Back To Work...

...after a couple of difficult weeks.  Remember the watercolour book?   Well...because I had coloured the reverse of that with transfer dyes, I was able to create another, similar book...

This time, I've stitched the coloured side with normal weight thread, while the reverse has the heavier, Decora thread.  You can just pick up the stitching, I think...it's not particularly intense, by my standards.  I find the individual pages interesting; here they are as individuals, to let you see clearly how each of them stands alone as a landscape...landscapes within landscapes, if you like.

I suspect I'll add quite a bit more stitch, but this is all I could manage today.  I haven't taken pictures of the reverse, which, of course, is white with stitch.  I haven't yet decided what to do with it.  Paint is an option, of course, but so are applique and collage.  Plus, I could add significantly more stitch, obviating the need to add more colour (I think...).

I think the title of this might be 'Red Sky At Night', because the rhyme keeps running through my head...but we'll have to see.  Things might change as the piece progresses.  They usually do.

Another One Bites The Dust...

another hand made book, that is (hands up everyone who now has Freddie Mercury's dulcet tones in their ears...?).  Here is the reverse side of the purple watercolour landscape book, finally finished.

As a comparison, here's the front...

They're similar, but by no means identical.  If you look closely, you'll see the stitching on both sides.  Of course, the reverse side doesn't have the heavier thread, but it doesn't seem to have lost anything as a result.  I'd like to say it was carefully designed to fit the stitch...but it wasn't...   I'm pleased with it.  Will I add text?  Possibly.  I need to think about it, look at the piece for a while, see what suggests itself.  Writing, for me, is just the same as art making...it's fairly spontaneous, but also fairly focused. 

As you'll recall, the colour for the reverse side was transfer dye, and that means that I could get a minimum of three, and up to five (if I'm lucky) prints from the same piece of painted paper.  So I happened to have another piece of Lutradur XL cut and ready to make into a book, so it seemed reasonable to turn that into another purple landscape piece.

The colours here are more intense; that's because I ironed them on longer.  The amount of pressure and the length of time you iron a piece will affect the intensity of the colour transferred on the cloth.  I deliberately made the first of the transferred images relatively light, to reflect the tones on the painted side of the book, but this one, I wanted to be stronger.  I contemplated simply ironing onto the reverse, but decided that I was too tired, and that it would be much more interesting to add paint on the reverse, so that's for another day.  Two for the price of one...always a good deal.  Well, okay, one and a half...but who's counting...

It's Amazing...

...how much more energy I have if I don't fiddle about with a computer...  Someone cut a BT cable during some work, plunging Bo'ness and Linlithgow into internet darkness for a day and a bit.  So...I started to develop some new work (of which more anon) and existing work, namely the watercolour landscape I spoke of last time . 

I started by folding the book, so that I could see how each 'page' worked.  As it turned out, it also made the piece easier to handle with the sewing machine, as I could fold and unfold as I went along.  I'm happy enough with the colour and structure ... now, it needed stitch.

I started with some variegated cotton, in purples: it doesn't show up all that well in the main image, but you can see it nicely in the detail.

I wanted some sort of contrast, some heavier thread, so raked out some Madeira Decora, which I put in the bobbin.  I haven't used it in a very long time, and  struggled with it, somewhat...but decided to leave some of the catches in the stitching as they were, added texture ( she said firmly)...

Not necessarily a good decision...but I don't want to run the risk of redoing the stitch, and missing the original holes... so it's going to stay as it is.  So, as I say, not necessarily a good decision, but the best I can make in the circumstances.  I've kept it very, very simple.  I don't feel the need to add more stitch.  I had contemplated adding some applique...but I think that would be overkill.  A poem, perhaps, but no more visual imagery, I think there's enough going on as it is.  It's interesting to swap between the individual landscapes, as designated by the folds that make up the pages, and the entire landscape, across them all.  Anything else would be distracting.

Being a book, of course, this isn't the only side that's important.  The reverse needs to have treatment, too...  Some of the watercolour has leaked through, so the choice of colour is already made for me.

Why?  Because whatever I add, the watercolour would mix with it.  And, on reflection, I don't want the colour on the other side to shift at all...so I need to add dry colour, rather than wet. That rules out conventional paint of any kind.  I could fuse on fabric, but then I would lose the stitch, and I want to retain that.  So... I painted up a piece of paper with transfer dyes in these colours.  That monoprint I showed you was on a large piece of paper, and there was enough room on it to colour a piece for dye transfer, so that I was sure that it was both deep and wide enough to cover the entire strip. 

So far so good... now all I have to do is iron on the colour...

