A few more samples.

I forgot to post the two FME samples I was working on last week – so here they are.

This is the required sample of FME lace – not one of my favourite techniques! The flower petals have holes in them [I do like holes] – the leaves were made separately and then attached to the fabric.

 

 

And this silly thing  is what I did with the samples of cords.   The background is a left-over from C&G – cheapo velvet with painted bondaweb, to which I added FME zigzags and couched cord of all descriptions.

Thanks to Anna for the tips on cords. I don’t find the normal foot flattens them too much if I reduce the pressure, but her straw idea did make the free motion ones much more controllable. So much so that I used that trick for some cords for this. Can’t show you mine, though, as it is a gift for someone …

Today I’ve been working on a screenprinting sample – although it morphed into another FME sample. [Not sure what has brought on this citrus-coloured fit.]

This was originally covered with rather too many red and orange flowers, but they faded or disappeared when I washed it. So I FME’d over their ghostly remains. The result is better than the original, I think – the vagueness of the remaining outlines meant I felt freer about what I was doing.

It really needs another flower in the middle, although there is no ghost there, so I may need to take my courage in my hands and do it completely free hand …

 

Busy busy busy

Well, busy for a retired person!

Wednesday was college, as usual. This week it was screen printing, which I had done before. Once. Despite having a screen of my own.

As might have been expected by those who know the two tutors involved, this was a rather more experimental session than my last experience. Precisely cut stencils under the screens? No. Careful registration of the screens? No. Washing them out between colours?  Don’t be silly. I did end up feeling that I really need some thermofax screens, though.

Unfortunately I only took one photo of my work, and the rest of it is drying, so unphotographable. And these ladies gained a bit more colour later, when we all went into a scraping the dye on with old credit cards phase.  These were done with a freezer paper stencil.

Even more unfortunately, the colour seems to have faded on some of my pieces – the result, I suspect. of old dyes. But they are, after all, ‘only samples’ …

Yesterday was busy in a different way. First we went to an exhibition at the Discovery Centre by Louise Cattrell. Wonderfully atmospheric pieces, which at first glance look like Turner skies – until you begin to look deeper into them. If anyone would like to buy me ‘Strand’ for my birthday? It is one of the smaller ones …

After a nice lunch just next door to the Discovery Centre , we went back for a talk on Van Gogh. Very good – apart from a woman in the row in front of us who tutted at any and every thing. My fellow student L. moved along the row behind her to sit next to us - ‘Tut’. Someone else moved along the row in front of her to sit with their friends - ‘Tut’. And that was before it had started! I wasn’t surprised she was on her own.

She told Wensleydale during the interval [L. and I had sloped off to look at the Alice Kettle] that the talk wasn’t very good because the speaker was either saying what she already knew, or going into too much detail. Couldn’t win, really, could he? Fortunately she then left, and three rows relaxed …

We are obviously ignorant because we learned lots of new things, and we liked the details he gave on Van Gogh's painting techniques, influences and use of colour theory – which is what I think she meant by ‘too much detail’.

After all this gadding about, it’s been good to spend today at home. I splashed some Brusho about  – a bit of Pollocking and lots of paper [brown and cartridge], painted using a technique suggested in Frances Pickering’s book ‘Page after Page’. Lovely book, very inspirational, strongly recommended if you are an embroiderer who likes to make books – or possibly a book maker who doesn’t mind sewing.

The papers ended up pretty good too, although the colour choice was governed by ‘What have I already got mixed that needs using up?’

That is corrugated card top right. Why paint it? No idea - it seemed like a good idea at the time, and is what the book was wrapped in. Pickering encourages you to try different materials for your books - the brown paper is also recycled packaging.

Another Tuesday trip – but -

for once, without Wensleydale.

I think I have mentioned that, for the degree, we have to do a presentation on an artist of our choice. And our group’s unanimous  choice was Alice Kettle.

Quite fortuitously, she has an exhibition on in Farnham, in collaboration with ceramicist Stephen Dixon. So of course we had to go. Very interesting work – recognisably Kettle, but different to the Discovery Centre piece that I am so familiar with. A bit smaller, to start with - especially the plates. If you, like me, are a Kettle groupie, it is well worth a visit. And the gallery is under threat as the result of funding cuts so they need as many visitors as they can get! The exhibition is free, but you can pick up a copy of the limited edition book about it, with personal stitches by Alice, for £7.99.

We also popped into an exhibition by the designer David Hillman – an opportunity for nostalgia if you remember the launch of the Sunday Times colour magazine [no, it hasn’t always existed] or that wonderful magazine Nova - [the original, not the short lived pale imitation].

And we also visited the art shop for some retail therapy – much to the consternation of the students, who were a bit thrown by this invasion of middle-aged women talking to the saleswoman [who was a quilter] about textiles …

Have to go back for the Bernard Leach exhibition, though.

