Crash! Bang! Wallop!

What a picture!  Imagine the scene... Me in bed, Robin at computer downstairs, and suddenly there's an almighty crash.  Both of us thought pretty  much the same thing...what have those damn cats done now...  But in fact, a textile work had come off the wall; the frame had pretty much bounced, but the glass was a write off... this is is after we'd cleaned off the worst of the loose glass.

Fortunately, nobody had actually accused the cats, so treats were not required to sooth indignant egos...  

There is a debate which goes along the lines of, glass or no glass in framed textiles... my framer assures me that glass does no harm to a textile, provided there is a decent degree of separation between glass and work.  This is a custom box frame, so there certainly was plenty separation.  I've now removed the rest of the glass, and rehung the piece;

I'm sure Haydn the framer is right in what he says...but I think I prefer it without the glass.  This is a really tactile piece; there's something about being able to see it without the glass, that makes it much more immediate.  The piece itself is called 'Echoes', and features hand dyed and printed fabric.  There's also some coloured Bondaweb on there, but it doesn't show up in the image.  It's there to provide texture, rather than colour.  I had the silk carrier rods lying about..they seemed to want to be included.

Wondering about the title?  It's a misquote of a Tommy Steele classic, 'Flash, Bang, Wallop'.  Wondering who Tommy Steele was?  Sorry, before my time too... but you'll  find the song on YouTube.

Today...

is an I Feel Better sort of a day. After yesterday's dental angst (a tooth removed and a filling), I woke up today and thought...mmm...I've actually got some energy! Which is just as well, really, as I found that I have no batting (well, okay, almost no batting...other than some wonderful wool stuff, which I'm hoarding for no reason other than the fact that I really love working with wool...might make a knee rug with it for the winter). So, I rang my friend Judy and said, come and play...and we went to a quilting and arts supplies shop for the morning (well, it is rather large...). Sixty pounds and two hours later, I thought that a Sit Down was in order, so we went to a lovely cafe, the Park Charity Cafe, which is run entirely to support two charities, and had Cake and Coffee. Yum. In deference to my gall bladder I had a small cake, a raspberry and lime cupcake, which was truly delicious and very pretty, to boot. And then home again.

Given that I still have some energy left, I'm planning to quilt this afternoon, and, if I still feel okay tomorrow, to pop into the Gallery and cut some mounts, at least. I found a piece of cotton that I'd dye painted/printed, and thought it looked Rather Promising. Photos tomorrow. Meanwhile, I did some frog stitch on this little piece, which was cut out of a Much Larger Piece that wasn't working. It's a deconstructed screen print on a lovely piece of vintage French linen, quite a rough weave, I like it a lot. The photo doesn't really do it justice, unfortunately. I've taken most, but not all of the stitching out, as it made sense in the context of the larger piece, but less so now that I've cropped it. Hopefully, I'll be able to quilt them both today, but looking at the time, I think perhaps one or the other... I'm running out of daylight, and I don't like quilting in artificial light.

Meantime, if anyone knows where I've put my Bondaweb, please do tell. I didn't think it was possible to lose a whole bolt of the stuff, but I have proved myself wrong. So it's out with the spray glue, instead...needs must, etc.

Returning From The Brink Of Disaster...

...or how to survive One Of Those Days. I'm definitely having one, and much of it centres round this piece, called 'Cave Drawings I'. It started as an inkjet print on Evolon, as I'm writing a section about doing just that thing at the moment. I then added some net, and some stitch, but felt it needed Something. A gel transfer, I thought. Forgetting, of course, that I hadn't actually set the ink (I use a spray). So, what happens? Ink runs in one section. No problem, I thought, just whip the gel back off again, which I did, and we'll add something to that area. I know, a print done on Bondaweb.

Problem was, the Bondaweb wasn't sticking well to the backing sheet, so I covered it with greaseproof paper and ironed it. So well, in fact, that it stuck to the greaseproof paper. No, that has never happened to me before, and to be honest, I didn't believe it. So I ran it through the printer, fusible side up. Nifty print of a fossil. Try to iron it onto the piece. It did. Trouble was, the paper didn't want to come off again. Stood for half an hour peeling it off laboriously. Some of the Bondaweb stayed on the piece, some of it didn't. In the meantime, I'd forgotten where exactly the original problem area was. Ahem. And I left a few pieces of the paper on the cloth, as they looked interesting.

Meanwhile, ran two other pieces of Bondaweb through the printer. One was successful; the other was eaten by the printer, and disgorged itself slowly in shreds. That kind of a day? Oh, yes. Still, I'm quite pleased by the work. Wait til you see the next one in the series...if I get that far...