Yes, another one.

Monoprint, that is.  There are, as always, two of them...

I'm working with the ghost print. I was planning to have them in this orientation, and I was struck by the interesting variations in colour on the ghost.  That would be because I tend to work layer on layer on the glass plate I use, so as the thicker layer is removed, the remains of whatever was on there before tends to come through.  It's lazy, perhaps, but also serendipitous. 

I looked for threads that would pick up all those variations in colour, and got started.  The circular motif has been stitched in a spiral.

It made me think of fossils, of which we have a small collection.  And it struck me that that circular motif looked as if it was embedded in the lower section, which gave the piece its name.  By this time, I'd trimmed the piece down quite a bit, to get rid of the excess white, and the blob of colour at the bottom, which was a distraction.  And I stitched some more.  And then I thought, that white... it doesn't look right... and the orientation's not right, either.  So this is what I ended up with.

The grey at the top is a mixture of black, white and silver, though, given it's watered down, you don't notice the metallic element of the paint.  I had intended leaving the grey area unstitched, but it didn't seem right, unbalanced, given the amount of stitch in the lower two thirds of the piece.  And that seemed to solve another issue : I had felt that the circular motif didn't have enough stitch in it, but couldn't really see how to fix that.  Miraculously, adding stitch to the grey resolved the balance enough for me to feel better about it. 

So...Embedded it is.  I'm planning to machine stitch it's 'twin', so watch this space ...

Finding A Rhythm.

I  recently watched a documentary on the work of Sean Scully.  I didn't particularly like his work...or so I thought... but I found his process fascinating, and not unlike my own.  He works with stripes or blocks of colour, and I found myself thinking, I need to do that.  Let the fabric speak for itself. Needed to be hand dyes, I thought, needed to be in some way related to each other.  Minimal stitch, I thought, and went through my really very limited selection of hand dyes (ironic, given that most of my stash was my own hand dyes...), and put together three tops.  I thought I would machine quilt them, but when I ran out of hand work, I thought...maybe...   So I fished one out.  This one, to be precise.

Reader, I didn't like it.  (For those of us who like to know these things, a piece of rust dyed muslin on the top, hand dyed muslin (of a different, slightly heavier weight), in the middle and a piece of commercial fabric on the bottom, the only piece of fabric I could find to go with the other two).  The problem?  Firstly, I didn't like the shape, and felt the strips were too wide.  Secondly, I couldn't work out how to stitch them.  Third, I couldn't see a way to make them hang together in a cohesive whole. 

I turned them round.

That felt a bit better, but still, the problem of the width of the bands of colour, and the shape.  The thought of dismantling the whole thing, changing the width of the bands and sewing it all back together, just didn't appeal.  There was, however,  distinct problem with getting all three fabrics to relate together.  Each way I looked at it, I felt as if tow of the three bands sat together well but all three, didn't.  I needed to find a solution, to pull the whole thing together.  Oh, and did I say?  It didn't feel like mine....which is perhaps not surprising, given that usually, my ideas come from my own personal landscape, where this one had come from considering someone else's.  So, reader, this is what I did.

The fabric is all a bit darker than in this image...but... The wool is couched onto the top, reflecting the swirls in all three fabrics, but taking their own path, not following anything already existing in the cloth.  I would have preferred to have hand felted the wool down, but that's not really an option now, so I used an apricot coloured thread that matches some of the apricot colours in the fabric to the right.  I then found some brown variegated thread to quilt the rust dyed section, with colours from all three pieces of cloth, and then thought...now what?  My original intention was to stitch with a darker thread, but that didn't seem right.  And there needed to be something else in that upper right hand area, to make it more interesting.  So I cut a circle from a piece of Lutradur that had been dyed orange, and stitched it on.  I then found a very pale variegated thread to stitch round the resulting curves, on a much larger scale than the earlier stitch.

