Developing Ideas.

I said yesterday I'd talk about how I might use some of the images I took at Callender Park, so I'm going to talk about two of them, specifically.  The first is a rhododendron; there were a lot of rhododendron bushes, and a happy family clustered in front of them, so I couldn't take a range of photographs as  I would otherwise have done.  I did, however, get up close and personal with this one, at the end of the group.

This is the photograph I took, uncropped, au naturel, as it were.  I like the colours, the variation, the texture implied in those petals.  I thought it might be fun to tweak the image a bit...so...

Loud, man, loud!  I wanted to take a look at the way the colour is grouped, so fiddled a bit with the settings, to produce this... I rather like it, though I could live without the white, and could have done something about it, I suppose, but given this is a reference photograph, I let it be.  Besides, I love the semi abstract shapes that are suggested around those white patches.  It would be interesting to do a monoprint based on these shapes, or possibly an applique.  Finally,

Looks very similar to the first one, except... I've fiddled around with the colour intensity and the amount of contrast, to show up the texture a bit more.  Again, the shapes of the flowers are shown quite clearly in this image, good for applique reference, or painting, for that matter.  Flowers change almost moment to moment, so drawing from reference photographs seems a reasonable thing to do.

My eye was caught by lots of things in the park; the second one I'll discuss here, is a section of the wall of the main house.

This was cropped from one of the images I took yesterday.  I didn't particularly want to get up close and personal, so it was taken from a distance; often I'll photograph individual stones, or groups of stones, if I find them interesting.  I've always been interested in stone walls; that interest grew in Norfolk, with the incredible flint buildings there (I've talked about them on this blog before).  I like the variation in colour, texture and shape in this.  I photographed it because it struck me that it would make an interesting basis for a quilt.

So, once more, I played around with this image, cropping it again and playing with the intensity of the colour.  

Not a lot to choose between the two images, but when you look at this third one...

There's a distinct difference; much stronger colours, more contrast.  What this exercise has done for me, is to suggest how a series of quilts might develop 'about' walls.  I've never been interested in brick walls, because of their regular nature (the reason I don't make patchwork quilts is my dislike of regular pattern).  Taking a wall like this one as a template of sorts for a series of pieces, but varying types of fabric and gradually turning up the visual volume, as I've done in these photographs, would be an interesting way of exploring this form, as well as providing a challenge.  A bit like a crazy quilt, but in a far more regular form.

Will I ever get round to either of these possibilities, or any of the others I found at Callendar Park?  I don't know, to be honest.  My energy is limited, and there are plenty more ideas where they came from... I'll talk about choosing an idea to work with, tomorrow.

Making The Most...

of our day out, we continued on to Callendar Park, a huge (170 plus acres) estate near the centre of Falkirk.  Reader, it's gorgeous... lots of things to do, plus a wonderful house...

The space is glorious; masses of trees, and every so often, a specimen tree in among the mass planting...

In the background, the edge of the loch.  Complete with swans...no, not the real thing, but little boats that can be taken out for fun.  And everywhere you look, something interesting, a different vista.

I have to admit, I was exhausted yesterday...should have know better than to go to two places on one day.  I think it was worth it, though, just to see all this beauty.  And I took one or two images that will doubtless inform some work...more tomorrow. 

Water, Water Everywhere...

but fortunately, plenty of cafes too, so no problem with thirst.  The Kelpies are water spirits, so it makes sense that they are situated at a marina, with a selection of boats and barges

Lots to look at.  We had a really good time, though the coffee was pretty awful...however, we were struck by the attention to detail.  Here's an image of one of the lights in the cafe...ring any bells?

Here Comes The Sun...

for today, at least....so we thought we'd go out.  We plumped for going to see the Kelpies, the amazing sculpture of two water horses at Falkirk.  They are even better up close and personal...

They are fierce, wonderfully observed, in an incredible setting, surrounded by water.  If you've not come across the word kelpie before, you've clearly not been keeping up with your Scottish myths.  Here's a link to tell you about them.  They can shape shift into human form, though I don't think these sculptures quite manage that... maybe just as well. 

