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. 

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...

Rework and Review.

'Nothing succeeds as planned'; one of my favourite quotations (from Joseph Heller).  You'll remember this piece...

It has been sitting on the back of the sofa, waiting for...actually, not sure what either of us is waiting for... but I noticed that some of the yarn was distinctly coming adrift.  This started up One Of Those Conversations in my head.  You know the sort, the apportioning blame sort... you aren't patient enough, you didn't do this well enough, you idiot...I'm sure you get the general drift.  Thoughts like that don't help.  Reader, I refelted it.  That helped. 

So...the review... because some of those thoughts, reformatted, are in fact quite useful.  Working out what the problem was, might help in the future.  It just doesn't need to be a judgemental, blaming process; rather, it should be a detached analysis of the piece and its problems.  So... what was the problem? 

Mostly, the thinner parts of the yarn weren't properly attached, so they pulled free of the backing.  The backing itself was difficult to felt through, partly because the cotton base was really quite tightly woven, and partly because there's a mixture of wool and silk fibres on the top.  And yes, partly because I didn't spend enough time on the felting process, so the thicker areas, which did felt reasonably well, were not as attached as they could have been.  The rework has solved all those problems, just by investing more time into the process.  I'm glad, because the fallback solution would have been to couch the yarn, and the problems I was having with the felting, would have been just the same with a conventional needle. 

We all need to rework, sometimes.  The trick is not to beat yourself up about it.  When you catch yourself doing that, switch to asking yourself questions.  Start with, what's the problem?  Stick with the facts, and the solutions, and get the work done.  And learn from it: I know I have.

Gotcha!

Well... the studio is nearly finished (hurrah).  What I couldn't find, however, were my hat blocks.  Yes, the lovely wooden, heavy, expensive things.  Funny how the easy to replace, cheap stuff never goes missing, huh?  So Robin very kindly went out into the garage...and couldn't find them anywhere.  Until we looked inside the Baby Belling boiler... hurrah.  Gotcha.  This is an old image, from the Little Green Shed... wonder what happened to that painting, come to think of it.  Probably given away in The Great Purge.  Shame, really, it would have fitted in here really nicely....sigh. 

I've found a couple of hats as I go along, including the little fascinator that I needlefelted with yellow yarn to look like a miniature cake; all it needs is a cherry to sit on the top, must try to find something appropriate.  I do have a red glass bead in the shape of a heart, which isn't quite what I had in mind, but in all else fails...  I really do want to get back to making hats, so watch this space.  Now that the room is nearly complete, I don't have much of an excuse.  It's been a while since I did make a hat, so it'll be interesting to see how well I remember the process.  Fortunately, I have a book or two...or six... to refer to.

The other thing Robin found was...yes, you've guessed it, my felting needles.  I now have enough felting needles to have a party with, anyone want to come round and felt...? 

Carrying Further On...

...with the felted piece I showed you here.  Reader, I succumbed.  I did not wait to find the box of felting needles I know is somewhere around in the rest of the stuff...rather, I bought another box of felting needles.  Only three, admittedly.  I'm hopeful that this will be the only duplicate I have to buy...sigh. 

So, today, I did some further work on the piece. 

To me, it's a huge improvement on what it was.  I rather like it, though I don't think it's finished.  It reflects the kind of work that you might see in my sketchbooks, these constant curves.  I've been drawing like this since my teens, but up until now it has very rarely ever put in an appearance in my textile work.  I think that needs to change.  

The curves are partly designed to reflect the curves in the felted wool, but also reflect the machine stitching already in the piece.  Here are a couple of close ups, as the general views don't really show you the stitch, in light and dark metallic threads.  

Looking at these, the stitching also reflects my drawings.  I've said for years that stitch to me is about drawing, about mark making, rather than about creating pattern.  And yet, there's pattern here.  Something to think about; but first, I need to think about how I'm going to develop this piece further.  

Carrying On.