I have to say, this was not at all what I intended, but I think it resolves all the problems I identified with the piece.  What's more, it relates nicely to many of the drawings in my sketchbook over the years, and some of the work I've done in the past.  There's a tiny example here .  I'm pleased, even if it wasn't what I intended.  And it's a bit cluttered, perhaps.  It is, however, definitely mine: I don't think Sean Scully, were he ever to see it, would recognise his influence.  And that's how it should be.  Now for the other two.

Oh, and as a ps...it's called Rhythms. 

The Last...

...of the recent batch of monoprints.  Well, not the absolute last: rather, the last of the monoprints I can hand stitch.  Those that remain, have too much paint on them to make hand stitch comfortable, so will be machine stitched.   

I think this is my favourite of this current batch.  More colour variances, and varied texture and marks.  The stitch is pared back to allow those things to show through.  The blanket stitch is perhaps a bit heavy handed...though it looks better in real life. 

Coming to the end of a cycle of work is always problematic...what to do next?  I've started a small creativity group on Facebook, based around a monthly prompt.  I have a few ideas around that, so at least that's something.  However, they're mostly around paint, and I need to have some bits and pieces to do by hand on days when I'm sofa bound...so that needs to be thought about.  I've got a few bits and pieces tacked up and ready to go, so perhaps one of them.  They need a bit more thought, though.

Meanwhile, given I'm set up for paint... I wanted to experiment with Lutradur XL and paint, so, while I was monoprinting, I used some of the excess paint to put a wash on a piece that had been part of a larger book, but cut away when I changed my mind about it.  I then added some machine stitch.

 It's effectively the same colour, both  sides, but with different thread, plain on one side, variegated on the other.  Yup, more landscape... one of my defaults.  I think what this one wants, is to explore the idea of weather, and the changes in light, and therefore colour, that there are when there is a change in the weather.   Which doesn't exactly fit the bill for hand work...but hey... you do the work you have in front of you.

Every Now And Again...

I make a Useful Quilt, no art involved, really, for the back of a sofa or the wrapping of a baby... this is one such, made for a friend's newly-arrived grandson.  I can show it to you now, as it was collected yesterday.  It's by no means the best thing I ever made, but, as my granny would have said, it'll do a turn.

It's about 36" square.  The centre blocks are African fabrics, bought a year ago for no particular purpose... I had thought about making a book with them, but this seemed an altogether better thing to do. The green was the only fabric I could find that sat reasonably well with  those strong colours, while the surrounding fabric is almost jungle-like, and seemed appropriate.   I like making for babies...I think that commercially made things are either too big or too small to be truly useful. This, though, is roughly the right size for spreading on the floor, or the grass, for tucking a snoozing small child into, on the sofa, or the floor for that matter, for a trip out to the car on a cold, damp day. 

What I did discover, however, while making it, is that this size is too big for me to handle now.  I suppose it's a measure of the deterioration in my health over the last year.  I had no problem a year or so ago with Jessie's Japanese Garden, which was quite a bit bigger (see it here).  It is what it is.  I've just torn up a pile of A4 sized white fabric, to monoprint; I think that's about what I can cope with now.  Not entirely sure what I'll do with the two other quilt tops I talked about in the Japanese Garden post...perhaps hand stitching is a possibility.  We do what we can.

Unintentional

...well, it was.  I was working on a completely different piece, when I was left with a long bit of red/orange thread, too long to discard.  So I went to work on a second piece, and found myself finishing it almost before I knew what I was doing. 

Yes, it's another monoprint, much looser than the work I've been showing you.  It didn't originally have the red circle, but it needed something, and that seemed to be what it needed.  The stitch is a lot looser, too, mostly straight stitch but with some cross stitch at top and bottom.  Once again, I've stitched in order to support the brush strokes of the paint, for the most part.  And I've only used one colour of thread....couldn't be simpler.