A closer look, here, from the same position.  You can get up very close to the sculptures; their texture is remarkable.

I found myself wondering about basing a piece of work on the patterning of these metal blocks, which have been so carefully engineered.  Reverse applique, I thought, and a wholecloth, allover pattern, though it might be an interesting exercise to make a series of blocks in this way.  The attention to detail and realism of these horse heads is truly remarkable.

Note the way the sculptor shows the veins and musculature of that upflung neck...remarkable.  You can almost hear the defiant scream of the kelpie. 

More about the site tomorrow. 

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.

Look Before You Leap

I've been spending a bit of time getting ready to teach several workshops....so it came as a surprise to get an email today telling me that I was no longer required.  Apparently nobody wants to make cute little cushions, and someone else has been lined up to do the linoprinting workshop we'd been discussing, which is unprofessional, but without a contract, there's nothing I can do.  Wish I'd known that before I bought the soft cut for it.  So...that was something of a waste of time... and money...and materials... I now have three wee cushions made up as samples.  Oh well, they'll be useful for something, I suspect.  It was suggested that I rent the space, but given that I'm not welcome to do workshops for the shop, I don't think I'll bother renting the space.  My idea was to support a new local business, and meet a few new people into the bargain, not to become a workshop provider.  Yes, I'm offended.  And upset.  Won't be leaping before I look in future.

The image is pure eye candy, dyer's chamomile from my Norfolk garden.  Reminds me that I want to try growing it here, too.

Pacing Myself

You may  have noticed it's been quiet on the blog this week.  My sister had a party at the weekend, and I'm still paying for it in reduced energy, so very little sewing.  I thought you might like to see how the Borderlines piece is progressing (I talked about it here), so...

Regular stitching, irregular sizes, round and round, I hope it suggests a field.  And then some much more intense stitch in the lighter area of paper.

I hope it supports the texture of the paper, which sadly, you can't really see clearly from the image.  It's really quite fragile, though it has a rough look. 

The real challenge, though, is the background.  All that white.  I really don't like white, don't use it much at all.  My original intention was to use a dark blue/pinky purple hand dyed thread as the background, in a similar fashion to the yellow stitches in the image above, but now I'm not so sure.  Maybe a variety of different colours, grouped in different ways; rectangles, or circles.  Rectangles are more likely...to reflect the idea of a patchwork of fields.  If that isn't enough, I dare say I could use a wash of either a herbal tea or a watercolour paint... but I think I'll wait to see how the stitching turns out. 

Ideas tend to shift and change, to develop, as the work goes along.  I like that.  Art is a living thing, in its way, a relationship between the maker and the thing he or she is exploring.  It ought to change as more is learned, more uncovered.  It's all part of the process.

Relative Normality

Well, you didn't really think it was going to be tidy for long, did you?  Note the strategic placing of the coffee cup, and the small photograph waiting for stitch which has nothing much to do with anything... oh well....

The reason for the relative chaos is the creation of a sample for the class I'll be teaching at Fabric And More in Bo'ness, called 'Patchwork Without A Pattern'.  I have thought for some time that when we teach basic patchwork, we really ask a lot of beginners.  We want them to line up corners, get points right, choose fabrics that work together, make blocks that look similar and fit together, all sorts of competing priorities in a skill that's new to them.  If you take away the need to line things up and fit together properly, then learners can practice the whole quarter inch seam thing along with the suitable fabrics thing, and still produce something that's worthwhile.

So...I took some scrap, and fiddled about with it... the panda was a pure fluke, a strip that someone had given me...I think he's rather cute, despite semi decapitation...

The deal was that I'd make a small wall hanging, but when I assembled it...

It shrieked cushion... so that is what it became.

Ideally, it should have lavender in it, but my lavender went the way of most craft things in the great move, and I've no idea where to get it locally. I'm going to play with this idea a bit more, see what I end up with...watch this space.

