A bookish Tuesday trip.

My favourite craft centre, Walford Mill, has been running an exhibition of artists’ books – and it suddenly dawned on me that it finishes at the weekend.

So we took advantage of another lovely day, and drove down to Walford via our ‘avoiding the A31 in summer’ route across the New Forest. Longer, slower [unless there is a traffic jam on the A31, which is why we avoid it in summer] – but you get views like this when you stop for lunch. Not to mention the ponies.

For non-Brits - if you are saying to yourself ‘That doesn’t look much like a forest’ – the New Forest is neither new nor a forest. More information here if you want it.

But I digress. After a pleasant picnic we went on to Walford, where I bought an armful of books in their second hand book sale, and got inspired by the exhibition. At first, I was disappointed that they were all accordion books, but realised this is probably because they display well – and it was a learning experience to see how many variations of the form there were.

Both Wensleydale and I felt the show compared very well with the embroideries at Ramster, although these artists too, were mostly non-professionals. Perhaps it is the limitations of the structure, perhaps that it is a fairly specialised genre which attracts only loonies like me, but unlike Ramster I could have happily brought many of them home – if I could have afforded them…

It was also reassuring to see several examples using manipulated photographs of everyday things – street furniture or aluminium pie cases for example. I learned quite a lot about how to handle scale and positioning, and when - and when not – to add stitch. Altogether a useful and worthwhile trip – and the cafe lived up to expectations as usual.

Ah – now I see…

We had a sort of mega-tutorial at College yesterday, so now  I understand what I am supposed to be doing for Module 9, the Research Project. I had seen it as a formal academic writing exercise – which was why the apparent lack of any parameters was so scary. However, rather than an essay, what we have to do [I think] is collect visual references, and written information and evaluation about our research topic – a sort of annotated scrapbook.

My topic? Artists’ books.

Bet you’re surprised.

So I've collected my books on books in a heap by my bed, ordered some more from ABE books and Allibris, and begun to do some Googling. This could be fun.

If anyone has any suggestions for good books on artists’ books, or any artists whose work you think I should look at, please let me know…

While at college I almost finished my triptych - all bar glueing it together, because I’d forgotten the glue. I didn’t get started on the book of manipulated images as I decided I wanted to do a Coptic binding and realised that I didn’t have any suitable card for covers with me. Finishing both is now slotted into the planning [a part of my new organised regime!] for Saturday afternoon. Evidence of planning and organisation is one of the marking criteria, so I have invented planning record sheets and started to fill them out. Wonder how long that will last.

And of course I have to make a book to keep all the research in – I could hardly chose a topic like artists’ books and use a manufactured one, could I? [Although of course an artist’s book could be made in a manufactured one – one of the points I need to mention when distinguishing between hand made books and artists’ books. Right after I’ve defined ‘a book’…]

What a difference …

a good night’s sleep makes! [Plus having a day at home and not too many chores.]

I did a little collaging – Quality Control and friends [she is, of course, the one who’s out of step],

 

 

 

 

 

and a little kirigami. These aren’t from my calendar, which is a bit neglected at the moment, they are all my own work. This is actually a pocket in the collage sketchbook, hence the diagonal line.

 

Then, inspired by this post, I took this, which had been hanging around for years – possibly decades – and tried to make it a bit more interesting.

[Mmm – just Googled CPC and out of dozens of possible sources, my money’s on the electronics firm, which would mean it used to belong to Cheese Major. Unless it was one of the many government initiatives which came, went and sank without trace during the years Wensleydale and I worked in education.]

But I digress. Unlike Hanna’s original, I started with the cover. A bit of fossicking turned up an experimental piece from the summer - painted iron-on interfacing ironed-on to some rather bright hand-dye. The ends are different because the interfacing was smaller than the hand-dye.

So I free machined it, going round the shapes in the paint in whatever colour took my fancy. [I’ve decided the only way I’m going to gain confidence in FME is by just doing it, in situations where I don't much care what it ends up like!]

 

 

 

Hanna added end papers to her planner, and I was going to do the same till I found this – a bit of paper bag printing on poly satin, bonded to more hand-dye and embroidered. I never knew quite what to do with it, so it went in the front of the binder, with an offcut of the outer cover at the back – end textiles. I stuck them down with double sided tape, but the cover is sewn, with pockets to slip over the covers.

I wasn’t sure about the painted interfacing when I first did it, but today, every time I pressed it, it got softer and more like a rather bizarrely coloured suede. Nice.

Then I tackled the inside. The binder is an odd size, just too small to take A4 paper, so everything had to be cut down to fit.

