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.

Shifting Direction...

...again.  Another mini relapse, another rethink.  As I can't work at a machine for more than fifteen minutes at a time, work needs to be small scale.  And, I discovered, hand stitch is meditative, but painting is joyful... and who wouldn't want joy in their lives?  So, another shift in emphasis.  I bought some canvas boards to work on, but I'd been reading recently about watercolours on fabric, mainly people enthusing about Inktense on fabric.  I have a few inktense pencils, and did contemplate buying blocks, but thought I'd start with what I had to hand.  I've been playing with watercolours, and remembering why I don't work with them, predominately...so maybe not inktense.  Acrylic, now... so I worked with watered down acrylic paints on a scrap of sheeting I had to hand.

Not my usual palette, but, like I said, what I had to hand.  Once it was dry, I started markmaking with oil pastels...

Oh, look...there's a figure... entirely unintentional, but the unconscious does what it does.  She looks like a dancer.  Now... as a child, all I wanted to be was a dancer.  I love dancing.  I'm married to a non-dancer, so I can't say I miss it, entirely, as I haven't danced in years...last time was possibly my son's wedding.  But this is undeniably a dancer.  And making this piece is a way of having dance in my life, probably the only way it will ever happen again.  And here she is, finished.  

She is outlined in machine stitch, with accents provided by two different variegated threads, though they read as very similar in the image.  Definitely worth working some more in this way, I think.  

I did promise a look at the finished felt piece... here it is.  

Can't get excited, to tell you the truth....but I started, so I finished.  Not worth framing.

Slowly, Slowly...

...because that's all I'm fit for at present.  Rumours of relative normality were a bit of an exaggeration, and I've had several weeks of no activity at all.  Mostly, that's been an energy thing, but the depression thing didn't want to be left out, so between them, I stopped working altogether.  In an attempt to shake the depression at least, I fished out a piece of green nuno felt which, frankly, looked somewhat unprepossessing, to the point of making me wonder why I hadn't just tossed it out.  A bit of stitch, using silk threads I got from Dale Rollerson at The Thread Studio in Australia, and had struggled to find a use for for some reason, made me change my mind somewhat.

I'd intended it to be a scarf, hence the shape and size, though in truth, it's not really long enough for that.  Those threads were perfect for what I wanted to do, picking up the areas of darker green, and adding a bit more colour.  Because this was a scarf, in intention at least, the shapes the dark green make are completely random, though one or two made me thing of Celtic motifs.  Here's a closer look at a couple of them...

Not enough stitch, though...and things had ground to a halt over the weekend, as I couldn't find any threads that would be appropriate for the body of the scarf.  Today, however, I found some cotton thread that, whilst not ideal, would have served.  And then, I realised that there was a couple more silk threads which, whilst not identical in type, had been dyed with the same dyes... so I thought... that's better...

So...that's the plan for the rest of the week.  Much as I'd like to blog more regularly, I'm afraid it's just not possible at present, until my energy levels improve.  I will let you see the finished piece, though.

Relative Normality...

...has been resumed, for now, at least.  A relapse, followed by Christmas, followed by an examination by a physiotherapist has left me unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, and gifted me a zimmer....sadly, the hospital will be wanting it back, so it can't be customised.  So I haven't had the energy, until yesterday, to do any work at all. 

I had looked out these small pieces of cloth before the relapse...and I do mean small: the largest is approx 4" by 2.5", the smallest, roughly 2.5" square.  Yesterday, though, I combined them.

Yes, I know, they don't look like much : that's the whole point.  I'm continuing the theme I started, exploring ME and its consequences.  ME has systematically stripped me of the ability to work, has stripped colour and texture from my life, and these tiny pieces represent that.  I have to work within those confinements: these pieces represent them.  You probably can't see, but the base fabrics are not pure white.  They are, in fact, pale prints, reversed, with pale prints, unreversed, held on the surface with random stitches, other than the central piece, which is a scrap of rust dyed silk.  You can't tell with ME, how you are going to feel from day to day; these random stitches represent that idea, with the raw edges indicating that they have been torn from a larger cloth. 

I intended to add them to a lutradur book, but when I got hold of a piece of lutradur, I liked them as a unified piece, so this is how they will stay.

I will, of course, iron the lutradur...that bump in the centre is not ideal...    I'm not sure how I would frame them: perhaps sandwiched between two pieces of glass.  I don't particularly want to put them on a coloured mount, and I think they might be lost on white board, though a double mount might do the trick.  I'll have to think about it.  They do look better in real life...but perhaps that's just wishful thinking.