Something To Refer To.

We went to visit my sister yesterday, to celebrate, a tad belatedly, her 30th wedding anniversary with the rest of the family.  Being half an hour early, we detoured to Leven, meaning to enjoy watching the water sparkle in the sunlight, which we did.   On the way to the house, though, Robin stopped to buy some rolls from a particularly good baker, and I spotted this...

I admit, it's not an obvious photograph to take, but then, I'm the girl who used to get down on her hands and knees to take photographs of roots and stones... There's a lot of texture in this image, and, sadly, more reflections than I wanted; didn't think to roll down the car window.  What I was after, in actual fact, was the cracks in the stone underneath the sign, the one to the left of the image in particular.  That said, I like the whole of it, it's interesting, I think, though I'm unlikely to do anything with the whole thing, really.

The main problem is that this was taken using a phone: you never have your camera with you when you need it.  Given that I have two, perhaps I should take to keeping one in the car.  So the image is small to start with, and it starts getting a bit hairy when I try to crop down the image to study the crack itself:

At this size, they're okay....ish... a tiny bit of pixellation.  Smaller, though, and we get this:

Still fairly adequate.  But looking at a smaller area, the bit I'm really interested in...

well... I dare say a photographer would just delete it.  I, on the other hand, think it's fab.  Firstly, it suggests ways of rendering it, like pointillism, that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.  Secondly, it isn't my only reference; I can look at the larger images to get a crisper look at what's going on.  Finally, I didn't take the photograph as a photograph, an end in itself.  I took it as reference, to remind me of what was there, to use as the basis for textile work and/or drawing.  As such, the smallest of them, and the one we might usually discard, is probably best.  

Reverting To Words...

,,,because sometimes, only words will do.  This week is ME awareness week; read more about it here.  There are a lot of events happening across the country, across the world, in fact, including Millions Missing, where shoes are set out, labelled with their owners' stories, to indicate the way in which they are missing from the event, and indeed, to some extent, from their own lives.  I can't go to the Edinburgh event (at the Mound, if you want to go along), so I thought I'd mark it with a poem.

Wasting My Energy : A Poem For ME Awareness

You. Yes, you. You who can dance

Whenever you want.  Stroll

Unconcerned wherever you

Wish, run for a mile, or a

Bus without thinking.  Work, laugh or play

Without consequence.  

You really don’t get it, now do you?

Here sit I, wheels for feet,

Buses a distant memory.  Oh yes,

My legs work, and the rest of me: I can

Stand up, point a toe, take a few

Careful steps, then sit down hard

Gasping for breath.

And that will make me

A fraud in your eyes;  that is,

If you see me at all.  Invisible,

That’s me.  (It’s got something to do

With the chair).

Humour me, just for a moment.

Imagine a world filled with pain,

Every action carefully planned, consequences

Weighed up and measured, that is

If just rising from bed can be managed..

Imagine your life without action,

Interaction, meaning: you’re imagining

Mine.  Nobody asks for ME; it just

Happens one day, irreversible,

Misunderstood.  No testing,

Diagnosis or cure.  No treatment.

No sympathy.  Just judgement,

And the shaking of heads. It’s no

Way to live. It’s all there is.

You still don’t get it, do you?

I really tried.

Stitch Sabotage?

So... I thought I'd start the stitch on this piece, Borderline...well, okay, continue the stitch. Except... I couldn't remember which threads I'd used.... but I did work it out, eventually.

And here they are...

So far, so slow.  And it got worse.  Much worse.  

I had a clear idea what to do with that upper right hand circle...this, to be precise...

And this is where it all went to hell in the proverbial handcart.  Texture in the centre, I thought.  French knots, I thought.  Wish I'd left it well alone...  Turns out, I used to be able to do French knots...and the first one turned out fine... but it was all downhill from there.  I looked up my favourite stitch book, and followed the instructions and got another one out of six attempts.  Then it was YouTube....no joy.  Yes, I could see the woman demonstrating, doing beautiful stitches.  I did exactly what she did, and got damn all.  By this time, I was incandescent.  Had the piece not had so much potential, I would have thrown it out the window and been done with it.  However.... 