 

 

These are the dividers, made from an old calendar. I’m not usually a flowery calendar person, but this one was free…

I added some lined paper, cutting down some with two punched holes which won’t go into the four ring binder I take to college.

Now I need to decide what to do with it. Hanna made hers as a planner, and heaven knows I could do with one of those, but I can’t find any printable planner pages on the net that make any sense to me at all.  Maybe I’ll have to wake up my dormant form-constructing skills, and see what I can make for myself.

Back to business.

For the first time for a few days I had the energy last night to do more than simple knitting [can’t think why not <g>]– so I finished this, which I started a while ago. It is one of my collagraphs on a piece of fine polyester fabric, backed with white felt and worked in running stitch in two strands of embroidery floss.

I had been reading an old WOW interview with Olga Norris in which she talks about her use of running stitch – see here for some examples. She uses two different coloured threads in the needle, and works the stitch to introduce controlled distortion to the pieces. So that's what I tried.

There isn’t very much distortion, perhaps because of the felt backing, but I like the way using different thread colours allowed me to introduce more shading to the piece. I'm very pleased with it!

That was last night – today I made a book. In my internet wanderings I came across this tutorial, and knowing I had a piece of scrap leather somewhere, decided to have a go.

Serendipitously, by the time I'd cut the irregular edges off the leather, it was just big enough to take pages made from brown paper packaging. [I’ve got a ton of it!] It fastens with a jeans button and buttonhole cut into the leather.

I love the interlaced binding, but I think the edges look a bit unfinished, so I may go back and work a whip stitch round it with some more of the cream thread.

And then, I embroidered a book page, for a book which is yet to be constructed. The page is Bondawebbed together Colourcatchers [which I’d done earlier], with velvet applied with machine and hand stitching. I'm quite pleased that the back, which will show in the finished book, is almost as neat as the [not very neat]front – but I forgot to take a photo and my camera battery is flat, so that will have to wait!

In between all that I’ve been reading my new book. Although I’ve never been lucky enough to see her work for real, I've admired  Cas Holmes’ work in magazines and on the net. And look, she makes books! So when I heard about her book I ordered it sight unseen, which I don’t often do.

I wasn’t disappointed. She writes about how she constructs the fabric for her pieces – a more interesting take on ‘fabric paper’, not that she calls it that. I’ve just got on to her thoughts on mark making with stitch, which also has some great ideas. Strongly recommended for fans of layers, loose ends and carpet tape stamps- although it’s not, I think, a book for new embroiderers - or for neatniks.

I have also ordered Gwen Hedley’s new book, so I hope that is equally good!

I may have mistakenly given the impression

that I was going to start the first stitched piece of the FDA this week.

Turns out I was wrong.

We did have a session on Wednesday entitled ‘Everyday Cloths’. [The first stitched piece has the title ‘Everyday’. Cue Buddy Holly. But I digress.]

We did do some stitch.

But any connection between the session and the piece was strongly discouraged.

We started by looking at everyday ‘textiles’ [in my case a tea towel, a kitchen cloth and a pan scrub] through a magnifying glass and a microscope – and drawing them with graphite sticks and ink. Then we rubbed the graphite with linseed oil and splashed the ink with water. Hence the ‘stick’ through the pan scrub top right, which is a dribble.

Then we made ‘collages’ inspired by the drawings – followed by stitched pieces inspired by the collages. Design twice removed you might say – and a loooong way from the originals.

I am particularly fond of the ‘pan scrub’ which is a giant whipped spider’s web worked on a junk CD. The strange lumpy thing on the left is gathered calico with added bits. No, I don’t like the colour scheme either, but we were leant on [in this totally non-directive course] to use the colour scheme of the collage.

Next time I'll think about the newspaper I use. Oh, the dear dead days when newspaper was just black and white…

Mind you, I did get away with making 3D collages which were supposed to be 2D but ‘reflect the depth’ we saw in the microscope.

Actually it was a very enjoyable session! I need a microscope. And an OHP.

Today’s excitement was the arrival of this lot - the results of me going  a bit mad with the plastic a day or two ago. I decided we didn’t have enough books. [I can hear the laughter from those that know me from here…]

But it was here – so this lot didn’t break the bank. We get their paper catalogue, and Wensleydale fancied the book on North Yorks monasteries, and I fancied the one on Nano Nature.

But while I was on line I strayed into the textiles section and a few more books fell into my shopping basket.

Janice Gunner’s ‘Shibori’ book is one I have coveted for a long time, since I dribbled over A’s copy years ago. Full price - £18.99. Amazon's price - £11.99. Postscript’s price - £4.99.

