Progress of a kind.

I seem to have galloped ahead with finishing the throw and think it will be a present for some unsuspecting person come Christmas.

I write with this little room in utter chaos as a BT engineer is due to arrive at the end of the week to upgrade our Broadband. I live in hope but not expectation of great things. My room is packed to the smallest corners with very useful bits and pieces which in no way can be thrown away and in the midst of this is the cabling for the computer, so I will leave the picture to your imagination. Its rather like an archaeological dig, going back in time with all the levels of  'experiments'. I even found a half finished 'knot garden' and marvelled at my tiny stitches.

If you would like to know how to tie a square knot properly, something which I think I have done incorrectly for years, and also why you should make the effort to get it right – then follow this link and if you are like me spend quite a bit of time until you get the satisfaction of getting it perfect. You will feel so proud of yourself! The whole site is worth a look and you can listen to Susan Mills book artist talk about her work.

Sketchbook Challenge - The Book.

Sue Bleiweiss



'my book!

I’m calling it my book but it really wouldn’t be a book without the generous and gifted artists who contributed their time and artwork to it. You could say that I’m excited about seeing the cover out on Amazon but that would be a pretty big understatement…


 I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jill Berry,Jackie Bowcutt,Laura Cater-Woods,Violette Clark,Jane Davies,Jamie Fingal,Judi Hurwitt,Tracie Lyn Huskamp,Susan Brubaker Knapp,Lynn Krawczyk,Leslie Tucker Jenison,Lyric Kinard,Jane LaFazio,Kim Rae Nugent,Kelli Perkins, Carol Sloan,Carla Sonheim,Kathy Sperino,Diana Trout,and Kathyanne White. Their contributions to the pages of this book make it a work of art. The book has a publication date of June of 2012 (hopefully it will come out a little sooner than that) but you can preorder on Amazon .'

So sometime in 2012 I'll be in print!

On with the Throw.

I am continuing with finishing the throw along the lines of Alisa Burke’s Free Motion
Graffiti class. It now has a blue backing, which was nearly fleece but then I found quite a heavy suiting material which feels like wool but is a polyester blend.

 I decided that the best way forward was to ‘tie’ the three layers together; which I have now done and am sewing on the binding. So this week it could be finished. I could have gone on with the free machining for weeks but decided enough was probably enough.

I have just bought some jewellery as presents from an Etsy seller in Holland. I can’t tell you more about it as I don’t want to spoil the Christmas surprise for the recipients, but I want to tell you that not only is it unique and lovely, but also thoughtfully and beautifully packaged. I found out about http://www.etsy.com/shop/jmsstudio    from another blog but can’t unfortunately remember whose.

If I have not got back to new followers or people who kindly left comments it is most likely down to the vagaries of Blogger.

Stitch Interval.

A little bit of hand stitch for a change.

Variegated thread is so useful.

I want to share a link to Noela Mills' blog. She is a visual artist working in Queensland, Australia and her blog entitled WABISABIART features her interest in Wabisabi, finding beauty in the old, worn, rusted and patched. I am paticularly taken by her artists' books, as I think you will be,paticularly if you have not seen them before. It is also worth following some of her links to some of the interesting work being done by Australian artists.

More Free Motion Graffiti

A few pictures of the Free Motion Graffiti throw as it progresses, slightly interrupted by an exciting project this week. I’ll tell you about that in weeks to come, enough to say that I have been working away very hard on it.

There is now a catalogue to go with the ‘Crop’ exhibition which you can get from the previous link. MagCloud also offer a digital catalogue for a few dollars which is a bargain I think if you are interested in artists’ books.

crop exhibition in situ

crop exhibition in situ, a photo by rejectamenta on Flickr.

Mine is the one with the apples; there is a life drawing on the inside, looks as if they were shy of showing that side!
http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/283676
Digital catalogue for under $4's.

'Crop Exhibition'

‘Crop’: An Exhibition of Experimental Artists’ Books



Avenue Campus reception and gallery corridor

The University of Northampton 31 October—16 December 2011 Open daily 10am-4pm


Opening Event: Tuesday 1 November 5-8pm

This is the seventh annual exhibition of experimental altered artists’ books, curated by Dr. Emma Powell (de Montfort University) and Melanie Bush (The University of Northampton). Work by international book artists will be on display alongside students from both institutions. For more details see the ‘We Love Your Books’ web site.

