On A Roll...

...with the monoprint thing... it's getting interesting.  I started with a painting, and then took two monoprints from it, one on cloth, one on prepainted paper.  I suspect the painting isn't quite finished...but I'll need to wait and see. 

And then I thought... use the rest of the paint... and play with greens.  These photographs aren't terribly accurate in terms of colour; apparently my camera doesn't like green... but they're an approximation.  They get looser as I go on, and the paint gets less.

All four are on cloth : the first is on transfer dyed lutradur, just for interest's sake, really.  I don't think every one of these is successful...but I won't know until I've added stitch.  And if they're not, it's okay.  This is about process, not about result.  What I am pleased about, though, is that these feel like mine.  They don't refer to anything or anyone, and whilst I have no idea at present what this is 'about', I have the feeling they'll tell me.  This is my preferred way of working: no idea, no picture in my head that I have to somehow follow, just me, the cloth and the paint.  And that's how I like it.  Now to see if I can find some thread...

Yes, another one.

Monoprint, that is.  There are, as always, two of them...

I'm working with the ghost print. I was planning to have them in this orientation, and I was struck by the interesting variations in colour on the ghost.  That would be because I tend to work layer on layer on the glass plate I use, so as the thicker layer is removed, the remains of whatever was on there before tends to come through.  It's lazy, perhaps, but also serendipitous. 

I looked for threads that would pick up all those variations in colour, and got started.  The circular motif has been stitched in a spiral.

It made me think of fossils, of which we have a small collection.  And it struck me that that circular motif looked as if it was embedded in the lower section, which gave the piece its name.  By this time, I'd trimmed the piece down quite a bit, to get rid of the excess white, and the blob of colour at the bottom, which was a distraction.  And I stitched some more.  And then I thought, that white... it doesn't look right... and the orientation's not right, either.  So this is what I ended up with.

The grey at the top is a mixture of black, white and silver, though, given it's watered down, you don't notice the metallic element of the paint.  I had intended leaving the grey area unstitched, but it didn't seem right, unbalanced, given the amount of stitch in the lower two thirds of the piece.  And that seemed to solve another issue : I had felt that the circular motif didn't have enough stitch in it, but couldn't really see how to fix that.  Miraculously, adding stitch to the grey resolved the balance enough for me to feel better about it. 

So...Embedded it is.  I'm planning to machine stitch it's 'twin', so watch this space ...

Autumn...

...is definitely here, seemed like the appropriate moment to add some stitch to this wet felted piece, in the shape of a leaf, yet another something or nothing saved from the cull.  In truth, I suspect that I meant it to be a petal...but who knows..it was made several years ago, can't do wet felting now. 

It was, however, always intended as a three dimensional piece.  It reminds me of autumn leaves that have turned colour, and are just beginning to dry out.  They buckle in intriguing ways.  This one has a natural curve on the edge, and slopes as if it were a very shallow bowl.  I really regret that white; I don't know what I was thinking.  So, to break up the white, and encourage the natural curves, I added stitch, as always, hand dyed cotton thread.

Happy now? Not really.. the stitch achieved what it was supposed to, perhaps too well in some places.  Might consider painting that white, using watercolour paint, to see if I can decrease the contrast.  I suspect it may be flogging a dead horse.  Not everything succeeds as planned...hell, not everything succeeds.  It's okay.  It's called learning.

Trusting The Process....

...is all there is, really.  I spent most of the morning avoiding stitching the new piece, and couldn't work out why.  It didn't feel like being lazy...goodness knows, I know how that feels, and this wasn't it.  I had intended to stitch lines down the whole of the piece, representing tears...except... I made three, and then thought...what am I doing? 

For me, it's all about meaning.  Stitch for the sake of it, because I've always done it that way, isn't my thing.  So I took a closer look at what this piece represents...and discovered that actually, it's about holding it together.  The stitch needed to show that...and here's the finished piece.

There are three lines of stitch on the left hand side, and a single line on the right.  The silk carrier rod has been stitched on, and there are a four stitches holding the tiny piece of rust dyed silk at the top.  And that's it. Just enough to hold it together. 

Because that's what's going on in my life, at present.  I know how to live with this illness, but I don't know how to live with it well, with conviction.  My life is roughly the size of a postage stamp, where before it was a huge, bright canvas.  It's difficult to adapt to, because the parameters change from day to day.  So all I can do is hold it all together, and persist.  And try to make something meaningful out of it, for myself and, hopefully, for others.

A Less Than Perfect Day

...and it's only 2pm.  First, we discovered the bath plug doesn't work.  It's the type that you press to close, and press again to open...except that it doesn't close properly.  This wouldn't be a big deal...except that having a bath takes a great deal of energy, and it took ten minutes to get enough water for a small child, much less me, making things worse than usual.  Then the gardener broke some bit of equipment or other, and will have to come back tomorrow, meaning I'll have to be up early, as Robin has an appointment. And then, to cap it all, while finishing off cutting one of the more complex lino pieces I'm making, the knife slipped and damaged the adjacent section.  Just Great.  Hours of work ruined.  Well, okay, I can paint over the relatively small area, once I've printed it, but that's really not the point. 

So I thought I'd play with some fabric, and ended up with this.

Piece of evolon, with elements of rust dyed silk and paper.  Small element of stitch, but really, I wanted the fabric to do the talking.  I'm tempted to now add some hand stitch, to emphasise the verticals, but it would need to be very fine variegated thread, possibly silk, and to be honest, I'm not sure the piece is worth it.  Did it make me feel better?  Not really; it took me three goes to upload this image, so I think I'll just go and sulk somewhere quiet, and drink my coffee.  Which I'll probably spill.  Sigh. Definitely One Of Those Days.

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...