Oh, Wow!

It was just a plain brown envelope.  And then I opened it, and look what was inside...

Threads from Stef Francis...thank you, Stef, they're wonderful.  I really did look at them and say, 'oh wow'.  I bought them really to go with one of the pieces I showed you earlier, Borderlines, the piece with the textured paper.  That wasn't to hand, but these were.  Firstly, the piece I showed you yesterday:

The brown is really strong against that print, and I'll use it on the marks.  The orange, not so much...but it is a gorgeous thread.  And then there's this, which I wrote about here:

Now, I wasn't intending to put much in the way of stitch on here, but looking at the way that thread sits on this piece, I'm now not so sure... perhaps a stitched border round the very edges of the piece...perhaps more... I don't know, but I'll be having a good think about it.  I rather wish I had more of that coloured evolon; it would be interesting to make a pieced top from repetitions of this 'block'.  Life isn't like that, of course, but I may well follow through on this idea once the workroom has settled down a bit. 

And talking of the workroom...the shelves are now where they're meant to be, though I'm still working out what to keep, where.  I promised you a sneaky peek, and here we are...

Thread and fabric mostly along the long wall; paint, drawing materials, feathers and other embellishments tucked away in the corner.  The painting will go up in front of my sewing machine; it's a calming image called 'Goddess'.  My rulers will go up on the walls, too, and doubtless a couple of framed textiles, eventually.  What I don't have, is a design wall.  I had one in Norfolk, and rarely used it.  I did contemplate a blind on the front of one of the bookcases, but the boxes stick out too far.  Besides which, most of the work I'm likely to be doing in the future will be small scale, not much bigger than a napkin.  So I'll be doing what I advise my students to do:  stick it on the floor, and stand up...if you're careful, stand on a chair...just don't fall off.  Or, more likely, I'll take a photograph, and contemplate that.  Works every time: it's the distance that's important.

Things are coming together, finally, both with the work and the room.  If only I could find a new body...

Minor Adjustments...

...can make a big difference.  I love working with transparency, but sometimes it just feels a wee bit wishy washy...   I'm still working through those scraps, and came across this lino cut on bandage muslin, which had been rust dyed before I printed it.  I've frayed the edges a little, to add a bit of texture and visual interest, though it's not obvious in the image.

It fits a small piece of evolon like a dream...even if I have positioned it the wrong way round, sigh.  But you get the drift.  There's a piece of yarn running across the top and bottom of the piece, which I'll couch on with some hand dyed thread I found yesterday, while tidying up (handy, huh?).  But... I want to beef up the rust colour just a bit... so...I'm going to double up the muslin... clearly didn't print on all of it, fortunately. 

Not sure that it's showing up well in the image, but again, you probably get my drift.  It's a good way of working with lutradur and other patterned fabrics; the combinations can be really interesting.  Meanwhile, I need to think about stitching this...but that will have to wait until the arrival of the brown hand dyed perle I've ordered on line.  I'm just not set up for dyeing at present, unsurprisingly, though work on the studio is progressing; might show you that tomorrow.  The shelves are full, all except the one set that needs to be repositioned.  I've moved the cutting table to its proper place...just need to remove the empty boxes, shift and fill the shelves and move the work table.  Then I can get the machines out and we'll be pretty much good to go...hurrah!

Moving Along.

Well, I don't know about you, but when I start fiddling around with bits of fabric, I'm not happy until I have something that works... and I think this might be it. 

The fundamental structure is pretty much as it was, but with additions on one side.  I did cut that piece of evolon smaller, but it still didn't feel right, so it has been replaced with lutradur 120; much heavier than the rest of the lutradur, but with a similar texture.  And it has been tilted to one side, while the orange lutradur at the top has been trimmed down to remove the white edge.  That gave a bit more room on the surface, making it possible to add a few more pieces of that heavier lutradur.  Is it finished?  I don't know; those additions are perhaps a bit much... I like simple.  It has the feel of a sketch, as it is, and not a finished piece.  Were it larger, it would work, and I might well think of doing a larger piece based on this design.  As it is, though, I don't think it's ideal... it needs more space between the elements.  So, I can either trim them down, or remove them.  Come to think of it, I could replace them with beads, perhaps, significantly smaller, and a different texture...but I don't think I will...the whole point of the addition was to repeat the heavier lutradur...so, smaller, or nothing.  We'll see.

And there's movement in the studio, too.  More shelves, to take the boxes with fabric and other bits and pieces.  I didn't appreciate just how many bits and pieces I still have... most of them to do with hats.  Come to think of it, I haven't found all the hat blocks, yet, which means they must be somewhere in the garage, along with who knows what... I'm arguing with myself currently, contemplating giving up painting altogether, mostly because I don't really have the space for it.  I haven't painted for several years, the whole ME thing meant that I couldn't get down to the Little Green Shed with any frequency.  I've certainly given up oils...too long a drying time, despite loving the effects they produce.  I guess I'll put away the fabric 'stuff', and see where we are after that.  I've given up a lot; painting on a large scale would just be yet another on a pretty long list.  

Progress

At last, a clear wall, ready for bookcases...and the first one in situ.  I managed to drag this one out of the garage by myself, albeit I did need a long sit down afterwards...  I couldn't find the loose shelves, either.  That proved to be a bonus; it allowed me to pile up the transparent shoe boxes, using the space effectively.  I suspect I might not have thought to remove the shelves, had they been there with the carcass.  Yes, that's all thread.  Yes, there's a lot of it.  In front, is the boxes I have already filled, ready for the next bookcase.  That may take some time to achieve, but at least I've managed to get this far.

