Textile Festival

At the weekend I had a visit to Cirencester which is in  the Cotswolds where every house is built with a golden colour stone and is generally v. posh and quite unlike the area where I live. The first trip was to Brewery Arts where there was a ‘pop up gallery’. I bought a lovely devore scarf made by Barbara Fidoe. I particularly like the colours and the long thin shape. I have had in mind to make a scarf of a similar shape in felt, but really don’t have quite the space, or is it the energy which is lacking. Any way it is extravagant and beautiful. Also showing were the felt pods of Deborah Roberts.

Barbara told us about the Stroud Textile Festival, there were many small galleries throughout the town and a larger display in the museum. I saw some stimulating work including the Brunel Broderers Curious Drawers, pieces based on the idea of cabinets of curiosity of which there are examples in the National Trust House where I work .It could not have been a better time for my visit .
In the museum the work was linked to the idea of Stroud Scarlet. Stroud has a number of old mills and in these the cloth for the red coats of the British Army used to be woven. The lawn mower was invented in the area originally to cut the nap on cloth. I particularly liked the light box installations of Henny Burnett, ( follow the link to see her work and more about the Festival) photographs of lots of tiny pieces on red cloth, old letters, thistles etc. Love Stitching Red would have found it all v. familiar.

I have started to work into one of my dyed pieces and so far have used a combination of curved seams and Spirit Cloths’ weaving technique which she shared with us on video. I am machining it at the moment and then intend to start hand stitching into it.
I don't usually like gadgets but I have fallen for the interactive fish which move with your mouse; the perfect pets.

Leaves

I thought the idea of leaves had come from nowhere particular, but had forgotten that I had been stitching some leaves in a sketch book over the past month. Here are some pics.

Some interesting shapes develop on the reverse of the page.

Anyone near The Hurst ,Tadley UK (0118 9812918) may be interested in coming along to three Saturday workshops to be run fortnightly on 12th June, 26th June and 10th July from 10-3pm.. The aim will be to learn how to design and make an embroidered panel using Ethnic textiles as inspiration with lots of creative fun along the way.

'A Lamentation of Leaves'

I have continued working on the dyed pieces and have probably finished for the moment.

I monoprinted using leaf shapes which I cut out of some Xerox transparencies I rescued from a charity shop; they have been so useful. I came up with the idea of cutting out a shape for the monoprint whilst falling asleep one night. Antihistamine Tablets have been giving me nightmares, but in this case seemed to help.

I then used a thermo fax screen of skeleton leaves in green to give a bit of contrast.

On the one piece I just kept adding layers and using left over paint. It easy to get attached to these pieces and I would find it difficult to cut them up at the moment.
I decided on some text and have used a quote from Yates:
‘A lamentation of leaves’
which I think is lovely and soulful. In my mind I can see some quite heavy embroidery at the base of the leaf piece. We shall see.

 I have been to some local Open Studio events, including a morning’s sketching at The Sandham Memorial Chapel, which centres on the amazing narrative paintings of Stanley Spencer; then on to a display of art/craft at Greenham Common Arts.

 I also visited the National Needlework Archives new centre which is in the same complex. I had hoped to go round the working artists' studios at Greenham but they were not officially open, a kind lady let me look around anyway. I was so struck by how the artists were working on a theme and pushing it in all directions. Working in isolation it is difficult to do that. It was v. inspiring.

Book Art Blog

My work is featured here on this new Book Art Blog   from Berlin  which starts with a general discussion and examples of what book art is about.
 The author has used an image of a piece of work I did on my Access Course to illustrate the discussion after finding it on Flickr. I hope it will be a success and provides us all with lots of ideas and inspiration.


I received my mini book swaps from Australia and here are some images from them. If you want to know more about the paper swaps head over to Woven Letters.

STOP ROBBING THE RICH

STOP ROBBING THE RICH
Originally uploaded by DBO PONDERS

Exhibition in Nottingham.

Monoprint

This is another stage along the way with the pieces of fabric I am working on after the two stages of immersion dyeing and manipulating using Jane Dunnewold’s recipe and later her stencilling technique.

 I bought some, expensive, Golden Liquid Acrylics and some open gel medium, following the idea suggested by Liz Berg in a free download from Quilting Arts. Unfortunately the packaging was so tight that I split the first minute bottle whilst opening the package - I patched it up, whilst still being aghast at how much I had paid for a tiny bottle of paint. You have to see this in light of the fact that I had just thrown out my old ‘glucky’ paints, most of which were acquired from charity shops, and the fact that I admit to being a mean Yorkshire woman.

 I have now found that a few drops of the paint go a long way. The resulting monoprints are great, in that the handle of the fabric is still nice and soft. When I have monoprinted on fabric previously I have used acrylics alone and the fabric has been difficult to stitch into, especially when machining and there is not much time to work on the marks before the paint dries.

The next Doodles workshop is on Wednesday 19th May 1-3pm and will be ‘Recycle/Reuse’ transferring images from old books to make a unique picture. Book by ringing 0118 981 1238.
My monoprint and stitch workshop is  available on HEN.