I have another piece to work on, but that's it for today, no more energy.  It's a start.

Trusting The Process....

...is all there is, really.  I spent most of the morning avoiding stitching the new piece, and couldn't work out why.  It didn't feel like being lazy...goodness knows, I know how that feels, and this wasn't it.  I had intended to stitch lines down the whole of the piece, representing tears...except... I made three, and then thought...what am I doing? 

For me, it's all about meaning.  Stitch for the sake of it, because I've always done it that way, isn't my thing.  So I took a closer look at what this piece represents...and discovered that actually, it's about holding it together.  The stitch needed to show that...and here's the finished piece.

There are three lines of stitch on the left hand side, and a single line on the right.  The silk carrier rod has been stitched on, and there are a four stitches holding the tiny piece of rust dyed silk at the top.  And that's it. Just enough to hold it together. 

Because that's what's going on in my life, at present.  I know how to live with this illness, but I don't know how to live with it well, with conviction.  My life is roughly the size of a postage stamp, where before it was a huge, bright canvas.  It's difficult to adapt to, because the parameters change from day to day.  So all I can do is hold it all together, and persist.  And try to make something meaningful out of it, for myself and, hopefully, for others.

Necessity...

...is the mother of invention, they say, and so it is in this case.  I hauled out my pale fabrics, intending to make another piece in the ME series (this was the first one).  There have been subsequent books, but another textile piece seemed like A Good Idea.  I have some offcuts of Evolon, from the kits I used to offer...I used one here.  They're an odd size, a bit longer than I'd like, they feel a bit unbalanced.  Anyway... I had selected a few fabrics, meaning to piece them together.  And here's where the necessity comes in.  I would have to lift the sewing machine onto the table, and that would take all my energy, so not going to happen.  And no, I don't hand piece...besides which, I wanted to have the raw edges showing...so applique rather than piecing seemed to be the way to go.  Here's what I've ended up with, after half an hour or so playing about with it.

All of the fabrics are wrong side up; the patterns were simply too strong the 'proper' way round.  I'm still using the idea that ME leaches colour from my life, by stealing my energy. Looking at this, the whole thing needs to move a bit closer to the top edge of the evolon.  And then, I'll crop the bottom off, but given my complete inability to cut in a straight line, I'll stitch it together and trim it later with the rotary cutter.  Not sure about that small piece of rust dye at the top; it's too dark, so I'll substitute it with a paler scrap.  I'm contemplating stitching this with very fine metallic thread.  I swore blind that I would never do that again, after finishing a commissioned piece that was intensely stitched with the stuff.  Well...never is a very long time... and I think the metallic thread is what's required...dammit... sigh.

Sew...

...more stitch on the book I'm currently working on.  Here's the progress.  I've finished the front page now...I think... I'm never entirely sure until the whole thing is done...

You're going to have to imagine it folded, admittedly...but this is both sides.  I'm intrigued by the reverse, because, of course, the stitches don't look the same on the back, as on the front, so things get a bit more abstract (or should that be random?).  So...that's the front and back of the book (as well as both sides of the paper, if you see what I mean)....now here's the central pages.

The central motif is stitched with a rayon hand dyed, corded thread (the rest are cotton), which proved a pain to work with, but its sheen goes nicely with the metallic paint that was used.  As this isn't a colouring book (and don't get me started on the point of colouring books, or lack of it...), I didn't feel the need to continue the stitch so that it filled the entire motif.  I decided I wanted to have large vertical stitches on the bottom dark section.  Blanket stitch, I thought.  Ha ha ha, said my memory.  I know you've done it lots of times, but I don't remember how you did it... ME affects memory, and a lot of what I used to know, doesn't come to mind easily.  In this case, I could remember how the stitch works, but not how to start it.  Got there in the end, though, by process of logic.  Just as well that hasn't gone, too...

I did briefly think about swapping the front and central pages round, but decided not to...they've been trimmed to fit the way they are, swapping them round would require a further trimming, and I want to avoid that.  Given that no real narrative for the book has yet emerged, it wouldn't have affected the flow or meaning of the book.  That's unusual for me; usually there's a story, a meaning, a sense of how things relate to each other, that requires a particular structure, even when the work is largely abstract.  I think that's why I'm drawing a blank on writing a poem to go inside the book.  Perhaps something will emerge...that often happens with titles and concepts.  I start with one thing, and end up with that thing, but also with other meanings and ideas.  That's what I like about making art.  I'm not following a pattern or a template; each piece is unique.

