Book Week

Book One

'Another chance to see' the CTW book, which now has contents. Adding the contents took most of Wednesday, about as long as it took to make the book itself, if you don't include drying times. That was partly due to deciding to add a fancy, but not very successful, title, which had to be designed, believe it or not. Then I added the pasta machine prints I made earlier, and some real lace. (The bits of handmade beige paper, and the smudgy blue piece in the middle, are dampened paper embossed by putting them through the pasta machine with the collagraph plate but no paint, although the blue one did get some Rub-On.)

Book Two

Continuing work in the 'tree' sketchbook. You may be looking at some of these for a while before you see any link to trees. I got a bit carried away.

I finished the four-sided stitch trees. Then I got a bit patchworky with a couple of my Gelli prints, one on paper and one on fabric. I really like the paper version, lots of little 2" square bits of inspiration. Appliqué, or surface embroidery perhaps, or canvas work?  There are also a couple more knitted samples, and some of the grottier prints cut out and layered.

My thoughts have been turning, as they often do, to vessels, so I used some Gelli prints to cut out 'sketches' of cylindrical ones.  Then I actually drew some, if you count oil pastel and Brusho as drawing. And finally I knitted a couple of tension samples for felting, using a mystery white Aran/chunky from my stash, which are so boring to look at I haven't even photographed them. And it didn't felt much either. Lovely texture, not much felting. Time for Plan B, I think.

You may be thinking 'enough of all this sampling, what about making something?'  I have to agree. Wensleydale always says Plan B is thinking of Plan C. In this case it was deciding to try to knit a cylindrical vessel like the ones I'd been drawing, to see if they would actually work. I used smaller needles, in the hope that it will get stiffer when it felts.  It took several goes to find a cast on for the base which looked as if it might lie flat: I remain to be convinced. But when it's as tall as I want it - or when I run out of wool - or when I get bored, I shall cast off and felt it in the hope I can produce something which will have a reasonably flat base and stand up by itself, even with added cables/holes/lumps and bumps etc. If not, it really will be time for Plan C. 

Mind you, it will be time for Plan C if it does work, just a different Plan C.

Trees, knitting and a book.

Last week, after I'd made the pasta machine collagraph prints, I got out the Gelli plate and made tree prints with the stencils I'd cut from my tree drawing. Or are they landscapes?

Here's one I made earlier, in both orientations. Can't make up my mind. Whichever, I definitely prefer Gelli to pasta.

And here are a few more trees, in various stages of completion. OK, the bottom two (random cables, with and without i-cord), aren't very tree like, but they could be with a bit of work. I keep getting ideas for treeish things to knit, but I felt like a break from knitting (apart from  the VHC's scarf, of course), to add some four sided stitch to one of the Gelli prints (top right).

An hours good cycling on TV most nights this week has enabled me to make good progress on the scarf, despite spotting an error the other night and having to pull half of it out. W. said that the VHC wouldn't notice, but I would, even if it is mistake stitch rib. Babybel was very pleased with her scarf, so I hope the little one likes his 'boo' one.

I also managed to finish off the Contemporary Textile Workshop lace book. I was going to line it with Vilene, but I realised that it was stiff enough on its own, so it's lined with a bit of an interesting print I found in the cupboard.

I'm going to put the better pasta prints in it later, but first I have to wait for the Markal I put on the cover to cure a bit, otherwise I'll end up with blue hands. Again. Just call me Cheshire Smurf.

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Treading the Primrose Path of Dalliance.

Well, it is Valentine's Day. Although this primrose path is completely indoors, given that we have 50 kph winds blowing outside and it's raining heavily. Again.

I've been dallying with book making again. The book of the week was going to be an experiment, to see if I could make this technology work with my own covers. Just quick paper-covered card covers, a hole punch, some of the 'rings', which are actually discs, and a few pages.

Then I remembered that, ages ago, I bought  'Artists' Books Ideation Cards', from Julie Chen, but had done nothing with them. You select cards at random and then make a book that fits.  Category cards outline the methodology to use, adjective cards describe the mood of the book.

It seemed like a good idea to try them out.

My Category cards were 'multiple openings' (i.e. not just a straightforward start at the beginning and keep on to the end book), 'multiple colours', 'based on a grid', 'no images', 'favourite colour', 'found text', and 'hand drawn or painted'.

