Fossilised.

Back to hand stitch, and the piece I showed you here... The advantage of working small (this piece is roughly A4 size), is that it can lie beside me on the sofa, while I decide what to do with it.  Of course, the disadvantage is that the cats lie on it, don't they, Merlin?  I found myself drawn to the random marks I could see, and stitched them :

That was the easy bit... deciding what to do to create the whole of the shape, which reminded me of a fossil (hence the title), was a bit more challenging.  Another hard line didn't seem to be appropriate. Mainly because 'that purple morass', as I called the area to the right of the figure, was still there, and needed to be worked with, to minimise its impact.  I finally decided to use blanket stitch.

It gives the firm line I wanted to delineate the area, but pulls the eye in to the mass, rather than outwards.  The whole area reminds me of a fossil we have, somewhere, Orthocerus Nautiloid.  I love fossils, I find them fascinating.  I've made one or two pieces based on fossils, but this was a surprise...

And I'm going to leave it at that.  No more stitch.  I don't think it would add anything, to stitch the background, which is quite interesting as it is, plenty of texture and visual interest.  Anyone who has attended one of my printmaking workshops, will know that I talk about 'leaving space for stitch'.  There needs to be a strong visual justification for adding stitch to a print, not just, because it's a textile piece, or, because that's my style... and in my view, there just isn't one here. 

Another one bites the dust....on to the next hand stitch piece...

... And The Heat Goes On...

and on... and on... and I do know it's unreasonable to complain about it... but hey.  The Shed remains oven like... though it wasn't too bad yesterday, when I managed to get a reasonable amount done.  I spent the day painting, something I haven't done in a while, and finishing off most of the prep work on some altered books; there are still two remaining that need finished, but the other three are ready to be worked in.

I'm still exploring the 'Linescapes' idea, as you can see from the images that follow;

This is an A5 image, mixed media.  I like the energy in it; if they could move, those curves look as if they would be travelling at speed...   Robin calls it the desert piece.  Which was followed up by this;

This is a small board book, with its pages sealed together, giving the piece a three dimensional feel.  I'm not so keen on this one...these lines feel too thick, and too far away from each other, too regularly spaced.  Interesting, though.

And finally, this one, the best of the three, I think, Strata.

This is on a canvas board, and I think it shows some potential.  Again, it's mixed media; acrylic paint and oil sticks.  I like the texture of the overall piece, and I need to think some more about how to use textures in this series.  I had initially wanted the lines to be raised in some way, which is fairly easy to achieve in textile, but needs a bit more thought in paint.  Looking at this, though, I like the overall texture.  It's reminiscent of one of the first trial pieces I made in paint, which I didn't photograph, unfortunately.

Finally, I did some work on a small piece that I was not happy with, and it has ended up like this;

About six or so inches square, on board, it's called 'Dawn In The Summer Garden'.  Very gentle..and possibly not quite finished... oh well...back to the drawing board...

Yet More...

...forgotten work; this is a stitched photograph, printed out on Evolon.

I love the richness of this piece, and some of the unexpected details, such as the area in the left with the interesting blue marks (try clicking on the image to get a good look).  That combined with the texture of the stitch, and the feel of the cloth, makes it a really tactile piece.  It's not all that big, but packed with detail,

This wasn't the only piece I looked at today; I worked on another version of it, this one printed on Lutradur XL; I'll show you tomorrow.  It had a different feel to it altogether...and a different fate, too.  I added quite a bit of stitch to it, though... but did not do so here.  The stitch in the dark areas is very intense, black metallic thread with little bits of colour shot through it.  It makes the background incredibly rich, somehow.

The temptation was to use stitch to emphasise the textures of the seeds in the image.  It was an easy decision not to; I think the photograph shows that so well, that it's really not needed.  Also, the dense stitching pulls the background down, giving the seeds a slightly puffy look, though not as much as the use of trapunto would have done.  I didn't want to lose that by stitching into these areas.  In this case, I firmly believe that less is more.

Fascinated By Feathers.

They are just so incredibly beautiful.  The colours, the sheen, the variations, the texture and that incredible softness.  These are natural colours, no dyeing involved here, though some dyed feathers are really interesting.  Because we are working on making accessories with hand dyed cloth, I thought I might like to dye feathers, too.  It looks really very simple, a combination of acid dyes and alcohol, as feathers may not be boiled, too delicate.  I'm wondering if that combination would work on cloth and fibres, too...much less steam in the studio... 

These particular feathers are ideal for fascinators, and I'm designing one around them right now.  The dark areas in this photo read as dark brown or black; they are, in fact, a beautiful green.  Subtly beautiful; Mother Nature really knows what she's about, doesn't she?

KISS...

is the order of the day with these small pieces. It stands for 'keep it simple, stupid', and is good advice for anyone, along with the idea that less is more. This is a struggle for me...I do a lot of quilting on most pieces, though more recently, I've been aiming to give the impression that I'm drawing with thread, rather than quilting or stitching. I rarely ever stitch for pattern, preferring to create texture and/or line. I'm learning, though, that it's difficult to get texture out of canvas, so will stick with Evolon when printing for stitch. Whilst I have to prepare the Evolon, I much prefer the quilted result, though canvas is okay for line work.

This image, though, does show a bit of texture, which isn't really surprising given that there is a lot of stitch in a relatively small area. It hasn't distorted the canvas, one of the advantages of working with a stiffer cloth than usual. I did decide not to add any more stitch, though; I thought it would make the piece far too fussy if I did. See what you think. And I don't think I need to identify the flower for you...

I sat today and stitched a pile of these small pieces, no bigger than 5" square. Tomorrow, I'll cut mounts for them, and see how they look. If I'm happy, they'll go onto my Etsy shop, which I intend to reopen next week or so (yes, I really am feeling better!). And I'm thinking that some of the images, scaled up, might make nice tshirts, if just for me, so I've opened a Zazzle account, to try it out. Might make some personalised mugs for Christmas presents!