It strikes me that all these pieces are connected by this idea of simplicity, of paring everything down, not adding more than is absolutely necessary.  I initially intended to add stitch to that red circle, but decided that it simply didn't need it; it's a strong enough mark to stand as it is, without cluttering it up with stitch. 

The actual piece is a bit wider than I'm showing you here.  It was my intention to crop it, but I haven't yet cut anything.  Which is just as well, because I have the feeling that I need to include a bit more on that right side.  The bottom mark continues along into white space, with no stitch.  It gives the piece an airiness, a sense of space, that this image doesn't give.  So I've learned something today.  Less is only more when it works.

And now I need to go back to the first piece I was working on, but that will have to wait til tomorrow.

An (Almost) Matching Pair...

...of landscapes, made from a monoprint and a ghost print.  I talked about the ghost here.  This is the main print...

I'm popping the ghost print down here, for easy comparison. 

There's lots more texture in the main monoprint, much easier to see what's happening in the main body of the 'land',  It's clear that there are a lot of curving lines, so the stitch reflects that.  I like using blanket stitch, it encloses and defines areas of space in a much better way than a running or back stitch is able to.  I did use the same thread in these areas on both quilts, but the sky in this main piece reads as much darker than the ghost print, unsurprisingly, so I used a darker thread in the sky.  The treatment, though, is the same, seed stitches scattered around the blue areas.  I did consider adding linear stitch, but decided that it would distract from what was going on below it, and I didn't want to do that.

So, there you are...two nearly identical landscapes.  It's interesting how different the stitch makes them appear, though it's clear that they are related.  I've got a couple more monoprints in this palette to work on, and it will be interesting to see how they turn out in comparison with these.

Collage...

is not my strong point, as you'll have established from my earlier post.  I took a wee while to play with a couple of the pieces I worked on...and no, I'm still not happy.

I got rid of the vertical lines, which clearly weren't working for me, but I'm not convinced by the textures of the paint...needs a lot more warmth.  Probably needs a bit more contrast, too.  Contrast is one of my bugbears; I never feel like I get it right.  I'm pretty sure that this isn't going to amount to much...but I think there's more learning there for me, so I'll persevere.

And talking about perseverance... remember the piece I said was going in the bin?  Well...

....it didn't quite get there...  After adding paint to it, using a bit of scrap muslin, I tore up the paint-daubed fabric and added it to the piece.  As you do...   This idea of adding verticals, is a recurring thing for me, but I've never really got to proper grips with it.  There's something about standing stones...that's where the initial idea came from...but I think there's a bit more to it than that.  It's part of my practice, to search for meaning, but I'm not sure if it always leads to added value.  I suspect that it's not the verticals, where the meaning lies, but rather in their relationship to each other, and to the background. 

Borderlines

This piece was finished a couple of weeks ago, but somehow I never got round to posting about it here.  It's one of the dwindling number of unworked pieces I have left that survived The Cull. 

The temptation was to smother it in stitch, but somehow, looking at it closely, that didn't seem like such a good idea.  What I wanted to do, was to use stitch to support the marks I'd made by dye painting.  For me, the piece is 'about' space: there's a small area nestling in the centre, cradled by the darker marks, that in my head, is a farm, surrounded by tall pine trees on two sides, with fields in front.  It's funny, the stories we tell ourselves about our work... but I digress.  I started with the area to the left, a sweeping section of orange moving to fuchsia.  I wanted to give it some scale, and to give some texture to the area without smothering it.  The uneven crosses are scaled, getting bigger in the foreground, to suggest distance.

I tackled the dark area next.  It dominates the piece, and I didn't particularly want to emphasise that any more, so stuck with dark colours.  Blanket stitch delineates the firm line as it curves down and round, and additional stitches reach out into the curve, taking their cue from the blanket stitch itself.  Most of that area, I've left clear to speak for itself.  That central area has lots of tiny crosses, a reflection of the larger crosses to the left, while at the top, there are seed stitches, and some large, dark stitches to delineate the dark marks at the top right, as if they were somehow silhouetted against the sky (more of that imaginary story).  

