Unexpected Choices...

...are always interesting, and usually the best.  I'm mid relapse, and whilst  lying in bed, was leafing through an art book... and had an idea.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a book about Sean Scully, and the idea was to do with this particular structure.  Yes, it needs to be ironed... sigh. 

The colours in this aren't all that accurate, but you get the drift...  Left to right, there's a section of rust dyed lutradur, one of tea and onion skin dyed cotton, and rust dyed muslin.  Two of the three are semi transparent, and that proved to be quite important. 

I'm not that keen on this, mostly, I suspect, because I hate white, and rarely use it in anything at all, textile or painting, other than to mix in with other paints.  I love colour...and apparently have a problem with the absence of colour.  The original idea I had, was to add some colour, a square, thereof, in the lower right section, which is quite different to the original idea, to stitch with the thread you see there, browns and blues, following the curves in the rust dyed sections, and across the white.  When I went into the studio to select the fabric, though, I spotted the box with the lace. 

I don't use lace, much, but I have some for hats.  Somehow, though, it seemed like a good idea to use something lacy on top of these semi transparent fabrics, following through on that idea.  When I opened the box, I spotted a doily.  Now, I don't like doilies.  I had a brief moment when I thought I'd use them in work, as is the fashion...but it has never really seemed like my kind of thing.  I really don't like this whole, take something, or better still, lots of things vintage and slap it/them onto a background and call it art, trend that has been hanging around for at least a decade, if not more.  Circles, though.... I liked the idea of circles.  So I fished around in the box some more.  And then I had a rest (as you do...well, as I do, these days). 

And this is what I'm going with.

   
Three doilies, all featuring lace and/or cutwork.  The one on the right is positioned on a circle of lutradur, to echo the lutradur element of  the base fabric.  And I've fished out some very pale threads to stitch them down with.  That, though, is for another day : I've overdone it.  But it has been worth it, I think... much better than sitting gazing at a computer screen. 

Done.

So...the piece I showed you last time is finished, and here it is.

It's on top of more of the same orange coloured lutradur, to strengthen the background colour.  I think it's fairly effective.  The cardboard disc is a yellower colour than it shows here, and I like the way the stitch has worked out.  I had intended to add more stitch to the background, but I've decided against it; I think it would distract from the piece, rather than add to it.   I've trimmed it down, to give it some balance, and it'll sit happily in a mount. 

I've been drawing today, faces, probably the only thing I don't often share on the blog.  Of all my work, it's the most personal, though, given some of the work I've shown over the years, that may surprise you.  It has been a long time since I drew a person, and I'm reminded how important it is to keep practicing.  It's not bad, you understand...but...  Some other time, perhaps. 

Now I need to cut some batting, before I can start stitching the monoprints, and a couple of the larger pieces I've been working on recently.  I've been too tired to paint, the last couple of days, but I think I can muster the energy to do that...if not today, then certainly tomorrow.

Finishing Touches...

...are often easier and less than we think.  Here's the finished piece, the development of which I showed you here.  I said it needed stitch...

...and now it has it.  Much less of it than I'd thought.  I originally set out to stitch all the way round the piece.  I found a variegated hand dyed perle which had all the colours in the piece in it, including the tannin stains in the background.  The lovely curving line was complete chance, but when I looked at it, I decided there really wasn't any need for any more.  I did contemplate adding three more at the bottom, but thought it would be gilding the lily.

Knowing when to stop is essential, and often very difficult, particularly when you have more ideas.   That usually means that there's a need to explore more within a series format, rather than that you need to add more to the particular piece you're working on.  Ultimately, it's all about intention, as I've already said elsewhere, in a conversation about a piece of work made by someone else.  Part of my intention when I work is to keep things as simple as possible, while expressing whatever it is that I'm trying to say. 

I'm happy with this, now.  Yes, I could melt the lutradur a bit more, but it's a risk: if I melt too much, it'll just look silly, and as it's not distracting from anything, it's a risk I'm not prepared to take.  Perfection, as I've said before, is the best you can do on the day, and that is constantly changing as you learn more, and become more confident.  Sometimes discretion truly is the better part of valour.

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. 

Relative Normality...