I am not responsible for any damage you do to your credit card if you go over to Postscript …

A new book, an old book, and the beginnings of a collage – sort of…

It’s been a fairly productive day, despite feeling distinctly uninspired for most of it.

I finished another sketchbook – one which I started a while ago when I painted some paper in the style of Frances Pickering. Although I loved the results, the paper has been hanging around irritating me because it raised my workroom just above my mess tolerance level – although that is pretty high. [Put it away? Where?]

Yesterday I started trying to assemble the painted pages – and a few more - into a book and made a mess of punching the holes in the spine. So I went and sulked in the bath.

Today I had another go, after rescuing the spine with a strip of duck tape. [‘If it moves when it shouldn’t – duck tape. If it doesn’t move when it should – WD40.’ Can you tell I used to live with an engineer? Although actually he is this sort of engineer. He’ll hate me if he ever reads this <g>.]

It was a bit of a fight – but I won. I think I have gone about as far as I can with the repurposed Amazon mailer sketchbook – this one weighs 750 gm and has [reaches for calculator] 224 pages. Even at my planned one drawing a day it’s going to take the best part of a year to fill – and I am not achieving one drawing a day, by any means.

I acquired two other books today, courtesy of ABE books and the postie. You may have noticed that I have a bit of a thing about old embroidery books [I have a bit of a thing about new embroidery books as well, but not as big as the thing for old ones. Feel the same about men. But I digress]

I’d read about Mariska Karasz on The Textile Blog [well worth reading if you are at all interested in textiles] and I really liked what I saw of her work. I couldn’t quite afford the book about her work – the one I did buy is a more of a teaching book, but it does have some examples, and lots of lovely line drawings in that ‘ethnic’ style that was so popular in the 40s and 50s.

I have been interested in the work of Hannah Frew for a while – chiefly because we were told we should include her in the C&G history of British embroidery, and I found it very difficult to find out much about her! So I was pleased to find an article about her in the current issue of ‘Stitch’ – and even more pleased to find she had written a book – albeit in 1975.

Unfortunately although both books were very reasonably priced – I had to get them from the US, which put the cost up a bit …

And finally – after joking about an embroidered collage for drawing studies – I started one.  Cut back appliqué, inspired by a section of one of the scans I showed you yesterday. But in reverse, because I worked the machining from the back.

 

 

It is looking a bit unbalanced at the moment but I’m hoping some hand stitch will help that. And after all – ‘it is only a sample’.

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.

It is finished.

Well – strictly speaking – they are finished. The most onerous part being the C*******s shopping. I went to the butcher’s this morning – ferried a few hundred yards by Cheese Major in his Chelsea tractor as I can’t ice-skate – and the box of organic veg arrived late this afternoon. Wensleydale is mulling the wine, and anything we haven’t got now we can live without.

And I finished that little book of samples from Kim Thittichai’s workshop, that I was going to whip up in a couple of afternoons. Trouble is I kept having ideas.

These are the last finishing touches. You may spot some distressed Tyvek on the left. I did it, so it’s in there – doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about the stuff!

The distressed Lutradur – which I do like – has gained a tree. It started as a stencil from Ed Roth’s ‘Stencil 101’, but the paint alone looked a bit lost so I added some copper FME. It still looks a bit lost in the photo, but it looks better in real life.

The cover hasn’t changed much since I showed it first – except that I’ve reoriented it, to accommodate the tree. I was going to do a Japanese stab binding but decided on a stick binding with a Tyvek bead on the stick. [If I’m going to have Tyvek samples, I’m going to have Tyvek samples – and Tyvek beads are sort-of-OK.]

So that’s it. Tomorrow, when not cooking [for historic reasons, which no longer apply, we have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve] I shall start thinking about my ideas from the great collage experiment last week.

JP made some kind comments about yesterday’s post – but I am worried that I have misled you, JP. The sketchbook pages I’m showing are all from my old City and Guilds course, not recent work. The sample book above is recent – the workshop which inspired it was part of the Foundation Degree I’m doing at Eastleigh College in Hampshire. Several of the pieces in it were made in that workshop – I made the book to hold the samples, but it sort of grew a bit …

And when I wrote about ‘slobbing in bed like a retired person’ – I was talking about myself. I’m very good at not getting up. I'm sure all other retired people are like my neighbour, who goes swimming before most people are at work.

The snow dyeing has been rinsed, washed and is drying as I type. It is looking good – apart from the felt. Either viscose/wool felt doesn’t dye with Procion dye like I thought it did – or it isn’t viscose/wool felt. Pity – it looked quite interesting before I washed it …

I have some other white felt I could try – but unfortunately the snow is rapidly disappearing, as we are having a thunder storm. This is, to put it mildly, unusual in the UK in December – but it’s the second one in as many weeks. And as W. has just said, we can’t remember ever having a thunder storm while there was snow on the ground. Now it’s hailing as well.