This wasn't the only piece I worked on yesterday... I went on and painted more paper, as I had the paints out anyway... printed with some bubblewrap...  and I designed and stitched another piece... and then had to lie down... but hey, I had fun.  More anon.

Turning Over A New Leaf...

or, in this case, turning a leaf into a book...books are made from leaves, right?   I've been contemplating making shaped accordion books, and decided to make a couple of small ones, just to be sure it would actually work... well, you know how it is...  A leaf shape seemed a good idea...

Not only did it work, they actually stand upright...though, given that they're yellow, they're more reminiscent of lemons, than leaves...so...

That's a bit better...  This has potential, I think... so I went from the leaf, to the tree... drawing an outline first, and then following it...roughly...with the scissors... well, I don't colour in the lines, so why would I pay attention to the lines I've drawn...

Mind you...these have been cut from card; I'm not sure that making them in fabric, other than in Lutradur XL, would actually allow them to stand up... but the principle is good.  Perhaps if they're stitched intensely, and made from the heaviest Lutradur other than XL... Hmm...

Getting Sidetracked...

...is a fairly common occurrence for me, and it usually leads to something creative.  Unfortunately,  it also brings problems.  The days are gone when I can just poddle about in my workroom, doing a bit of this, and a bit of that...or at least, not if I intend to do something specific.  And I did have that intention.  I wanted to do more machine stitch, and thought I would work on this book, which has been hanging around for ages, waiting for me to feel well enough to do it.

First, I needed suitable threads...and finding those took quite a bit of the available energy.  I realised, as I did it, that unpacking and shelving in order of finding things, was not the most effective way of doing it.  I need to have the threads near the machine, so I don't have to cross the room to get them.  Yes, it's only four or five steps there and back, so ten in all.  But add in the amount of time it took to stand and work out what I wanted, and select them, and you're into a major energy drain.  So I'm going to have to get someone, probably Robin (sorry, Robin) to move stuff around for me.  But I digress (at least digressing in my mind doesn't take quite as much energy, huh?).

While photographing, I noticed the little ME quilt on the cutting board...okay, I thought, two minutes... and that's what it took.

I'm pleased with it, though I have to say, it looks better in real life.  But back to the book.  Bobbin wound, machine threaded, I worked on a single flower.

Reader, that was enough.  No more energy.  But it's a decent enough beginning.  Here's the back...and this is why I like machine stitch on books.  The back is the same as the front, other than being a different thread (cotton on the front, rayon on the back, both variegated); no need to worry about what the stitch is going to look like, as you do with hand stitch...and for this particular book, it's important, because it was designed with that in mind.

I'm pleased with how it's looking so far.  I wanted to give the idea of a sketch, rather than a full blown representation of a flower, and I think this is working really well.  I may only be able to do a couple of flowers a day; tracing the image with stitch requires a lot of concentration, and that's tiring, too.  But it's worth it.  

Finishing Off.

It ain't finished 'til the fat lady sings?  Sometimes.  Other times, something feels as if it ought to be finished, but continues to niggle at you.  Over the years, I've come tor realise that the only thing to do is to put a piece like that aside, and let the unconscious work out what needs to be done.  It can take a while....or not...

You may remember this piece; I talk about it here. And it has been annoying me ever since.  Predominately because it's boring.

Not to mention that it somehow felt too wide.  Today, I worked out what to do with it.  I've been rereading 'Structure of the Visual Book' by Keith A Smith.  It was talking about folded books, and gave an image of an accordion book, not unlike the ones I've been making, except that the folds were very frequent.  So, when I glanced at the piece, I thought...I wonder if I could turn it into an accordion book... and started playing around with the necessary folds.  In reality, though, it was obvious that the section at the far end, with the starfish, really wouldn't be happy with that treatment.  The folds, though...they were interesting... soft folds, not pleats, folded so that the words are easy to see, closer together.  So I tacked them into place...and that wasn't easy; stitching through three folds of Evolon is heavy going, and involved forcing the needle through them.  And I ended up with this...

 So...not so wide... soft folds suggesting the waves at the beach... the paint treatment not so dominant...definitely better.  It's still by no means the best thing I've done, but I can live with it now.
I decided to leave the stitches in... by the time I'd got them there, I was pretty well exhausted.  The should really have been white, on reflection, and I might replace them at some point, though I did add some brown stitches at the bottom right, just to balance it out.

Is the fat lady singing?  Nah, she's going for a lie down...

Today's Blog...