Fragments...

is an ongoing theme in my work; if you pop the word into the search box top left of the page, you'll get a selection of posts on that theme.  So it's perhaps not surprising that I've come back to it yet again, while thinking about another book.  It might be a reflection of my scattered mind...  Whatever the reason, I found myself collecting scraps of rust dyed silk.  I find them fascinating; in fact, I find rust dyed anything. fascinating, but silk in particular. The combination of lustre and texture is truly seductive. 

I don't have much in the way of scrap, as a couple of my friends will testify...they kindly donated some when I bemoaned the fact last year.  I got rid of lots and lots of it during The Great Purge.  I kept most of the rust dyes, though.  The fabric itself is fascinating (I think we've established that, right?), but it's in the scrap that we get to have the best view, I think, because there's not so much detail to look at.  Here's one of the pieces that started me off raking around in my silk collection.

It's very small indeed.  I'm drawn to the texture but mostly, to the curves.  On a larger scale, this might inspire a piece of work (oh lord, another idea...aaargh...).  I started raking through the rust box because I don't have enough scrap to fill a book, and I don't want to mix in other types of fabric.  I found a piece to fussy cut into smaller segments...which feels like cheating, certainly, but needs must etc.  I chose it, not because it's particularly interesting, but because there are small random spots of dye, which I don't want to feature in anything I make... not sure how that happened, but it would have been a long time ago, so not worth worrying about.

There's certainly enough interesting bits to supply the book, so that's done... but of course, when faced with a box full of fabric, it would be rude not to continue... and look what I found, without really trying...

This wants to be hand stitched, as I have done with a number of rust dyed pieces (check it out here).  The first one I did, I tried machine stitch, but really didn't like it, not enough texture, and have stuck to hand stitch ever since.  There's a short series entitled 'Flotsam and Jetsam', which I posted about here.  I don't think this wants to be part of that, though... it makes me think, not of the beach, but of autumn.  One to contemplate....in any case, it'll need to wait until I can stand long enough to sort out some batting.

This next one, though, I can do something with Right Now.  It wants to be a scarf...

...it's just long enough.  It won't tie, but a small brooch or pin will hold it beautifully.  All I need to do is hand roll the edges, which is about all I've got the energy for at the moment, albeit in small stages, one thread at a time. 

And at that point, I stopped looking.... no point in planning more than I can reasonably do, given my fractured mind tends to throw up more ideas than I can cope with, on a daily basis.  I'd like to do some more rust dyeing, but at present I have more than enough to work with, and, of course, all of my rusty bits were ditched before the move, so I'll have to find some more before I can continue...sigh...  it may be the only type of dyeing I have the energy for.

If The Answer Is Fifteen Minutes...

...what was the question?  Well, quite simply, that's the amount of time I can work before I'm too tired to continue.  Given that this is the first day I've felt like doing anything other than something very basic, like folding the book from yesterday, that's reasonable...after all, I've only been out of bed for a few days.  The real question, of course, is how long I'm going to be stuck at that...and the simple answer is, I have no idea.  Anyway...

I wanted to get on with the book I showed you yesterday, and decided to stick with pastels, and use the same basic colours in each section of the book, but in reverse order, so, green in one section at one side, means green on the same section but at the other end of the book on the other side.  Sorry, no photo to prove that lol.  This is as far as I have got so far.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy working with pastels.  It's a very direct way of applying colour, no intervening brush, no water, unless you want to use it. Just me, my fingers, the paper and the pigment.  The colour here is built up using roughly five or six different shades of the same colour, with a little bit of white here and there.  That's fun to do.  Here is a couple of the pages in close up, so you can see what I mean.

I've run out of steam, now, so it'll have to wait.  Fortunately I can leave the work set up in the studio without inconveniencing anyone, so it can wait as long as it has to.  I can't do this work on the sofa; too much dust, that would be impossible to remove from either upholstery or carpet (yes, that is the voice of experience).  I'm working onto a sheet of clear plastic, so that if there is too much dust to pick up, I can simply fold up the plastic and bin it.  I also have a hand held vacuum cleaner, and the floor in there is tile-effect vinyl, so easy to clean up.  In Norfolk, this kind of work would have been done in the shed, but I don't have that luxury any more. 

More when I'm able to do it.