And that's where I left it.  I don't intend to add any more stitch.  I think there's a tendency to assume that when you hand stitch, you should leave no inch unstitched.  That's not my style.  I don't think that stitch should dominate a piece: rather, I think it should play its part, neither going unnoticed nor taking over.  If you can only see the stitch, then I've failed.  I want to create an integrated piece, where the different elements combine seamlessly (argh...no pun intended) to produce something with a story, with meaning.  I think this piece does that, though you may not agree.  

More Simplicity...

is sometimes the only option.  Take a look at this...

The eye reads it as a landscape...and the stitch supports it, small and narrow at the back, wider and larger at the front, to give a dimensional effect, and some random stitching in the 'sky'.  I had intended to add some applique, to suggest a standing stone, but actually...it's fine as it is.  I did try the applique, and that was fine, too, but different...and I prefer this version, so here it is.

And you may remember, I cut a piece of cloth in half, here, and created a landscape with it.  I struggled with the second half of the cloth...and in the end, added an orange circle, to give it a focal point....and struggled some more.  In the end, I took some blue thread, and stitched it randomly...

It's a landscape too, I think: a very different type of landscape, much more abstract, no apparent horizon line...but nonetheless...  The dark marks are closer to a dark turquoise than you see them here, but this was the best I could manage, so... I'm still not sure about it, but the stitch has improved it, somewhat.  In this, the actions I've taken are simple, the piece itself, less so.  But I rather like it, nevertheless.  Who says simple has to be the same every time?

Not Worth Having?

At one level, that sums up  the hour or so I spent monoprinting, this morning.  Here's what I produced.

All on paper, which had been worked on a couple of days before, except the last one, which is on a scrap of pale green sheeting.  Three of them probably merit further work, but the other two  will be painted over, or binned. 

So, why am I telling you this?  Well, because whilst they may all end up in the bin, they were nonetheless worth doing.  I've said it before, I'll probably say it again: it's the process that matters, not the end result.  In this case, I've learned a few things.  For one, I need to be more careful about how I handle the paint on the plate, because, whilst I want to produce texture, I don't want to produce blobs.  Secondly, I really do need to either use printing inks, or remember to use retarder with the acrylics, because on warm days, the damn stuff dries far too quickly for my liking.  Finally....I'm not entirely sure I like working on paper.  That last one's a biggie.  I much prefer the process of adding paint to cloth, to then add stitch of one type or another.  Though that might be because I don't feel I have the skill level with paper, that I do with cloth.  Of course, the only way to increase my skill with paper, is to keep doing it. 

Lots of people give up at the very beginning, because they can't tolerate the feelings that learning produces in them; they're not comfortable.  Sticking in one's comfort zone is a huge temptation.  I know a lot about paint, but clearly, I don't know enough, or else I've forgotten what I knew, because I'm really not happy with these, and I don't like it.  It would be easier to give up, to be honest, to stick to what I'm fairly good at, working with cloth.  And I might consider using cloth as if it were paper, it's not unheard of, after all, though it's normally canvas that people use, and given the amount of fabric for dyeing I have, I'm not buying canvas to add to the pile. 

Lots to think about.  And that fourth one's heading for the bin.

Harvest.

Another monoprint on sheeting... small, about 5.5" by 7.5".  Yes, you guessed it, excess paint again.  When I started stitching, I had intended to stress the verticals, but realised that doing so would take the emphasis away from the logical focal point, that orange circle.  So... lots of seed stitches in orange, and the addition of some long, straight stitches emanating from the circle.  Somehow, that wasn't enough, so I added some chain stitch in the centre...which still wasn't enough.

So...I took a pencil, and drew over the edges of the circle, just to help it to stand out from the background....and I was tempted to leave it at that.... except...it looked a tad bland.  So... some blanket stitch across the diagonal line in the lower part of the piece, and some long stitches to show up the verticals but not so much that they took over.  And it still wasn't done.