...is brought to you from the sofa.  Robin's out, and we're expecting a couple of parcels.  Doubtless they'll arrive once he's back again. but if not, by the time I get downstairs, there's a real risk that the delivery man will have disappeared again.  So here I am.  It's more difficult to rest on the sofa; too much stuff that ought to be done, or wants to be made.  I'm resisting.  That said, I'm also contemplating this piece, which you'll remember from Saturday's blog on printing.  It said it wanted to be a book: I agreed.

It looks quite different in 3D, than it did lain flat...

The orientation change makes a huge difference, while the folds encourage us to read both the whole thing and the individual page.  I did contemplate hand stitch, but I really do think that machine stitch is preferable (really do have to ring the engineer this week, I NEED my machine back). 

And talking of needs, the piece needs a poem.  Of course it does, I hear you holler.  The poem will be written on the other side of the book, this time, before the stitch is added.  I think the effect of the stitch will be interesting; it should break up the text, even the individual letters, making the poem act like a piece of visual art.  Which is, I suppose, the whole idea. 

The poem is about interpreting visual marks.  I've got a thing about that...I talk about it here, to some extent.  I stitch, print and paint in this way, making marks, and to me, that reflects the natural world, where the elements create marks in and on, for example, stone, which our minds then attempt to interpret.  'Natural Graffiti', a quilt I donated to a cancer charity, reflects that them (see it here), but I've been stitching rune-like and other abstract and semi abstract forms into quilts since I started making, over thirty years ago (cough).

No, it's not written yet; I'm going to lie on the sofa for the rest of the morning, and see what we can come up with, my unconscious and me.  Seems infinitely reasonable.

Phew

Some things Just Don't Work...or at least, don't work as planned.  This mulberry paper book certainly didn't; I described it here .  Reader, I finished it.  And now, as I thought, the stitch has softened the paper to the point where it doesn't stand properly.  It lurches like a drunken sailor...

So...I ironed it.  And that made it worse.  No, you really don't want to see.  Here it is, flat.

I think it's boring.  It might have been better with darker thread, but I'm not even convinced by that.  I'm tempted to add darker purple stamped spirals to it, to balance out the colour...that might be interesting... but I'm not sure I'm ever going to like it.

I think my problem with it stems from the regularity of the stitched lines.  I don't do regular; it's not my style.  It seemed appropriate for this piece, given its size, but it has turned out looking like something someone else made.  Interestingly, while I had the iron out, I ironed this piece, which I finished some time ago, and which has been hanging round the workroom ever since, both here and in the rental.

It was inspired by old images of industrial Glasgow, though it could be any industrial city, really.  The base cloth is a section of a  piece of linen that I dyed a very long time ago, intending to make a jacket with it.  The shapes on it are of a heavy duty cloth that had been used as a clean up cloth by another artist.  I liked the colours, and begged it from her when she was finished with it.  The blues stand for the waterfront...the shapes, for machinery and buildings used for heavy industry. 

Like the book, above, this has fairly regular stitching....except that there's significantly more variety in the mark making, and whilst the stitch is important, it's not the dominant feature, which it is, in the book.  The stitch is part of a unified whole; it supports the applique units in telling a story.  The book has no story...and apparently, that's why I don't like it.

I like blogging; in talking to you folks about what I'm doing, I talk to myself about issues, challenges and how I feel.  What began as a way of connecting with other people, has become part of my process, a way of connecting with the work, and ultimately, myself.  It's really useful. 

Unexpected Changes, or Feline Intervention

I thought it was time I finished the stitch on Borderlines, so that was what I did this morning, until the birthday boy swept me off for breakfast (yummy pancakes and fresh fruit).

I'm quite pleased at the way this is turning out; only one fair sized section to go, and the stitch will be complete.  The nature of the piece has changed, somewhat. however, as I discovered when I picked it up to start stitching.  Part of the paper block on the left hand side of the quilt is no longer as it was when I started.  Here it is now...

Yup...it's frayed, distressed, nay, disintegrating in parts.  What can have done this?  Well, that's where the feline intervention comes in.  I have the habit of putting whatever I'm stitching behind me, on the back of the sofa.  Turns out Merlin has been sleeping on it.  I said early on that the paper was quite fragile, and here's the proof.  Some of it has just disappeared, although by and large, it's hanging on in there, thankfully.  Also thankfully, I like the result.  Just as well, really, as it would take an inordinate amount of work to replace it.  And fortunately, the books are too small to treat like this, so we won't be having a repeat performance, though if anyone wants an alternative method for distressing hand made paper, here it is, help yourself.  Just keep your fingers crossed that your cat doesn't attempt to shred it (Mollie probably would have).

Getting It Wrong?

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I'm not fond of the word 'wrong'.  I don't think it's got much of a place in art.  However, in terms of the mechanical doing of a particular process, wrong is possible.  And did I ever get this one wrong. 