Mmm - immediately I could see some potential problems - er, challenges. 

Multiple openings?  The cards suggested, amongst other things, split pages, which seemed like a good idea. I didn't want to make a dos-a-dos ring binder!

Favourite colour and multiple colours? Purple is my favourite colour, but I was definitely not in the mood for a purple book. I often work in black and white plus one colour -but what colour? Amd are three colours 'multiple'?

Based on a grid? I'm not sure what this means, but I found some pre-painted papers with sort-of-grids on them, which covered 'hand drawn or painted' as well.

No images? This seemed to conflict with the above, but I decided it meant representational images, which I was very happy to omit.

Found text? No problem, though I haven't decided what I'm going to find, yet.

I wasn't going to bother with adjective cards but then I thought 'Why not?' That's where my quick and dirty experiment began to go off the rails.

My five adjective cards were 'formal', 'sequential', 'loud', 'historical' and 'sculptural'. 

Formal? The sort-of-ring-binder I'd been planning was definitely not formal. It would have to be a proper book.  

Sequential? I'm still working on this one. In a sense all books are sequential, but I think it implies a narrative structure to the contents, of some sort, which seems to conflict with using found text.

Loud? And formal? Can something be both? My first thought was to use some red cheong-sam type fabric which is bright, if not loud, but quite formal. However I know from bitter experience that it does not like being ironed, and I Bondaweb fabric to my book covers. (I have a hate-hate relationship with glue.) Plus it was too thick to work with what I had planned for 'sculptural'.

Historical? I'd decided to use a simplified case binding, which is quite traditional, so that would do for hysterical historical.

Sculptural? I really didn't want to get into complex book forms. So I decided to try a little embossing on the cover (perhaps a grid?) which is something I hadn't done before. But it would need a fairly flexible covering material, which is why the cheong-sam fabric (no idea what it is really called, but I suspect it's rayon) was too thick. It seemed like a job for handmade paper, so I found my stock and selected a nice bright, middle of a primrose yellow-orange. (That's where the primroses come in!) It was pretty loud, but I hoped the book structure itself would provide the formality.

The book is still awaiting its found text sequence, and I may cut some holes in the pages, but the bulk of it is finished, and I'm pleased with it. Perhaps I'll get round to the experimental sort-of-ring-binder next week. Just so long as I keep away from the cards...

When I wasn't doing that, I did another bit of mad weaving with one of my Gelli printed stitch explorations. That lumpy white stuff is some knitting cotton I've had for years, which seems to have found its role in life at last. This will not be becoming a mad book, however.

Sock knitting has continued, although the last couple of pairs didn't get photographed.

And here's something I made earlier, but which was delivered today, photographed at an odd angle so you can see there are hearts in there.

Hope you've had a good Valentine's Day, without too much wind and water spoiling the party!

So much for a low stress week...

On our way to our Monday Babybel and VHC minding, an ominous yellow warning light appeared on the car dashboard. Consulting the manual revealed that we had 'an engine management system' problem. (Don't ask me, and even more, don't tell me. My eyes will glaze over and I will start biting the cushions.) The manual told us to go directly to the garage. So we did.

Fortunately, it was not one of our silly o'clock starts, so it was daylight, it was not raining, we could turn round easily, and a substitute B &VHC minder was readily available. 

So we turned around, did not pass Go, and did not collect £100, alhtough it would have helped with the bill.

In the old days, when you took a poorly car into the garage, a mechanic in overalls came out, looked under the bonnet, sucked air through his teeth and told you what was wrong. These days a young man in the showroom, in a shirt and tie, tells you that they can't tell what the problem is until they've plugged it into the computer, he advises you not to drive it too far, and that they could take a look at it tomorrow.

To cut a long story short, we got it back on Wednesday afternoon, for a price, and all appears to be well. Luckily we have bus passes and a good bus service.

It did mean I got more done than expected, including not one but two books of the week, although neither were going to be books when they started.

My bedtime reading recently, as part of my Visual Marks inspired research, has been Val Campbell-Harding's 'Machine Embroidery - Stitched Patterns'. She recommends trying the automatic stitches on a variety of fabrics, so I collected a few from the scrap box, sat down at the machine, and asked myself ’which patterns shall I use?' 

