Thank you, Wendy!

 Last week my quilt group had a talk by textile artist Wendy Dolan.  Talk about inspirational!  Dive down the link and have a look at her lovely work!

She was very generous in sharing how she worked - the steps that she took to create textile art works, often using architecture as a start point.

Its a subject matter that I enjoy too, although I've never really been able to represent it well in textile pieces.

Inspired by Wendy (and clutching a copy of her book) I decided to start a small piece whilst my head still held some of the ideas that she was sharing.

 I used her genius tracing paper idea to try and put colour blocks (using torn paper) under where I wanted them to be in the thread sketch.  Then splodged the paint onto the prepared 'canvas'. 

If I'd have been more patient I'd have practiced a bit first, which would have taught me to dilute the paint more as I would have preferred a lighter blue!

 Next I stitched from the back through the tracing paper from earlier (which was the main lines from a photo - I've learned that I need to edit these lines more carefully when I'm at the tracing stage).  This gave me my basic lines for the picture.

 Finally I added more detail, some coloured thread to the main suspension lines of the bridge, and tried to resolve the 'under bridge' kerfuffle of lines on the right hand side.

Finally, the piece was trimmed and put into this frame that I had to hand.

There are many areas where this 'sketch' can be improved (paint density, thread line weight, resolving which bits I want to show and how, reducing the size to within the frame on a background, changing the colour of the frame...)  but on the whole I'm pleased with this as a first attempt at Wendy's technique, so, 'Thank you, Wendy!'.  As it can be used to produce relatively recognisable objects (for anyone who lives locally, this is Teddington Lock footbridge) by someone who has no art skills, I'd really like to try this again from a picture of my house and perhaps some other local landmarks.  All good fun!

Meanwhile, hand stitching the binding on my 365 challenge quilt continues - nearly there!