I'm pleased to say that my 'crop' book is amongst one of the 50 books chosen from the online exhibition to go on show at the above venue. I am hoping that there will be a catalogue as I have no chance of going to see the exhibition this year.

FreeMotion Graffiti

There are a number of good reasons to stop by Alisa Burke’s blog at the moment; one is to congratulate her on the birth of her baby girl and to' oooogh and ah’ over the photos of the new baby. The other is to take a look at her new class Free Motion Graffiti. I was tempted and joined recently. I have been free machining for a long time, in fact back to the days when I had to take apart my old Singer to disengage the feed dogs – the machine itself was so heavy that my husband had to lift it onto the table for me. I think of free machining as a skill that takes some time to master, yet I have recently seen people new to it sit at an up-to-date Bernina and get going straight away with not one broken needle. Life moves on.

Anyway, back to the class. It is not expensive and frees up ones approach, and is fun to take part in. First of all I went back to Alisa’s DVD which I downloaded from Quilting Arts quite a time ago, and painted some fabrics ready to cut up.

These are some bits and pieces from the small throw I am making. I am also using both string and Quick Print blocks to show the different type of marks  they make, as a group I am teaching are in the process of making various types of simple printing blocks at the moment.

'Fragments from a Life'

As promised some time ago I am posting more details of the pieces I exhibited earlier this year for the exhibition ‘HerStory’. I made two pieces. The first was a fabric book. I used pieces of rusted fabric together with various fibres and scanned notes bonded with cocoon stripping. I also incorporated pieces of waxed paper which had been distressed with a wood burning tool. I wanted the book to look and feel very fragile and used ‘fuseFX’ a gossamer bonding mesh which was helpful to get the effect I was after. I was given a pair of rusty scissors the builder found in our garden which came at just the right time. I also added some pine needles which came from the road in Bournemouth where my mother lived.

Here are the notes for my submission for the exhibition:

‘Fragments from a Life’
When someone dies one can wish that, like the great diarists, they had left fulsome accounts of their life, telling all, answering all the unasked questions; however, most often we have only the odd fragments of fragile lives from which to try to piece together a story.

‘Fragments from a Life’ One and Two are based on this theme.
One piece is an artist’ book and the other is a small wall hanging.
Scraps of recipes, misspelled notes about how to manage a pension, very little is left, yet saying so much.

The second piece was a hanging loosely based on an open book. The pleated spine is padded. Some of the added elements use sheer fabric printed using a foam block. You may recognize the woman from my drawings of people in Dubrovnik last year; which shows that sketchbooks are really useful.

I thought I would post these here as now the excitement of the exhibition is well over it seems unlikely that they will see the light of day again for some time.

Rare Bird

Rare Bird, a photo by stitchworks-jackie on Flickr.

The paste papers dried nicely, almost their best property being how nice they feel.

I wanted them to use for the spine cover of the two books I intended to make from the For Sale board.

 I have to show the sewing cradle as usual just to prove to my son that his efforts in making it were worthwhile. By looking at some other sites showing paste papers I moved on to draw into some of them, and on one that I didn't like particularly I used a string block to make an additional pattern. It improved so much that I put a piece on the front of my sketchbook. Another thing that came to me this week was to use a stamp pad with a string block; it works well. No doubt some of you think this is a pretty obvious idea anyway.

I like the new lightbox feature on blogger, and there seem to be a number of updates in the pipeline, but I do wish they would sort out the commenting problems. Sometimes it takes me ages to make a comment, and often I have to start all over again, which makes it easy to give up at times.Well I've now discovered that the Lightbox feature has been scrapped as it broke a number of blogs. Shame, I was in the minority who thought it worked well. It does make one a bit unsure about trying any of the other new features just in case all is lost.

'For Sale'

The house we stayed in near Windermere, in the Lake District, was for sale. The weather was rainy, with the wind literally howling round the house. An old for sale board had been knocked down and was in a broken state by the rubbish bin. Well ,just imagine my excitement. My husband just could not unerstand why I wanted  to find space for it in the car with the inflatable boat, bike frame etc...

After a good shower it is perfect for making book covers.

I decided to make some paste papers as part of the binding. Here is a link to a really helpful tutorial.

 

 Be aware that I only made half the amount of paste mentioned and still had enough to take into my day centre group for them to have a go. It really works best if you use your fingers and enjoy the tactile quality. You will need plenty of paper and space to spread it out.