Writing It Out.

You might remember this book...I wrote about it here

I said I needed a poem, which I would write on the reverse. And lo and behold, in my sketchbook...

I know, it's not easy to read on there... here's the final text...

random
marks
embedded
in stone
lifetime's work
to grasp
that process
make those
rune-like
forms
both with
and without
meaning

That seems to express everything I intended.  The challenge, of course, is to write it on the back of the book in a reasonably regular manner.  I started by writing it again, removing a few words, just looking to see how many lines there are...fourteen, it turns out...

Next stage...measure the book itself, which, it turns out, is the length of an A4 sheet of paper.  So I folded an old letter (yup, we recycle...) to the correct width, then folded it in half, and added the words.  On reflection, should have folded it in quarters, but hey... this isn't about perfection, it's solely about distributing the words in a fairly even manner, without huge gaps...

So...it's possible.  Basically, I added the words on line seven, worked downwards, then upwards.  Looking at it, I decided that capital letters were out.  And then wrote the words again, on the book, this time.

Unfortunately a couple of stray capital letters got in there...a sign I was thinking about too much at once. I can't correct it, so it stays that way.  What happens now, is machine stitch on the other side, which will, of course. obscure the words to some extent.  I like the thought of that; it's not easy to 'read' the marks on stone, either, so it's consistent with the original inspiration.  That may not happen for some time; hospital op on Wednesday, which, while minor, may cause a flare up of the ME, which has been pretty bad recently, so I'm not planning anything.  If I get to work, it will be a bonus.  I am going to take my watercolour crayons and pencils upstairs, so that I have something to play with.  Might as well make the most of the down time, if I can.

Making The Most Of Things

.
..is sometimes all there is.  Today I'm in bed.  I've been slowly deteriorating over the last couple of months, so this is mostly a preventative measure, and I may be here some time.  My bedroom is possibly the nicest room in the house; it's huge (the size of a double garage), has a gentle colour scheme (white and lilac, predominately) and is light and airy (it has two windows).  There's no view, really, just the grey of roof tiles against the massed grey of the skies.  No camera up here, so no images; the image is from a much earlier blog, a manipulated image of a photograph taken in France, as I recall, the right colours for the room.  I wrote a haiku, though...

layer on layer
grey ethereal softness
smothering the sun

The sky is heavy today, filled with heavy grey clouds.  There was some brightness, just above the rooftops, but that has gone now, though the sun seems to be trying to break through; the haiku reflects a moment, a snapshot in words.  I have a few books to look at, 'The Art of Joan Schultze', one of the few quilters I really admire, 'Art Textiles Of The World : Great Britain Volume 2", which speaks for itself, really, and 'Hat Anthology', ditto.    Lots of images to consider, the kind of books you can dip in and out of without getting overtired.  There are some novels, too, though reading feels too much like hard work today. And my third window, the computer, my window on the world, where my friends live.  It's a small life, but it's mine. And I do my best to make the most of it; there is art in everything, even this.

In A Bind.

Reader, I finally did it.  I bound the first of the ME pieces, described here.  I used the feather fabric I found, kindly donated by a friend among some scrap she gave me from her stash. 

The binding is far from perfect, and perhaps that's not surprising; it's probably the first time in over twenty years that I've chosen to bind a piece. I don't like binding, but this piece seemed to need it.  And, imperfections apart, I don't like the binding on here, either, but it does add another layer of meaning.  It speaks of limitation, which is the core issue of ME.  I've always thought that binding on an art quilt limits the eye.  By that, I mean that it stops any movement contained in the quilt, at the edge.  I like to encourage the eye, and the mind, to wonder about what's going on outside the edges; the binding stops it dead.  How does that meaning, that movement, continue?  Does it stop, or does it continue into infinity?  I'm not all that fond of mounts and frames, either, but I think they're better than binding.  This piece, though, didn't seem to want to be framed; it's too tactile for that. 