I decided to empty a large wooden chest that was upstairs, which was full of sewing 'stuff'.  In the Norfolk house, it lived downstairs in the conservatory, and I thought it was full of projects that I'd bagged up ready to go.  Apparently not, though I did find a couple of those.  Mostly, though, there were pieces of lutradur and evolon in various sizes and shapes, some more vintage lace, mostly still attached to tray cloths and the like, and some bits of scrap canvas from Bertha.   I'll tell you more about what I found, later on in the week, but my favourite find today has to be this;

At first glance, I thought it was a tulip, but actually, I think it's a partial magnolia blossom, manipulated a little in Paintshop Pro.  I'm still not convinced that spring is here, despite the clocks leaping forward at the weekend, but this did lift my spirits quite considerably.  It's printed on canvas from the Bertha era, but will have to wait for stitch until the studio table is clear enough for me to set up a sewing machine.  More about my finds as the week progresses.

Boxing.

No, not that kind of boxing... this is a non-violent blog, I'll have you know.  Besides, I don't have the energy to fight, even if I wanted to.  Though perhaps this should be entitled Reboxing, as in part, it involves transferring stuff from large boxes, to small boxes...these small boxes, to be precise, bought in Costco yesterday.

These are a really handy size...small enough to fit on bookshelves, but large enough to take a reasonable amount of stuff, without making me struggle to move them.  This illness really does affect everything, right down to how I store my stuff.   I bought ten, but I suspect I'll be going back for more.  In my last studio, my stuff lived in under bed boxes, which was fine when I was well...now, it's not so great.  I suspect that ultimately, I'll be getting rid of Rather A Lot of storage boxes, including the really big ones I used to put stuff in to take to shows.  

So...I've allocated the first five.  One has knitting yarn in it.  And that, I'm struggling with, given that I did knit now and again, but don't really knit any more (well, only when depression strikes hard, but that's another story altogether).  There's a bit of me feels that that yarn should go somewhere where it will be used, rather than hoarded, and I suspect that's what I'll do.  Err...make that, what I've done; I've taken half of it out of the box to donate to charity; the other half has potential for embellishment, so gets a stay of execution for now.  Another box has paper in it, specialist papers like tea bag paper, which I'll use for stitch.  One has rust dyed fabric in it, mostly silk, but some lutradur and evolon, too, as well as some vintage fabric in it, mostly lace, which I keep promising myself I'll use, but never actually get there... I'm not really convinced that lace is my style, but  at some level, I love the delicate nature of it, so it survived the original cull, and seems to be surviving this one, too.  There's some lace yardage, too, modern stuff, for hats and bags, which was bought when hat making was at the forefront of my mind.  The fourth box has some vintage fabric that I treated with soy milk before we moved last August, and which has been waiting to be eco printed ever since.  I suspect it'll be waiting rather a long time more, given that I don't currently have a garden, and I'm not going out much at all.  Again, I'm not entirely sure it's my style, really, not that I'm absolutely sure what my style is, any more. The final box has my stash of mostly hand dye painted or printed fabrics, plus the UFOs I mentioned.  

So far so good, huh?  More boxes are definitely required, but for now, I have five more to play with.  I think I'll bring the startling number of shoe box sized plastic boxes containing threads in from the garage, and reallocate them among the boxes, keeping them arranged by colour as they are currently (I blame that Clare Hedges, she's a bad influence...).  The shoe boxes can be used for other things, possibly in other places, such as the study.  For now though... I need a rest.  

Exhibitions...

mean all kinds of work that you really don't think of. Open Studios starts next weekend, so this weekend is a flurry of activity. Robin is framing and mounting pictures and textiles. I'm hanging paintings in the conservatory, putting hanging strings on other paintings, to be hung in the shed, and unearthing the spare easel from beneath sundry layers of Other Things (mostly cloth). This is pretty much the pattern for the week to come... looking for things, putting things away, making more things (like my monoprinted greetings cards), and generally Getting Ready. And that's as well as the regular things that happen, like the workshops at the gallery (transfer dyeing is this week's topic), and working on the Exquisite Evolon book. So if I'm quiet this week, you know what I'm about.

One thing it is doing for me is bringing me to the realisation that I've got quite a large inventory. No wonder I've not got room for anything in the house, not to mention the studio. The image is one of the small paintings that will be hanging in the Little Green Shed.. why not come and see it in person?

WARNING!

This is what happens when you leave a thing half done. It might even be a picture of What Too Much Fabric Looks Like. Well, I exaggerate a bit; that's a small proportion of my actual stash, which is boxed up now and looking tidy in the far corner of my studio. But it was what stopped me playing with my embellisher this afternoon; I quite simply couldn't get at the table. And yes, there was a bit of me thinking, there's something I should be doing, here... but hey, the embellisher won't go away, and I can now see the table. And I managed to put all of that lovely fabric away, including the small mountain that was underneath the table, without falling in love with more than one piece of fabric, which is now sitting waiting on top of the sewing machine. I'm impressed. And I think I might do some quilting before Robin gets back from the football.

Funny, though, I might think I have too much fabric, I might even believe it; but it's still remarkably difficult to contemplate giving it away... but I do have some set aside for Sally, and some more for Jill. And Andrew is coming for Christmas with his new girlfriend, and she sews...so perhaps she might like to do a bit of judicious stash diving while she's here... so I'm not as mean as all that! And there will be one or two more quilty visitors after Christmas, and I'm looking forward to sharing some of that lovely fabric with my friends.