Turning Over A New Leaf...

or, in this case, turning a leaf into a book...books are made from leaves, right?   I've been contemplating making shaped accordion books, and decided to make a couple of small ones, just to be sure it would actually work... well, you know how it is...  A leaf shape seemed a good idea...

Not only did it work, they actually stand upright...though, given that they're yellow, they're more reminiscent of lemons, than leaves...so...

That's a bit better...  This has potential, I think... so I went from the leaf, to the tree... drawing an outline first, and then following it...roughly...with the scissors... well, I don't colour in the lines, so why would I pay attention to the lines I've drawn...

Mind you...these have been cut from card; I'm not sure that making them in fabric, other than in Lutradur XL, would actually allow them to stand up... but the principle is good.  Perhaps if they're stitched intensely, and made from the heaviest Lutradur other than XL... Hmm...

Back To The Books...

You might remember that I made some linocuts based on a piece I made that featured spears and shields...or trees and leaves, depending on how you thought about it... see it here .  I can't find a post about the book I made through printing the blocks on Lutradur... but it has been lying around the studio, waiting for me to generate energy... reader, I started... this is the 'cover'.

I have to say, this is much more my kind of stitch.  I'm colouring outside the lines again... it matches the fairly rough and ready nature of the prints.  Here's a closer look...

Proof, if proof were ever needed, that I couldn't do a straight line if you paid me for it.  Partly that's to do with the lutradur (like I need an excuse...).... I'm used to working with at least two layers of cloth, one of which is normally wadding, or maybe velvet; this is a single layer of lutradur, and the foot is levitating above the cloth.  Every twitch of the hand shows in the stitch because it's so light, it moves in a disproportionate manner.  My hands are clearly very twitchy.  Overall, though, I don't think it detracts; it's unusual to look so closely at one particular section, like this, divorced from the whole.  And had it been a big deal to have straight stitch, I would have used a walking foot, rather than a darning foot, and all would have been...errr...regular...and probably boring. 

Note the distortion, too, again to do with the weight of the cloth.  I think it'll iron out to a great extent, and I think it gives the piece some character...it seems to age it, a bit, the way that old paper distorts and crinkles slightly as it gets older.

I ran out of steam half way through the second leaf, but it'll get done, slowly, but steadily.  I meant to take images of the back, but forgot; part of the reason for the intensity of the stitch is that the reverse side is significantly paler than the front, unsurprisingly.  I'm using a darker thread on the reverse, and it seems to be working reasonably well.  More to follow as I work through the pages.

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.

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.

Printing...

one of the books that I'm planning around the theme of shields and spears.  I've now carved a couple of lino blocks for that, with a couple left to do....enough for now, I thought, even though one of them was only partially finished. And, just to prove I've learned my lesson, note my (relatively) tidy work surface...

I decided to use acrylic paints this time, combined with a medium that delays the drying time, so that the ink doesn't just dry on the plate.  For once in my life, I followed the instructions; I was a tad alarmed by the idea that too much medium might mean that the paint doesn't dry at all.  It's one thing to get the ink from newspapers on your fingers; entirely another when the visual art comes off on your hands...  \I mixed my own colour, a combination of three paints.  Someone once told me not to use paint straight out of the tube; it was important for an artist to mix their own colours.  And so I have found it.  It's a meditative thing to do, and allows you to really think about the effect you're trying to achieve, and the colour that will do that for you.  It took several tests before I was happy with the colour, somewhat warmer than the dark brown out of the tube.

 The blocks are too small for a double page, and besides, other than the central spread, they aren't seen like that within the structure of the book, so I needed to select elements to print on each individual page.  I started with the partially carved block; here's the test print.

The bit I hadn't thought through was that the whole thing would print, not just the leaf.  Fortunately, I liked that result...if I hadn't, there would have been a lot more carving to do before I could have used it.  I may well cut one of the remaining blocks in half, and carve a block specifically like this, to use in the future. 

I started to print the five pages that make up the signature (the technical word for a combination of pages, if you haven't come across it before).  I wanted a random combination of images, but started with the central motif.

It became obvious quite early on that I couldn't print on both sides of the pages; lutradur is semi transparent, so the print can be seen on the other side, though, as it is printed, not dyed, it hasn't come right through; it's like having a shadow.  And that was okay, because I intended to stitch, so the shadow would be supported by the stitch.  And, without overtly thinking it through, that had been my intention from the start.  What I hadn't realised, though, was that I needed to vary on which side of the lutradur I printed, so that there would be an interesting visual mixture of strong and weak prints.  I only managed to do that once, though... a combination of getting carried away and brain fog...sigh.  I'll be more deliberate about it the next time I make a pamphlet book in this way.

I struggled with deciding what to do with the cover.  In the end, I decided to print the same thing on both front and back covers, and here it is.

I think that works well; the image is a strong one, an eye catching way to present the piece, I hope.  When the ink was dry, I folded the book and combined the pages, mixing up the different images to avoid having the same thing twice.  The joy of working with semi transparent material, is that you get more than you usually would, when you look at the open pages.  Here's a look at that central page again, this time combined with the rest of the pages.

That effect will be something to consider in the future.  And now I'm stuck.  I want to stitch this with the machine, and I still don't have it back (hopefully this week).  Overall, though, I'm pleased with the way it has worked...for once, pretty much as I thought it would.  It needs a poem...I have two of three lines, but one refuses to come.  It'll doubtless arrive in its own sweet time...words are not as biddable as paint.

