Tall Fox Dot

Friday night saw the last fashion show of my friend and her college BA group. They had already held a show in Brick Lane but this show was held on campus in Ashford. I was really impressed by the standard of all the pieces! But obviously I was mostly there to support Emma, who we gave a big cheer when she came out at the end! I went there with Alma and Lin, who is Ricks Mum. Lin has MS and is in a wheelchair so there was a bit of heave ho-ing when we got in the marquee so we could sit down,
but once we were sorted we actually had a pretty good view (around the back of a twitchy white haired man's head!) from the second row. The girl in the (blurry) picture is modelling one of Emma's dresses. Em is starting up the Tall Fox Dot label I mentioned in a previous post. My favourite of her pieces was a hooded dress with lazer cut out detailing down the sleeves (right), and I'm really pleased for her because she's had someone interested in buying it! :) >>>>>

She's worked sooo hard on this collection and deserves to become famous from it! So look out for the name! Emma Foxley- Tall Fox Dot!
Her other designs can be seen by clicking here >>>> CLICK!!<<<<<

Another name to look out for is Heather Blair, who designed and made this awesome blue coat...
I just wish my photos had turned out better!

Fruity Bits!

A week ago I was in Accessorize with my friend Alma, discussing things that I could felt and sell. We were coming up with all sort of silly things, as usual, but we kept spotting all these cute fruity pieces in the shop and were getting waaaaay too excited about it! Espescially the little bracelets and earrings! Then Alma suggested that maybe I could try and felt some little charms and with fruit being in for SS11 I thought it was a good plan!
Alma makes fab little pin cushions and made me an uber cute water melon one with an ice cream patterned wrist strap and a teddy bear shaped button. I love it and suddenly love water melon things!! So this was my main inspiration for my first fruity felt! I drew a few ideas in my trusty little sketchbook and searched through my wool for some colours. I was thinking I could make some large versions and turn them into keyrings. I think they'd look good! The charms are small so I'll have to use my little hand needle for them which is fine. But I'll try do some larger ones on my machine! I haven't used my it for a little while. Which is really bad! It's just that we're in the process of trying to reorganise our room and theres so much stuff piled up on the chair and the floor in front of it that it's kinda difficult for me to get too :( But I'm determined to get the rubbish sorted out this week so I can sit and have a massive go on it fairly soon!


So, anyway, here is my first tiny little fruity felt I've made! It took just under an hour to do using my single hand needle. It could do with a little bit of neatening up but here it is... I quite like it :) I need to start using my proper camera more! I took this photo on my phone and it's quite a grainy image and made the melon look a bit rough, but it gives you the idea :)
I just need to add a couple of jump rings. What do you think? I think I'm going to try make a slice of orange next!! I'm hoping to end up with a whole felted fruit salad!

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Bunny! (not sure why the first paragraph is a link)

Last night I attempted to make a rabbit keyring as a birthday present for someone. It was based on a picture of their pet rabbit. However I didn't realised that I haven't got any light brown wool left. So I had a rummage and, as advised by Rick, I went for a sort of burgandy colour as the base instead. Not sure how well this worked. We have been wondering if maybe it looks more like a dog? I like the little sequin heart nose though. But Im not sure. Its cute.... but maybe a bit alieny? Yeh. An alien dog! lol. Or a rabbit? What do you think? It took me a couple of hours to make.



My friend, Anni, has commissioned me to make her a felt of one of her wedding photos! I'm really looking forward to starting this! It's been a while since I've been able to get stuck into something like this and the photo felts are what I like doing the most. Before I start to felt the pictures from the photos, I like to draw them a couple of times in different ways so that I can look at the picture more and pick up as much detail as I can and get an idea of the shapes and proportions. The photo shows the first drawing I made along side the original photo.