One of the things I do have in the new, as yet unestablished studio, is a number of UFOs, things that I thought, six months or more ago, that had enough potential for me not to bin them, or pass them to someone else to do something with, as was the fate of a reasonable amount of stuff.  Looking at them now, I'm not so sure I shouldn't just have binned them... and certainly this piece in its original state was not particularly promising.  I had taken a rectangle of cotton hand dye, and felted white wool onto its surface...sadly, I didn't take a photo of it in that state.  It didn't look good.  I don't like giving up, though, and thought that a bit of surgery was in order...so I trimmed it round the edges of the wool, to produce this :

(Note the new light grey carpet, suitable for taking photographs of random textile items...which was not really why I chose it, but...).  I contemplated cutting holes in it, too, but decided that was A Step Too Far.  It was, however, a distinct improvement, so only the trimmings hit the bin.  It sat like that for a few days, and I started to go through the stuff in the studio.  One of the things I found was a sponge, with a single felting needle embedded in it.  Bingo!  Going through the boxes with yarn and threads produced a purple variegated wool, and the piece started to take shape...until the damn needle broke.  Yes, I have loads more.  No, I can't find them.  Yes, I'm stuck, and so is the piece, looking like this... 

(This time, it's on the new coffee table, perfect height and colour for photos).  Improved?  I think so.  Stuck?  Oh yes, absolutely.  I'm planning to do some hand stitch, but really don't want to start that until I've finished with the needle felting, as I suspect I'll add a little more at the top left hand side.  Basically, I attached the yarn to emphasise curves in the felting, which is why I started where I did.  I think I'll echo the downward sweep of the yarn, and then double back to balance out the piece.  Incidentally, I rather like the yarn curving out over the edge, but it's not particularly practical, so it will be felted onto the bottom as originally intended. 

One partially down, several to go.

Funny...

...how things change.  And quite quickly, too, even though it doesn't feel that way at the time.  My last blog was in January this year, and said that I wouldn't be making, or blogging, for a full year.  Wrong...or at least, wrong-ish.  I have been making...textiles, changes and a new workshop...but more of that later.

I'd like to say I'd come to terms with the ME which has changed my life so dramatically, but I'd be lying if I said I had.  It would me more truthful to say that I am going through a great deal of grief... coming to terms with ones limitations will do that to one.  My old life has died, my new life is a work in process... emotionally, that's a lot to process.  Interestingly, I'm not depressed...which for a life long depressive, is, well, quite surprising, really.  In a good way.

I have been spring cleaning my creative life... instead of a room full of fabric, I now have a couple of boxes.  About ten carloads of materials have made their way to new homes, with a bit more still to go.  I'm debating what to do with Big Bertha, my large scale printer, because I am not physically able to work on large pieces, so she seems a bit surplus to requirements (contact me if you're interested... she will be priced Very Attractively).

It's probably easier to tell you what's left.  What's left, is materials for drawing, print making, hat making, felting and hand stitching on a small scale...think the size of a napkin (a vintage napkin).  Embellishments, and some beads.  Two sewing machines and an embellisher.   And that's pretty much it.  When you consider the range of things I used to do, that's pretty narrow.  Felt making is way down the list at present, because I don't have the energy.  Hand stitching is it...that and thinking.   And looking.  Of course, I haven't forgotten the skills and techniques I have used, which is just as well, given my next project...

I recently met Anita O'Neill, the owner of Eaubrink Studios, near Kings Lynn.  The location is fabulous... really spacious, well equipped studios in an amazing location, a lake, sheep, chickens, a lovely garden... what's not to like... and the last piece of my personal jigsaw fitted into place.  I miss teaching... particularly working with people on creativity...so I offered to run a six week series of workshops for Eaubrink on just that topic.  Starting on the 18th October, the course is called 'Finding Your Voice'.  The blurb says; "This is a series of six weekly workshops lasting four hours each time, which encourage you to look closely at the world around you, record what you’ve seen (in a variety of different ways) and then turn your findings into creative projects. Although the focus of these six weeks will be working in textile, the workshops are suitable for anyone who wants to learn how to turn ideas into finished art works, including painting, printmaking, photography and writing; opportunities to try all of these things will be available during the six weeks."  And the gem at the end, is a reunion after six months, to review the work that has come out of the workshops, with the intention of creating an exhibition.  

