Happy Halloween

Where has all the stitching gone, long time passing

With apologies to Peter, Paul and Mary, time to ponder where my stitching has got to.  I’m being diverted in to sketchbook work, which is a good thing, in light of the degree of mental block I have about thinking my scribblings are worthy of the word sketchbook.

Work in the studio at Mary Ward, continuing with this piece, cutting a stencil to allow multiples to be drawn on top of each other

Then as ever, I felt the need for some collage

One more week to work on this in the studio.

I am still working on the CQGB monthly challenge. with the last one of the seed series well underway. Applique, embroidery and texturing with TextureMagic

Shadowing with oilsticks has been overdone, I’ll need to see if I can tone that down.

The final three in the series are based on bacteria, and the threats posed by overuse of antibiotics.

I’ve filled a sketchbook,, so needed a new one. Breakdown-printed cloth with an appliquéd piece of melted ( deliberately of course!) gold lame fabric. 

Filling up

 

Experiments with drawing ink and an angle-cut hair dyeing brush on pasted tissue paper - swans, gondolas?

Inspiration this month has come from: Ruth Padel and  Issam Kourbaj, “Dark Water, Burning  World” a small installation in the Islamic Gallery at the British Museum; The Business of Prints at the British Museum; Prism at Hoxton Galleries, now finished, particularly the work of Ross Belton using found natural materials.

Finishing on using found natural materials, a note on Margaret Cooter’s blog, inspired me to search out this beautiful method of making decorative roses from autumn leaves.

Sketchbook - a working object

Regular readers will know that the term “sketchbook” is one I have very mixed feelings about.  I mistakenly used to read this as an object of beauty, with a wonderfully formed image or composition on each page. Through discussions with my art tutor, I now understand that it can be a working, dynamic object, where pages can be revisited, added to, changed and adapted.

I realise that I enjoy setting up a page and then coming back to it several weeks later when I have worked on other techniques, been to an exhibition, or viewed my photographs.  I have been doing that this week.

Painted page, cut out, with inverted section and then with photograph of work by Victoria Coeln.

Back to drawing

It is lovely to be back at the Mary Ward Centre to draw with the inspirational Abigail Downer.  The first exercise is to consider two objects, a natural one and a manmade one, as “actors” in a composition.  My objects are a vase and a gourd, 

Many exercises later, I have a drawing of the vase,  a little lopsided, but a good start.

While studying the structures together, I was struck how overlapping multiple images of the vase mimicked the folds and rolls of the gourd.  That is what I am exploring next,

One out, one in, and see the Hive

Kaleidoscope is finally finished and bound, so time to bring out my blue splash quilt and ponder quilting designs.

Scribbling with variegated thread on the little squares in the sashing.

Auditioning possible quilting patterns with soap lines

I think wavy lines are the way to go.

If you have time, do go and see The Hive at Kew. Really innovative and strangely unsettling to be inside it. Intriguing grids on grids to photograph.