The Only Advantage...

..to being stuck in bed, is that, occasionally, someone gives you flowers, in this case, my lovely daughter in law, Tracey.  Gladioli are among my favourite flowers, graceful, as sensual as lilies, but without the poisonous, staining pollen.  They last for ages, too, always a bonus. 

I'm not able to stand very long, so I quickly took a succession of images.  The light wasn't good, either, so they're a bit on the blurry side, but I rather like that.   I also like that they gradually become slightly more abstract as they go along.   The flowers won't last for ever, but the images will last for as long as I keep them.  See what you think.

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.

Getting Rusty...

...or maybe that should be, rustier... I found quite a lot of the rust dyed silk, and I'm working my way through it.  I stitched this a couple of nights ago, a very simple little piece.  The shape of the rust motif just begged to be turned into a flower, a daisy of sorts, perhaps... and the 'stem' is made from semi felted hand dyed yarn.  After the frenzy of stitch that was the last piece I showed you, I think this is a great reminder that often, less is more.

Some of the rust dyed silk isn't terribly interesting, though, so I have taken a couple of smaller pieces and bundled them up with onion skins, oak leaves and birch bark (I almost typed birk barch..err.. birk works, barch, though, doesn't, except as slang (look it up...)).  Here's one of them...

Because it's such a small piece, I confess that I just popped in what was lying around from a previous bundling session.  I like working in that kind of random way, not knowing what will appear.  It's how I work in general.  It's fun.

It's Scary...

...how quickly time goes by. It's Monday again, and Monday evening to boot, and I somehow lost the weekend... I did have a meeting with another textile person today, to talk about a possible collaboration, which will be fun. And then there was flower arranging class, with a traditional tied arrangement, all roses and alstromeria, not to mention lots of foliage. Photos tomorrow... I love the roses, they are flame coloured, and variegated...will be taking a number of photos of them at different stages of their life, to see what I can do with them on Big Bertha.

I am, however, excused from chicken feeding and dog walking duties; Haydn and Judy are back from their holiday. I will, however, be wandering about Dereham Common nevertheless, with or without dogs, collecting bits and pieces for the next arrangement. Watch this space! Oh, and I'm going to experiment with wreath making, tomorrow, using fabrics. That should be entertaining. I used a wreath form as part of the arrangement this evening, and discovered that it's not as easy as it looks to cover it with foliage... but I managed. Eventually. Phew. Fabric should be Much More Manageable... but you never know.

And in honour of the arrangement, an image of part of a flower.

KISS...

is the order of the day with these small pieces. It stands for 'keep it simple, stupid', and is good advice for anyone, along with the idea that less is more. This is a struggle for me...I do a lot of quilting on most pieces, though more recently, I've been aiming to give the impression that I'm drawing with thread, rather than quilting or stitching. I rarely ever stitch for pattern, preferring to create texture and/or line. I'm learning, though, that it's difficult to get texture out of canvas, so will stick with Evolon when printing for stitch. Whilst I have to prepare the Evolon, I much prefer the quilted result, though canvas is okay for line work.

This image, though, does show a bit of texture, which isn't really surprising given that there is a lot of stitch in a relatively small area. It hasn't distorted the canvas, one of the advantages of working with a stiffer cloth than usual. I did decide not to add any more stitch, though; I thought it would make the piece far too fussy if I did. See what you think. And I don't think I need to identify the flower for you...

I sat today and stitched a pile of these small pieces, no bigger than 5" square. Tomorrow, I'll cut mounts for them, and see how they look. If I'm happy, they'll go onto my Etsy shop, which I intend to reopen next week or so (yes, I really am feeling better!). And I'm thinking that some of the images, scaled up, might make nice tshirts, if just for me, so I've opened a Zazzle account, to try it out. Might make some personalised mugs for Christmas presents!

Changing My Mind...

 

is, of course, something I do on  a regular basis.  Now that I'm beginning to recover properly from the gall bladder surgery that knocked me sideways earlier on this year, I'm starting to review what I want to be making.  And to my eternal surprise, that includes at least one traditional quilt.  A very simple four patch, in gentle, pastel colours.  With flowers.  Hmm.  Not a style usually associated for me.  And this quilt is for me...to sit on my sofa, so I can wrap myself in it whenever I please.  It'll be called Comfort And Joy; named even although it isn't an art quilt.

Those of you who live nearby know that it was my intention to sell my commercial fabric.  Since most of my work is around manipulated photographs at present, I  figured that this was a good idea...it's only taking up room.  I looked through it this morning, and discovered that...well...I just can't do it.  It's lovely fabric.  It's my fabric.  And I can imagine using it, too.  I can even imagine teaching a scrap quilt class...  'Perfect Squares'... just exploring what can be done with this most flexible of shapes.  Fun, I think...

No, I don't know what's come over me, either.  But hey.  Change is a good thing.  And I'm ready for it.  The image is one I'll be working with soon, probably on Evolon.  It looks as if it wants to be very tactile, perhaps with beads...  hurrah.  

Flower Power

I said yesterday that I would show you the results of the stitch I did yesterday. True to my word, here I am. I had prepared a piece of pale pink hand dye by painting loose flower shapes onto it using thickened Brusho; then I simply stitched into it to produce the work you see above. I'm pleased with both of these pieces, for different reasons. The heavily stitched piece has enormous energy, it seems to leap from the cloth. I used three different threads, all variegated, using the blue to add definition after the textural stitching had been added to the petals and centre of the image. The distortion produced by the stitching makes the piece puff up in an interesting and organic way, very like real life. I intend to mount and possibly frame it, a simple box frame, probably, and possibly coloured using Brusho to match the piece...don't know. There again, a simple gold edge might be good...we'll see. Or possibly Haydn will tell me what to do... when you've found a good framer, you don't argue with him! Especially when he takes good photographs of textiles!

The second piece is quite different. It's simple, a thread sketch compared to a fully developed piece, using the machine as a kind of pencil. It seems to want to be combined with other pieces in a quilt of sorts. So I guess I'll be making more of these wee pieces, if only to combine them together. I like its simplicity.

I'm not usually a representational sort of a person, but recently, I find myself increasingly interested in landscapes and the natural world. That, for me, is a real shift in perspective. The work I'm doing with Bertha uses images from the natural world, some recognisable, some less so. And there's a lot of rust dyed fabric waiting to be used. I've mostly rust dyed habotai silk, and of course, there is a chapter on rust dyeing in the new Exquisite Evolon book, which I'll have with me at Festival of Quilts. This time, though, I've rust dyed some vintage French cotton, it has an amazing texture by itself, and the rust enhances it enormously. I'm looking forward to working with that, too. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this new burst of creativity.