Printing, chopping, stitching, and lots of fun!

After assembling the image below, stitching into it by hand and machine, I felt it was just too dense, it couldn't breathe, so I chopped it up into lots and lots of 3" squares! (Above)

Nine squares, covered in a fine voile to knock back some of the colour, but then cut away in places for contrast. Machine stitched onto the background, with further machine quilting, emphasising some of the lines and shapes.

Same again, but I decided to cut up one of the 3" squares into 9 smaller pieces. Some text was also free machined in a couple of places. All experimental stuff, and I'm enjoying playing with ideas.

Still about 11 or 12 squares left over, so I stuck them onto a very long strip of paper, concertina style, and then added some marks/drawing with a black pen wherever the fancy took me. This is now stuck into my 'developing ideas' book.

More experimenting with leaf prints onto fabric and paper. I've always liked dandelions, their colour is such a glorious yellow, and reminds me of the sunshine. I also love the interesting tooth shaped leaves, and then of course the dandelion clock! Lovely seedheads to blow and have fun with. After printing with the leaves, I stuck other pieces of fabric and paper around them, stitched into some of these pieces by hand and machine, and then decided to assemble them into a simple book form. See below. Again, it's been a lot of fun doing this, and it's definitely something I will be doing more of. Hopefully I'll be getting better results as I go along!

Finally, I live in Carshalton, which is becoming quite famous for it's lavender fields. I went along today, and was surprised by the amount of people who were also visiting. In fact it was difficult to get a photo without too many bodies in the way! The first photo shows a field that is a week or two behind  the field in the second photo. I really like the contrast of the yellow flowers sprouting between the rows of lavender. These lavender fields must also be on the itinerary of our Japanese visitors, there were many of them here today, taking photos as a reminder of their visit.

Across the road from the lavender fields is our beautiful local Oaks Park. This weekend, the artists who work in the artists studios there, had their doors open to the public. It must be a very inspiring environment to work in, and I'm quite envious. I met some lovely, and very talented artists who were all very welcoming. I was particularly impressed by the work of sculpture artist Kendra Haste, and have decided that I must make a visit to The Tower of London, to see her wonderful animal sculptures in situ.

Until next time, thank you for your time, and enjoy your creativity, whatever it is!

Playing and having fun.

Layered and collaged cover for my new ideas/sketch book/journal. It was started a few weeks ago with my Kairos friends, and I finished it off yesterday to cover my new book.

Above is the experimental piece I made on my return home on Saturday, (see previous post). Today I decided to chop it up a bit, and stitch into it. I had no ideas or plans as to what I was going to do, I just started stitching, and a garden theme seemed to take over. Below are three photos showing the end results which I have stuck into my new journal.

I also played around with another collaged experiment, and divided it up into smaller areas that I thought had potential for another day. See below.

The last two images are the results of some fruit and veg prints I made onto scrap cloth, ready to use on other projects.

I'm enjoying a break from my more considered and careful work, but hopefully this playful experimentation may spark off some fresh ideas, and a new path to explore on my creative journey. Fingers crossed anyway! 

Text and Image workshop with Cas Holmes.

Today was one of the most enjoyable days I have spent with my passion for textile art for a very long time! A workshop run by Cas Holmes, where the theme for the day was 'Text and Image', is to be thoroughly recommended. Cas is an extremely inspirational textile artist, whose work, created mainly from found objects, and her wonderful ability to transform the seemingly mundane, into something profoundly beautiful and meaningful, is also a very generous teacher. I loved her phrase, 'design enema' which was how she suggested we approached the workshop today. After selecting three papers and three pieces of fabric from our own stash, we were then also allowed two pieces from a collection that we each donated to, and which was handed out to us by Cas.

To begin, we were encouraged to make rubbings onto our chosen fabrics/papers, and then to further experiment with simple mono prints. We used leaves, grasses and anything else that we had with us. It was such a good excuse to play, and see what results we could achieve with simple tools, and a restricted array of materials.

During lunch, we stitched as we ate, playing around again with our papers, fabrics and a needle and thread. At this point, we also added any text by either printing, or writing onto some of our peices. To be honest, I was so enjoying what I was doing, that I think I could quite happily have gone without my lunch, something that for me is almost unheard of!!

At this point, Cas demonstrated the next stage that we needed to carry out to take our work forward. This was where her expression 'design enema' became meaningfull! Using the papers and fabrics that we had worked on during the morning, we had to layer and collage them together, using a watered down cellulose paste, but WITHOUT giving too much thought to how we were placing things! I think most of us found this quite difficult, I know I did, and it made me realise that more often than not, I probably over think my design ideas on most occasions.

The result of my efforts is in the first photo at the top of this page, with the two underneath showing work in progress. Below, you can see two more attempts that I had a go at once I had returned home. All three need to dry out, and then have further work done on them, which could include further printing, collage, stitching, or even being cut up and reassembled.

