Heritage breed sheep Portrait Exhibition with Project Baa baa and Galway 2020

I am delighted to announce that my exhibition of Heritage breed sheep portraits in conjunction with Project baa baa and Galway 2020 will open at the end of this month in the Printworks Gallery, Market Street, Galway. Textile Artist.

‘Each portrait will incorporate needle felted wool shearing taken from each of the breeds. The completed portraits are made by layering needle felted sheep wool with hand and machine embroidery to create a hyper realistic representation of each subject. The work is highly original. By using shearings from individual breeds incorporated into the artwork the artist will tell the story of each breed through its own portrait, creating an awareness of the importance of Irish sheep wool and the variety of wool and breeds in the country.’

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I began working on the portraits in May of 2019 by visiting sheep breeders throughout the country. The portraits evolved from sketches and photographs taken from each of these visits. Each breed and its wool is so unique and has been represented in a way that I hope captures their individuality and the versatility of Irish wool. I used techniques such as needle felting, and fiber manipulation overlaid with embroidery to create each piece.

Venue: PRINTWORKS, Market Street, Galway

Free: Covid 19 Restrictions apply (Booking available from 27/10/2020)
Exhibition is free and open from Friday 30th October to Friday 20th November 2020. Open Bank Holiday Mon. Tue - Sun 11 - 5pm. Covid 19 restrictions apply. 

Buy Online: All exhibitions will go live online once the event has been formally opened. Artworks are for sale online also. Purchase enquiries to hello@projectbaabaa.com

https://projectbaabaa.clr.events/event/130188:5-sheep-breeds-wool-portraits-by-textile-artist-kathy-ross-free

Working on Galway Sheep.

Working on Galway Sheep.

Colourful Hoops and a new Aurifil Artisan challenge

Its been a crazy few weeks with everyone learning to adjust and cope with all the new changes and restrictions. During the first few weeks of Lockdown I found it hard to focus on work. Everything felt grey and pointless. I was craving colour and vibrancy and so after playing around with ideas in sketchbooks I decided to create a range of smaller colourful hoops to brighten up my feed and hopefully my followers mood too!

I'm calling them 'Windows to the World, as each hoop is like a little aperture capturing something beautiful.

Each hoop is is between eight and twelve inches and features a different little colorful creature.

They've been proving super popular to and selling like hot cakes.

My two most recent hoops were these little Bees. also used them for my April Aurifil Artisan challenge which was to showcase my favourite weight of Aurifil thread. For me its always been 50wt.

As an embroidery artist you need a huge range of colours in order to create that hyper-realistic look. Aurifil have them all!!

50 wt Thread adds precision and accuracy to my work whilst also being strong enough to stitch through all those layers of applique. its quite simply the best!!!

Auifil DOM With Patsloan

Aurifil Designer of the Month

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Run by industry darling, Pat Sloan, the Aurifil Designer of the Month Program has been a mainstay of the Auribuzz blog since 2011. It all began with Pat’s offer to design a Mystery Block of the Month for Aurifil’s customers in 2010. It was such a success that Pat suggested we continue the block of the month model with the selection of 12 designers per year, introduced via a ‘Designer of the Month’ interview along with one unique quilt block. Every year since then, Pat has assembled a new team of top-notch Designers, featuring one per month throughout the year.

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This year I was lucky enough to be invited to be one of the guest designers for the 2020 DOM. The challenge foe 2020 was to create a block inspired by Auifil Color Builders https://www.aurifil.com/color-builders.

There are 12 color builders in the collection and Pat Sloan cleverly assigned each box a corresponding month and Italian City the designer was then asked to create a block inspired by either the color or the city matched to them.

I was asked to work with the fabulous Pompeii Red collection, Immediately I knew what I wanted to make!!

A few years ago we went on a family holiday to Italy and there were fields and fields of the most spectacular vivid Poppies. I hadn’t made any Floral pieces before and felt this was the perfect opportunity to try something new.

Each Designer was also given matching Kona Cotton Solids from Robert Kaufman https://www.robertkaufman.com/

and a base of charcoal Linen also from Robert Kaufman. I began my drafting my applique pattern, cutting each piece and then fusing it to my base , before hooping it up to add all the free motion embroidery details.

It was such a fun project to work on!!

You can read my Interview with Pat Sloan and download the pattern here

https://auribuzz.com/2020/02/15/february-aurifil-designer-of-the-month-kathy-ross/  

https://blog.patsloan.com/2020/02/free-february-aurifil-designer-block.html 

. Be sure and Tag me or share

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Aurifil Artisan September Challenge, Embroidery.


I wanted to share one of my latest projects with you which I made as part of the Aurifil Artisan September embroidery challenge.

Ive always loved Aurfil 50 weight for its precision and strength but I wanted to showcase how it can be used to capture details and texture in a free motion textile piece.

I choose to make a portrait of a Vixen and cub as we have had a few Fox visits to our garden over the last few weeks.

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I began with a very loose under painting with acrylic inks and then needle felted in the base colors so that I had and initial layer of texture in place.


Then its time for the fun part of the process, thread painting

One of the most used color in this make is no 4150 Its a beautiful variegated tone which ranges from pale yellow to an ochre orange.

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Making a piece such as this requires an huge range of tonal changes to capture all of the different tones of fur on the foxes and so these variegated threads are a great place to start. 

I used at least another 20 colors but that's the great thing about Aurifil when your a thread artist, they have a tone for everything. :)


I cut my subjects away from their backing fabric about half way through each make. I do this so I can really hone in on the tonal qualities and details of the subject. I also love that when they're reattached to their backing fabric they stand out and have a 3 dimensional quality.

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I painted in the darker tones of the back drop using Acrylic inks and then stitched the foxes in place using the amazing Aurifil Mono-filament.

Mon-filament is fantastic as its an invisible thread and incredibly strong so it can cope with all the layers of fabric felt and threads without interfering with the details of the final piece.

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