It’s been quite a productive day …

despite not waking up early, and not being in the mood.

I finished a sample of free motion lace, which I started yesterday and didn’t like – somehow this morning it didn’t look quite so bad. Can't show you that as it is drying after I washed out the water-soluble stabiliser.

I also made a few machine wrapped cords. I have a confession to make, if you promise not to tell teacher. [Warning for non-embroiderers – technical bit coming up.]

When I make cords, I do it with the feed dogs up and the normal foot on, not free motion, although these are supposed to be free motion samples. I find the cord feeds through  better than if I’m trying to free machine it, because the foot holds it firm and it doesn’t wiggle all over the place. Of course you end up with a very regular stitch – although you can vary the stitch length as you sew.

Now I've got to decide what I’m going to do with all these cords. I was going to make a lattice but I don’t think it will work …

And then I made a couple of books. [Can you tell it was Wensleydale’s day to slave over a hot stove?]

One is a map fold book containing the results of my mark making yesterday.

 

 

I’m not sure how we were meant to store/present this exercise – so I may be in trouble …

 

 

 

 

The other is a little sketchbook – since we had a package from Amazon earlier this week.  The packaging, some spray paint and paper, a bit of duck tape and thread, and Keith Smith’s ‘1,2, & 3 Section Bindings’ for inspiration.

So maybe I was in the mood after all …

I was so busy whingeing yesterday …

that I forgot to show you these - proof that JP was right when she said spring is on its way.

Of course the forecast is ‘Chance of snow’. :>(

Thanks to JP and Sandy for their encouraging remarks yesterday. Not sufficiently encouraging to get me darning a 1” diameter hole, though, even if it is ‘hand embroidery’, Sandy.

 

I also forgot about this, which I finished before the free machining disaster day. It looks a bit like a storm cone – or an escapee from a Saatchi art competition.

Cobi made an interesting suggestion about what to put in the middle:

http://bigartadventure.blogspot.com/2009/04/patty-says-that-this-has-been-such-fun.html

http://bigartadventure.blogspot.com/2009/03/altered-cutlery-guest-designer.html

but I don’t have any spare cutlery <g> – and I was afraid it would be too heavy for the structure to support. The central diamond [can’t remember the proper geometric name for that shape!] is made of gessoed craft Vilene, which I just happened to have in my stash – as you do. I added machine embroidery in a diamond pattern, cut out equilateral triangles, and used jump rings to hold all the bits together.

Today I took my courage in both hands and returned to FME – but this time I used my Bernina, not the Elna I take to college. And some more interesting fabric than calico. Not perfect – but much, much, much better.  The flower and leaf shapes were in the hand-dye, so I just outlined them in a variety of stitches – and thoroughly enjoyed myself – until I cut off the corner by mistake. Which is why there is that couched cord top right …

A boring post …

because I haven’t got much to report. Yesterday was college day. We started with an interesting lecture on gender and politics in art – except it was much more about gender politics. Interesting how many feminists came out of the closet …

Then we had a session on machine embroidery, about which the less said the better. So I’ll say something.

It was one of those sessions when I didn’t have the right thread, the right fabric, the right machine, the right inspiration, the right amount of sleep the night before, there was an ‘R’ in the month, the wind was in the wrong direction, and the gods of free machine embroidery were not on my side. You get the picture.

So today – after I had put back all the wrong stuff I had taken the day before, and got out the stuff I would have taken if I had known what it was we were going to do – I began to think about starting again.

You will have noticed I didn’t say I started again? That’s for tomorrow, gods of free machining  willing.

Just to improve my mood, I realised this morning that I had a very large hole in the heel of one of my favourite hand knit socks. The left one of these.

Quite beyond darning, even supposing I did such esoteric things.

Another Tuesday trip!

The excitement may be more than I can bear.

I’d heard about the opening of the new premises of the National Needlework Archive, which used to be in Southampton but is now in Newbury, so we thought we’d take a look. [So great is my antipathy to driving in Southampton that I would far rather go to Newbury.]

So we pottered up there  – and arrived in the middle of a power cut. However there was enough light to see by, so we had a good look round. The exhibition space is not enormous – the building was previously the chapel for Greenham Airforce base – but there were some interesting textiles, old and new, and a couple of sewing machines as well.

There is a wonderful irony in an exhibition of ‘women’s work’ in a  place that was once famous for its efforts to keep women out. And, like their suffragette predecessors, those women used textiles  to publicise their cause.

On the way home we popped into Whitchurch Silk Mill again. If you Gift Aid your entrance fee, you get free entry for a year, which is quite a bargain. Wensleydale always enjoys the technology, and their little exhibitions are usually interesting – at the moment there is one about scagliola, and another about wooden printing blocks. [I’m sure you know that silk is used in making scagliola. And of course you know what scagliola is, like I do – now.]