What Do You Do...?

...when you don't have the energy for machine stitch, but you want to do something constructive?  Well...I fished out the box with my 'special' hand dyes, the ones that have been printed, or screen printed, or dye painted.  The jury's out on some of them...I kept them because of the work involved in them, I suspect, rather than because I really want to work with them.  Or they would look good in a large scale project, for which I don't have the energy at present (though things are looking up on that front...but I digress...). 

Here's the box itself... not very big at all, as you can see; I have another one that size with plain hand dyes...not that I consider my hand dyes particularly plain, but that's an entirely different post. 

A variety of colours and textures.  The top one was an attempt at breakdown screen printing...here it is with another one, made far later in the process...

I'm going to make a journal from the top one, but I may cut up the lower one and reassemble it, with or without another cloth or two...actually, it would make a good basis for another series of haiku quilts (find out about them here ).  Might do the same with the top one, actually... it would fit into the ME series really well. 

And then there's this...

It's a lot more orange than this image, but I can't persuade it to behave itself, so you'll just have to make do.  A piece of low water immersion hand dye, which has been overprinted using fabric paints, using two different lino blocks.  Sadly, I don't think I have the leaf shaped lino block any more, and doubt I have the energy to cut another one...it was quite effective.  If there was more of this fabric it would make a good skirt, or some other piece of clothing...as it is, it might become a panel in a larger piece, but I'd need to have a good deal more energy to make that happen.  It'll go back into the box, and wait.  It would certainly make good cushions...but I don't have a room they would fit into... sigh.

There's a lot more cloth in there, but it'll have to wait, too.  Enough is enough.

Making The Most Of Things

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..is sometimes all there is.  Today I'm in bed.  I've been slowly deteriorating over the last couple of months, so this is mostly a preventative measure, and I may be here some time.  My bedroom is possibly the nicest room in the house; it's huge (the size of a double garage), has a gentle colour scheme (white and lilac, predominately) and is light and airy (it has two windows).  There's no view, really, just the grey of roof tiles against the massed grey of the skies.  No camera up here, so no images; the image is from a much earlier blog, a manipulated image of a photograph taken in France, as I recall, the right colours for the room.  I wrote a haiku, though...

layer on layer
grey ethereal softness
smothering the sun

The sky is heavy today, filled with heavy grey clouds.  There was some brightness, just above the rooftops, but that has gone now, though the sun seems to be trying to break through; the haiku reflects a moment, a snapshot in words.  I have a few books to look at, 'The Art of Joan Schultze', one of the few quilters I really admire, 'Art Textiles Of The World : Great Britain Volume 2", which speaks for itself, really, and 'Hat Anthology', ditto.    Lots of images to consider, the kind of books you can dip in and out of without getting overtired.  There are some novels, too, though reading feels too much like hard work today. And my third window, the computer, my window on the world, where my friends live.  It's a small life, but it's mine. And I do my best to make the most of it; there is art in everything, even this.

Tulips.

One of my favourite flowers.  A couple of years ago, I wrote this haiku :

Vaseful of colour

An elegance of tulips

Brightens up the room

Those particular tulips exist only in the poem, of course, but these were on my kitchen windowsill last month... enjoy.

Surprising Myself.

Well... life is full of surprises... I decided to apply for membership in Prism, a well known exhibiting group.  As part of the process, I was required to submit up to six images of work over the past five years.  And that was what was surprising... first, that I'd made as much work as I had. Although given the lack of space in the house, that really should not have been a surprise at all...sigh.  The second, though, was the underlying theme running through my work.  I had always thought that it was 'about' emotions...and, of course, it is.  But it's predominately 'about' landscape...inner and outer.  I thought I would show you the images I have sent to them, to see if you agree with me.

Norfolk Flint.

This is a  manipulated photograph, taken of an old flint wall, and printed onto Lutradur XL.  Instead of stitch, there are places where I have burned away the fabric; the frame has lighting built into it, so that you can choose to light it or not.  I had never seen a flint wall before coming to Norfolk, and took a lot of photographs... the best of them are like paintings featuring different sections of beautiful stone.

Norfolk Landscape.

This piece celebrates the endless skies and fields of Norfolk, broken up, on occasion, by rows of trees... This is a monoprint with additional details painted in, then stitched.

Inner Landscapes IV

Pieced cloth, mainly hand dyes, edged with commercial cloth and sari ribbon.  A thin layer of Lutradur, transfer dyed and hand stitched, partially obscures the piece, but can be moved, a metaphor for depression.  The colours are of the Highlands, while the stitching is reminiscent of the flints of Norfolk.

