mosaic monday

mosaic monday
Originally uploaded by cathy cullis

Click on this to see Cathy Cullis selection, which kindly includes my felt.

Felt

Last week I decided to give myself a break from planning the evening classes and workshops and to treat myself to making some felt.

I would like to be positive but having been to the enrolment evening last night, to which a handful, a very small handful of people came, I think the classes are unlikely to run. Languages, computer studies etc. look to be in the same boat. I am however pleased with my plan and samples and will hopefully be able to use them in the future. Thank you to the people who said they would attend if they didn’t live on the other side of the world!!

Here is a link to my new felt hero Lisa Klakulak. I think her fantastic pincushions are my favourite although I am a fan of all her way out and intricate constructions. I like the colours, the shapes and the details which make her felt so contemporary.

On-line Embroidery Exhibition

'LaceWing'

One of my former tutors Val Campbell-Harding used to say that the back of a piece of work was often more interesting than the front; she was right more times than she was wrong. To see the online exhibition you can click on the side bar link.

Snow Writing Graffiti

One of my new heroes is Alisa Burke whose work I have mentioned before. I liked her style because it is very much art based. I first came across her on The Quilting Arts website; it has quite a lot of information and every so often there are free promotional gifts if you register. Currently there is a free e-book about free motion quilting, which I was too busy to take up but which sounded worth having.




I think I mentioned before that I paid to download a video lesson by Alisa and these are the results of using her graffiti style using my snow writing symbols.

Elderberries

I made my first attempt at making Elderberry Jelly this week. I added plenty of lemon juice but it took two attempts to get a set. Left with the debris from the jelly bag I was inspired by Cathy Cullis’ description of no pain natural dyeing to just dunk some pieces of cotton into the jug and see what happened.

The cotton had been mordanted in alum a long time ago; in fact when I gave up on the tempting idea of natural dyeing feeling that I didn’t really have enough space or energy. I have washed these pieces and the colour seems stable, although it may fade with time.

Paper Beads

These are two samples from my City & Guilds course. Its good sometimes to look
through the folders full of samples for inspiration and to either feel how you have moved on or perhaps to be aghast at how much work went into them - often a bit of both feelings.

At the moment I am working on designs and samples for an evening class and two creative textile workshops I hope to run starting in September. The evening class will be about using Ethnic textiles as a design source for an embroidered panel. A lot of work if not enough people sign up for them to run but it keeps me busy. The classes and workshops will be at The Hurst Community College near Tadley, Hampshire (0118 9811611).

'Snow Writing'

This is a stitched piece which I recently completed using the ‘snow writing’ symbols.


The symbols were printed out onto calico from the computer. I have found that using A4 labels to carry the fabric through the printer works well. I then machined the fabric using a double needle, which made it curl round like a book spine which I liked. I intend to keep it like that and with the loose threads at the edges.



As you see the beads are made from book pages .I then hand stitched with some slips of silk added in places. The symbols were the starting point and also looking at samples from the past in which I had stitched and included paper beads. I will post pictures of the samples next time. Sometimes its hard to remember where you started and keep track of how ideas come together; and equally of how they disappear at other times.

Indecipherable

On and off over past months I have been using some marks which I saw in the snow as inspiration as I thought they looked like some unreadable lettering. Here are the photographs which I took.

Some sketchbook pages.

Some of the stitching related to the imagery. Next time I will post the most recent piece. I think there is a link both to book making and the general pleasure at the moment in including words and lettering in textile pieces.

Sea Blue

I have used this stitched piece as a background for a photo group competition on Flickr.
It was one of a series with 'blue' titles ie Lavender Blue. It is worked on a silk background and uses carrier rod silk strips which I painted and used Iridescent Tinting Medium to add some sparkle. The stitching is mainly Cretan Stitch, with some machining and seeding. Carrier rods are lovely to use and fairly cheap; you can turn them from something quite ugly into something fine and tactile.

If you fancy donating to a good cause have a look here Great North Swim.

Blog Award

Thank you to Abigail for this award.
I always enjoy following the links from the blogs which I enjoy, but I tend to keep my current blogs in my favourites list, because it does change according to my current interest – which means this is a good opportunity to point people in the direction of some really interesting and I think unusual blogs to which I would give this award.
http://thisiswhatisee.typepad.com/ Interesting photographs of her daily life.


http://echoesjournal.wordpress.com/ Beautiful art work currently on the theme 'Summer is'.

http://www.susanpm.blogspot.com/ Generous in sharing techniques.

http://hannahlamb.blogspot.com/ Cyanotypes using natural materials, and documenting her artistic struggle as she follows an MA course.

Dynamic Drawing

This may or may not be dynamic but it was the first group exercise on my drawing workshop of that name which took place at Morley College yesterday. We all moved around the table using either charcoal or pencil drawing the person infront of us on the same piece of paper - difficult to explain, it reminded me of moving on in county dancing. There were many similar exercises. I am not sure I really enjoyed the day, could have been my mood. It was a different approach which I am very open to but there was more talk than practise.
'Art in Action' on Friday was v. wet and muddy, probably like being at Glastonbury but we were lucky enough not to be camping and came home to much needed fish and chips. I particularly admired the drawings of Julia Polonski who uses muslin and texture over her drawings and for the second year the stitch marks of Roanna Wells.