So I thought somebody might as well have a laugh out of it, and posted on FB.  Yes, they laughed (and I'm very happy for them, I'd have laughed as well, had it not been two hours of my life I won't be getting back again...).  And then someone said, Colonial knots.  Three different someones, in fact.  Reader, those kind women have changed my life.  I will never again mess about with the French version.  Here are the instructions I was sent to; do yourself a favour, go and have a look.  

So... I now have a collection of knots...looks better in real life, to be honest, but hey.  I wish I had put more space between the individual stitches, but it took so long to get the end result, I'm rather loath to unpick it.  And when there was space between them, I'm not convinced it looked any better.  Sigh.

But that's not all.  I did a bit of work in another section...and then put the work down, so I could have a rest.  Apparently that was an invitation to Merlin...

And this was bad enough...but this annoyed me...

Dammit, that paper is fragile. I remembered too late that it's easier to handle paper if it has a light interfacing attached (though not necessarily easier to hand sew, admittedly, which is why I didn't do it).   And then, to add insult to injury, he started playing with the thread.  Reader, I chased him.  I've come to terms with cats sitting on my work, but that was a paw too far.  

He got his own back, though.  I must have left the thread on the sofa that night, as in the morning the ball was on the other side of the room...he (or Mollie, perhaps) had clearly had a great deal of fun winding it round the scratching post.  Cats?  Can't live with 'em etc.  

More on this piece as it develops. 

A Little Light Shopping?

I had a visitor, yesterday, my first in this house, not counting family.  I'd like to think she came to see me. you understand, but I think she was really tempted by the fact that there's a new fabric shop in Bo'ness, Fabric And More.  Their website is still under construction, but here's their FB page.  The owner is the lovely Fiona Paterson, a skilled maker in her own right (more about that tomorrow), as well as approachable, friendly and helpful.  Just what you need in a fabric shop.

Those of you who are looking carefully will notice the six Brother sewing machines at the top of the shop.  Yes, there are workshops.  Yes, I'll be running one.  Or three (watch this space for dates and more details),  I like small groups, and this is an ideal space for six learners and wee me, because the layout is flexible; we can have it like this, or in separate work stations.  And for all that I'm a Bernina girl, I do have a Brother machine, and like using them, so I'm pretty happy about that, too.

Yeah, I know, less of a post, more of an advert...I apologise.  I'm a bit over excited.  I really miss teaching, and this gives me the chance to do more of it, more or less on my own doorstep, in a nice space, with cake.  Actually, I might have to provide the cake... but hey, I don't mind that... you so know that all of my workshops feature cake, you can't sew without it!

Nearly Done.

The first of the ME quilts is nearly complete; here it is. 

It pretty much turned out as I thought it would, though I did do one thing differently.  I had intended to put a spiral in that top left hand box, indicating energy, but when I began to stitch it, it somehow didn't feel right.  So, it became an oval, suggesting a head (in my mind, at least), with a bright red cross through the centre, to suggest the lack of energy that is one of the hallmarks of ME.  It echoes the three red to purple crosses in the bottom right hand side box.  The fabric in there has a postmark; it is intended to be a letter or message 'about' my previous, energy and activity filled life.  

So... the only thing left to do is to bind it.  Now that should be interesting, as I haven''t made any binding in nearly twenty years... so I'll be having a bit of a refresher course in that, YouTube here I come...   Meantime, I didn't think I had anything suitable for binding, but rooted out a couple of strips of fabric that I was gifted as scrap from a FB friend.  I think you'll agree, it goes perfectly in terms of colour.  It works very well in terms of symbolism, too; the feathers suggest flight, and my mind can fly, even if my body can sometimes barely walk.  The perfect fabric to edge this profoundly meaningful quilt.  It may, of course, only be meaningful to me, but that's enough.