Reliquary

Another Norfolk/Highland composite; this time, the colours are Norfolk in autumn and winter, while the found objects that decorate it come mainly from the Highlands.

Linescapes I : Rewriting The Landscape

I wrote about this piece a couple of days ago.

Visual Haiku.

Small, hand stitched pieces made to specific rules; I have written about them in several posts, with a summary of the 'rules' here.  In their way, they too seem to be landscapes...

This is the first part of the application process, and I have my fingers crossed.  If I don't get through, though, I have to say that this has been a very useful process to go through.  I had thought that I was quite clear about the way my work was going; this has been a useful refocussing of my attention onto the really important bits.


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Sometimes...

things fall into place.  I write a daily haiku.  Well, okay, sometimes I don't, but then sometimes six arrive on one day...so it all balances out.  I was driving to see a friend this morning, and noticed a red poppy in the verge.  I thought that its petals, moving in the wind, looked like skirts...reminiscent of the famous Marilyn Munroe pose with the air vent.  And then, later, in my friend's garden, I found this flower... and it all fell into place...

Frilly, flirty skirts

Falling out from a green heart

With pink tinged crown.

These poppies look nothing like the wild poppies... here's a view of one in full flower... but the skirt comparison is even better here.  Nature is wonderful.

A Haiku Of A Different Colour...

I said that I'd picked two lots of fabric last time... here is the second selection.

I've written a few kitty haiku in my time... but this will be the first time I've featured cats in a haiku quilt.  I have made cat quilts before... as well as the cat hater's quilt I made for my husband (another story, for another time...), I have an occasional series called Mooncat... check him out here.

I think this particular combination of fabrics works very nicely; but I don't see it as restful, as the haiku quilts were intended to be.  It will be interesting to see how that turns out, if it will be possible to make quilts that embody stillness, or the movement towards stillness, with fabrics that are not of themselves restful.  I'm looking forward to that particular challenge.

Colour Blind?

No, I'm not.  But I am easily led astray.  Looking at one of my friend Angela Huddart's posts on Facebook, I remembered that I wanted to continue the series of visual haiku I had called 'Meditation in Purple And Gold'.  This little series I talked about a little here.  Each quilt was made to a strict set of rules (as a haiku is written), and each one had a piece of a particular fabric, a lovely commercial purple with gold metallic swirls.   Sadly, I don't have any more of it, so I can't make more of the same.  And as Robin is still without a job (anyone want a good FD?), I don't want to spend any money (I don't have it to spend...), so buying more of it was out of the question.  So, I went a-hunting.  For purples.  For one cloth with a large scale print (ish), one with a variety, and one that was purple and gold.  Easy, right?

No.  I don't have any.  Nothing like.  I found some purple batiks, and put one to one side, but the rest didn't work... though I did like the look of a dark grey/almost black fabric with random leaves on it, so that was put to one side also.  Then there was the interesting print with orange in it...and a cat fabric...and something else...they went to a different side (as it were...), but with the same intention, of making meditative quiltlets.

I thought for a minute that I would have to buy some fabric after all... but then thought about the hand dyes.  I hadn't used them in the meditation quilts, but thought that I might print on one with gold paint... and above is the final selection.  Yeah, okay, the hand dye is closer to pink than purple, in that section at least, but it works really nicely with the rest of the cloth.  So we shall see what we get.  And you're not getting to see the other set...I didn't take a photo.

And as I was coming out of the cloth studio, I spotted a large piece of purple organza:

Okay, more lilac, really, with interesting areas of blue.  There must be a metre and a half, maybe two metres in the length.  It is crying out to be hand stitched, possibly in gold thread.  I'm whining in my head even as I type, because I know what a pain that's going to be... but you know how it is.  When the fabric talks, the artist listens...and gets on with it.  Wish me luck, I'll need it.  But first, I need to iron it...

Reculer Pour Mieux Sauter

It's just so elegant in French... it means, going backwards, to go forwards. I suspect I've used it in a title before, but it's worth restating.   I'm in the process of clearing out and reorganising my fabric rooms, upstairs in the attic.  I'd like to say it looks worse than it is, but I suspect it's the other way round.  I've shown you pictures of my chaotic workroom before, so I've put up some eye candy instead.  Much more fun to look at than mess, however creative it might have been at some point.  I've got a bag of scrap to go to a school, a bag of fabric for the Hub and I've surprised myself...more of that in a moment.

