son-in-law the finished rug, they thought the expression so grim that she must have been in a really bad mood when she hooked it – so the second photo shows where she gave the mouth a bit of a smile -

A workshop on "faces"

The tutor had to cancel because of illness, but we carried on anyway!