I've said that limitation is a key element of ME: let's continue that theme.  Robin brought in a postcard-sized piece of Lutradur he found in the car...no, I have no idea how it got there.  This is what I've done with it :

It is made from some bits that were lying on my side table, left over from previous projects, plus a starfish from my bead and bit collection.  I started by stitching on the blue hand dyed silk organza, and then added the strip of fabric.  At that point, I realised what I was making.  This is a postcard from another lifetime, my pre ME lifetime, when I could do what I wanted, when I wanted.  I love the beach, and for the first time in our married life (39 years this year) we live near the sea.  In particular, I love beach combing...but I can't do it any more.  I can't walk far enough, and the number of wheelchair accessible beaches are very, very minimal (you need a special wheelchair.  Turns out there are two in Scotland).  Either way, though, I don't see myself visiting the beach any more...so this is a postcard from my previous, beach combing existence.  It's very simple; the sea, the sand, the starfish.  It was photographed on top of my laptop, so that you could see it clearly, but I need to think carefully about what I'll put behind it.  I think this is probably the first piece in a series, and unlike the quilt, it will happily take to small frames, probably box frames....the ideal would be to make frames from driftwood. 

I feel the need to say that this is not about self pity; it is about making something meaningful out of a bad experience.  The ME is unlikely to just go away, so I need to find ways to live with it that are meaningful for me...and this is it.  I have been contemplating a blog specifically 'about' ME, but the jury's still out.  There are a lot of ME blogs around, some more useful than others, and I'm not sure that I'd be adding any value.  Mind you, there's a lot of art blogs around to, but that fact has never stopped me blogging...

I'm pretty sure I have some more postcard sized bits of lutradur around, so I dare say I'll be making some more of these.  I think perhaps the frame needs to have a luggage label attached, with a personal story.  Clearly the making of books, and their associated poems, are having an effect on the rest of my work.  We'll see.

Small Stuff.

'Don't Sweat The Small Stuff' was written by Richard Carlson, one of those annoying touchy-feely management books from the 1990s or thereabouts.  The sub-title was 'And It's All Small Stuff'; now there, he has a point, but not quite the point he was trying to make.  For an ME sufferer, it is indeed all small stuff.  Every task has to be broken down into its component parts, so that at least some of it can be achieved with the energy levels available at the time.  Today, technically, it was Tidying Up, mainly because I can't get the stuff done that I want to, without clearing some space.  You would think there would be a limit to the amount of mess I can make on a table top, wouldn't you?  Apparently not.  Particularly as the energy levels from previous activities had run out before the tidy up stage...so there was transfer dye to go back in the drawer, the papers I'd printed and painted to put away (well, okay, put on the floor...haven't worked out where to put them yet), the goodies that I'd been given, to go away...you're getting the drift, right?  This pine cone needed somewhere to live too.

When I began to run out of steam,about half way through clearing the table top,  I sat down and managed to encourage my Bernina to limp through the rest of the stitching on the piece I showed you yesterday.  It started playing up as I worked, yesterday, a problem with the tension that I couldn't resolve by the usual means, so it'll be off for a service.  It would already be there, but when we drove up to drop it off, the shop was shut, despite both FB and Google assuring us it was open...sigh.  And now...I need to rest.  I might manage to clear the rest of the table this afternoon...or not.  Tomorrow, as we all know, is another day.

PS.  I don't sweat anything...I haven't got the energy...

Challenging Assumptions.

With ME, there's an overriding assumption that, whatever it is, you're not going to have the energy to do it.  That's not always true, though, in fairness, a goodly percentage of the time, it is.  I've talked about how my practice revolves around the expressive and the experimental....but it also embraces adaptation, these days, from bitter necessity.  I've been hankering for wet felting recently, and I just know, without trying, that fifteen minutes of that would be the only thing I got done that day, a very high price to pay for admittedly a very expressive form of textile art.  And then I found this.

It was an ACEO (does anybody make those any more?), though I did think about making it into a brooch (does anybody wear those any more, other than me?).  Though I suspect that the base felt might have been wet felted, the top layer was definitely added using an embellisher, and finished off with hand stitch.  And that made me think.

I recently bought a metre of prefelt, something I haven't used before (a blog post about prefelt here, if you haven't come across it before).  I do have a fair amount of wool tops...who can resist those fabulous colours. especially when they're dyed in multiple colours... and had almost got to the point of giving them all away.  But I do have an embellisher, and I can work with it.  In many ways, it would be better than using a sewing machine, because piecing usually requires getting up and down to press the work, or cut more pieces, or whatever... and that's very tiring.  Yes, I could set the work up in such a way as to be able to swivel to use the ironing board...but it would block both the doors if I did.   Now, all I have to do is change the needles in the embellisher, and Get Started.

Sounds like a decent compromise to me.  Might even get some book pages out of it...

Book The Third.

I said in my last post, that I'd discovered, rather belatedly, that the second book, Fragments, was 'about' ME,  about the way that it has stripped me of my ability to engage in the activities I used to, leaving me with fragments of my life.  The third book, however, was always about ME. 