Can't wait to get started :)

Tootsies, Videos and Machines

On Monday I went into a shop in town called The Sewing Shop. My friend, Emma, suggested that I enquired about a felting machine because she thought it would help me with what I do. The lady showed me the one that they had and let me have a go on it. It's AMAZING!! It would help me so much! It's so much quicker! I couldn't do everything with it,such as small details and the pictures on my photo felts, but I could do the bases for my felts quickly which could knock off a few days and it would also mean I could make my accessories quicker to build up more stock and to a higher standard! I'm hoping that within the next week I can get one! The lady said that I can go back with my wool fibres and try it out again to see if I still like it. Which I am doing tommorrow! But ooooo! I'm so excited about it!

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The other day I made a video on youtube to demonstrate how I make my felts. It's not a brilliant quality and I'm not sure my camera liked how fast I was moving but you get the idea... It does go on a bit long and you can here my fiance in the background laughing at The Fast Show in places but if you are interested in how I make my felt then here you go.... :)

Em's simple need felting video.

Key Ring Numero Two!

Just a quick post to show the second keyring I have just finished. It's a lot bigger than the last one (Mimi) and much neater. maybe because I am more awake this time? I duno! I've also added a bit of bling to this one too... What do we think? I'm guna try some different designs tommorrow.














I've taken a photo of her next to Mimi to as a comparison. You can see the difference... though the green one was missng the bling at that point!

I found my sketchbook!! WOO!

So... Here are my very simple and quick doodles of keyring ideas.... Obviously I'll be doing more but you can see where Mimi came from! She actually popped into my head when I was selecting some beads in the shop!

Im going to try another in a moment.


The fried egg is rather random.... but why not?! I'm aiming for quirky!

Thought I'd post this pic too... I was trying to give my friend, Anni, some tips on drawing portraits. So I drew this diagram uber quick.... Think it helped?!



Oh and yes... I did draw the rupert in the background! It was a present for my fiance because he loves him! :)

Keyring Numero One!

Last night I stayed up late to try and attempt to make my first keyring. Earlier in the day I had gone into a little shop in town called The Bead Pot to gather some bits and bobs. I bought a few keyring hoops (not sure what their proper name is but I mean the ones that you can split and attach to your keys), one belt loop clasp thing and some jump rings and thought I'd give them a go and see how they look. I also spotted some rings with little holes in which I thought I could try and sew some felted pieces to, and some hair grips which I will try and do the same thing with! My stock is slowly growing!

I also went and bought my self an uber cheap sketchbook for 99p which I have started to fill with ideas. I was going to post some pictures of my quick little doodles but the book has done a runner somewhere and I can't find it! Grr!

Anyway, I have a taken a photo if my first keyring on my DS as its quicker to upload it. The quality isn't brilliant but I'll take a better photo soon...

Here's Mimi...
She does need a wee bit of tidying up around the edges and I haven't properly trimmed the threads at the back yet where I have stitched on the bead and around the edge of her dress... but you get the idea :)

I've named her Mimi after me... cheekily! But Shes my first and she looks like a Mimi, and that's my mums pet name for me and has been since I was little. LOL... so yeh :) What do folk think anyway? Feedback?

Time For A Re-think...

20th Septemeber?!?!? That was the date of my last post! That's shocking!! I could lie and blame the very slight hour increase at work taking over my life, but I won't! (Though I'm sure it's had some impact!)

Ive been trying to have a re-think of things lately. Trying to get my art drive back into gear and give myself something to head towards. Since my last post I made (almost) a gazillion felt Christmas tree decorations that my friend put on sale for me at the Lamberhurst Craft Fayre in October. From that I had a lady contact me about doing another fayre myself, but there were a few delays in sorting myself out so I'm going to wait until the next one. Which is sensible because I need time to get making some more stock to sell! I've actually been in discussion with one of my close friends about working together on a few stalls and maybe having a little joint thing going on! She makes these cute, quirky little felt creatures and shes just embarked on making some horror themed pin cusions too so it should work!