...has been resumed, for now, at least.  A relapse, followed by Christmas, followed by an examination by a physiotherapist has left me unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, and gifted me a zimmer....sadly, the hospital will be wanting it back, so it can't be customised.  So I haven't had the energy, until yesterday, to do any work at all. 

I had looked out these small pieces of cloth before the relapse...and I do mean small: the largest is approx 4" by 2.5", the smallest, roughly 2.5" square.  Yesterday, though, I combined them.

Yes, I know, they don't look like much : that's the whole point.  I'm continuing the theme I started, exploring ME and its consequences.  ME has systematically stripped me of the ability to work, has stripped colour and texture from my life, and these tiny pieces represent that.  I have to work within those confinements: these pieces represent them.  You probably can't see, but the base fabrics are not pure white.  They are, in fact, pale prints, reversed, with pale prints, unreversed, held on the surface with random stitches, other than the central piece, which is a scrap of rust dyed silk.  You can't tell with ME, how you are going to feel from day to day; these random stitches represent that idea, with the raw edges indicating that they have been torn from a larger cloth. 

I intended to add them to a lutradur book, but when I got hold of a piece of lutradur, I liked them as a unified piece, so this is how they will stay.

I will, of course, iron the lutradur...that bump in the centre is not ideal...    I'm not sure how I would frame them: perhaps sandwiched between two pieces of glass.  I don't particularly want to put them on a coloured mount, and I think they might be lost on white board, though a double mount might do the trick.  I'll have to think about it.  They do look better in real life...but perhaps that's just wishful thinking.

I have another piece to work on, but that's it for today, no more energy.  It's a start.

Next...

came the pink fascinator...here's what it looked like pinned to the block.

Not terribly prepossessing...and it doesn't look all that much better trimmed up and ready to wire...

Once that was done, and the binding was on...

...I thought...now what.  Note the fading on the sinamay; nothing wrong with the fabric, just faded colour, so whatever I chose to do, had to cover that section, at least.  I really didn't know what to do...and then, raking about in a box, found the daffodils I made a while ago, just to see if I could.  Three of them made from lutradur, the trumpets heavily stitched.  They went nicely with the pink tone of the hat, so I stitched them together...

...and then added them to the base...

...and now we're talking... this works really well.  But just as I was putting things away, I came across a pale green piece of florist wrapping, very similar to lutradur, and thought it might be interesting to use it round the edge of the hat...

 
Looks better in real life... so I stuck it on my head, no mirror (too tired to get up and fiddle around...), and here's a rough idea of what it looks like...

The green edging has only been tacked on, but I think it gives you an idea of what it will look like once it's properly sewn on.  I'm quite pleased with this; really must play with more lutradur flowers...and with lutradur in hat making in general... hmm..

Watercolour...

...isn't something I've worked with in a long time, but playing with Cara using Granny's Magic Crayons at the weekend inspired me to try them out on Lutradur XL.  I'm not a huge fan of acrylic on lutradur, because, unless it is thinned down to the nth degree, it blocks the little holes, which give it its transparency, in my view, its greatest asset.  Besides, it does unpleasant things to the hand of fabric, and I'm not overly keen on stitching through it.  By and large, I stick with transfer dyes for lutradur, because they do none of these things, and were designed specifically for colouring polyester.  But hey, a girl can try other things... and it's tiring, by my standards, to work with transfer dyes, because they have to be painted onto fabric, then ironed on.  Great results, and fixed, to boot...but needs must when the devil drives. 

So...I wetted out the lutradur with clear water, and started adding colour direct, mixing it on the cloth.  I chose red because there was some red dye already at the corner of the lutradur, so I wanted to work with that; watercolour wouldn't have covered it up, of course, being transparent.  The risk of doing that is that you don't like what you get... and I didn't... so I took a monoprint of sorts from the wet paint. 

I didn't bother to unscrunch the paper, hence the white tree shape to the left hand side, and the crackle texture of the print in general, which I rather like.  It got rid of a fair amount of the paint, and I was able to continue...and finally made this...

This was taken while it was still wet; it will dry slightly paler, but hopefully not too much.  I'm planning to add another wash to the reverse side, so that this can become a book after stitching.  No, you're right, it's not particularly interesting at this point...but it has lots of room for stitch...and possibly some applique... we'll see.  I then went on and played a bit more with a block of lino and some paint, to make a selection of monoprints.  I don't have enough energy for lino cutting, so that seemed to be the best way of using the block...