And the answer came 'All of them!' Apart from the buttonholes. And the basting stitch. And one or two others I couldn't be bothered with. Just under 170 in all, ten per piece of fabric, so I had to find a few more bits of fabric. By then I'd decided to restrict myself to black, so I had to be a bit creative about what 'fabric' is. And decide what I was going to do with 17 6" squares. The answer, of course, was a book. A rather untidy, sort of Japanese stab bound book, as seen above, which I hope will be useful.

This morning, after photographing that lot, I was going to move on from automatic stitches. The plan was to get put the Embellisher and try embellishing stitch-like marks. But first, as the result of some more bed time reading (author's name withheld to protect the innocent, but it was not V C-H) which recommended using drawing inks for the process, to try dip dying some paper and fabric. I have lots of ink I'll never use any other way, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Well, the cotton fabric (top right, bottom left) slurped up the ink like there was no tomorrow, and the paper - didn't. Look at my results and laugh. And the ink was the waterproof type, which is sticky, so the dipped pieces stuck to the newspaper I put them on to dry.      

Chalk it up to experience...

Then, before I got the Embellisher out, I thought I'd use some of my stitch mark Gelli-printed papers for a bit of weaving. And because I'd been reading Sherrill Kahn's  'Creative Embellishments' (yes, in bed, how did you guess? Not laziness, insomnia!) I decided to add some woven fibres and some stitch.

Wensleydale looked at it and said 'Chess board meets Snakes and Ladders' - which is quite an interesting idea.

And I looked at it, and it said 'I am a book cover'. 'No, no', I said, 'You are going in my sketch book', but it refused. A book cover it became. A totally impractical, irritating to use book with an equally silly book mark, but Wensleydale, who writes a journal, has agreed to use it. That man is so noble!

Tomorrow I must get the Embellisher out.

     

The weekend after the week before...

has been very productive, I'm glad to say.

Although I have officially finished the last Visual Marks challenge, I can't stop exploring ideas inspired by the session. Lots of ideas! I don't think they will lead into anything in the long run, but it's fun seeing where they take me.

My first idea was to do more automatic stitching, but with some variations - like not on felt, and trying  different colour combinations, and not having anyone else to add their bit - as Wenseydale doesn't do machine sewing. I started just after the Visual Marks session, but it got shelved when I realised I'd have to make four. But this afternoon I fired up the Bernina and got cracking.

This is the result. I used net, backed with Solufleece, which I had not used before and was impressed with - although I found out the hard way that ironing it is not  a good idea. I added some bits of lace as well as the stitching. 

My favourite is the black lace on white, bottom left, which has a floaty look I like. No idea what to do with any of them, though! 

I suppose if, by any unfortunate chance, I was asked to provide a bridal veil for the upcoming wedding, the white on white version might lead to something, but I don't think it's going to be that sort of wedding, somehow. I hope.

As an alternative to machine stitching, I decided to up the scale a bit, and try to reproduce the machine stitches by hand. I suppose, if I had really copied the machining I'd have used couching, but instead I worked on canvas. I'm quite pleased with this, although there are problems with the layout - and as you can see, it's not quite finished.

The next step is rug canvas - I kid you not!

I realised as I slaved over a hot sewing machine this afternoon that my experiments are of two types - stitches, and stitch-like marks. (I'd like to pretend this was deliberate, but it just happened.) I had lashed out and bought myself a big Gelli plate as a late Christmas present, so yesterday I made some simple monoprints of marks inspired by the machine stitches. Some were better than others, but there are a couple I really like - I'm thinking book covers.

This is the first time I've used the Gelli plate when it wasn't red hot in the conservatory, and it is much easier when the paint doesn't dry instantaneously. Which may be why I realised what I hadn't realised before - it is very easy to get too much paint on a Gelli plate, but impossible to get too little. Even if all you have is a few smears left over from a previous print, a spritz of water will often give you a second print, which can be more interesting than the first!

The next step in mark making will probably involve the Embellisher - watch this space.

Circuits and Bumps.

You may remember that at the conclusion of my last post I said I was going to play with Grilon, and similar threads, which shrink when exposed to heat.

