News So Far….

It’s been a busy time at The Manbroiderer towers, with the exhibition at The Creative Craft Show at the N.E.C Birmingham last month that saw my work exhibited alongside my friends at Traverse Textile Art Group. 

I Managed to see the truly spectacular Red Dress exhibit which is absolutely breath taking.  Also the National Embroidery Awards exhibits that showcased the amazing talents of so many textile artists in one place.

The best part of the show was meeting all of you, it was lovely to catch up with so many of you and find out what you are all up to and the exciting projects you are working on. If you didn’t see my photos and videos of the winners, please check out The Manbroiderer on Facebook to see all of the images I took at the show.

I have also launched my shiny new website that will include my blog, and news of current events, exhibitions, and my available work as well as a fully stocked shop where you can purchase all of your embroidery supplies at the best prices possible.

This ties very nicely into my next piece of news which is my lovely embroidery kits I’ve been working hard to get released.  There will be two new kits released onto the site by the end of April, so keep an eye on www.themanbroiderer.com for the release, There are two test shots below of the finished designs, you don’t want to miss them.

Explorations in Textiles

Last year, I made the decision to enrol in the Explorations in Textiles course at Littleheath Barn Studios, and I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. My primary objective was to experiment with novel techniques and explore colour in a manner that had not been previously encountered.

The course has provided me with the autonomy to employ colour with boldness and confidence. Although I am mostly self taught, I have attended numerous art workshops, primarily focused on sketching, which had not adequately addressed colour theory.

The second compelling reason for my participation in this course was to gain insights from Liske, the tutor, into various methods of colouring fabric and to consider fabrics as integral components of mixed media. Through a combination of paint, print, dyeing, fabric manipulation, and sketching, I have acquired a wealth of knowledge that has profoundly influenced my artistic endeavours.

Commission Unique Handcrafted Art with Butterflies

I decided to try this piece after thinking how it could be done, after my woodland piece I wondered how I could take it a step further.

I’d bought the glass dome and for a long time I kept thinking what I could do with it, as well as how I’d put together the finished article. I purchased some natural wood coasters for the base to give an organic feel, it was then a case of creating a mossy scene using wool felt and appletons crewel wool to create several hundred French knots to keep with the organic theme. Topped this whole piece off with a real tortoishell butterfly.

my books are now open for commissions on these, please feel free to message me at tony@themanbroiderer.co.uk for more information and prices.

Beautiful Foxgloves

I've recently finished this foxglove piece, I admit it's taken me longer than it really should have. I was trying to work out how to get the right perspective. Ensuring that the foxglove flowers and leaves were the correct size, took more working out than I'd realised.

After dyeing the fabric background using sponges to create more of a depth rather than a flat colour I then went on to create a template for the flowers. I imagined the flower trumpets as if they were opened out and flattened and created a cardboard template.

I created four different sizes of template, some of which would be used for the base of the flower trumpets. I think I made in the region of 50 flowers of varying sizes. I created templates foe the leaves too, the leaves were created using velvet which I then free motion embroidered the details on each leaf.

I free motion embroidered the grass on the background, then felted green merino wool fibres to give the base some depth, I finished it off by hand embroidering some flower details.

I hand sewed the flower trumpets on by hand from the bottom up as I needed the trumpets to lay on top of each other.

I hope you enjoyed a little insight into this piece, let me know what you are all doing, I'd love to see your projects. You are welcome to email me Tony@themanbroiderer.co.uk

Popping Poppies

I’ve always loved poppies, mainly the kind that grow naturally in fields. Today there are many different types which as beautiful as they are, they don’t hold the same meaning to me.

obviously the poppies found wild in fields symbolise both world wars, which I admit I am obsessed with. It just grows anywhere and makes a boring meadow or fallow field into something truly beautiful, those small pops of red are just striking.

this new piece I have created is a stylised poppy field image that I hope emulates what I mean. Using a series of stem stitch and straight stitch to create a hay field, dotted with French knot coloured “flowers”. I’ve created poppies using cotton fabric, stiffened with Aleenes fabric stiffener, stitched in the centre with dozens of black French knots. I really hope you all like it.

Fishy Art

I love fish, more specifically aquarium fish, so after my last projects all being floral, I thought my next would be animals.

I found the orange crystal organza and knew exactly what I was going to do, it was made for being the fins of a goldfish, so after sketching out the fish I started the crewel work.

Using paintbox cotton threads and loads of short stitches this is the final piece, as you can see the organza really did need to be fins, in my opinion it looks stunning. I am considering turning this into a kit, would you be interested?