A long time ago …

in the summer of 2008 to be exact, we went to the Burrell Collection in Glasgow where we saw, amongst other things, an exhibition of suzanis.

Which inspired a piece of needlepoint, which was going to be made into a bag.

I finished the embroidery, bought the backing fabric, zip, clasp etc. and found some fabric for the lining in my stash, but unfortunately it became a UFO*, and lived in a plastic bag in the cupboard. But just before we went on holiday it fell out on me again and I decided to finish it.

There was a bit of resistance when it came to putting in the grommets [not my favourite activity] – but today I plucked up my courage, my hole punch, my hammer, and my grommet setter – and it is finished. I wish I could have got a brown clasp – but it will do – in fact I’m quite pleased with it. So much so that I’m thinking of designing another piece of suzani inspired needlepoint – probably in even more non-traditional colours …

Today’s picture is one of my ‘textile words with two meanings’ ideas. Not sure it works – but trying out ideas is surely the point of a sketch book – or even an unsketch book.

The letters are self adhesive fun foam – also used for some of my alphabet tags, which are languishing a bit at the moment as the result of bag finishing. Wish I had a bit more stickability– that’s why I need the discipline of a formal course.

* Unfinished Object

Extreme embroidery?

How about torn corrugated card, held together with staples and stitched with string?

Today I had the great pleasure of taking a class, at the Discovery Centre, with Jackie Langfeld. If you went to the Mall Galleries for the Prism exhibition earlier this year you may remember her ‘Paper Warriors’.

We didn’t quite make warriors – but I did manage these.

You can’t tell from this photo, but this is a bowl. the idea was that the beads and French knots would look as if they were cascading down to the lowest point – except that the lowest point shifted as I was stitching it. Jackie had some good ideas on how to deal with that – she is an ex-C&G teacher and was clearly a good one. All the students got individual attention, she had lots of suggestions, and was very tactful. She was also very generous about sharing  her techniques and materials.

This is an experimental piece. When I left the class I thought it was finished but looking at it in the photo, perhaps it isn’t! And maybe it isn’t the right way up – although I thought it was.

 

 

 

What do you think?

One or two of the students who didn’t know about her work seemed a bit gobsmacked by it – but if you like this sort of stuff, and don't have very arthritic fingers, I recommend her class! [Stapling and sewing corrugated card can be hard on the hands.]

Jackie has some pieces in the current Embroiderer’s Guild exhibition in the Discovery Centre. We had a quick look at coffee time but i shall be going back for a longer visit.

Today’s image is another of my kantha/graffiti pieces on a Colour Catcher. The other page is one of the graffiti-ish papers I painted and then used for the book pages.

Unsketch Book Part Deux.

Visiting the Banksy exhibition made me think about the use of lettering in art – and embroidery. Not just graffiti but illuminated manuscripts, samplers, Tracy Emin …

And then I started thinking about textile-related words and phrases which have another, non-textile meaning. So today's pages are some of the ideas I jotted down -there are a surprising number of them.

Not all of these inspire me but I’m a great believer in writing down everything that comes into my head and editing later.

Incidentally, according to this article found by  Mr Cheddar, the Banksy Exhibition made £15 million for Bristol – despite being free. Which proves something, though I’m not sure what.

I enjoyed this quote in the article, from the deputy council leader.:

"He isn't just a tagger but a  gifted artist in his own right. He is slightly off-the-wall and he has a strong kind of chemistry, which fascinates people.”

Er – no, Mr Cook – Banksy is on the wall. That’s the thing about graffiti …

I have been wondering

what to do for my daily photo, since I’ve run out of flowers. I’ve noticed that the owners of a couple of blogs – although I can’t remember which ones – have been showing images of their sketch books – so I thought I might show you some of my non-sketch books – because there isn't much sketching in them.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t get started on anything until I’ve made a book for it. So when we were asked to look at two installation artists for Contemporary Textiles, the first thing I did -[once I’d decided who I was going to choose] – was make books for each of them.

And I can’t do anything to follow up the first CT session until I’ve made a book for it.

This is one of my installation artists books. I think I’ve shown the front cover before – since then the back has gained a bit of decoration, and the whole thing has got a bit more battered. And fatter. The thing on the back is a temporary tattoo from a set I bought in the £ shop ages ago thinking they’d come in useful. Somehow they seemed right for this book.

