'Mark Making and Stitch'

I had a very enjoyable day on Saturday as one of the workshops I had organized actually ran. There were seven students for the five hour workshop. It was really satisfying to see them get pleasure out of the plan I had organized and to be so enthusiastic. We started with mark making, then basic monoprinting and then interpreting parts of their design work in stitch.
Above is one of my samples from my City and Guilds course and the other samples are from the book I worked on to go with the workshop. Click on the first pictures to see more detail.

I hope more workshops will follow in 2010 and if anyone is interested and doesn’t live on the other side of the world, the contact number for The Hurst, Tadley is
0118 9812918 or email to marie.rodwell@hurst.hants.sch.uk

I also ran a short introduction to wax resist last week at Doodles a local craft shop. This was by request as I am in no way claiming to be an expert at Batik. It went well but there were only two people there, and it is quite a lot of work for such a small uptake.
By the way I learned a lesson – don’t try carrying a pot of melted wax in your car because it slops all down the sides. We live and learn. I have started using Soy wax which is excellent as it is workable for longer and environmentally friendly.

Felt Jewellery

Just for fun and because I had seen the tutors’ work at Art in Action I went along to the City Lit in London for a one day introduction to felt jewellery. It was enjoyable but I was slightly disappointed as we were told there was not long enough to learn how to string beads which I had thought was on the course details. The tutor was Heather Belcher and she is very keen on carding wool prior to use. She showed an examples of two pieces of felt one carded and one not; certainly the carded one had much more visual texture. I think I got the hang of it better than previously and it seemed much less arduous. There is plenty of information about how to string beads on line- even videos.

We made felt tubes and felt balls and use elastic thread to make them into bracelets.

Here is a link to the work of Angela O'Kelly who makes some interesting pieces. One of my favourites jewellery artists is here, I particularly like her brooches.

Everyone seems to have different ways of making their felt. The tutor used a piece of calico to rub the wool inside rather than net, which is probably better as it doesn't get so stuck in the material.

A day out in Winchester/Japan

It was a lovely sunny day in Winchester yesterday and I tried to appreciate it in the way a visitor of mine recently did. Firstly I went to the University library to see the touring book art exhibition ‘Micro-Pages. Well done to Abigail Thomas for organizing this; its travelling around so do go if you have the chance. See my previous post for venues.
I then went to the Discovery Centre to ‘Quilt Secrets' a collection of quilts both traditional, from the County Council’s collection and contemporary work. I enjoyed the glimpses into peoples work boxes from the past and the work of Diana Harrison .Then in the same building ‘Tradition and Transition’ an exhibition of new work by the Winchester Embroiderers’ Guild.
What a feast but not finished yet – there are lots of charity shops in the city. Sometimes I wonder why I keep on looking at what is sometimes a lot of samey junk but this is what keeps me looking!

Priced at £2 because they couldn’t work out what it was – a lovely silk hankie and two face flannels, each velvet on one side. I looked up Wako/Japan today to find it is an exclusive department store in the ‘sophisticate city of Ginza’; specializing in luxury items. ‘Built in 1932, the curved building with a clock tower faces the Ginza Yonchome intersection and adopts a Neo-Renaissance style to its design.

The latest high-precision Seiko Quartz model is used as the clock for the clock tower and the Westminster-style chime of bellsring to tell the time on the hour every hour.' So two cities for the price of one!

Big Draw

On Friday this week I went along to a workshop organized as part of The Big Draw which is now an annual event in England to encourage drawing. I looked on the website in time this year and found there was a whole day organized around map art at New Greenham Arts Centre.

It was called ‘A short walk in the Big Landscape’ to coincide with an exhibition there of landscape paintings. We had three artists from the studios guiding us through a series of drawing activities, and a display of work by artists who use maps as inspiration. Should you want to see these drawings, done by the whole group, in more detail just click on the image.

This was all free and on top of this we had a free lunch with chocolate brownies – and yet half the people who booked didn’t bother to turn up. I must say it was their loss.
Greenham Common, for those who don’t know, is the former missile base, where the women’s’ peace camp was for many years.

Impulse Buys

I enjoyed my visit to the Knit and Stitch on Sunday. Its three years since I was there, which I think is a good thing as everything seemed a bit fresher. In The Art of the Stitch Exhibition I saw work by two of the artists I had written about for my Diploma essay, Rosie James and Shizuko Kimura, but whose work I had only previously seen in pictures. As soon as I walked in I started seeing examples of embroidery using maps which is nice as my day service group are right on trend.
The work that I found most inspiring was the experimental work of Dionne Swift, who is currently printing onto felt and experimenting with fabric manipulation in terms of repetition. You can see some of her work on her website and blog.