Why?

Over on  ‘Things Handmade' there is a bit of a reflection as to why the author is making, pricing items , exhibiting etc.; especially when she believes she is making work to satisfy herself and not primarily to sell.

I must say I was delighted to sell one of my two Cyrus Cylinders in ‘The Made to Fit’ exhibition. I had priced them both but with no real thought of either of them selling. I was pleased with both pieces, both the thinking behind them and the execution. When I heard one had sold I was genuinely surprised, but as I said delighted that someone literally loved my work enough to pay good money and give it a place in their home. It is still a strange feeling, as unlike selling items on a craft stall I have no idea who the piece has gone to, and there is a certain sense of loss – but that is only minor.

Here is a picture of the Flare Magazine display at the NEC recently.  It was worthwhile entering to get myself into action; I like to be motivated by exhibitions, competitions etc.

I have over dyed the pieces of cotton and silk, manipulating the fabric again and immersion dyeing. I also made a stencil in the Jane Dunnewold fashion and used this with opaque fabric paint on some of the pieces.

More Stash

The good news is that I am working steadily through my stash of dyed, painted and printed fabrics, merrily cutting curved seams and making a variety of blocks to be used together at some stage. On the less sensible track I decided to dye some more material, in fact to use up most of my store of cotton and silk which I bought prepared for dyeing. I will have to look at Whaley’s updated price list so I can get tempted.

I don’t know about you, but the more I read about dye recipes the more confused I get. This is despite the fact that I once wrote a dyeing workshop for Workshop on the Web. I think it’s a bit like felt making, everyone seems to have their own pet method which tends to come over like it is written in stone. I have been watching the Complex Cloth DVD and decided to go back to basics. I have started with a low water immersion using an initial colour, binding the silk and cotton, and then intend to go for over dyeing for the next step. I am even using up my Procion Dyes which is another good thing as I have had them for a long time.

There were two enthusiastic people joined in the Doodles (Tadley) printing workshop this week. We printed on envelopes and old book pages using water based printing inks; by the end of the session there was some creative buss about and I enjoyed that very much.

I have put this together using a 'new' to me version of blogger,which should make it much easier to place pictures, when I get used to it. It was a steep learning curve for me when I started this blog, when I had to ring my son to check out how to insert code. Things have become much simpler since then, but I am stuck in  my ways, and felt a moments panic when the familar uploading was nolonger there.                   

Kozo

Kozo
Originally uploaded by stitchworks-jackie

Cyrus' Cylinder Part 2

For my second piece for the ‘Made to Fit’ exhibition I made another version of Cyrus’ Cylinder, this time, influenced by my course with Louise Baldwin, I used various papers,including some very delicate Japanese papers, stitched into the seams around the cylinder. On some pieces of Vellum I printed either lines from the Bill of Rights, or some of the quotes from the actual cylinder.
On a trip to the British Museum I asked where I could see the cylinder but had a blank response. Fortunately in the Enlightenment Gallery, I found a number of incised cylinders and presumed one of them was the one I was looking for.

This is a piece I made in Louise Baldwin’s workshop which relates to the finished piece.

I stitched a piece of calico with a twin needle to get the shape of the cylinder. This is the inside, I stamped both sides with a handwriting stamp and added rolled beads made from book pages as in version one.

How to get the pieces to keep their shape; it was simple in the end, when I got the idea of using empty cardboard toilet rolls. I did paint them nicely with gesso.

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Here is a tip if you haven’t thought of it already.

When I went to throw away my old window cleaning spray, I thought how useful the spray attachment looked.

Cut down it works well should you want a sprayed background, especially on the days when you haven’t enough puff for the diffuser or the tiny spray bottle is too fiddly.

Next Workshop.

The next workshop at Doodles Tadley ( see link for website) is on Wednesday 21st April.

Called Recycle/Reuse we will be making art on book pages from 1pm to 3pm..

Cost £12.

JUST ANOTHER

JUST ANOTHER
Originally uploaded by DBO PONDERS

Video fun.

I really enjoy watching craft type videos at the moment; I am sure that for me it is an ideal way to learn. If you have ever filled in one of those questionnaires about learning styles, I must be a visual learner. Its not only the techniques, I also enjoy observing how people work, their setting and in general their accents and mannerisms.
My three favourites at the moment are the amazing Jude Hill on Spirit Cloth, (see links), I imagine many of you will have been avidly watching her technique for weaving strips of cloth and I see chequerboard patterns springing up across blog land.
Even more generously on You Tube you have three video lessons from Alicia Merrett showing how to cut and sew curved seams. If you Google her, she has an interesting website with information about her workshops in the Glastonbury area. She shares the whole process in a lovely clear manner and doesn’t try to sell us anything, other than wanting us to share the fun which, of course, I had to do after buying a new blade for my rotary cutter.

For a good laugh you can watch the phantom one handed felter here.

For no reason other than to be nice, Chris Gray has sent me some of her faux leather papers. Chris is to be admired for sticking to her ethnic theme and exploring it in her textiles and sketchbooks; so, not at all like me. I'm off to cut some more curved seams.