Some time ago, I mentioned on FB that I wanted to stitch in gold on a piece of silk, and a friend offered me some gold threads, which she kindly sent me.  I never did stitch the silk...but here's the thread, or some of it, on that central orange blob.  Is it a sun?  Is it a flower head?  Is it something else entirely?  I don't mind, really.  All of them, or none of them.  Either way, the piece is now as done as it's going to be.  I have a few more monoprints in this palette to play with.  And, having used it on this piece, I think I need to learn a bit about goldwork.... but that's for another time.

Simplicity...

...is a laudable aim, but not always easy to reach.  One of the fabrics that survive the cull was a piece of  brownish hand dye, which had then been discharge dyed.  It was interesting enough by itself, but somehow not cohesive enough to make a single piece.  Reader, I cropped, and the jury is still out on the main piece.  However, I had a few pieces left over, and nothing that would go well with them.  Whilst I do now have someone to help me out with the more physical work, I'm not yet set up for dyeing...so thought some more.

If you're a long time reader, you may remember the Meditation pieces, and the haiku quiltlets that followed.  They were made following a fairly rigid set of rules that restricted the number of fabrics used.  The results, I thought, were simultaneously simple and complex (no, I don't know either).  So I wondered... if this brown cloth was not good as it was, could I cut it up and restructure it, in a similar way to the haiku, but only using a single cloth?  Turns out, I could.

So far, there are two small pieces.

I've tried to work with the curves inherent in the cloth, giving a sense of movement across it.  The premise is incredibly simple: I'm not so sure that the reality is.  I've only used one thread, too, a variegated dark brown and gold thread that delineates those curves.

And here's the second piece.

Fewer curves, here, but a couple of sections that look like calligraphy, reminiscent of the Natural Graffiti  quilt I made.  In fact, I suspect some of the fabric in that was dyed at the same time as this was.  Again, just the one thread (I'm hoping to run out of cloth before I run out of thread...). 

Was it a worthwhile experiment?  I'm not sure.  I think I have more to learn from it, so I'll persevere.  I don't think this is an approach that would lend itself to most fabrics, certainly not commercial repeat patterns, unless they were on a very large scale, curtain fabrics, perhaps.  But it's certainly a way of working with those fabrics which are too interesting to get rid of, but not coherent enough to use as they are.  I've got enough fabric for another couple of quilts: this time, I'll take a leaf from the haiku quilts, and dial down the size quite significantly, and see what happens.   I'll let you know.

Somewhere...

...over the rainbow... well, okay, it's pink.  But somehow this naive-ish piece makes me think of rainbows.  You may not agree, of course, and that's fine.  I rather like it though. 

It started life as an exercise in mark making on a piece of pale green sheeting.

When I picked it up to add stitch, I decided to cut it in half, because, whilst each half is cohesive enough, there's not a great deal of cohesion across the whole thing.  I think it was a decent decision.  And, the human mind being what it is, it tried to make sense of it.  The first half doesn't actually make much in the way of sense: there's not a motif or shape to rest your eye on (which was really what I was going for in the first place).  The one above, though, does read as an abstract landscape, and I'm happy enough with that.

Now to tackle the other half.

Finishing Off...

the small piece on muslin I showed you yesterday.  And I do mean small : it's just over postcard size.  I trimmed it back a little more once I'd finished the stitching.  While there are still areas of white on the edges, I'll be adding a mount, which will cover them.  The colours are reminiscent of Highland hillsides, and I'm fairly pleased with it.

  

So now what?  Well... this was the 'ghost' of another monoprint.  This one is much more definite, has a good deal more colour, and is slightly bigger, roughly 8" square, though that includes a fair amount of white space around the edges...probably closer to 7" square, if that were trimmed away. 

