Radio silence over

  Here's the embroidery I've been working on for my MA installation. The whole thing (islands and sea) took me about 70 hours. I am thoroughly sick of embroidery at this point. In a week's time I'll be finished with university.
   
I got some fabric printed up by Spoonflower and embroidered the waves on with chain stitch in standard embroidery floss and Rowan knitting cotton for the thicker lines.
 
(Here's a closeup- the whole thing measures 18"/45cm square and has about 50-60m of embroidery on it)


I added islands on, stuffed them to create a relief effect, and then mounted the fabric onto a wooden frame. (Sorry this one was on the floor- it was hard to get enough distance to fit the whole thing in with a 50mm lens, and my 28mm lens distorts the lines too much)


On a table to show the relief a little better.
   
  Where the stars are, photoresistors will be connected up to an Arduino, and when a visitor moves the model boat to that place, the computer will play the animation (ok, Captain Pugwash-style animatic thing) for that island. The textile map was meant to match as closely as possible to the style of the animations. Here's the loop which will greet visitors for comparison (there are some sea monsters and things I need to add in to the animation tomorrow). 

Long time no see

  I haven't posted much in the last few weeks, because I've been working all hours to finish my MA project and dissertation (I handed in my dissertation last week). This is the kind of thing I've been doing. Yesterday I stuck on the Beatles Anthology, the longest documentary I could think of, and sat and just sewed and sewed until about 70% was done. I was in Spain for two weeks before that. I've got lots of photos, but I haven't had time to develop the film ones and organise and post-process them. It will have to wait until later.    The first week was fine, but the second was far more stressful than a holiday should be. There was a 40C heatwave, and the air conditioning broke down, and there were ants, and we both had insomnia and short tempers and it was too difficult to concentrate on the work we'd both been forced to bring with us. Stress. In two and a half weeks I should hopefully be all finished with my MA, and free to find a full-time job, and actually earn steady money again (I hope). I'm really broke right now, and I'm tired of being broke for so long.