Bunking off college …

but with ‘per’ – as Wensleydale is prone to say, having read far too many ‘Jennings’ books as a child.

We were asked to do emergency Babybel sitting, so I arranged to go into college in the morning, and bunk off in the afternoon. It was a seminar and tutorial session so I grabbed the first tutorial and then W., B. and I all went to the Hillier Gardens for lunch and a play in their tree house. A good time was had by all despite B. and I being under the weather – turns out she has a virus in addition to the conjunctivitis we knew about.

The seminar/tutorial were very helpful and I have spent today sampling, in between the coughing and sneezing. 'Everyday’ has morphed into ‘family’ after the suggestion that we thought about what was most important to us. [Everyday > familiar > family had come out of my mind maps.]

This is more or less the idea  - you might think that you have seen something like it before! – but this will be at least a metre long and 2D. Oh, and made out of an old, faded, frayed curtain, with bleached out lines. And recycled textiles. And string. It’s a bit conceptual, this piece.

Why do I associate my family with tatty textiles, do you think?

I did draw the line at ripping up my GG grandfather's dictionary for it, as suggested by one tutor.

Another suggestion was that the circles [‘family circles’ – geddit?] should be made from textiles obtained from  – and possibly stitched by – family members.  So now I am cadging old clothes from my kids and their families … [I haven’t mentioned the stitching yet …]

I played around with a bit of curtain and the embellisher – adding holes and patches. The white was a scrap of silk noil I fished out of the bin, embellished from the front or back, which I really like.

 

 

I think the bleached circles will be stamped with a set of pastry cutters made by my grandfather. We are fairly sure they were joined with lead solder so I don’t use them for food! This is the effect on ink – the fabric samples are drying as I type. [I have four of these curtains, all about 3 metres by 1.5 metres, so I’m not skimping on the sampling …]

 

I also tried drawn thread work and other stitches using self threads from the curtain – the warp and weft are different, which gives some interesting alternatives – as does the fading. Loose ends are deliberate!

 

 

 

Can you tell I’m quite enthused by this?

We have a busy few days coming up so I probably won’t get much done before next week. The next step is – probably - a full sized mock-up, and experimenting with scanning and printing out bits from GG Granddad's dictionary – I thought I'd try tissue paper glued to the curtaining and see how that looked.