You can see the similarities in structure; there's a clear flow down from that top left hand area, through the blue to the bottom right.  The movement inherent in the paint is much clearer, though, just by dint of there being more paint, and the colour is stronger, all round.  Were I not about to do a fair amount of machine quilting on a different project, I might be tempted to machine stitch it...and I still might.  I do think I'd like to get rid of some of that white, as I did in the first one.  This time, though, I think I'll add some more paint, rather than putting cloth between the top and the batting.  I'll do that, I think, and then make a decision as to how to stitch. 

One Thing...

...inevitably leads to another...or in this case...six others.  It seemed like a good idea at the time....it always does.  I was working on this monoprint from the small collection I was talking about yesterday.  As you can see, lots of stitch..  The piece is on a scrap of muslin I got from a friend.  I don't usually work on muslin, but it was to hand, and there was paint and... you get my drift. 

The sections that are reading as very pale blue at the top of the piece, were originally white: because there was such a lot of white in there, and because I don't much like white, I popped a small piece of lutradur behind it, which was blues and purples...it worked very nicely, and didn't add any bulk to the piece at all.  Sadly, it didn't do much for the bottom left hand corner, so I decided to add some more paint.  So I mixed some up, and, rather than paint it on, printed it on, instead.  And then I trimmed it a bit, because I felt it was just too dominant...and got this.

Which is altogether better.  And put it aside to dry.  And then I thought, better wash up the piece of glass I was using to monoprint from (no gelli plates here, I'm too mean, and am quite happy with the traditional method).  And realised that there was still a blob of paint on the glass...and I really don't like washing perfectly good paint down the sink.  You so know what's coming next, right?  Yes, more monoprints.

The one I've just shown you was very landscape-y, so I thought I'd continue in that vein.

Each print has a 'ghost' print, made from the remains of the paint on the glass: I often prefer the ghost prints for stitch, because the paint suggests, rather than dominates, leaving ample room for stitch.  But of course, the excess paint had been blue, and I'd scooshed out some Naples Yellow and there was too much...it's becoming a theme, this, isn't it?  So...

The blob at the bottom of the ghost is a bit unfortunate, but I'll trim that off before I start...otherwise, these are okay.  I suspect that there's a larger painting waiting to get out of this... it's part of the joy of monoprinting, that things for development are often suggested by this spontaneous way of working. By this time, I was on a roll, but was starting to feel tired, so I finished off with these, adding the paint straight onto the glass, so that there wasn't any left over.   I've been reading about Sean Scully's work, after watching a documentary on him on the Beeb...' this pair is a definite nod in his direction.And then, reader, I washed the glass.  And that gives me enough to play with until next Monday, when I may well paint again....mwahaha...

Spontaneity...

...often leads to interesting work.  I've been playing about with painting fabric, after the success of the Dance piece, and when I'd run out of steam, there was still some paint left.  When in doubt...monoprint... so I grabbed some scraps of fabric.  I got several interesting pieces, one of which I worked up yesterday.

This is how it started.  It made me think of rocks, mountainsides, hillsides... so its name is 'Red Rock'.  So, I popped a bit of batting on the back, and hand stitched...and this is what it has ended up as.

I started at the bottom, stitching with variegated thread to give a reference to landscape (I hope), and then back stitched the red curve in the centre. I didn't want to add vast amounts of stitch, so took my queue from the dots of red that cover that area, and made some small, irregular stitches, just enough to suggest the colour.   Then, blanket stitch in the dominant brown curve, shortening the stitches as I went along to suggest distance.  And finally, I added washes of pale blue and pink watercolour paint, to tone down the white areas that were dominating the piece. 

And that's it.  I did contemplate more stitch in those paler sections, which almost make a V shape in the left hand side of the piece.  Finally, though, I decided that the texture of the paint itself did enough to suggest movement, and let it be, though I did add a few pencil marks to the edges of the diagonal section, just to emphasise it slightly.  And that's it.  I'm quite pleased, all in all, not bad for using up excess paint.