Merry Xmas

Xmas postcards sent for swap this week.  The bauble detaches to be hung from the tree.

 

Drawing in the British Museum and birthday postcards

Our tutor is very keen on everyone getting over their nerves about drawing in public, so we all went to the British Museum today.  I'm still struggling with relative proportions as seen in these first two A4 pages from the Mexican gallery, supposedly of Huaxtec female deities .

I tried to enjoy the whole experience, including having a couple of Buddhist monks looking over my shoulder, and overhearing the following exchange: " Have you ever been to Mexico?"  No……….  " Do you want to go to Mexico?……………." ………..No.  If I was a decent painter I would be tempted to include these observations in my final works, as does Kurt Jackson.

After a coffee ( and a very good salted caramel and apple cookie),  I found a more straightforward subject, the sculpture of  "Mother Earth" by Mona Saudi.  After another painstaking attempt at clean lines and shading

I had a good talk with the tutor about my lack of patience and wanting to draw more quickly and spontaneously.  He was very understanding about  "finding my own style of drawing that fits with my personality and way of working" so suggested a more dynamic approach.  I'm happier with these.

4B pencil

Charcoal pencil

I haven't done many postcard swaps this year,but have kept up with the birthday swap.  Unfortunately the Yahoo group where the swap is posted seems to be losing its momentum, so I'm not sure ho much longer it will continue.  I think several epode have been put off by the difficulties with the Yahoo upgrades this year, particularly the difficulty of loading photographs. I wonder if there is also a reluctance to spend 62p  time on posting cards to up to 6 people at a time every month.  My birthday theme was feathers and fronds, and everyone has interpreted it differently.

The Narnia postcard is now edged and ready to send off

Adventures with pencil and thread

Continuing explorations and sampling, I played around a bit this week with putting colour on cloth using watercolour pencils and Inktense pencils.  I'm still undecided about the Inktense, as the colours are so bright - and I usually like bright.  

As you can see, I am not a tidy worker.  Initial trials were with freezer paper stencils with water-colour pencils and ink pads.

This gave quite accurate and pleasant results.

The on to using Inktense on some of the quilted samples from the Philippa Naylor course, following the instructions here. I experimented with water only, water and textile medium, and textile medium on its own.  Water causes a lot of colour bleeding, could be good in some contexts, and the most refined results came form a mixture of water and textile medium - petals 1-6 in the flower on top right.

I needed some stitch work after that, working at my mobile sewing station.

Some postcards appeared for a swap next week.  The metallic threads on these proved very temperamental but isn't that fabric appropriate for this week?.

I have forced myself to get down to more drawing, I'm Ok with these results.

I've called this, " Will I keep them?" as I am still undecided about these shoes.  They are Clarks, and have actual Linton tweed in them, so I would be supporting two aspects of the British economy by keeping them.

Clearing out, stitching up and inspiration - (photo heavy)

I am using these few weeks before I go to Australia ( for 4 weeks!) to clear up and use some of my sample pieces that had been lurking unloved for too long.  I'm a member of an exchange group for textile postcards, which are a great way to use stitched samples.  Looking at these, I'm evidently in love with blue and orange.

Black Kunin felt, bonded fabric, hand and machine stitch

Indigo dyed fabric, hand applique and embroidery, machine quilting

Indigo dyed fabric, fish from a greetings card

Commercial fabric, wrong side, hand embroidered eyelets, machine quilting

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Commercial fabric, raw edge appliqué, buttons

Commercial fabric, machine applique and quilting, hand beading

Inspiration this past week has come from visits to

• British Folk Art at Tate Britain- good, but seemed incomplete to me as there was no scrimshaw, canal ware and very little ironwork.
• The New Georgians at Orleans House - interesting and bonkers combined non several pieces, on until 27 July
• Twickenham Carnical, where the best popcorn ver was on sale.  If Drum and Kernel are near you this summer, do try their wares.
• Matisse cut outs at Tate Modern - really lives up to the hype, but perhaps avoid going on a Saturday afternoon!
• Chelsea College of Art , BA Textile Design show - I found the textiles amazingly inspiring, particularly the weaving, printing and knitting.  Surprisingly enough, little of the stitched work caught my eye.  Some of the beautiful pieces are below

 

A fun interactive design scheme by Christine Kim - choose shapes depending on aspects of your life…...

then print the result in repeats

Trimmings, offcuts, leftovers…..

I am finishing the quilted panels based on the Scallop, and have quite a few offcuts from the sides of these.  I used a great piece of cloth for the back of these that glows with yellows and reds, so the trimmings needed to be made in to something.

Resulting 5 postcards

These look a bit bleached out on my screen, they really are vibrant in today's sunshine.

Mixed stitching

I have just started a new job, so a lot of stitching has slowed down while I adjust to everything involved with that.  A couple of postcards for the birthday swap, made with hand-dyed and commercial fabrics.

A 5inch Dear Jane block to complete a tilt started by one of our group members who was a great quilter and who died this year after a long life.  Although I enjoyed making this in memory of her, this has fully convinced me that I will never make one of these quilts.

Then finally, quilting of a piece of screen printed cloth, potentially to protect my laptop if the piece is large enough.  Inside is tray-dyed cloth overprinted with a photo screen that has two sections on one screen.

Outside is Procion P painted cloth then overprinted with two different screen  stencils made from wide masking tape carved into curves with a scalpel.

Details of quilting, so far.

I am also taking part in this stitch-along, but there will be few photos as the final product will be a present to be revealed on the day of the 50th anniversary edition.

Birthday postcards

A recent birthday brought a flood of postcards on my set theme, which was "Anatomy".  This was interpreted in many inventive ways, shown below.  Apologies for the formatting, sometimes I hate computers.

Postcards for summer

Fabric postcards swaps are a phenomenon in the on-line textile world.  The theme is defined, a date is chosen, swapping groups are set-up and off we all go in to our stashes of fabric.  I don’t take part in many, due to time constraints, but this one I really enjoyed.

The theme was “your favourite weather”.  Bonded fabrics, stacked and slashed, then recombined with a bit of bling on the top, then machine quilted. Trying to represent the heat and shimmering haze of a London urban summer, (which hasn’t been felt much so far this year.)

 

Resolution round-up

So, the sewing resolutions were,

1. To always return my sewing scissors to the correct storage space – so far, so good
2. To finally replace the scissors that only cut with half of the blade since I tried to cut through a pin ( accidentally) – replaced with a super sharp pair of Gingher shears
3. To make a thread catcher in which to dump all pieces of thread and fabric trimmings –A4 journal quilt stitched up the sides, and voila, threadcatcher
4. To finish at least one UFO before starting something else  - mmmm, let’s pass on that one
5. To have a few fabric postcards ready in advance – yup, see below
6. To try out every stitch on my sewing machine ( 130 out of 144 to go)  - 125 out of 144 to go
7. To organise my threads, so I don’t spend more time searching for the right one than I do using it.  - yup, customised this one to hang on the wall rather than to stand – what a transformation in storage

Not bad, for two months in to the year.

Experiments with watercolour pencils, stitched non-woven voile and hand-dyed fabric.

On the left, kimono silk, with appliquéd butterfly and overlay of a shirt collar stiffener from a new shirt.  On the right, kanzashi flower petals, stitched flat, rather than kept three-dimensional.