'Carried Away'

Thanks again for the comments. I do agree that creativity is about that wonderful feeling of being ‘carried away’, either being entirely in the moment and forgetting everything else or carried away with a surge of enthusiasm and just wanting to get on with making/creating.. However, I also know that when I look at a piece of work that I truly admire it will tend to have a certain simplicity and rightness, with nothing unnecessary added or taken away. I think there tends to be too much angst around about the creative process, but at the same time perhaps that is what keeps us going, the striving for that moment when one knows a piece of work is just right and complete.

This week I have been completely taken up with the inspiring work of Alisa Burke. I went to a local DIY store for a hedge trimmer and bought a trial pot of chalky emulsion (such lovely colours). It worked well on fabric and this lead to a Google search which via Quilting Arts brought me to Alisa Burke’s work. I paid to downloaded one of her videos because I just felt she could be me using all the left over bits and pieces. Her video is excellent and really encourages you to layer techniques.
Recent enthusiasms include cyanotypes, must do more when the sun shines, and life drawing, I would like to go to an ongoing class, but there isn’t a convenient one at the moment. I will put it on the list.

I also found this site which can take up a few happy hours if you are an enthusiast for colour; it could also help in working out interesting colour themes. Nice to play with anyway.

Woolworths' Book.

Thank you for recent comments and especially the birthday wishes.
Here are some more pictures of the Woolworths' book; it surprising the memories that the shop provokes. There are still lots of news stories about its demise and also about the young woman who has started the new version, Wellworths in Dorchester. Of course, Woolworths is now on the internet so not quite dead.

I think I did get a bit carried away, especially when I found the ‘boil proof’ elastic in a local charity shop, which is probably why it was not chosen. Also I had to find a way of doing the lettering and printing by hand which made it a bit inconsistent in style. I took the photos of our local store for the cover and added some texture with scanned muslin.

I bribed someone in Dorchester to send me the bag, which is lined with cotton and printed with Closure etc inside. Completely carried away as you can see.

Woolworths

There will be a couple of posts now about the book I worked on over the last few months for an exhibition; unfortunately, it didn’t get selected but it did keep me out of trouble for awhile.

These were some of my first thoughts.

I chose to make a book about the closure of Woolworths because my school friend’s mother worked there and my first Saturday job was in Woolworths on the haberdashery counter.

There are many people’s memories on the internet and many are similar to my own. We used to go there after school when they had a sort of bar where you could get chicken and stuffing sandwiches. I must say I hated the job but still have some fond memories of the shop.

Cake and more.

20th June, my birthday. I’ve made a big chocolate cake to celebrate and I intend to have much more than my fair share.

I’m also getting the bits and pieces ready for the next short workshop which I am organizing on Wednesday 24th June at Doodles craft shop in Tadley near Basingstoke.
We will be, hopefully, having fun printing with Quick Print on paper using acrylic paints and brusho inks. I have found a good tip is to mix the brusho with acrylic gloss medium which then acts as a resist to a top coat of water based paint etc. The next session I plan to use the same printing method but using fabric paints on fabric.
I know you would really have liked a picture of the cake but I didn’t want to make your mouths water too much.

Summer is?

Summer is?
Originally uploaded by stitchworks-jackie

Seen at the Hackwood Art Festival.

Beware

I’m getting bits together now for the June button swap. The theme is beach, sand etc.It is fun to get the ideas and bits and pieces together and nice to receive a parcel; so far one from Oregon and one from Portugal. Anyone can join in and there is no on-going commitment; take a look here.
This is an old book illustration transferred to a piece of canvas with acrylic medium and then painted with acrylics.
This is not an advert for Boots The Chemists but rather a warning, if you know you are about to do something stupid, try to stop yourself. Listen to that sensible voice inside. I decided to make a print pad from a dried up embossing pad. What a good idea, and I would use a cheap blade not my good one. You can tell by the pic that this was not a good idea. After cutting myself I used a sponge instead.
The shell like stamp was made with Quick Print.

Some more handmade buttons. I bet you just know I’ll be moving on to a new fad shortly!

Dandelions

This post relates to a request from Kathi who is about to do some work based on a photograph of a dandelion. Funnily enough I had thought recently to throw away some of the design boards from what I worked out as being 17 years ago. The stitching is quite heavy and mostly on felt, which I thought related to the subject but which the tutor didn’t like as she thought it killed the light. Some of the sketchs I remember doing in the car whilst waiting for my son to finish swimming lessons; you can see from my last post what he's doing now.

The piece I actually liked, which was based on the delicate tufts of seed heads, was sold and I didn’t unfortunately photograph my work at the time.
Well have fun with those dandelions. I can’t let you sample the dandelion wine I made; I assure you that you had a lucky escape - it was rough!!