I did some prints on paper, some on lutradur, the last image is the one I like best, but, like the painting, it has plenty of room for stitch.  Should keep me out of mischief for a while...

Today's Blog...

...is brought to you from the sofa.  Robin's out, and we're expecting a couple of parcels.  Doubtless they'll arrive once he's back again. but if not, by the time I get downstairs, there's a real risk that the delivery man will have disappeared again.  So here I am.  It's more difficult to rest on the sofa; too much stuff that ought to be done, or wants to be made.  I'm resisting.  That said, I'm also contemplating this piece, which you'll remember from Saturday's blog on printing.  It said it wanted to be a book: I agreed.

It looks quite different in 3D, than it did lain flat...

The orientation change makes a huge difference, while the folds encourage us to read both the whole thing and the individual page.  I did contemplate hand stitch, but I really do think that machine stitch is preferable (really do have to ring the engineer this week, I NEED my machine back). 

And talking of needs, the piece needs a poem.  Of course it does, I hear you holler.  The poem will be written on the other side of the book, this time, before the stitch is added.  I think the effect of the stitch will be interesting; it should break up the text, even the individual letters, making the poem act like a piece of visual art.  Which is, I suppose, the whole idea. 

The poem is about interpreting visual marks.  I've got a thing about that...I talk about it here, to some extent.  I stitch, print and paint in this way, making marks, and to me, that reflects the natural world, where the elements create marks in and on, for example, stone, which our minds then attempt to interpret.  'Natural Graffiti', a quilt I donated to a cancer charity, reflects that them (see it here), but I've been stitching rune-like and other abstract and semi abstract forms into quilts since I started making, over thirty years ago (cough).

No, it's not written yet; I'm going to lie on the sofa for the rest of the morning, and see what we can come up with, my unconscious and me.  Seems infinitely reasonable.

Stamping...

...isn't something I do very often.  Mostly, that's because I don't like using other peoples' images or work.  I have never gone for the Somerset Studios variety of mixed media, that uses copyright free images, usually vintage.  There used to be an awful lot of it about, and it all looked the same.  Not my thing.  Sometimes, though, it's justifiable, usually when I want an effect that I can't reproduce myself; like this.

I can't imagine carving something as detailed as this; actually, as you know, I'm giving that sort of thing up, as soon as I've finished the current crop of lino blocks for the Spears and Shields series.  And sometimes I see a stamp that I Just Like, so I buy it.  Mostly, though, if I can't make it myself, I don't use it.

When I went into the studio this morning, I discovered, to my surprise, that the paint I'd mixed earlier in the week was still usable, thanks, I presume, to a combination of medium and clingfilm.  So I thought I'd try out the stamp, which arrived about a week ago.  I love text and the allusion of text or words...that's perhaps not all that surprising.  I've wanted a stamp like this for a very long time, but have never got round to buying one.  This one will do nicely.

So...I also discovered that I'd let the paint dry on the glass board I'd been using to roll out the paint for printing.  Unthinking, I dumped more paint on, and started to work.  Thoughtlessness and laziness are a deadly combination... look what happened....

That texture is the result of the dried-up paint being rehydrated, catching on the roller and peeling off.  This is Not A Good Thing.  Reader, I trust you will not be doing this, for lo, I am a Bad Example.  If I'd thought about it, I could have turned the board over before I started, and used the other side (I didn't).  So in the end, I scraped as much of the dried up paint as I could, before wiping the board with a floor wipe (face wipes really aren't big enough for studio use).  And I started again.

I wanted to start to build up a couple of layers, so took a piece of lutradur 120 which had already been coloured,  stamped the text on it, and then made a monoprint on top of that.  The monoprint was in two sections, as you can see from the photographs.

I think this has interesting textures.  The paint for the monoprint was added to an old lino block (the proper, traditional lino); it seemed to work fairly well.  And we're back to waiting for the machine to come home... I think a phone call on Monday will be in order, given that there's a queue building up.

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.

Life's A Beach.

Well okay, these days, not so much.  But I decided to keep going with the piece from a couple of days ago, which made me think about the beach. A specific beach, in fact, the beach at Cramond.  When I was nine or ten, my mother was lent a flat right on the edge of the River Almond, and we spent the summer there.  My mother worked, so my sister and I were alone most of the week.  It was magical.  Actually, it was probably dangerous, my sister can only have been about six, and I had sole responsibility for her...but nothing untoward happened. 