You may remember that I said I'd brought boxes in from the garage...well, in one of them, I found a small lino block (and this one is actually made of lino, not soft cut, so dates before ME).  I actually ditched most of my lino blocks, not sure how this one survived, to be honest.  I thought it might be fun to print it on one of the books.  So... first I needed a background, because I didn't want plain white.  I have a fair number of ink blocks, the kind used for stamping, and one of those was in the same box.  It happened to be green, and I wondered if it would work on Lutradur.  The answer to that was, yes, it could.  I simply dragged the ink surface across the fabric, and it worked fairly well.  Bit unfortunate that the ink pad fell off, bending itself in two as it did so, but actually, it left some interesting marks, so that was okay. 

And then it all started to go to hell in a handcart.  I decided to transfer dye the lutradur, using the block I'd found.  Firstly, I found a couple of places on the block that should have been carved away. Takes too much energy to remove them, so I sucked it up like a good little princess.  One or two of the prints I made looked okay, though, so I left them to dry.  So far so good.  Ish.

Later, I went to iron on the transfers.  And there's where things went pear shaped.  I made every single mistake in the book, all the things that I advise students not to do....yes, them.  I didn't check the iron temperature, because I always have the iron at its hottest setting, right?  Wrong.  So when I transferred, I got something that looked like a ghost print, and managed to drop the paper when I checked it, so couldn't realign the print, and ended up with a smudged, double image.  I used one of the prints I wasn't happy with, the one with lots of odd bits and pieces that shouldn't be there, and no, I have no idea how they got there, either...but they're on the book now.  And then another double image.  Things were starting to get out of hand.  The back didn't go as planned, either, and I have no idea why. 

And yet... here's the book, ready for stitch.  (I know... at last, a book that's going to include stitch as a major design feature... finally...).  And I Rather Like It.

The front has a good balance to it.  Yes, there are flaws; click on the image, have a closer look, you'll see them.  What's important, though, is that they don't dominate the piece.  They don't scream, look at me, I'm a mistake...ha ha ha.  Adding stitch will take what little attention they get, away, I think.  I rather like the double images; think I might try that again, deliberately, see what I get... some other time.

The back is more densely coloured than I wanted, but that's not the end of the world.  Boring, you say?  Meh.  Not as boring as all that, reasonable variety of both tone and mark.  What will bring it alive, though, will be the free motion machine stitch, following the shape of the flowers.  And that's what this background was designed to contain, to support.  It's not that great on its own, but once the stitch is added, it will be the perfect counterpoint to the front.  And this is an excellent example of how I think fabric books need to be conceived, designed and worked. 

I couldn't work out why I'm not keen on fabric books as a genre.  As a book lover, it ought to be a no brainer...and yet... I think it's because the examples I've seen, seem to be random collections of stuff, sometimes with a theme, sometimes without, contained in a cover.  Imagine a story book created on that basis: I find it very difficult to do.  The story is the thing, in my books, the concept.  There always is one; it's just a question of finding and expressing it.

Feline Assistance?

Only if you use the term loosely.  I only have two cats now, down from four.  Mollie and Merlin love textiles, and 'help' whenever they can.  The level of assistance varies .

Mollie is a quilt girl.  Here she is, trying out 'Borderlines' for size.

Oh, I like this one, Mum...

Mmm...comfy...   She later dozed off on it entirely.  Not quite what you expect for an art quilt, but...

Merlin, on the other hand, is more cosmopolitan in his tastes.  Here he is sitting on a lot of different things, simultaneously; my sofa does get a bit busy, as I spend a lot of time sitting on it.  I think he called it purrrrformance art; I called it all sorts of things, none of which were polite. 

My lino cutting stuff, is on that board, Merlin... be careful... and don't knock that box of notepaper over, or the pen... really, though, what he wanted to lie on was the small book I'd cut from hand made paper, again from Heather's parcel.  It had been folded for some time, so rather than try to iron out the creases, I used them to create another accordion book.  Which He's sitting on.  And here's the result.

That was flat, before he sat on it.  It now has a perfect impression of his bum.  Pass the iron, somebody... 

More about the work in progress tomorrow.  

Sorting

Sorting is a wonderful word.  It can mean either fixing something, or bringing order to something.  I did a bit of both, yesterday.  First, the back of 'Purple Rain', which now has text: definitely fixed that; it feels like a definite improvement.

,

A visit from the postman brought a large padded envelope from my friend Heather in Norfolk.  She sent me this little lot, which I was more than happy to sort through....

