Odds And Sods.

So...despite saying I wouldn't work on this stuff, yesterday, I did, nonetheless, splitting it up into groups that looked as if they would work together.  All in all, I got roughly half a dozen different things to work on, with quite a lot left over to play with.  This is the first piece, and it has two different options.  The base is a piece of hand dyed red cotton velvet. 

The first option, as you can see, takes a small piece of brown hand dyed linen, slightly frayed round the edges, and a piece of yarn.  It looks to me like a kite, flying in a red sky, but it feels a bit clunky.  The brown is somehow too solid... I could cut a square out in the centre, which would lighten it somewhat, or put something semi transparent on top of it, probably lutradur, but even with stitch, I still think it's not quite right.

So, moving swiftly on...here's option two.

Two pieces of lutradur, over a narrow offcut of evolon.  Looking at it, my immediate feeling is that the evolon is too heavy, and needs to be narrowed down, or possibly replaced with a piece of darker yarn; come to think of it, it might be better to replace it with lutradur.  The lower piece of lutradur, though, is interesting, because it is actually two pieces, stitched together, as you can see here:

I wanted to see what happened when two semi transparent pieces were combined; this was the outcome.  My original thought was to use them for a brooch, but I think they work quite nicely here.  I think this second option is the basis of my first little piece of work from the odds and sods I showed you, though clearly the centre piece needs to be rethought.  It's not quite as white as it looks here, more of a creamy beige, but it is just a shade too heavy... no time to work on it now, though.  As well as changing that central column, I'll want to add quite a bit of hand stitch around the figure, but not on it; I'll fuse it down using bondaweb, I would think.  

More tomorrow.

It Was Just Lying Around...

...honest, Guv...  just bits and pieces found when going through bags and boxes of stuff... 

I've got very little of this kind of fabric, the odds and sods you gather when you make a lot of work, as I used to do.  A couple of pieces of hand dyed cotton velvet.  A bit of hand dyed linen, very frayed on one side.  Fragments of rust dyed silk.  A lacy doily, found in a charity shop, I think.  And then a collection of paper, with some woven plastic, which has been a net of some kind, vegetables, perhaps, I don't know, it was given to me a long time ago with no explanation.  So, given I don't have much of it, I've been collecting it together to put in one place.  Yesterday, though, while putting yet more stuff into boxes, I came across some Lutradur XL, already cut into small bits, mostly either postcard or Artist Trading Card (ATC) sizes, though there are some squares.  And I thought... I don't want to keep working on UFOs...I want to make something original.  Putting the two together seemed like a good idea, given that whatever I do is likely to be hand work.  Whilst you can actually see the floor in the studio, it's still not in a state that would let me set up the sewing machines, much as I'd like to (sigh). 

Sadly, I'm not able to work today; just having the idea is going to have to be enough.  I didn't sleep well last night, had a shower today in preparation for going out this evening, so I need to do as little as possible, to preserve the energy I have left (you'd be surprised how much energy it takes to have a shower). But that doesn't stop me thinking about how to approach this.  I enjoy working in series: it's a great way of exploring a small cache of materials like this, or a particular theme, and is also good if you feel stuck, and want to work your way out of so-called 'creative block'.  I've talked about series elsewhere on this blog, notably when I talk about the 'Meditation in Purple and Gold' series (one of the posts is here, if you're interested in that).  

In the meantime, though, I've just added a bit of lilac silk organza and some silk carrier rods to the mix...watch this space... did I say, I think it's going to be fun...

So I Couldn't Wait...

to see what they looked like printed onto fabric, so I printed one small piece, and one large piece, on Evolon, and here's the results.

Not the best of photos, but gives you an idea of how it has turned round...the background is pure white, rather than the odd pale lilac it's showing here.  That's the small piece (no surprise there...), a bit larger than A4.  And this is the larger piece...

which, for reasons best known to my software, is fairly accurate, colour wise.  In both cases, though, it's all about the line, just as in the linescapes series.  Dammit, how much work can any one person have going at the same time... ?

Now to find more Evolon...and wait til it's cool enough to do some more ironing...