As for me, Im thinking of starting a range of keyrings. Maybe felting a few shapes and objects, 3D as well as 2D and stitching them onto the the metal keyrings. I think they would be quite succesful. I also felted myself a necklace around this time last year and recieved so many compliments on it that I'm thinking about the possibilty of making some more. But key rings are my priority at the moment!

Until I have some photos of the those, here are some examples of my Christmas tree decorations.

Better late than never!!

At Last! An Update!

Well, it's been a while since my last post! I will admit that my artwork has taken a bit of a back seat recently. There has just been so much going on the last couple of months! However, I am now finally back on track with it all!

My friend has offered to sell a few of my felts at a Christmas arts and craft fayre she is taking part in, in November. So at the moment I have been trying to get into the festive mood and design and make some seasonal pieces. I am hoping to make a few small felts showing typical Christmas images (trees, stars, Santa, etc) and attach some ribbon to them so they can become tree decorations. So far I have only completed three. But this week I will be firing out a few more. I also want to do a few slightly larger pieces, maybe framed, though I'm not entirely sure yet. I'll see how things go! But from being an art and craft fayre goer myself, and having watched people float around the stalls, I often find they are more inclined to buy smaller, cheaper items, and in a larger quantity. So I am hoping that will bring in a bit more money for me! :)

In other news, I have been drawing a bit more again recently. Yesterday I sat and drew a couple of pictures of my fiancée playing on his Playstation. I haven't drawn portraits in so long but I'm fairly happy with how they came out! I'm not sure what I will do with them yet but I'll keep them for the future.

I still want to carry on with my garden/ outside sketchbook that I started a few months ago. Especially with Autumn now approaching- the colours will be lovely to work with!

The Latest Project...

A couple of weeks ago I began filling a new sketchbook with drawings of things from the outdoors. I'm trying to develop prints and pieces based on outdoors during summer. So generally leaves, trees, flowers etc. I've been doing a fair number of my back garden which has been quite fun

because there's so much going on in it at the moment.

I have cut up one of my Fiancee's old t-shirts (I did ask permission first!) and have started to paint inks onto them, and wash over them with water, which works quite nicely. I love using this apple green pen that I have. When the water soaks into it, it draws out some nice blue colours.

In the post this morning I received some free fabric samples :) which have turned out to be very useful indeed. I have began to try out little things on them, including a little image transfer process using acrylic paint that one of my friends from uni taught me.

I also received a lovely parcel from my Nanny with a huge amount of wool fibres in so I have more to experiment with for my felts :) I was sooo happy :) so i'll be getting on with that pretty sharp-ish :)

New on the 'blogging' scene...

Hi all! I'm pretty new to this so please bare with me. I've decided to set up a blog about my art and textiles work so that I can keep people up to date with what I'm doing and let people know about anything interesting that has been going on regarding my art work.

My name is Emily Quincey. I've just finished doing a degree in Fine Art, studying at The University for Creative Arts, Canterbury. I never really liked putting myself in a box as to what area I worked in (during education you're always pushed to choose between Sculpture, Paint or Print and Digital Media). I like to try a bit of everything (other than sculpture- that's really not my area!). However I have always had an interest in Textiles and Printing and recently my studio work has been leaning into that box quite a bit more.

I love making felts and have a growing collection of figurative and abstract pieces now. I use the washing machine method and needle method and love them both equally but for different reasons.

Last month, my University degree show was held and I exhibited a series of needle felted pieces, taken from photos that I treasure for different reasons. Each felt took me between 3 days and a week to make. Its a repetitive process but I was really happy with the out come so it was sooo worth it!

'With Nanna'

The exhibition

'Engagement'

I intend to update this blog regularly (at least once a week) with the ins and outs of where my work is going. This week I have been filling pages in my sketchbook with drawings of the outside in the summer... leaves, flowers, my garden etc. I want to work with these and develop them into patterns, felts and use them while learning about new processes.

If your interested, I also have a Facebook page with photos of a large amount of my work, so take a look and 'Like' the page if you do :) Thankyou :)