I bought the silk loose weave cloth it is made from, many years ago.  I don't know why I bought it, to be truthful, I just liked the colour and the texture, so it was probably an impulse buy.  It survived the cull, which is remarkable, given how much fabric I got rid of.  It has turned out to be perfect for this particular book. 

The paper is once more dyed using onion skins, herbal teas and tannin; in fact, there are small pieces of onion skin embedded in the paper (I have no idea how that happened, but I'm grateful).  Each page represents a stage of ME.  It starts with remission, which is not quite well, but able to do most things, as long as you're careful (I was in remission for just over a year, I thought I was well, but looking back, I was doing comparatively little, and giving myself hell for being lazy.  As if.).  On each page, the cloth gets smaller, and has less substance to it, until the last page, where there is very little cloth or substance and structure remaining. 

In some ways, this is a misleading way to depict ME.  There can be a gradual decline, as the book suggests, but mostly it's unpredictable.  One day you can feel fairly energetic (by ME standards, which aren't very high), the next, you can feel dreadful, and for no apparent reason.  It makes visual sense, though, to have structured the book that way.  Who was it who said you shouldn't let reality get in the way of a good story?...or was it the truth?...but I digress.

The reverse of the book is blank, to reflect the impact I feel I have on day to day life around me.  It's true that I talk to people on Facebook, but by and large, I have very little interaction with the place I live, or the people who live there.  I'm not asking for sympathy: it's a fact.  The book simply reflects reality.

As I said elsewhere, it's inevitable that I would explore ME and ME themes in my work; it's what I've always done.  ME is seriously misunderstood; I hope that making work like this will help people to understand what it's really like.  And if someone with ME ever tells you they're 'fine', you might remember that their fine is probably one of those pages... distorted, full of holes, getting smaller all the time.  And above all, fragile.

Facing Up To Things.

Today is likely to be a day of bits and bobs.  Not every day can witness significant process in whatever projects you're engaged in, and I suspect the closest I'll get to progress is finishing the binding on the ME quilt, and even that may not happen, given what else is going on.

As you can see, it's nearly done, and would have been finished yesterday had I not run out of steam. I'm pleased with the fabric I chose for the binding (we discussed it elsewhere); it works well.  The main task for today, though, is this.

Yup, more boxes (there's another two in addition to these).  My original intention was to have a summerhouse, rather like I had the Little Green Shed in Norfolk, albeit on a far smaller scale.  That would let me paint without making a mess in the house.  And here's where the facing up to things bit comes in.  You'll know from posts elsewhere that I tend to paint on a large scale.  Standing up.  Occasionally throwing paint.  And that's not going to happen: I don't have the energy for that kind of thing any more.  And that was a difficult thing to admit...yet another activity cut from my repertoire, and there's a very long list of those already.  This one, though, is particularly difficult; it's very close to my heart.  I used to say that I made textiles because I couldn't paint, and art textiles were the closest I could get to it.  And then, twenty years ago, I discovered I could indeed paint, so continued with both activities, in parallel.

The reality of ME, though, is that you can only do so much.  Cutting lino blocks, and having to admit to myself how little I can actually do, forced me to look at painting.  It's physically demanding, much more so than the kind of textile work I do.  I have the nasty feeling that wet felt making will have to go, too, unless I can find a willing slave to do the hard work.  Yes, I can use the embellisher (peeking out from behind those boxes).  I can even do wet felt in the washing machine, I suspect.  But it's not the same, and some half measures just aren't worth doing.  And I do have a good deal of fleece...sigh.

I do have a compromise for painting, though.  I'm going to do more mono printing, that most painterly of printing disciplines. I can do it sitting down, and I'm happy to print on a small scale, where painting on a small scale just doesn't feel doable or right; it doesn't fit the things I want to express.  Of course,  I may try developing the mono printing, and find it doesn't work for me either, in which case, I have a lot of paint to get rid of.

Dyeing, on anything other than a small scale, is also likely to go.  I'm not sure about that one, to be honest.  It makes sense to stop dyeing cloth altogether; just setting up to dye is tiring, much less moving things around.  I could dye thread (yes, I know, I've said I would never dye thread, too fiddly etc...), and that's something I really need to think about.  I seem to spend quite a bit of time searching for thread in particular colours, and not finding it, so it would be a useful thing to do. 