Slow, Slow...

...slow, slow, slow...no particular variation in pace when you're hand stitching.  And that's a good thing; it's meditative, rhythmic.  I'm about three quarters of the way through stitching the piece 'about' ME I showed you here.  This shows you the progress so far...

...and a closeup, so that you can see the stitch...

As I waited for this to load, it struck me that this is one of the very few, if not, indeed, the only art piece I've made entirely of commercial fabric.  Usually the focus is on hand dye, but I don't have much of that, any more, and it'll be a while before I'm set up well enough to generate some. 

You can see that the stitch is very intense throughout, so far.  I'm planning to do more of this random stitch in the other three borders, but with a larger stitch size.  The photograph suggests a considerable amount of distortion, which is caused by that intensity of stitch, but I'm confident that that will resolve itself as I complete the stitching. 

This is the perfect piece to take places; so far, I've stitched on it in the doctor's waiting room, as well as the local fabric shop (of which more, another time).  I usually have a piece of work that I can carry about in a pocket, for those waiting rooms.  I hate sitting around doing nothing, which is a bit unfortunate, given I have ME; there are times when that's all I'm capable of doing.  Hoping to get the stitch on this finished this week, so it'll be sitting beside me on the sofa....I do love my sofa...

An Unexpected Gift.

The aftermath of a house move is...empty cardboard boxes.  What felt like hundreds of them; I swear they were breeding in the garage...  The original plan was to return them to the removal company and reclaim our deposit, but they went bust, taking our deposit with them (entirely against the law, of course, but not a lot to do about it).  So... landfill?  Seemed like a waste.  So we offered them locally, and gave them to a very nice lady.  Turns out that she owns a second hand shop, the second hand shop that never seemed to be open, but had an incredibly beautiful hat in the window.  Every time we passed it, I commented on the hat.  Robin happened to mention it to the nice lady as he helped her to unload the boxes at her shop.  Reader, she gave it to me....and isn't it beautiful?

Apparently it's an Australian hat, bought in Melbourne.  Vintage, around the 1970s; I must admit, I have difficulty applying the term vintage to something that was made in my lifetime.  Intensely bridal; if not the bride herself, then surely the mother of the bride.  It's satin, with lovely flowers around the brim.  It still has its original label and the swing ticket from the shop, so clearly never worn, and really expensive for the time.  The crown is a little dented, but hey, if I'd come from Melbourne in a container lorry, I would be dented too.  I think it's buckram underneath that satin.  It is absolutely gorgeous. 

I'm a very lucky person....and now wondering about a vintage hat collection... shhh, don't tell Robin... And must get back to millinery.

Nothing Is Ever Wasted.

It's what I tell people, when they say, that didn't work out, or, I don't know why I wasted my time doing x, or some variant thereof.  No experience is ever wasted.  At some point, you will use it, even if it isn't directly.  So, when I found this very small silk piece and thought, is this actually worth working on, that should have been the thought that went through my head.  I'm ashamed to say it wasn't.  I very nearly put it in the bin.

Admittedly it doesn't look terribly prepossessing.  Habotai silk, hand dyed, tiny slivers of pale blue tissue paper that I coloured somehow, long stitches with knots either end... whilst it looks better in 'real life', it certainly needs a good iron.  It's one of those sketches, I think, that I've been talking about over the past while.  And it's so small, and so delicately coloured, that additional work won't make it into a silk purse, as opposed to the proverbial sow's ear...  And yet...  So I put it aside, and have been glancing at it for at least a week.  I'm a great believer in putting time into a process, particularly when there seems to be nowhere left to go.

And here's the upshot of that invested time.  I have quite a few strips of Lutradur XL, which I want to turn into textile books, but with no place to start, I've been avoiding them.  Perhaps this piece is the start.  It might not be in this current incarnation, certainly, but scaling it down into a repeating motif over a book would bring out the best of its delicate nature.  I have more of that thread, though not of the tissue...but I could recreate that, if I felt it was necessary.  Now, all I have to do is get on with it. A way in, at last.