Let's not talk about that, shall we? I spent the whole day trying to get one which worked. Three went in the bin, the fourth went in my sketchbook as an example of what not to to do. I'm sure it was me, not the threads, but I shall not be trying again.

Thursday was much better.

Wensleydale, Babybel and I (the VHC was in nursery) went to the North Pole. Must be true, here's a sign to prove it.

(Actually it is Mottisfont's 'Pooh trail', but don't tell Wensleydale.) 

So on Friday I turned my attention to a new challenge - trying out every method of adding colour to fabric I could think of. (Bar dyeing, I've done a lot of that.)

These are the results, apart from the transfer crayons which were too anaemic to be used and are hidden under the Bondaweb.

The Bondawebbed one - plus a bit of the Shisha one.

I challenged myself using this fabric - it's a shiny synthetic curtain fabric I bought when I thought my C&G 'goldwork' was going to be copper. 

It, and the accompanying resolved sample, turned out to be gold - and I still love them.

But I digress.

I started with the Gelli plate, freezer paper stencils and Colourcraft Aztec. 

Lesson 1

See that mottled effect? Aztec reacts to the Gelli like watercolour, it beads. Quite a nice effect but not what I was after. It also runs under the stencil, contributing to lesson 3.

Yes, those are holes.

Lesson 2

For machine cutwork, use two layers of tearaway stabilizer, one isn't enough. And choose a thread which   doesn't break every five minutes.

Lesson 3

Freezer paper stencils detach themselves from the fabric and cling to the Gelli plate with a vice-like grip, perhaps because I hadn't ironed them enough - this fabric does not like a hot iron. (See lesson 11.)

You don't need freezer paper stencils anyway, you can just use ordinary paper on the plate. Doh.

Lesson 4

Acrylic paint worked much better, but I overdid the textile medium. It does help to keep the paint from drying too quickly in a hot studio conservatory, but if it's too runny it runs under the stencils.

Lesson 5

Don't do monoprinting in 35 degrees C.

Lesson 6

The splodgy dots were done traditionally, with a stencil and brush at room temperature, but they still ran. I used Opalite which is lovely but I still haven't worked out the best way to use it. 

Lesson 7

Sometimes foil can be too bright. I added Hotspots and foil to the three circles next to the splodgy ones to try and make them more interesting, but now they are OTT. Not sure what I'm going to do with these. Emulsion paint?

Lessons 8, 9, 10 and 11

Markals (right hand end of the top row) and spray paints (underneath it), on this fabric, come out very pale but sunprinting with silk paints works well (left in the middle row). 

And Markal rubbed onto a nappy liner, ironed onto fabric, covered with another nappy liner rubbed with Chromacoal, stitched down and zapped is - er - interesting, but all that heat shrank the fabric

Lesson 12

Don't buy cheap Shisha rings.

All those lessons! No wonder I'm tired. Just hope I remember them.

In between...

watching cycling on the TV (Go Froome! Go Cav!) I have managed to find a little time for repetition.

Earlier in the week, after a mini sort-out of stuff, I said to Wensleydale that when I'd finished repeating, I'd start experimenting with some of the stuff I'd bought over the years and never used - like Lutradur, and metal, and foil, and - well, you get the picture.

On Friday I thought 'Why wait?' - I can repeat and experiment at the same time. 

The result of this flash of inspiration was a lot of sorting through boxes, writing an embarrassingly long list of stuff to try, and spending a lot of non-TV watching time Googling what I'd found. I haven't been able to track everything down (has anyone any idea why I might have bought clear polyester sheets from Ario? They're like OHP slides but aren't - so what are they?) - but I've got ideas for most of the rest.

First out of the box(es) was some Evolon - which I bought and then decided I didn't like the texture. It is a not very exciting off-white, but you seem to be able  to colour it with all sorts of things, so as I also found some papers I'd coloured with transfer dyes, and a teetering pile of printable paper bags, that's what I tried.

This was transfer crayon (a rubbing of our garden table) over a mask of a jumble of thread. Not very exciting, but it got a bit of quilting onto felt and will go in the little brown book.