Another spread from my old C&G sketchbook. Having got the Green Man out of my system I moved on to trees – inspired by Mondrian.

You may not associate Mondrian with trees, but he made some beautiful – and increasingly abstract – images of them. There are a couple here. These are credit card and pencil rubber printed, based on our apple trees.

Thank you

for your kind comments on my good news yesterday – you can be sure I will blog about it! Unfortunately I shall miss the first session due to a long standing commitment – but from 14th October on, you should get weekly witterings on the subject.

And thanks too, to Julie, for identifying yesterday’s plant as toadflax. I Googled and it definitely was – so named, allegedly, for it’s resemblance to a toad and flax. Obviously.

After all yesterday’s excitement it has been a quiet day today. A little charity shopping produced these two. [I’m not intending to do any church embroidery but some of the designs are stunning and if I ever need to make an alb or a chasuble, I now know how to.]

The other is the well-illustrated catalogue of an exhibition, in 2001 in Dorset, which I’m sorry I missed.

I’m cheating a bit with today’s flower because, as you can see, it’s not a flower – although it was once. W. found it on the pavement so I scanned it in grey scale, and tinted and collaged it in Picasa [I couldn’t resist a bit of image manipulation].

For those who haven’t guessed – it’s an unusually flat conker – and for those who don’t know hat a conker is, it is the fruit/nut [?] of a horse chestnut. Beautiful moiré patterns, and I like the shadows which resulted from scanning it.

It’s been one of those days

when a great deal has been done and very little achieved.

I did rescue these two from the local charity shops.

 

 

 

Then I started  several things, including this, but finished none.

Creative embroiderers will immediately recognise it as several plastic bags ironed together and then embroidered.

Non-embroiderers will think I’ve flipped. Again.

It will be a book cover. Eventually.

Here’s son of plank’s transformation du jour. [Not sure why it is a son when it is quite girly colours.]

It has been ‘Gooified’ in Picnik and ‘Saturated’ in Picasa.

Couching, I think, with hand dyed Wensleydale wool, for the curls.

 

 

 

 

And with added Tilt Shift, thanks to Mr Cheddar.

A rare sighting …

of a finished object. Or two.

The felt book from ‘Re:bound’. The button hole would have been better a bit to the left and horizontal rather than vertical – but given the dearth of FOs around here recently – I’m pleased with it. It should fit neatly into my capacious bag for notes and sketches.

It wasn’t really in the spirit of ‘Re:bound’ because it’s not recycled, but it did use up a UFO or two – the embellished felt cover and the lining, which was an early experiment with fabric crayons I never thought I’d find a use for.

And as I think I’ve noted before, Finished Objects, like buses, tend to come in pairs. [I had a lot of time today because we got up early for Wensleydale to take the car in for repair.]

 

This is the BQL August Challenge converted into a bag. I needed cheering up, hence the very un-me colours. And I used up some of the fabric from the cushion cover [hey, another FO!] so that was a bit more stash reduction.

 

[We won’t talk about the felt and Vilene I bought yesterday - because they are staples, not stash – or the silver net because that was only £1.50 a metre in the sale and you wouldn’t expect me to ignore a bargain like that, would you?]

Today’s image is, for a change – not the plank. More ‘son of plank’. It is the scan of the book back which I showed you yesterday, Picniked with the ‘Boost’ filter. Can you tell I like Picnik?

 

It’s been a busy day …

so a short post.

Today’s plank is also Picniked – this is the ‘heat map’ filter. You can vary the colours but they are all bright.

I see all of these as either line stitches on hand dye, or textured stitches in canvas work on a high count canvas – probably higher count than I have patience for!

 

 

 

There has been a little progress on this, although it may not be obvious. Apart from the beads there are free cross stitches in the sections which will form the front cover.

I don’t think it needs anything else so with luck it may make more progress towards becoming a book tomorrow – a lining to stiffen it up and hide the back, a button and button hole [!]and some pages.

I will never moan about British Gas again …

possibly.

At 9.30 this morning [yes, Sunday] a BG engineer arrived, uttered the reassuring words ‘Oh, it’s the same type I’ve got at home’ and fixed the boiler in 30 minutes, including tea drinking time.

We have warmth!

We have hot water!

We also have a gate. But only because Wensleydale put the roof rack on the car, went up to S***s and collected it.