I'm sure you've heard me say 'trust the process', more than once.  I just want to add something to that.  Add time into that process, when all seems lost.  Let your unconscious work out what to do.  It always knows.

The Real Work?

Two different people said two different things, yesterday.  One asked what I made.  The other said that she was concentrating her limited energy on things that were really important.  The combination made me wonder...what is the real work?  Where am I going with all of this?  I've been easing back into textile work, making a quilt here, as a gift, finishing a UFO there....but it doesn't feel like 'real' work.  With that in mind, I sat down and stitched this.  It's called 'Flow'. 

The pink in the image is not real; it's reflecting my cutting mat, through the two layers of lightweight Lutradur which make up two sides of the 'sandwich'; the 'filling' is scrap threads from my friend Clare's loom.  Just before the ME, I was starting to put work together for a possible book, called 'Constructed Cloth'.  I have no desire to weave; too precise and repetitive for me, doesn't suit my personality.  I do, however, being a control freak, wish to have a hand in every stage of the making process, and it turns out that it's not enough to dye the cloth, hence this small piece. 

Here's a detail of the stitch.  I started out experimenting; when I've made this type of constructed cloth before, I focused on circles, just as you can see at the top of the piece.  The middle section of this piece has long curving lines with occasional circles in it.  Overall, it made me think of a river, hence the title, and I added circles top and bottom, to suggest pebble-covered banks.

I then trimmed off the excess, roughly, to see what it looks like.  Not entirely convinced that worked.... I've put it on a dark fabric to let you see it properly.  The colour of the piece comes entirely from the threads sandwiched between the white lutradur layers, very delicate.  I may hit it with a heat gun to expose some of the threads, which would give areas with slightly stronger colour,   It's very small; roughly 11" by 4"; it would actually make a really pretty purse, perhaps that's the answer.

It may not be all that successful, but it does help to defiine what the real work is... intense stitch, transparency, experimentation.  At least it leads to an interesting life.  Incidentally, there's a bit about constructed cloth here; apparently not one of my better days.

Done.

I showed you the beginnings of a stitched photograph here, a manipulated image of a magnolia petal; today, I finished it off.  And here it is.

I'm reasonably pleased.  It needs a good ironing; there's rather more distortion than usual, pretty much all at the top.  I think that's because there's two fair sized areas with no stitch at all, while the rest of the piece is quite intensively stitched.  It won't be a problem, whether or not the iron sorts it out, as, chances are, it'll be mounted, at least, if not framed. 

All the stitch uses variegated threads; the dark area is metallic, giving a slight gleam, the purple and pink areas were both rayons, and the yellow, a cotton.  Surprisingly, the only one that gave me any bother, was the cotton, which kept shredding...grrr.   Which reminds me that it's more than time to have the machine serviced.

Quite a few people who work with photographs stitch so intensively that the photograph can no longer be seen.  I don't work that way; I want my stitch to enhance the photograph, rather than using the photograph as a guide for stitch.  That seems to me to be more authentic, somehow.  Claude Debussy said that the music is the space between the notes; this work relies on both the photograph and the stitch for its impact. 

Here's what the piece looks like from the back.  It's interesting to look at it that way, not as a test of quality, but rather, to look at the form, without the distraction of the colour inherent in the photograph.

I'm pleased; I think the piece works well either way.  I wasn't intending to finish it, because I'm not a huge fan of stitching on canvas, but I'm glad I did.  I'm planning to start donating small works like these to charity, to raise money, though I suspect I'll need to make works that are a bit more commercial for that.  I suspect that charities can be remarkably picky; it would be a pity for something that involves a great deal of work to be sold off for peanuts in a charity shop.  I don't think it's unreasonable to hope that new work will be treated with a certain level of respect.  Or maybe I should just not worry about it.