Sorting...

...and more sorting...  It's interesting to see how much fabric I don't have.  Instead of multiple large boxes, I have two small boxes of commercial fabric.  One of them contains my collection of cat fabric...I made Robin a small quilt called 'The Cat Hater Quilt', a long time ago (it's a long story), and always meant to make a bed sized quilt along the same lines...but never did.  Couldn't bring myself to get rid of the fabric in the recent purge, though.  It's mostly fat quarter size and smaller, and I dare say at some point I'll get round to The Quilt.  The other box has mostly scrap in it, some of it donated by a couple of kind friends when I realised that I really had overdone The Great Purge, though there are also some FQs I bought recently, just in order to have something to play with in the rental, where I actually did have a workroom, as opposed to this house, where, at present, I have a pile of stuff (sigh). 

And then there's the two partially filled boxes, with dyed lutradur and evolon...well, mostly dyed, some of it is painted.  I still hold the line that paint is Not A Good Thing to use on either of these fabrics; lutradur, because, unless you're using watercolour paints, you take away the semi transparent nature of the cloth, which is what makes it special, and evolon, because paint ruins the hand, that lovely suede/velvet like feeling.  Here they are :

As you can see, there's not a huge amount, though I do still have lutradur on the roll, which is perhaps a tad excessive for what I need these days, but I dare say I'll get through it.  I might combine the boxes, save a bit of space, which is at a premium now that I'm down to one room.  Having said that most of this fabric is transfer dyed (or printed), the piece at the very top of the evolon box (the lower image) is quite interesting.  It was coloured using encaustic wax, just to see what happened.  Unsurprisingly, the fabric became really quite stiff, but the texture of the stitch still shows through quite clearly; I didn't think that it would.  I thought it might be interesting to make applique elements using encaustic...in theory, at least, you could attach them to the surface using heat, as the wax would melt, then resolidify, and cling to the base fabric.  Must try it out some time. Another one for the list.

The only other fabric I have is for dyeing, probably more than I need, silk and linen as well as cotton.  I'm used to dyeing in big quantities, hence the volume; I tended to buy dyeing fabric whenever I saw it at a good price.  Haven't quite decided what to do with it all.  There's no way that this type of fabric will fit neatly into a small box... under bed sized box it is....and possibly two of them... just have to work out where to put them.  If all else fails, I dare say they can go under an actual bed.


I doubt I'm going to get anything done today.  Yesterday was stressful for all sorts of reasons, and I'm feeling like a wrung-out dishcloth...and given that I'd like to go out this evening, to the Embroiderer's Guild in Linlithgow, I think today will be spent on the sofa.  I lead such an exciting life...snort...

Collaboration...

is fun.  One of my Facebook friends, Mary Kaye Catone,  is a keen photographer, and regularly posts her images.  I just as regularly say, that could do with stitch.  This time, she said, go for it.  This is the original image;

I love the textures and colours in this, and my initial intention was to make some long stitches in parallel running down the way.  Because I wanted to work small, I printed it out on some commercially prepared cotton...well, actually, it turned out to be silk organza.  That proved to be an additional bonus, as you will see.  But the transparency both added and detracted; I found myself struggling to put something behind the image that worked well.  In the end, I tried a stitched piece, which worked like a charm.  It was a piece of lutradur to which I had added encaustic paints, and then stitched.  Here's the back of the finished piece, to give you an idea of what I started with;

And here is how it turned out... 

and yes, I used those long stitches I was talking about earlier, though there is a row of small stitches at either long side, to keep the thing together.  And that's that, right?

Well, actually, no.  The thing about using silk organza, is that a lot of ink gets transferred to the backing paper.  And it would be wasteful to ignore that, right?

This is Ghost Tree, made from the backing paper, collaged onto mountboard, with swirls of shimmery medium to suggest mist.  I'm quite pleased. If you get very close up and personal with the piece, you can see silver leaf shapes drawn onto the board, my original intention, but somehow, it wasn't enough.  

So there you go; two for the price of one...and counting.  I still have some scraps to use up, probably in another collage.  Collaboration is fun...why not try it?

Bluescape

It has been an emotional few days. And when the going gets tough, the tough go in the shed and play... in this case, with my encaustic paints. Not something I've done in a while, though I have been using the set up to melt soy wax for batik, of which more another time. I made several pieces, most of which are not worth talking about, but I rather like the piece in the image, 'Bluescape'. I have a lot to learn about working with encaustics, but that doesn't stop me enjoying the journey, or the various outputs along the way. Bluescapes feels free and spontaneous, which I hope are qualities that fill my work. In fact, I feel another piece coming on, based on Bluescape... so I'm off to play some more, in cloth, this time. Maybe a bit larger, though; this piece is a mere 7" by 5".

As well as encaustics, I quilted 'moon cat I' yesterday, and there are at least another two in that series. I have Twitter to thank for that; someone commented about another cat piece I had made, and told me about her white cat, staring at moonlight. So I made moon cat as a response to her description. So there are more of those to be worked on, too. Just the thing to be doing as the snow flurries in the air... not a day for the shed, methinks, despite the very efficient heater.

Finally...

the shed is up! It doesn't have windows, and the roof felt has to be added, but it's up. Hurrah. And the builders are back tomorrow to finish it off. Double hurrah!

My scanner stopped working; as it is up on a high shelf, I got on a chair to see what was going on. Pressed all the right buttons, got it to work again...and fell off the chair. Thumped myself against a wall, bringing the chair down with me (don't ask, I don't know, I just did, okay!). Chair thumped me on the chin, thump on chin knocked head back against the wall. Ouch. If I bruise tomorrow, and I doubtless will, the builders will be wondering...

I did, however, get a visit from my friend Heather, who has just been to Houston. She came bearing gifts, and very welcome they were too, the SAQA catalogue from the show they put on at Houston, some fabric and threads too...lucky me! So all in all, it's been a good day, despite the bruising!

Having fixed the scanner, here is the picture I was trying to show you; a couple of small encaustic pieces, slightly bigger than ACEO size, done on khadi paper. I started an altered book today, but only got as far as the cover...I'll show you when it has moved on a bit. Meanwhile, I'm going to stop typing...must have bashed my wrist too. Poor me....

Cracked It...

The thing to do is to put the picture up first, then write the post...that way, I don't have to mess about with a picture here, and text there.

This is the face again, amended and some more wax added. It is purely an experiment, and is made on khadi paper, there are about five layers of wax on it now. Click on it to enlarge the image, and you'll see that the face is still there. I think another layer of wax, probably, and I'll call it done.

I spent the afternoon working in oils, the first time I've done so in a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and suspect that might be how I spend tomorrow and Friday, too.

It's Time...

to get out the encaustic stuff again. The temperature is low, low, low, my feet are cold and the conservatory isn't the warmest place to work. I was reminded of how much I enjoy working with encaustics when I came across this altered book that I made with encaustics. I'm hoping the weather will be better tomorrow, so I can take more pictures of it...meanwhile, you get to see the cover.

The shed arrived yesterday at 6.20am, an inordinately early time for anything to be delivered. The builders, however, failed to appear today, so it's still piled up beside the house, somewhat damply. Grr. Other than that, all's well with the world, really!