Turns out that all the ‘Oh yes, we’ve go one in stock, we’ll deliver it on Thursday’ was cobblers. Wensleydale had ordered a right hand gate. [No, I don’t know what the difference is either.] Right hand gates, it turns out,  are special order – but no-one told him that. It was only because he decided he’d take whatever they’d got that he found out from the manager.

The ironic thing was that we initially ordered a gate from somewhere else,  but cancelled the order because their gates were made to order and it would take three weeks.

That was, of course, three weeks ago …

This is today’s Pickniked image – I think. [I have also Paint Shop Pro’d the plank, but I think this is a Picnik version.]

I think I used the duotone filter and then added a frame.

Although I can still see a nude in it I have suddenly spotted a head and upper body in profile – a bit Gormleyesque. Which is fortunate because I have almost decided to choose Gormley for one of the installation artists I should be studying for Contemporary Textiles. You know, the excuse for making all those sketchbooks. Until I abandoned the pretence and admitted I just felt like making books.

I used the version of the plank I showed you yesterday for the outline of the stitching on this bit of embellished felt I did ages ago. It’s in reverse because I machined it from the back, using a variegated perle in the bobbin.

But the stitching didn’t show up enough for my liking so this morning I attacked it with some copper paint. Much more interesting, I think.

This is intended for yet another book cover but, just like the purple one – I know it needs more stitch but I'm not sure what.

I can manage straightforward decisions, though. Here is Babybel’s new bedding, all ready for her visit later this month.  Notice Ronaldo Junior giving it her seal of approval.

 

 

 

 

I used some of the left-overs to make this bag from instructions here. That is Babybel’s Daddy’s Spot – and as her daddy assures me he is 30 this month, Spot must be getting on for that too.

Do normal people …

think ‘It’s a hot day with no wind so I'll take some paper out into the garden and spray it with old cold coffee?’

Wensleydale seems to think it is perfectly normal, but then he’s been married to me for 38 years this month, so his judgement may be unreliable.

The paper turned out very well. It is destined to become the pages of a book. Surprised?

In the afternoon we did something a bit more normal, judging by the number of people there.

We went to Mottisfont Abbey.  

We’ve been a couple of times before, but only to go round the house. It has a good collection of 20th century art and some trompe I'oeil  wall paintings by Rex Whistler. But we usually go just before Christmas when the house is specially decorated, so we have only seen a little bit of the gardens, like this Impressionist bridge.

There are some enormous trout in the river, which respond well to bread – provided the ducks don’t get it first.

 

 

 

Today we didn’t go into the house [apart from the café] but concentrated on the gardens.

We were a little too late to see the old fashioned roses in their full glory but there were still plenty of flowers to look at, and smell. The sun really brought out the perfume.

 

I love the shape of the honeysuckle [top left]. It reminds me of this – on a book which, coincidentally, I found in the second hand bookshop next to the cafe. [I forgot to mention the bookshop.]

 

 

 

We also met an ent.  Here are his feet.

 

 

 

And here’s the rest of him, seen from the walled garden.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not saying what I think this bit looks like – but this may be in danger of becoming an X-rated blog…

 

 

 

 

And here, for  today's’ texture photo, is his skin. He was a sweet chestnut ent. I am not familiar with ents – er – sweet chestnuts - so don’t know if this sort of bark is typical – but isn’t it great? Smocking, I think, or twisted cords.

Do normal people wander round trees taking close ups of bark and envisioning them as embroidery? I got some funny looks and they didn’t know what I was thinking …

Yesterday, today and tomorrow

We had a very good day yesterday with Babybel – although, as expected, all we could do after she took her daddy home was collapse on the sofa in front of the telly.

We took her to Bird World near Farnham, as she loves birds, we had a two for one voucher, and it was on the way home after we picked her up.

It was a lovely day  and Bird World was very quiet, so we could get a very good view of the birds – or ‘ducks’ as she calls all of them.

 

Then we came home and after tea she played football with her daddy. I knew all those footballs would come in useful!

 

 

 

 

Today has been spent recovering! It has been another lovely day so, although I had intended to do some machine embroidery, I sat in the garden and finished this.  ‘M’ for a metal mouse.

I hadn’t sewn metal before, and found Ann Parr’s ‘The Art of Stitching on Metal’ very helpful. This is copper, heated in a gas flame and then pickled in balsamic vinegar for a couple of days. If, like me, you use balsamic vinegar so rarely yours is past its sell by date – use it to colour metal!

Tomorrow is the last Contemporary Textile Workshop of the year – it’s hard to believe that there have been six of them, and that it is a year since I finished C&G. We will be making books to display our efforts over the year – so I expect to enjoy myself.