Cramond is beautiful; I'm pretty sure that my love of beaches and the sea came from that summer.  So...this is a memory piece, and here's the memory :

endless summer

day on day the beach

sand between our toes

And here's the poem added to the piece, and some lutradur lace the colour of sand.

You know I don't like white... and this is just too stark.  Plus, I felt that the words were too dark, too stark a contrast against everything else. So, a little painting seemed to be in order.  First, I stamped some gold spirals into the centre of the 'sun', then dabbed three colours of metallic acrylic paint onto the background, giving this : 

Better?  Umm.  Different.  Possibly a bit cluttered, but it's too late to worry about it now.  And I'm still not happy.  So I stitched the words.  I'd been debating doing that ever since I added them, and finally succumbed.  It didn't take anything like as long as I thought it would, it adds a bit of texture and seems to somehow soften the overall effect of the writing, though the pen is still evident underneath. 

I've avoided writing on work for a very long time.  I started to learn calligraphy because I've been told so many times that my writing is abysmal.  It's a sort of cross between Russian and English handwriting, and not in a good way.  Finally, though, I decided that, like every other mark I make, it is authentic.  It's me.  And I do my best to be legible, on textile work at least.  Perfection is not required.  In fact, perfection is boring.  Hold that thought. 

And here's the finished piece.

The starfish was added for balance, and picks up some of the paler colours in the piece.  Am I happy now?  Meh.  It's not the best piece I've ever done, but I like the poem.  I'll put it away, now, and come back to it, see whether absence works its magic.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.  And if not, I'll throw it out...but I will keep the poem.

In A Bind.

Reader, I finally did it.  I bound the first of the ME pieces, described here.  I used the feather fabric I found, kindly donated by a friend among some scrap she gave me from her stash. 

The binding is far from perfect, and perhaps that's not surprising; it's probably the first time in over twenty years that I've chosen to bind a piece. I don't like binding, but this piece seemed to need it.  And, imperfections apart, I don't like the binding on here, either, but it does add another layer of meaning.  It speaks of limitation, which is the core issue of ME.  I've always thought that binding on an art quilt limits the eye.  By that, I mean that it stops any movement contained in the quilt, at the edge.  I like to encourage the eye, and the mind, to wonder about what's going on outside the edges; the binding stops it dead.  How does that meaning, that movement, continue?  Does it stop, or does it continue into infinity?  I'm not all that fond of mounts and frames, either, but I think they're better than binding.  This piece, though, didn't seem to want to be framed; it's too tactile for that. 

I've said that limitation is a key element of ME: let's continue that theme.  Robin brought in a postcard-sized piece of Lutradur he found in the car...no, I have no idea how it got there.  This is what I've done with it :

It is made from some bits that were lying on my side table, left over from previous projects, plus a starfish from my bead and bit collection.  I started by stitching on the blue hand dyed silk organza, and then added the strip of fabric.  At that point, I realised what I was making.  This is a postcard from another lifetime, my pre ME lifetime, when I could do what I wanted, when I wanted.  I love the beach, and for the first time in our married life (39 years this year) we live near the sea.  In particular, I love beach combing...but I can't do it any more.  I can't walk far enough, and the number of wheelchair accessible beaches are very, very minimal (you need a special wheelchair.  Turns out there are two in Scotland).  Either way, though, I don't see myself visiting the beach any more...so this is a postcard from my previous, beach combing existence.  It's very simple; the sea, the sand, the starfish.  It was photographed on top of my laptop, so that you could see it clearly, but I need to think carefully about what I'll put behind it.  I think this is probably the first piece in a series, and unlike the quilt, it will happily take to small frames, probably box frames....the ideal would be to make frames from driftwood. 

I feel the need to say that this is not about self pity; it is about making something meaningful out of a bad experience.  The ME is unlikely to just go away, so I need to find ways to live with it that are meaningful for me...and this is it.  I have been contemplating a blog specifically 'about' ME, but the jury's still out.  There are a lot of ME blogs around, some more useful than others, and I'm not sure that I'd be adding any value.  Mind you, there's a lot of art blogs around to, but that fact has never stopped me blogging...

