feeling refreshed

The house is back in order, the garden cleaned up and my studio work progressing nicely. I think.

The last corner of my table cloth project is finished. My good friend Linda, who can cut with scissors like a wizard, helped me with the blue flowers and dots. Linda cut them out and ironed them on and stitched a bit before handing it back to me. I am so grateful, because really and truly, I can't cut well at all and I wanted this flower to look crisp.

For those who are seeing this for the first time, the piece began life in one of Karen Ruane's online courses. Others were using hankies, I had two old pillow cases I wanted to make use of.

I am very happy with the out come. Only trouble is the darned thing is so old and fragile that where on earth can I put it? I might have to add a large bow and wear it as a cape along with my tiara on my birthday week.

This little piece was begun before I went to England. I meant to bring it with me when I attended Karen's real time, in person class in London, but I had it mostly finished before the date arrived.

 Since being home I have added the lace and ruffle on the bottom edge and a few minor details. I'll back it during the summer when I need easy tasks to have with me when we go to the camp.

This piece began sort of by accident. I had cross stitched the blue bird on a scrap with no real intention, and a year ago embroidered the gold flowers as an idle pass time.

 I often have plops of fabric lying about on the floor and scuffing through them leads to colour or texture combinations that I become inspired by. The gold and blue bits fell onto some white-ish linen and the piece evolved. This is my shake and back method. Start with something, throw it on the floor and see what happens over a few days. No shoes allowed in the studio.

The shake and bake method can be pretty hair raising when I get the paints, pastels and glue out. I am taking a 5 week course with Karine Swenson via Carla Sonheim's blog. (here) The first week's assignments are about lines. First messing about on paper with any drawing tool, then messing about on decent paper with paints. These are 6" x 8" on a very hard paper, and have some qualities I like.

pastels, watercolour from a tube squished on and smeared with a flat edge

charcoal, conte and wet brush through the charcoal

This is a close up of an 8" x 11" on watercolour paper. I like the intersections where I've added the gold marker.

I'm still sewing summer clothes for Steve and myself in an effort to have local, ethical clothin (I know, it ain't that simple). I am happy with this sleeveless tank top. It is meant to go with an orange and white skirt that is a bit louder than I expected. If I made a gold or orange top, I would feel just a little bit over 2000 volts of "See Me".

I've looked all over but can't find any photos of the skirt. I'll have to model it with the top sometime.

This top was a nightmare to sew. It is really very simple but the chiffony fabric is a horror.

the front hem is straight across while the back hem scoops down. There aren't any detail shots because there aren't any that help to redeem the drabness of the garment while on a hanger.

 After finding a fine enough thread, fine needles, using lots of pins, cutting carefully, getting lots of online advice, the fabric still crimped and pulled. There are 7 seams, including two armholes, the collar facing and all the hems and not a bloody one of them didn't need to picked out, redone, or just left to look awful. Worst of all, it has absolutely no hanger appeal. It's just a drab looking piece of fabric. But it looks good on because it drapes beautifully. I haven't figured out how to take a decent self photograph with this camera so I'll have to wait to show you.

In the works are a green shirt for Steve, a shirt dress and slip for me, several tops for me and a bedskirt. I hope those experiences are a little less horrible. So yup, I've been busy.

Doodling leads to compulsions

Once again Karen Ruane sends me into a world of inquiry that leads to surprising results ( here )

I've been playing with circles for a couple of years now and still find them interesting as a means to study colour interplay and patterns. I tested my 'permanent' markers for the step of adding colour to the textile, once the tracing with ink was completed.

One of those lucky/unlucky moments happened when some steam from the iron spurted out and caused some markers to bleed. I squirted the whole piece to figure out what would run and what wouldn't. I like some of the bleeds, and now know who to anticipate using them. The dark green one is interesting.

Karen challenged us to keep on doodling towards creating a pattern that could be repeated as they are in yards of fabric.

I began by drawing a grid of lines, then traced over three different leaf motifs, flipping the tracing paper back and forth to get different orientations. I added in the simple floral motif and then made sure there was a motif on each edge that could line up. For instance, there is a floral motif in the middle of the right edge (your right) that is missing it's top. You can spy it on the left edge at the midpoint.

I traced over the first design omitting any lines that overlapped that I didn't like.

Here the original and the good copy are side by side. You can see that the curving leaf joins the two sheets together.

Here the tip of the leaf and a floral motif join together at the overlap. If I were to trace the good copy four times, making sure the joining spots lined up, I could look at the original design and see if it would translate into a good overall fabric pattern. In the image above, you can see where there are two or three empty spots. That might not be so noticeable if all four edges were drawn up but we'll never know, because while this was fun and interesting, it takes me away from stitching. I could get lost in this practice. There are so many neat shapes and intersections that could develop. What if the grid lines were dominant instead of in the background. What if the floral elements were coloured, or not while the leaves were coloured. What colours? It is pretty speculative. Then I'd have to get it printed up and start to cut up the fabric to see how it would look stitched in different ways. What if I left it black and white and stitched the colours in? See what I mean? This could be just too much fun.

Textile Doodles

Over at Karen Ruane's latest class, She demonstrated how to get doodles onto fabric so we can have our own designs to use in our work. It is an extremely simple method but wow, do the doors fly open.

First you doodle on paper.

I went through my latest sketch book and drew small thumbnails of images that I have used a few times. Everytime I finish a sketchbook, I go through it and find images that still interest me and either redraw them in the new sketchbook or photocopy them to paste in.

These little thumbnails go back years and years.

I chose two thumbnails to work with, the abstracted flower with hatchmarks and a simple leaf motif.

Then I sketched up a full page doodle in light pencil, erased a ton and finally drew over it in a permanent marker. I used a number 0.03 Staedleter and during the process realized I wanted a variety of line thicknesses. I retraced a few things with thicker markers. This also gave me a good image to do the next step. On the above image, I squiggled a line around the page before I began, providing a link to whatever came next.

The fabric is laid over the doodle, secured, and traced. Simple. I made a few changes on the leaf motif. I first drew the largest leaves, then smaller ones until just the tiny ones.

The last two sizes, I turned the page and fabric about 10 degrees several times and looked for blank spots. This prevented all the leaves from being oriented in the same direction.

Before I traced the abstracted flowers, I laid down the two colours using Copic Markers, then drew in the darker detail lines. I was expecting some bleeding of the colours into the fabric but didn't get it. Usually bleeding happens often. I was trying to figure out how to deal with the usual bleeding and then, luckily, didn't have to.

I have ironed the two fabrics and will use them up this summer. This is a great technique for capturing elements of the work that can be used in a different way. If you are tired of using a red thread, then the red can be used on your own textile. Of course, you can always grab a red fabric off the shelf, but if you have used the red thread in a square, you can draw a red square and use it. I think you get what I mean. Hop over the Karen's blog and scroll down a few posts to see what she has done with blue hexagons and you will see a better example.

 

I love this idea and its possibilities. Not that I don't have too much fabric already, but none of my own design. These two experiments are less than a fat quarter and I don't have to go to a company like Spoonflower to get more than I need.