This is a paper bag. The panel on the far right was ironed straight on to the Evolon, top left is on something very translucent which may or may not be light Lutradur, and bottom left is one layered over the other. The pattern on the paper looked very fly-stitch-like, but printed off it looks less so. No idea what I'm going to do with it - possibly a book cover? (Now there's a surprise.) I also found some Lamifix, and as Google tells me you can't wash it, I decided I'd try adding it to book covers, because books are about the only thing I don't chuck in the washing machine. 

So, am I converted to Evolon? No. I still don't like the handle, it doesn't take transfer dyes as well as my favourite, in-your-face polyester satin, as shown on the left, and it makes an irritating popping noise as the needle goes through it. However I am open to persuasion if anyone has any suggestions.

It may make good book covers though, and I have enough left to experiment with other ways to colour it - like the Gelli plate, and someone suggested Inktense sticks.

After those experiments, I went back to the tried and tested - a little repetitive collage, mostly playing with stripes, and using yet more paper bags. They weren't ironed off, this time, just cut up and Bondawebbed into my sketchbook, with a bit of felt tip and rubber stamping. I like the deconstructed triangles, and the layered ones. 

Mmm - it's just dawned on me that if those sheets from Ario are polyester, I might be able to colour those with transfer dyes. I feel further experiments coming on...

Never say never.

I may have said on this blog - I have certainly said it elsewhere - that I don't like monoprinting. I like what other people do with it, I just don't like my own efforts. 

So you might assume I would not be in the least bit interested in a Gelli plate. But I like the look of what other people do with them, and then Handprinted  had a 10% off offer - and I succumbed. The plate sat around for a while, while I did other things, including subscribing to an on-line course with Carla Sonheim, and reading everything Google could find on the subject.

Yesterday I felt like getting on with it, despite it being the first day of a certain bike race. I did have the TV  on in the next room so I could rush in when things got exciting, and of course I made sure I didn't miss the rather unusual and disappointing finale.

I needed to work in the conservatory (only place with enough space) and it was 35 degrees in there, even with the doors open and the fan running. There were two advantages to this - it was easy to persuade the last drops to emerge from my elderly bottles of Lumiere paint, and paint dried quickly. There were three disadvantages - I was dripping with sweat, my specs kept sliding off my nose because of it, and the paint dried quickly.

I am not going to show you the results of yesterday. 

Today I decided to have another go, but using fabric instead of paper, so I collected an eclectic selection of Gelli plate sized bits and got going. It was even hottter today, so I  - er, let's just say it's a good job our conservatory is not overlooked, and I have paint in unusual places...

These are the edited highlights of the results.

Top right is a piece of PVC.  I don't know if the paint will stay in place, but it definitely makes boring brown PVC more interesting.

The grey piece in the middle of the bottom row is furnishing velvet. The print is very soft, as you would expect, and I love it - just need to work out what to do with it!

The others range from a very fine polyester to furnishing  fabrics, and all worked well, in different ways.

Things I learned.

1. There are no very crisp prints, but I suspect that is due to the speed with which the paint dried.

2. If you don't clean the plate between prints, some of the colour will come off on subsequent prints. I like this effect, but obviously you need to think about the colours you use. That was the problem with some of the paper prints from yesterday.

3. I personally prefer the more abstract imagery to the representational stencils and rubbing plates I used. Some time ago I made some print plates for making 'collographs' without a press, using various scraps and junk papers, and those worked well.

4. Most were made with just a single application of paint, but using 2-3 different colours, and I think most of them are good enough to use as they are - they are intended to be backgrounds for stitch, not finished pieces.

5. Adding fabric medium to the paint seemed to extend the drying time a bit - but only a bit.

6. A bit of metallic paint - or a lot - works well.

7. I read somewhere that you can clean the plate by adding a final layer of paint, adding the paper or fabric and leaving it to dry. That's what I did with the largest image in the collage and it's gorgeous, but  unfortunately it's on paper not fabric. I did the same yesterday using a bit of patterned paper bag and it is the best thing I did all afternoon.

8. I used some fabrics which were already dyed, printed or accidentally marked - not all of them worked, stronger marks were a bad idea. I'd like to try some commercial fabrics - black and white prints, say, or possibly batiks.

Ooops, nearly forgot.

More repetition. On the left, the book page which inspired the work on the right.