These are my impulse buys banana fibre and sari ribbon. I watched a good demonstration of felting using the smooth side of bubble wrap to start off the felting process in a gentle way when including fabric pieces. I had to have a go using my new supplies.
I asked a dumb question about why we are advised to use Olive Oil Soap but at least I found out why, having always wondered. You get fewer suds, of course!!

Felt

I have been working on some felt using Lisa Klakulak’s method of free machining to build up texture; obviously this is only in a very amateur way. I have a video of her teaching her method which shows how she has perfected her technique over many years.

It is fun to try but as any work with felt very time consuming.

I first made some prefelt, and then cut out shapes to lay on my base piece of felt.
I then machined round the shapes to raise them from the surface, before working into some of the shapes to produce more pattern and texture.

I made a couple of beaded brooches with some of the prefelt. It was thicker than the previous piece I made so I ended up compacting more of the surface rather than pulling the felt together to give shape. This reminded me of some work on felt I did a long time ago where I added metallic powder mixed with Ormoline Fabric Medium to the shapes, so that’s what I did. A scarf like this would be really nice and tactile; I'll put that on my list. I'm off to the Knit and Stitch Show tomorrow, so no doubt I'll come back with lots of new ideas for my list.

Thanks to those of you who joined my Followers List to keep me blogging.

Another Treasury here Lovely title 'Autumn spiked with Turquoise'.

Its nice to be chosen.

Transfer Paints

This morning I am preparing for a short workshop as an introduction to the possibilities of using Transfer Paints.

Of course the first thing I need is a list- having been to a workshop without sponges for people to use and only being saved by good luck, i.e. they kept sponges for the children’s workshops in the same building, I am careful to make my list- it doesn’t always work !!

I worked some samples again and found I was getting into it – like any media, the more you experiment the better and more satisfying the results.

This is a detail of a fern leaf I transfer printed and then stitched. I've no idea where the real thing is; I think I must have 'sold' or rather 'given it away' at a craft fair.

Not many people at the workshop, but very enjoyable as they produced some really experimental work.

By the way, I've put a Followers widget on my blog; many thanks to those of you who come back and keep me blogging.

Artists' Book Exhibition

Banks Street Arts 2nd Artists' Book Exhibition here.

October 8th - October 31st
2nd Sheffield Artist's Book Prize
10.00 am - 5.00 pm
Eighty artists' books from around the world on show during the Off The Shelf Festival. Come and vote for your favourite .

therainbowgirl Treasury

A nice surprise to be in this treasury of felt and stitch. See it here.

Doldrums

Generally messing about and needing to get out of the doldrums.

I was trying to remember how to make a felt bowl as it is a long time since I made one. Well this turned out tiny enough to make into a little pin cushion. I used the wool I brought back from Ireland and so tirelessly washed and combed – before finding it wasn’t much good for felting – to fill the pin cushion
I tied in tiny buttons to shape the edge and a piece of acquired dyed blanket for the top. So there you go.

Book give-away on the Hand Embroidery Network here.

Spindle Tree

This is quite fun to work on – I must admit it took me a year to get round to taking the photographs.

In a drawing class we took some hedgerow ‘shrubs’ apart and drew the leaves, the thorns, fruit, etc. It was so long ago that I have lost the original drawings but you get the idea.

I then printed the drawings out on some thicker paper and made a little accordion book with the idea of putting in some photos of my chosen ‘shrub’ i.e. the Spindle Tree. Having been out blackberrying this week I remembered the project and brought home some pieces to photograph.

Micro-Pages Artists' Book Exhibition

Micro-Pages flyer_ back
Originally uploaded by www.abigailthomas.co.uk

'The Windmills of your Mind'.

I’ve had a busy week so far. I was pleased with myself this morning having remembered how to set up a DVD slide show for my group next week; we are going to start a project on Map Art/Memory Maps. Thanks to the generosity of people on the web and great links to artists on people’s blogs I found some really interesting images to inspire them. I’ve bought some clay so we will be working with that and maps from a charity shop. I went to a mini workshop earlier this year with Kim Pilgrim who used the idea of Memory Maps, and she said it was OK for me to use the idea with the clients of the day centre where I work. I am quite excited about it and hope they are too.

These images are linked to another project. More about that if it comes to fruition. I wonder if all this activity is to deal with my disappointment about the evening classes. No, I just think that I easily move on.

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).