'On the Shelf' Part One

This week I have been on an interesting course at City Lit in London which involved ideas for monoprinting on paper and fabric and non-traditional applique with hand stitch. In preparation for the three day course we were asked to take along some objects or images to act as inspiration. I thought I would go for something prosaic and easily at hand, but with scope to lead to other ideas and interpretation, so my theme is ‘On the Shelf’; an expression which used to mean that you were long past it, and had no chance of the ultimate goal i.e. marriage and babies, I suppose the equivalent nowadays would be ‘past the use by date’. It probably doesn’t really have an equivalent as goals have changed and certainly age perimeters have done. At the moment I am simply taking it as what you find on a typical shelf in the average home, and probably never give a second glance to.

I took some photographs around my home and then manipulated them on the ipad with a number of apps..

Fabric applique like patterns can be built up using the iColorama app..

'Art in Action'

‘Art in Action’ is an annual event held in the grounds of Waterperry House near Oxford, we have not been for some years as the last time as we parked in the field car park the heavens opened and throughout the day there were storms.  The poor artists were occupied trying to save their work from the deluge. This year rain and lightning was forecast but we soldiered on as I had bought tickets, our luck was in as we had a lovely dry day with just the right amount of sunshine, so that the marquees were not horrendously hot as they had been on the previous day. Here are a few photos to give a glimpse of the event for those of you not fortunate enough to be there:

Roanna Wells working on her perfect stitching, an aerial view of the Tour de France bike race.

Here is a new hero of mine, whoever thought of performance art using the sewing machine, and who could possibly be brave and talented enough to set up their sewing machine in an Indian market and start making portraits on cloth of the locals, surely
only Harriet Riddell

.

 

Stitch Archives

Just looking through the archives.

Hand stitch over a machine made grid.

I was given a large bag of jewellry chains:

Heavy stitching varying the thread.

'Stitch Along'

I am pleased to be one of the ten contributors to Jenny Doh’s latest book ‘Stitch Along’. This is a fun project based book to which we were each asked to contribute three stitched items along with the sketch designs they were based upon. Jenny’s request came two years ago and makes me realize what a long process it is getting a book together.

 I had previously made a sketchbook for a group which had a year’s theme of birds, I wanted to join in with the group but have something of a phobia of birds, so decided to make mine quirky and use the title Rare Birds. Jenny agreed that this would also work for my theme for ‘Stitch Along’.

This is the fabric cover of the little sketchbook that flew all the way to the USA and back again. You can see some of the sketches on the Sketchbook Challenge blog.

Scrap Store.

Basingstoke now has a Scrap Store which had its' official opening on Friday; this is something of a late innovation for the town as I know that many other cities and towns have had one for many years. It is still in temporary accommodation but hopes eventually to move into a permanent setting which will have easier access. The store has been set up by Kirsty Whitlock a local textile artist who was lately the Embroiderers’ Guild Scholar. If you have not seen her work online or at Alexander Palace, take a look via the link.

The idea is that organizations pay a yearly fee, currently £25, and then can go and fill a carrier bag with goodies donated by local businesses; when I say goodies, I mean things like odd shapes of plastic, boxes, cardboard tubes, fabric scraps, in fact scrap to most but the aficionado of such things. My husband said it sounded just like my art room and I must say he was not far wrong.

I found some offcuts of foam board and museum board which were just the thing for mounting the work of my day centre group. The stitched work relates to a project on faces which took us many, many months and was completed in 2013.It has been waiting for me to find inspiration as to how to put it together. I just found the list of some of the ideas we covered along the way, which included:

1.     The basics of drawing a face.

2.     Mexican Glyphs, images from the British Museum.

3.     Using Ink Tense crayons to draw faces on paper and fabric.

4.     Applique faces, looking at the work and mask collection of Jude Hill.

5.     Taking black and white photos, turning them into ‘photocopies’ in Photoshop and colouring them in.

6.     Print out the face and place it onto a drawn body. Make a card in the style of Claudine Hellmuth. Wax the image.

7.     Make ‘stuffies’.