I've been giving myself a hard time recently, about my work.  How it's admired, but doesn't sell.  How, much as I'd love to work as a creativity coach, I haven't got out there to persuade people to try it, even though I know I'm good at it, and have a suitable background.  How I didn't write a book last year, despite planning it.  How the kits haven't sold...and how I haven't promoted them enough.  Me, me, me.  When you work on your own, it really is all down to you.  Above all, I worried that I've been so busy trying to make work that other people might like, so I could earn  some money (my husband is currently out of work, so there's no money coming in), that I'd lost sight of my own work.

Not a pretty picture, is it?  Whilst I might sound as if I'm being hard on myself (and heaven knows I'm good at it...), it's really the truth.  All, except the last bit.  What I've discovered is that there has been a lot of work going on around the edges in the last two years or so.  I know it, because I've found it, in piles, waiting to be developed, hidden under Yet More Fabric....I can't believe how much fabric there is, I swear it has been breeding up there during the summer...  And I haven't looked at the hand dyes, yet... argh...

So... I've decided to Get A Grip.  I'm going to finish clearing the studios, and see what else I find, and then make A Plan.  And, because I know that I have had this revelation before, and forgotten it, I'm going to write it down, but not in such detail that I drown in it (which is what happened last year).  Give myself room to make.  Stick with the daily haiku idea (twenty days, something like twenty four haiku), which is quickly turning into a journal of sorts, with some illustration.  Not quite an artist's journal, but interesting, nonetheless.
Scared?  Hell, yes.  Confident?  Not really.  But it does feel right...so I'm just going to think less, and do more.  That's the catch line for the plan... think less, do more.  And yes, I've said it all before, in public, too.  Hopefully, this time, I'll be able to stick with the plan.  Wish me luck, I think I need it.

The image above is 'Where'.  I made it several years ago.  It's made from hand dyes; the word 'where' was discharge dyed on one piece.  Then, I painted over the top, using acrylic dyes, after extensive machine stitching.  I love texture, and this piece has it by the bucketload.

Finally...

I got round to working on the piece I told you about here; in fact, it's pretty much finished, though I'm still debating about the foiling.  And one or two other bits and pieces... I don't think a piece is ever really finished; the trick, though, is to get to a point where you accept that you have done everything possible, and it is at least okay as it is... And that's where I'm at here.  You may not agree (feel free to differ, that 's what the comments box is for!).  Here it is;

A fair amount has happened since you last saw it.  Having drawn in the skeleton of the leaves, I got really quite disheartened: I thought it was awful.  Which is pretty much where I left it in the last post, telling you (and most of all, myself), that it had a long way to go.  I picked it up again a couple of days ago, and started by adding the hand stitch, in variegated hand dyed yarn by Sassalynne (I rarely ever dye my own yarn, too much of a fuss, though now that I'm getting into natural dyes,  I might change my mind).

The stitch helped.  A lot.  It added much needed texture I started in the top left hand side, carefully avoiding the leaf shapes, and as I approached the dark green section, I happened to spot a lutradur leaf made from rust dyed fabric.  It wasn't rocket science to realise that it would look good on that section... so on it went.  I don't normally add things like that until last, but somehow, it felt important to do it right away.  More stitching, and a bit of raking about to find another lutradur leaf.  That produced not just the leaf, but a 'seed pod' that I had felted, which seemed to fit very nicely under the text.  The second lutradur leaf was then added right up at the top.

I haven't stitched anywhere that I've added an embellishment, other than a stitch or two to hold them on the work.  That's not my usual practice, but they are very light, and don't really need any stitch to reinforce the areas that they are lying on.  Which left the text, and the leaves.  The text was easier, so I worked on that next.

I had said in a FB conversation that I wanted to make it difficult for people to find and read the text, possibly hiding it underneath things, or around things, or spreading it around the work.  What I didn't want, though, was for it to be difficult to read, and the gold on that green/yellow cloth was exactly that.  So I took a dark blue fine liner, and rewrote the text, a major improvement.

And then there was Those Leaves.  I really didn't want to hand stitch them, and when I wondered what that was about, I realised that they, too, needed to be relatively free of obvious stitch.  I wanted to outline the leaves, not make them stand out as a direct result of the thickness of the thread.  So I machine stitched them in variegated thread, which made them puff up slightly, but without visual interference from the thread.  If you see what I mean...