Above are some examples of Cas's work which she had brought with her, and they really are very beautiful, these photos in no way do them justice I'm afraid. Below are further examples of her work, the booklet shows the work, Urban/Nature that she will be exhibiting at The Festival of Quilts in Birmingham from the 16th to 19th August this year, and again at The Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace in October also this year.

Above, a piece by Cas Holmes using a simple onion for inspiration, where the theme was 'bulbs'.

If you are going to the the FOQ's or the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace, I can thoroughly recommend that you make visiting Cas Holmes exhibition, Urban/Nature, a priority!

Tropical Leaves. July JQ.

My Journal Quilt for July, inspired by the photos below that I took in New Zealand a couple of years ago. Why not in shades of green you may ask? Well, the four Jq's for May through to August have to be in shades of yellow, with up to 25% of any other colour. I guess there's a fair amount of black, plus some very subtle green shades on the bottom right.

These were from the the North Island, Whangarei to be exact where my daughter lives, and is semi tropical. I can't wait to go back for another visit!

I'll hopefully be back soon with some photos from the Cas Holmes workshop that I'm looking forward to attending tomorrow, just as long as I don't get lost on the way!

My five minutes of fame!!

Please excuse me if I blow my own trumpet! Members of Contemporary Quilt, part of  The Quilters' Guild of the British Isles have taken part in the challenge organised by EQA, to make a quilt that celebrates Diversity in Britain today. 60 little 8" squares were needed to make up this quilt, which is now on display until the 1st September 2012 at the Quilt Museum in York, England. Popular Patchwork magazine have run a three page article about this quilt, and you can imagine my delight when I opened the pages to see not only the whole quilt, but a lovely large photo of my little square! You can see it above, and the whole quilt below. There are some really imaginative little squares in this quilt, and I am hoping to make a visit to York later in the year to see the quilt before the exhibition finishes, and, of course, the quilts chosen by the other participating countries.

Below I've posted three more pics of the 'Reflections' quilt I started to work on a few weeks back. I didn't feel that it was going well, so put it away for a bit. Today I decided to add some more stitching around the couched down wool that I'd added, and I feel that at last it may have a future! Each panel is a sheet of 100% rag paper, painted with silk paints, and I do like the effect of using paper instead of cloth. I've decided to stop trying to make it look like the photo of the reflection, and to allow my creative instinct to take over instead. I wonder where it will lead me?

Thanks for taking the time to read this far, and enjoy whatever it is that you are creating! (As long as it's not havoc of course)! ;)

Getting the most from my sketchbook.

Experimenting with my phone camera, I was trying to isolate smaller areas from some images in my sketchbook. I then decided it might be fun to see what results I could get from playing around with the effects button. This is what happened when I tried the 'negative' effect! In my opinion, a rather 'positive' outcome! Either a stormy scene, or a night time image.....or maybe a sea fog rolling in!

The same experiment on this image, which is a section from the sketchbook page below. This was also part of an experiment in itself. I had previously cut random shapes from a magazine, stuck them down onto some A4 paper, coloured in the area of white paper around the shapes, turned over the paper, cut it up and then re-stuck the sections into my sketchbook. This particular fragment caught my eye, and I have in fact made a small textile piece from it. I decided to use it as the inspiration for one of my journal quilts later in the year, so cannot show it just yet.

You may recognise the section from the sketch above which I used to make my June journal quilt.See my previous post below, but again, the negative effect has totally changed the mood of the sketch.

Sketchbook page with experimental work.

Section of a watercolour sketch which I may use for a textile piece.

Negative effect of a feather print I tried using bleach over watercolour paint in my sketchbook.

A small section of a watercolour wax crayon sketch I made of trees and flowers.

Another very small section from a watercolour crayon sketch, and changed with the use of the negative effect again. I like the texture that 'zooming in' has given it.

It seems to me that there is still more mileage to be had in what I produce in my sketchbook, thanks to the technology available in my modest little phone camera. Lots of fun, and even more inspiration for future work.

Wishing you all lots of fun too in your creativity, and thanks for stopping by.

Jubilee Fun and Carshalton Ponds,

We have a delightful park with ponds in Carshalton, so when I was asked by our local gallery to try and produce a textile piece depicting an area of Surrey, our local Carshalton Ponds seemed to fit the bill! It's in my mixed media style with the spirals and painted spots, and lots of free motion machine quilting. During the Jubilee celebrations, some beautifully knitted ducks appeared overnight tied to the railings. Read about it here
.

 My sister Rowan and myself in Battersea Park on Sunday, waiting to watch the River Pageant on the Thames. This was taken before it got too crowded.

The park beginning to really fill up, this was taken near The Pagoda.

The Royal Barge on the opposite side of the Thames waiting for the Royal Party to arrive.

As we were leaving the park, my sister took this photo of me standing with this sculpture, Three standing figures by Henry Moore,  He made it in 1947, so we four are almost the same age!!! Hee hee, I think they've managed to keep themselves in better shape than 'moi'

Thanks for stopping by, until next time.