Will anything else have to go?  I'm not sure.  If I can sit to do it, and do it in short bursts, it seems to be okay.  Cutting fabric is difficult, because you really do need to stand to do it (trust me, I've tried).  Hopefully, though,  I'm now at the limit.  And there are quite a few things that I believe I can do, without aggravating the ME too much.  Which is just as well, really; every time I abandon another discipline, it feels like I'm cutting out a piece of myself.  ME might easily be described as death by a thousand cuts... but I'm trying not to come over as feeling sorry for myself.  Okay, maybe just a bit.  I grieve my life, and that's unavoidable, it would seem.  Eventually, there will be art about it; right now, it's too much to think about, too painful, too raw. 

I'm a naturally positive person, but I'm clearly not managing it today.  Normal service will be resumed, etc.

Reverting To Words...

,,,because sometimes, only words will do.  This week is ME awareness week; read more about it here.  There are a lot of events happening across the country, across the world, in fact, including Millions Missing, where shoes are set out, labelled with their owners' stories, to indicate the way in which they are missing from the event, and indeed, to some extent, from their own lives.  I can't go to the Edinburgh event (at the Mound, if you want to go along), so I thought I'd mark it with a poem.

Wasting My Energy : A Poem For ME Awareness

You. Yes, you. You who can dance

Whenever you want.  Stroll

Unconcerned wherever you

Wish, run for a mile, or a

Bus without thinking.  Work, laugh or play

Without consequence.  

You really don’t get it, now do you?

Here sit I, wheels for feet,

Buses a distant memory.  Oh yes,

My legs work, and the rest of me: I can

Stand up, point a toe, take a few

Careful steps, then sit down hard

Gasping for breath.

And that will make me

A fraud in your eyes;  that is,

If you see me at all.  Invisible,

That’s me.  (It’s got something to do

With the chair).

Humour me, just for a moment.

Imagine a world filled with pain,

Every action carefully planned, consequences

Weighed up and measured, that is

If just rising from bed can be managed..

Imagine your life without action,

Interaction, meaning: you’re imagining

Mine.  Nobody asks for ME; it just

Happens one day, irreversible,

Misunderstood.  No testing,

Diagnosis or cure.  No treatment.

No sympathy.  Just judgement,

And the shaking of heads. It’s no

Way to live. It’s all there is.

You still don’t get it, do you?

I really tried.

Nearly Done.

The first of the ME quilts is nearly complete; here it is. 

It pretty much turned out as I thought it would, though I did do one thing differently.  I had intended to put a spiral in that top left hand box, indicating energy, but when I began to stitch it, it somehow didn't feel right.  So, it became an oval, suggesting a head (in my mind, at least), with a bright red cross through the centre, to suggest the lack of energy that is one of the hallmarks of ME.  It echoes the three red to purple crosses in the bottom right hand side box.  The fabric in there has a postmark; it is intended to be a letter or message 'about' my previous, energy and activity filled life.  

So... the only thing left to do is to bind it.  Now that should be interesting, as I haven''t made any binding in nearly twenty years... so I'll be having a bit of a refresher course in that, YouTube here I come...   Meantime, I didn't think I had anything suitable for binding, but rooted out a couple of strips of fabric that I was gifted as scrap from a FB friend.  I think you'll agree, it goes perfectly in terms of colour.  It works very well in terms of symbolism, too; the feathers suggest flight, and my mind can fly, even if my body can sometimes barely walk.  The perfect fabric to edge this profoundly meaningful quilt.  It may, of course, only be meaningful to me, but that's enough.

Slow, Slow...

...slow, slow, slow...no particular variation in pace when you're hand stitching.  And that's a good thing; it's meditative, rhythmic.  I'm about three quarters of the way through stitching the piece 'about' ME I showed you here.  This shows you the progress so far...

...and a closeup, so that you can see the stitch...

As I waited for this to load, it struck me that this is one of the very few, if not, indeed, the only art piece I've made entirely of commercial fabric.  Usually the focus is on hand dye, but I don't have much of that, any more, and it'll be a while before I'm set up well enough to generate some. 

You can see that the stitch is very intense throughout, so far.  I'm planning to do more of this random stitch in the other three borders, but with a larger stitch size.  The photograph suggests a considerable amount of distortion, which is caused by that intensity of stitch, but I'm confident that that will resolve itself as I complete the stitching. 