I'm pretty sure I have some more postcard sized bits of lutradur around, so I dare say I'll be making some more of these.  I think perhaps the frame needs to have a luggage label attached, with a personal story.  Clearly the making of books, and their associated poems, are having an effect on the rest of my work.  We'll see.

Sometimes...

things just work out.  That book I showed you yesterday is now complete, though I had thought it would take a while to work out what to do with it.  I sat down to add some more stitch to the single line that was already there.  After  three lines on each side, I wondered if I did indeed want to continue to stitch that area, which was my original intention.  I was stitching in that colour to link the respective areas to the colours of the rust in the middle, 'secret' section.  It didn't seem to be right.  So what would?  This piece is about disintegration, and indirectly, about suicide and death.  What could I put in the four areas demarcated by the stitch, that would suggest disintegration?  Lutradur lace.

And as luck would have it (pure luck, definitely not judgement), I had a piece of lutradur already stitched, ready to be burned out.  For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about... here's the lutradur, complete with stitch.

And here it is after heating it with a heat gun....

Disintegration?  Hell, yes.

And then there's the poem.  Again, wanting to link the poem to the colours of the rust, I used a Posca marker pen in a light brown colour, on the reverse of a yellowish paper bag with grey stripes.  I had originally intended to use the front, but it just didn't seem to work, but the reverse was reasonable.  And I wrote a second poem for the reverse side ;

Consuming itself
through a change of condition;
a natural death.

So...here's what it looks like.

The white blobs have disappeared now; they were wet glue in the lace, which has now dried.  Overall, I'm pleased with the piece, and will make more books using this construction method.

The Road To Hell...

...is supposedly paved with good intentions; in my case, and maybe yours, too, it's also littered with random materials that we hoarded, thinking, 'I could do something with that'...and then never actually getting round to doing anything at all.  Most of that sort of material got given away during The Great Purge; it is truly interesting to see what I kept.  Working my way through the odds and sods I've been talking about over the past week or so, I came across some hand made paper.  I vaguely remember buying it in Norfolk, quite early on in our residence there, which makes it about ten years old, anyway... good grief...   It's highly textured; I have no idea what it is made from, but it feels fairly fragile.  It appealed, yesterday, so I took it as a starting point...

It's teamed, here, with a piece of transfer dyed lutradur 30, secured with large stitches using hand dyed perle.  It feels like a field, to me... I combined it with another piece of paper, this time a scrunched-up piece of brown paper.  I started working with brown paper (or rather, thinking about working with brown paper) when we were in the Highlands, but it took a workshop in Norfolk, roughly twelve or thirteen years later, to get me to Actually Do It. 

Again, these are stitched together using the same perle thread, in random stitches that reflect the construction of the light-coloured paper.  So far, so good.  It feels like a strong motif; but what to do with it?  Well... I have the habit of buying vintage napkins whenever I see them in charity shops; they tend to be very reasonably priced, and are an ideal size for me to work with.  So, I went for a rake about in my box and found several, but only one that was large enough to work with these bits. 

Hmm.  Needs an iron.  But it has potential...needs something else...

No, not Merlin's tail...but the circle, also from crunched up brown paper, seems to be the right way to go.  Now, where's that iron... ?

And here it is, ready for stitch.  I've pinned the napkin to some white felt, to stabilise it, and give the stitch a bit of depth when I eventually work out what to do with it.  I don't often use pins, preferring to work with fusible, but ironing is exhausting, while pinning requires minimal effort.  ME has forced me to adapt my practice to work round my lack of energy.  Things will be easier, I hope, when my studio is properly set up, but I haven't been well enough to do anything with it yet, other than put a couple of boxes on the new shelves.  Sofa sewing is all I can manage at the moment.

I'm going to let this piece sit for a while, to see what it needs in the way of stitch.  I'd like to add some machine stitch to that circle, nice clear dark line.  Well, ok, curves. There again, more of that random stitch by hand, in a darker colour, might well be better.  We'll see.  Meantime...I found a couple of small, identical napkins while looking for something suitable; wonder if there's anything in the paper stash that would work on them...or the rust stash...or both...   hmmm.  Yes, I did purge dramatically, but I still have choices, albeit on a much smaller scale than before...and that's proving to be A Good Thing.