Digitally created images and higglety houses

Another long gap but I have been creatively busy. I am very much into digital imaging taking and using my own photographs. I have even subscribed to the magazine Photoshop Creative which I find extremely useful for all those tips and techniques. I don't like everything covered in the mag as some of the creations are a bit OTT but I have learned a lot never the less. The downside of this is the time factor. It is very time consuming but I love it.

These are some of my digital images:

I have still been creating textile pieces too. Many of my photographs and digital images are often turned into textiles. This next image was the starting point for another art quilt. It was taken while on a walk around the city walls of Chester. They caught my eye because of the zig zag of the gable ends and the different colours.

The image was cropped, the bland sky replaced and a special effect applied.

Next, I duplicated the row to make eight houses and gave every house a lamp post. Each house was then separated from the row and further effects applied. Some were flipped. Some had a colour change and a border applied. Next I played around with the layout of the houses. I planned to stitch each one separately and then combine them back into one long art quilt. I wasn't too keen on a straight line so I arranged them in a higglety pigglety layout.

Each of the houses was then printed onto white cotton using pigment inks and an inkjet printer. They were each made into a quilt sandwich and free machined. They were all edged with machined satin stitch. I played around on the computer with different coloured backgrounds for the houses and the best one was a dark blue. I did think that black would have been the best but when I filled the background with black it dulled and took the vibrance off the houses. So dark blue it was. I quilted the background and applied the houses. I haven't taken a photograph of the finished house quilt yet but I did photograph the individual finished houses so I have created a simulation of the finished piece.

Sharing out my time with photography, digital imaging and textiles is not easy. Not enough hours in the day!! There is also family and getting some exercise and the dreaded 'housework' which tends to go to the bottom of the list of 'to do's' these days.

I am off to do some exercises on the Wii, then a soak in the bath, something to eat then on with some machining on the next textile piece.

So until the next post - cheers everyone.