Small Things And Coincidences.

often lead our minds to remember significant things, and by that, I mean things that are significant to us.  We have no garden in this new house; the garden space is under dispute, and we can't do anything with it until that is resolved.  There are no plants to admire, and I had not been aware of how much I rely on plants for inspiration.  Given that this is a new estate, there are no established gardens to enjoy, either, just a couple of cherry trees that have been planted either side of our house by the builders.  To my surprise, though, I found this leaf the other day.  I have no idea where it came from, blown in on the high winds we had last week, no doubt.

I find it beautiful.  A small thing, but it carries the memory of the plant it came from.  I'm not a gardener, so I have no idea what that might be, but it doesn't really matter.  It reminded me, though, of a poem I found while looking for something else (which is the way of these things, really).

The Vine Leaf
I know these lovely yellows and these greens,
These blues and all the moments in between;
Summer is full of them.  This, though, is the tipping point
Where green begins to turn to browns and golds, crimsons,
Aubergines, all the rich and fruitful tones of autumn. I find them
In a single leaf, a newly gifted vine, growing
Fair and unfettered in my Norfolk garden.  No grapes this year
(the plant is far too new); its tender leaves suffice
To capture this single brightly balanced moment
Between burgeoning and the slow slide into sleep.
For now it is enough, for both of us.

And when I read it, I remembered standing by that vine, admiring the colour of the leaves as they turned, taking photographs (I'm pretty sure I probably still have them somewhere), feeling that change in the weather that presages the shift to autumn.  Here's an image of the vine taken a couple of years later, in the early summer.

I'm not much of a poet, really: I'll never be published, certainly.  I don't write often enough, and I'm not terribly disciplined about it, either, as you need to be if you take it seriously, just like any other form of art.  And I've always thought of it as completely separate from the visual art...but this poem shows just how silly that is.  It is full of visual imagery.  In some ways, it is a better aide memoire than any photograph could be.  A photograph is a record of the way something looked in a particular moment; a good photograph suggests emotion.  This poem, though, contains a miniature universe of emotions, sights, smells, textures.  There's at least one textile book in there...perhaps an entire series.  All that, from a moment, a leaf and a handful of words.  Isn't that wonderful?

Cara's Leaf

We're grandparenting this weekend, normal service will eventually be resumed after I've recovered... Today, we took Cara to gymnastics, then had lunch out, wandered round a garden centre, followed by Serious Cake for Cara and Grumpa (who knew a child that small could eat that much meringue...?).  And then we topped that off with a play park, in the Kinneal Estate.  On the way back to the car, Cara really wanted a leaf from one of the many trees surrounding us.  Grumpa obliged (Granny did try to put her off til autumn, but with no success). 

So, I thought, what can I do with this?  Pressing it, of course, would have been a possibility, but I've never really got my mind round what you do with leaves that size once they're dry.  So... I drew round it.  My initial intention was to let Cara colour it in, and I will still do that (she's pleased with the idea), but I'm thinking, applique.  I'm thinking cushion.  Or memory quilt (though there would need to be a lot more memories than just one leaf to make a quilt...maybe it needn't be all that large,though...).  Or just a singled blocked applique quilt.  Yes, okay, I'm wondering what got into me, too, it's so not my kind of thing....clearly the granny genes are kicking in...

And here it is.

And that's as far as it's likely to go, this weekend anyway.  I'm exhausted already, and there's a day and a half left... so won't be playing with the idea any time soon.  I'll keep you posted.

Finally, thank you to everyone who was so supportive after my last post.  I really appreciate it.  Blogging is a bit like talking to yourself, sometimes, hearing other people talk is lovely.

Oops, I Did It Again....

I jumped to a conclusion, too quickly.  Or rather, I was lazy.  I thought there was something not quite right about the spear/tree piece, but I ignored myself.  And then my friend, writer and fellow textile peep Ann Rawson piped up on FB... 'not so sure about the bottom leaf shape, she said.  Damn.  So...
being lazy, again, I didn't want to detach the leaf, because I'd never get that stitching again...but I did want to have some sort of extra space in that shape...so, reader, I cut into the leaf.  And not happy with just that, I cut into the rectangle, too...

On reflection, should have left that rectangle alone....but the leaf is right.  And it's finished now.
Unless I stitch into that rectangle, where I cut it... but I might not.  And no, I'm not doing *another* blog post if I do... so you may never know.  Ann's a crime writer; I'm sure she'll appreciate the suspense.  And thank you, Ann, for the gentle nudge.  I needed it today.

Changing My Mind, or Stitch Changes Everything.

So... remember that red velvet piece?  Yes, this one...

Remember I said that this was it?  Reader, I was wrong.  And why was that?  Well... it was stitch.  Stitch changes everything.  I started to assemble the piece, as you do, with that top left lutradur element.  It said, I want irregular stitches....and that's what it got...

And what's more, I liked it.  Most of the other elements, however, Just Didn't Fit.  Sigh.  So... I came up with this. 

I'm still using some of the elements from the last version, but somewhat adjusted, with that leaf or blade type motif added at the top of the long vertical, one of the shorter verticals removed, and a second, larger blade or leaf on the bottom left.  It now has a completely different feel.  And then I added stitch, which was the point at which I contemplated giving up...

...more random stitch, including a couple of renegade French Knots.  I always struggle with them, and whilst I think they add something, I'm not sure why I bothered, given the fuss and the time it took to do what really ought to be a totally simple stitch.  I'm contemplating some beads in that upper section, but that may continue to be a contemplation...not sure if I know where my beads actually are at present...sigh.

This looks better in real life, I have to say, but I'm still not convinced that it's anything more than a sketch.  Not a bad sketch, you understand; I feel that the tree/spear thing (I'm pretty sure it's a tree, in my head, but there is a definite reference to spears going on in there somewhere) is worth developing further.  I've always had a thing about trees...but that's another conversation entirely. 

So...what do you think?  Was it worth the effort? 

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.