And there it is.  It's a small piece, about the size of the laptop I'm working on, and I'll probably put it into a mount for display.  It's title : Highland Leaves.  The colours make me think of Scotland in autumn.

Quilting Continues...

...on my (now overdue) grand daughter's quilt.   I can't show you any images...but I have four different quilting patterns in each of the four main panels on the quilt, have left the sashing untouched, as yet, and am in the process of quilting the borders...three down, one to go.  So, instead of talking about it, I thought I'd show you a Haiku.  I've already written about the idea of Haiku, here, and said in the comments that I was thinking more about it.  This particular piece is an experiment, a sketch.  I had made the little quiltlet several months ago, using my own hand dyes, and it has been lying around, waiting to be quilted.  It reminds me of Highland fields and hills in autumn, and  I thought that I would quilt leaf shapes into it.  Then, I thought it might be interesting to draw them, instead...so I did.  (Remember this is very much work in progress; it will have a lot more done to it than this.).

Looking at it, I started thinking haiku...and wrote one, inspired by the colours and the leaves; here it is.

It is written in gold marker pen, and as such is quite difficult to photograph, but this gives you an idea.  It says;

Green turns brown and gold
Dances with the cold, wild wind
Lies in moulded piles.

There's a lot still to be done.  The drawing is a combination of that gold marker plus a brown Inktense pencil.  I'm trying to decide what to do...whether to work more in pencil, or in stitch.  I do think it needs More Leaves, but that will have to wait for now.  I also think that it needs some foiling at some point.  And hand stitch, not machine.  Fortunately, it's not a large piece at all (if I could reach it without dislodging the sleeping cat on my legs, I would measure it... .    If you have any thoughts, feel free to leave a comment.  I hope to get this finished before Christmas; it will be my pick up and put down when I feel like it piece of work for the moment.  A nice change from machine stitching my soon to arrive grand daughter's quilt.

Continuing To Struggle...

... as my Granny would have said, there's nothing else for it.  I'm continuing to work on the piece I showed you yesterday, though I'm fast coming to the conclusion that depression and hand stitch do not mix well; three times, I've stabbed myself with my own needle, hard enough to draw blood...sigh.  So I think I'll go and do some more monoprinting, instead.

Here's a close up.  The piece is called 'Out Of Kilter'; the circles appear at first glance to be in a structured grid pattern, but they aren't really.  Some are ovals, some are circles.  It looks like I feel... a regular person on the outside, shambolic on the inside...out of kilter.

The next stage is to add some lime green crosses, I think.  No idea why, except that the colour is important.  They won't be regular, either, I shouldn't think.  For the meantime, though, I'm off to paint...

Haiku

Those of you who know me from Facebook, will know that I've been writing random haiku, recently. Like this one;
                                   Fabric covered floor;
                                   Beauty coming together
                                   In tiny pieces.

 Not sure why I've started writing, all of a sudden.  Except that I've always loved poetry, and have written the odd poem.  Haiku appeals to me because it has a clear structure; always three lines, a certain number of syllables to each line, and usually a surprise in it, a leap of faith of some kind on the part of the writer.  Not sure that I manage that third part, but I figure that might come with practice.

I realised that part of what makes the Meditation In Purple And Gold pieces coherent, is a similar tight structure.  Always three pieces of that purple and gold fabric.  Always three fabrics. So, I thought I would make some more pieces, but with slightly different 'rules'.  Again, three fabrics.  Postcard sized, to reflect the shortness of the haiku.  Stitch.  And the addition of an optional embellishment or surface design technique.

Lets look at each one, briefly, in close up.

This was the first one I made.  I sat looking at it for a while, wondering what to do with it, finally deciding to make a spiral.  All three fabrics are hand dyes; the last is painted with fabric paints.
The second piece was easier;

The base fabric was a foam marbled blue colour, with two pieces applique'd onto it.  Because it already had a form, of sorts, it was easy enough to work out how to stitch it.  The stitches are deliberately irregular; I think of stitch as mark making, where irregularity adds interest.  I'm not particularly interested in making a pattern here.  The third, though, was difficult...

Three pieces of fabric stitched together, two hand dyes and a commercial fabric.  It had no obvious patterning in the fabric at all, and I struggled to know what to do with it until I spotted a small piece of blue/green yarn, which I stitched onto the fabric in a way that is reminiscent of the River series I began some time ago (must make some more...).


Focus.  If you want to make simple work, you have to have focus.  It'll be interesting to see where this takes me.  What do you think?