If it's something you fancy doing, please contact Anita at Eaubrink.  This will be the last time I teach in Norfolk; we will be moving in the Spring, heading further north to be closer to our family. There are two places left...so run, don't walk, if you're interested.  More about it in my next post.

The work... the piece on the top is napkin sized... a monoprint, which was hand stitched using two different hand dyed threads, with the gold circle in a metallic thread...which doesn't gleam in the photograph, but does in real life.  The middle piece is a wet felted base, with skeleton leaf inclusions, and couched yarn on top of the leaves.  The one below is another felt piece, heavily stitched, with yarn felted on top as a feature.  All three pieces were WIPs from before I became ill, finished off in the last few weeks.

Felting Frenzy...

is what seems to be going on right now. I was in the shed on Friday with my 'apprentice', Gemma, and taught her how to wet felt. One of the things we made was this short scarf, made with wool fibres dyed by my friend and fellow Etsian, Kary, aka The Knotty Sheep , gentle lilacs and blues. I added some white silk fibres, for texture and colour. The scarf is short, and looks like an unstructured collar when you wear it. I can't decide whether to fasten it with a brooch or to make a ribbon or Evolon flower to fasten it. Similarly, I can't decide whether to keep it or sell it. That last one is not much of a problem, though...there will be other, different, possibly better scarves to come.

Gemma took to felt making like a duck to water, as she always does. It struck me, as we were working together, that the principles of most techniques can be taught in about an hour, if the student is paying attention. The rest of the learning is down to practice and imagination. All you need for that is time and confidence. Try it...what do you have to lose?

Felt Texture.

I love the texture of felt. I spent Friday in the shed, experimenting with wool tops, silk and thread ends. This particular piece started off as a rich brown, with the white layered on top of it. The purple pieces are my hand dyed silk fibres. This is a small piece, waiting for stitch. I might just do that by hand, add texture to texture... The purple makes me think of tree trunks; perhaps some blue stitching to suggest a sky...tiny blue random stitches, a pale blue.

I had forgotten just how much I enjoy wet feltmaking. It is, quite simply, painting with wool. All that glorious colour and texture... right up my street. I'm not an expert at this by any means and I don't pretend to be any such thing. I just love doing it, and I don't do it often enough. I don't use my embellisher often enough, either... Must Try Harder...

So...what do you love doing, and don't do often enough?

Rats...

I wasn't able to cut any mounts for the pieces I stitched, all twenty of them...mainly because the mount cutter had been borrowed, and trust me, I wasn't going to attempt it without one! So, instead, I opted for the retail therapy option. I've enjoyed knitting my scarf, and thought they might well make good Christmas presents...so I went into a local wool shop and shopped til I dropped (three balls...I put them on the counter after that...). I ended up with the grand total of eleven balls of wool, a jaw dropping (for me) £45 worth. Still, if that gives me Christmas presents for all my female friends, that'll be okay... I might even stick a couple on Etsy, depending how they go.

Knitting, to me, is boring. However, knitting something like a scarf, which is relatively contained, isn't so bad... my boredom threshold isn't as low as all that, after all... so we'll see. Meanwhile, I am woman, see me knit...

The image of course, is my new scarf (that's the pink frothy thing in the bottom left hand side of the image), and my new knitting stash; gorgeous colours and textures. Might even stitch into some of these, or embellish them... watch this space. And of course, there's always felting... I've wanted to get back into wet felting for a while... I feel some scarves coming on that way, too...
Just what I needed, another obsession...