This is the perfect piece to take places; so far, I've stitched on it in the doctor's waiting room, as well as the local fabric shop (of which more, another time).  I usually have a piece of work that I can carry about in a pocket, for those waiting rooms.  I hate sitting around doing nothing, which is a bit unfortunate, given I have ME; there are times when that's all I'm capable of doing.  Hoping to get the stitch on this finished this week, so it'll be sitting beside me on the sofa....I do love my sofa...

Starting Again From Scratch (Almost).

Over the past few years, I've been muttering about ill health and ME, and taking time off (it's summarised here).  It has been an unpleasant journey, mostly, from bedridden to remission, back to bedridden via heart issues, and very little done in the way of art over what I realise is pretty much the last six or seven years.  And I'm still living with it; I need a mobility scooter or wheelchair to go out, as I get unreasonably tired, unreasonably quickly.  There is a blessing of sorts; the depression seems to have taken pity on me, and pretty much disappeared, though struggling with grief has been the theme for the past couple of years.  I tell you this, not to  make you feel sorry for me, but rather to explain where I am at the moment with life, the universe and this illness, which is unlikely to go away. 

That said, my lovely husband and I did 'go away'; we decided to move from our home in Norfolk, back to Scotland, so that we could take a bigger part in family life up here.  It was a very extended move, as we had to wait for a house to be built, and took roughly six months, in all, but we finally moved in early January of this year.  We've slowly (emphasis on the slowly) got the house together, except for the garage, which still has a few boxes in it, and... yes, you've guessed it, my studio...which looks like this...whimper...

It was really difficult to find a house that had a separate dining room to serve as a workroom; I try only to use the stairs once a day, so needed a downstairs room for my stuff.  It looks like I have a lot of stuff...but when I consider how much I used to have, this is an anthill, not a mountain... very little fabric, an incredible amount of thread, much of which is still in boxes in the garage, feathers galore, hat blocks, sketchbooks, paper, paint.... jings.

At the moment, I'm kinda stuck.  Robin has hurt his back, and my son is busy, travelling the country for work, so the shelves that will hold all of this are everywhere but in this room.  I'm hoping to go out tomorrow to get some boxes to hold it in, though, so that at least it will look organised.  What has become apparent, though, is that even this reduced stash is too much for the space available...plus, I don't want to paint in this entirely new, pristine space, for lo! I have a talent for making a mess (surprising, huh?).  So I suspect that a summerhouse for the back garden will be in order, so that I can keep the mess outside.  It'll not be anything like the Little Green Shed (20ft by 10ft just won't go in this garden), but it'll be better than nothing, and given that I've cut down on the range of things I do, that's not unreasonable. 

So...what will I do inside?  Sewing, mainly, some drawing, dyeing if I can manage it, or if I can find someone to help me, felt making, ditto, hat making and some printing, probably just monoprinting, which is my favourite in any case.  Painting goes outside.  That sounds like a lot, but when I compare it against what I used to do, as taken from a bygone list of workshops... it doesn't seem so much.

Altered Art (books, shoes, boxes, bags, quilts ...you name it, we can alter it!)
Artist's Trading Cards
Artists Journals and Sketchbooks
Basic Batik
Basic Book Binding
Basic Hand Stitch (decorative)
Book Covers (stitched)
Cloth Dolls (Keyhole Kate)
Collage
Colouring Paper and Cloth
Fabric Postcards
Fascinator Fun
Feltmaking (wet and dry)
Finding Inspiration
Free Motion Stitching For Texture
Linoprinting
Mixed Media Painting
Monoprinting 
Paper Making
Printing with Natural Materials
Screen Printing
Silk Paper Making.

So... now to edit my supplies accordingly.  A couple of things that won't be going, though, are these:

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This box is full of supplies for hat making, mostly sinamay.  I thoroughly enjoy making hats, though it hasn't been something I've blogged about much at all, as I recall.  It's ideal for someone with ME, I think, because it doesn't often require brute strength; rather, it involves lots of small, fiddly movements, and you can mostly pick it up and put it down again at will, so good for lots of little rests.   At the front of the box, though, there are rolls of canvas and Evolon, the last remnants of the photographs printed on Big Bertha, who has gone to a new home.  I will, however, finish them off as something to remember her by.

And then there's this little lot, emphasis on the little, barely a third of a box.  Bits of hand printed or hand dyed fabric that I couldn't bring myself to throw out or give away, and which will doubtless combine in small pieces of work...but that's another blog post for another day.   Meantime, I'll keep you posted on progress.