This is an early pair of pages – some of my photos from the Banksy exhibition and a rather basic mind map. I am a keen exponent of mind mapping – and most of mine are much more complicated than this one.

Some disappointing news on the degree – the official start has been postponed until after half term, apparently due to an administrative glitch. Unfortunately I still missed the introductory session last week, because I was on holiday, and that wasn’t postponed.

Home again

after an enjoyable holiday in [you’ve guessed it] Yorkshire. We were very lucky with the weather apart from one very wet day when this -the River Skirfare in April -

 

 

looked like this.

The river bed is usually dry, due to a sink hole upstream, so for it to get this high there must have been a lot of rain. Not that it worried the sheep.

 

However, as it was so wet, I persuaded Wensleydale that we needed to go somewhere with a roof. Like Gawthorpe Hall, home of the Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth collection of textiles – not that that influenced my desire to visit it, of course.  :-^)

It is a lovely house in its own right – I could imagine living there quite happily. And the exhibition is lovely – very useful for C&G students researching either the history of embroidery or foreign embroidery – if you still have to do that in the new version of the course.

We also explored Nidderdale,  because we had discovered that Wensleydale’s great grandfather had been born there - or rather                     here.

Not that the family owned it – neither of us come from families with that sort of money!

Yesterday we were intending to go up to the Royal Parks to cheer on Babybel’s mum, who was running a half marathon. Unfortunately we didn’t quite make it, but we were able to catch up with the successful athlete later – 1 minute inside her predicted time, despite suffering from the after-effects of gastro-enteritis, seems very impressive to me!

Despite his apparent exhaustion, the dog didn’t run the marathon with her.

And Babybel seemed to be thinking about stepping into her daddy’s shoes – although she’ll have to grow a bit before they fit.

It’s been rather an interesting day.

It was the first session of the Contemporary Textiles Workshop for this academic year. We had been told to look at installation art during the break, so we had an idea 3D work might come into it – but I don’t think we quite expected to be given a black plastic bag full of junk from the Scrap Store and told to make an installation.

This is a bit of my group’s. Yes, that is a broom. And various bits of paper, ribbon, foil and yarn. There was a lot more of the installation – it started quite tight and g r e w.

It reminded me of a training course I went on where, amongst other things, we had to build a tower with various bits of wood. But today turned out to be much more fun. And more useful.

After we took lots of photographs we had to draw bits of the installations. Now, I know that I have said that this is a warts and all blog – but that doesn’t include my drawing. Drawing drizzles of thread is more difficult that I thought and only served to increase my respect for Susie MacMurray [scroll down to the Jerwood Prize].

But if I’m going to do an art degree I suppose I have to get used to showing my warts in public – so here is the best of them.  

This is the original

 

   

 

 

and this is the drawing.

Our homework was to change our photos to black and white, and select and print some for the next session in November, when things will be done with them. Well, of course, I couldn’t just change them to black and white - you can do so much more interesting things.

This is an original. I find the play of light on that plastic fascinating.

 

 

 

The B&W version …

 

 

 

 

 

and the results of playing around in Picasa – these are various combinations of ‘Sharpen’ ‘Highlights’ and Shadows. Much more interesting.

The coloured one resulted from applying maximum Highlights and Shadows to the original – not the B&W version. I think you need a fairly dark background to get such  a black result.

I shall resist the temptation to show you the results of playing around with all the other photos I took – like the 16 versions of the original of the drawing. Obsessional? Me?

Well – maybe just one.

What this all demonstrated to me was that you could take some uninspiring materials and produce some exciting results – although I have absolutely no idea how I might embroider them…

 

This is the final flower for a while, as I am going to take an brief blogging break. This is a hydrangea – even I know that – although I can’t remember where I photographed it …

 

 

 

See you in a week or so.

Busy doing nothing

that is very interesting – just gym, shopping, getting ready for Contemporary Textiles tomorrow.

I did [almost] finish these two last night – they are just waiting for their grommets. The ‘Q’ was going to be shadow work + kantha, but that looked boring, so I decided to add a row of beads. And then another row. And another one. And another row round the edge.

I hadn’t intended the alphabet  to be fabric manipulation – but so far most of it is…

Some more Mottisfont roses – we visited a bit late for the old roses they specalise, in but there were still lots of beautiful ones around. Must make sure to get there a bit earlier next year!