I oohed and aahed as I did so; there's quite a variety of things in there.  I have to say that I got sidetracked very quickly.  I was intrigued by some organza with shreds of newspaper stuck to it (got to do some of that with organza, and some in light weight lutradur; it would be interesting to burn it off in places...).  I found several small pieces that seemed to want to go together.  Sometimes, all you can do is respond to what you find; here's my response to three different elements  They are pretty much in the condition they were when Helen sent them, with the exception of the organza, which was attached to a larger piece, so I cut them apart.

The circles are light card, and I suspect they're die cut.  The vertical strips were combined as one strip on a larger piece, but as they were attached with sellotape, I was able to remove them (I have plans for the larger piece, but that's another story for another day).  Running along the bottom is a strip of that organza I mentioned earlier.

For reasons best known to my unconscious mind, this makes me think of Scandinavian forests in summer.  No, I've never been to Scandinavia...but hey... the position of the circle suggests the sun, travelling through the sky.  Unfortunately, there were three circles, but four pages.  Five pages would have given a better visual balance,  but I think what I've got works well.

The book is made from Lutradur XL.  So far, I've only got one this one side completed, and, whilst I had contemplated making something similar on the reverse with my own fabrics, I think it might be better to paint and print on the reverse.  No stitch.  This is a crisp image; stitch would clutter it up.   I have no idea what else I'll do with the treasure trove Heather sent me...but I dare say, over time, I'll think of something...

And Then I Thought...

...now what?  I'd made the pieces that needed to be made, that suggested themselves, and I really didn't know what to do next.  Yes, I'll be making more work about ME: in fact, I know what's next, and I'll work on that when I have a bit more energy.  In any case, it'll be done in stages, and won't be a book, or at least, it isn't a book in my head right now.  Though I will admit, it could be done in book form...would be quite effective... would be better... okay, that's that sorted.  Not an accordion book, though, a pamphlet.  But I digress.  As usual.  For now, for the accordion books, ME wasn't a theme I was ready to address.  I'm a great believer of building time into process; Borderlines is still waiting for stitch, but as I don't yet know what to do, I'm giving my unconscious more time to work it out.  Better that than doing something half hearted, and then hating the piece for not being quite what I wanted.

Anyway... I had another khadi natural dyed accordion.  The first page is very speckled with purplish dots, and there are a few scattered through the rest of the book.  That in itself is a lesson; there's something about working with the dyestuff in such a way as to ensure that the whole book is dyed in a similar fashion, rather than having one striking page and the rest, not so much.  I'm going to let myself off a scolding, though, given this was the first time I'd ever done natural dyeing.  You don't know what you don't know, in that situation.

Struck me that the palette for this book needed to complement that purple, so I got a piece of my own hand dyed silk organza in blue, the colour of sky when it's beginning to think about rain, but hasn't quite gone grey, yet, a greenish blue reminiscent of the ocean.  Wrapping was in my mind, too, because that had been an interesting experiment, and I wanted to try more of it.  What pulled it all together, though, was reading on FB that yesterday was Prince's 60th birthday (doesn't time fly when you're having fun).  Might not have been yesterday, of course, given how long it can take some posts to appear... but whatever.  Purple Rain, I thought   Book, I thought.  Wrapping, I thought.  And here it is.

There's no stitch in this piece at all; it would have been intrusive.  Everything is glued (Prym textile glue, for those of you who like to have the technical details).  I'm trying not to use bondaweb; it involves standing, and that gets very tiring, very quickly.  In any case, bondaweb doesn't seem to do very well with sheers, surprisingly, the glue is less intrusive, you can't see it unless you're looking for it, up close and personal with the piece.

The piece is wrapped using thread, this time, hand dyed cotton perle. a blue/purple melange.  I had fun varying the amount of thread I used, suggesting lighter and heavier showers (I hope). 

I changed the orientation of the silk, partly to add visual interest, partly because I wanted to suggest both sea and sky.  I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.  Nothing to do with the song; I don't know any of the lyrics, other than the chorus! 

And here's the back.

I like the way the thread slants, like rain in the wind.  I also like that the thread is pulled tight in places, giving shadows; you can see it in the page on the far left.  It wasn't deliberate, but it's an interesting effect, and I'll be storing it in the memory banks for further use.  I feel this is a bit sparse, to tell you the truth, even for my taste.  I'm contemplating adding the words 'purple rain' randomly on each page, which might help.  I first have to find my pens, though, and there's three different places they might be, and no guarantee I still have the kind I want to use.  I'm infinitely tidier than I used to be...but not that tidy... wish me luck!

I do love it when a plan comes together...especially when it's spontaneous.  To me, that's the best kind of art; it comes from the soul.