work in progress......

 Starting out!

 

 the stitched lines

 

The silk before stitches.

Dyed with pomegranate; I made it in a project with some young people at work. We did a project on Labyrinths, and plant dyeing.

The silk has been lying around, while I decided what to do with it. Then, looking through blogs, I found a reference to the native grasses of New Mexico; and how they (like all grasses) hold the soil together. An image came; and from that, I began stitching. This is very minimal, and with very neutral colours.   



tending/mending....completed!

This is it.
Finito.
I need to stitch a couple of loops onto the back, so I'll be able to hang it for the exhibition in November's Artwalk in Wakefield.
It has plant-dyed fabric (brown=walnuts; blue=woad; green=existing commercially dyed); hand printed, and hand-stitched, elements. And a lot of running stitch, which you can see better in the earlier posts. I think I've just got 2 more 'samples' to complete now. Best get on with it! 

tending/mending

It's almost completed, this one! Just the final few stitches to add, and then it'll be already. The exhibition I'm having will be in November, so I shall be busy completing everything for that. At the bottom, is a photo of the Chapel where I'm exhibiting.

I was in Westgate Chapel last weekend, when they were open as part of the Long Division Festival in Wakefield. Lots of bands to see; and some, performing in the Chapel itself. Here are some pews, and stained glass windows. Oh yeah...and some people! 

 

'bandaged heart'

 Close up; the 'heart' with loose threads.

 The complete piece. It's turned out like a small cushion.....so for the exhibition in November, I'm thinking to put it onto a chair, and just hope no-one sits on it!

I printed onto a bandage, and stitched the fabric/s together.

Layers; and stuffed with quilting fibre.

Then stitched onto denim, as the background fabric. 

This was one day in spring, in the very early stages of making, when the sun shone in through the studio door, and illuminated the procian dyed polyester! You can see the texture of the bandage more clearly in this photo.

tree dressing

Yesterday I went out with my friends, Gail and Emma, to some local woods, where we did some simple tree dressing. Gail and Emma had been on a day workshop a few weeks earlier, and thought they'd like to do something creative in the countryside. They invited me; so I did a quick stitched piece that included a heart-shape (seems to be my current theme!) and decided to include an acrostic poem; one which spells out a word made from the beginning letters of each line). 

 Here's the oak tree I attached both pieces to; either side of the trunk.

Last winter I made lots of these small fabric decorations, instead of xmas cards, for friends and family. I have some left, so thought it would be nice to take one for this outing. After all, they were designed for (xmas) trees!

 Gail did this; tissue and flour and water glue; TRUST.

 Emma took a simple and effective red ribbon. Tucked away, discreet.

And this is the landscape I visisted on Wednesday, when I went on a 'Wild Drugs' walk with Sue Salmon, a medical herbalist. She talked about the many different herbs and plants which grew wild, that could help to heal us. We've been using them for millennia; so they work very well with our bodies. They are compatible with us. Some of the plants she mentioned, nettle, plantain, dandelion, all grow in my garden. I was moved to consider using them. So if anyone complains about the weeds in my garden, I shall explain I am cultivating them for a purpose!

samples.......

Fragment of one of my small samplers. Top right, some tweed from my dad; top left black cotton discharged with bleach; bottom; a lovely old hankerchief which has original embroidery on it that I've embellished. It was put into an avocado, and put into the compost heap last year. The blotches come from that process. This is one more work in progress........ 

studio wall

Some of the collage samples I'm currently working on, pinned up on my studio wall. I'm using lots of the plant-dyed fabric I've made over the last 12 months or so. And I'm going through the fabrics I dyed on the City & Guilds course, and various fabrics I've collected, and been given.
These are all going towards an exhibition in November. It seems a long way away, but it will soon come round.

fragments......

 One of the samples I'm working on. Tweed. Curtain fabric. Silk threads.

Silk fabrics. Spirals of threads. Muted colours. The gathering of the fabric as one layer is stitched to the other. Textures.

No print included in this one......

bird box

Close-up of the seed stitches on the 4-band sampler of the previous post. I'm working on the tweed heart piece. It may take some time, as I work out what words to use, and where to place them.
Meantime I look out the window, at the birdbox, and hope the blue tits that are inspecting it, will take up residence. A friend told me a wonderful story that wrens had used one of their nest boxes to sleep in at night, and she'd seen them all emerging from it one morning; a seemingly endless stream of wrens flying out of it! What a sight that must have been. I've often wondered why birds don't roost in nestboxes overnight in the winter. It must surely be safer, and the combined body-heat would help them survive the cold?

A close inspection of this photo, will show the blue tit checking out the property! It's in the middle of the photo.

playing with filters!

One of the samples I'm working on. Silk dyed with walnut, and woad; cotton dyed with the woad. Printed with the collography plate I made. Photographed using my camera-fone; on ordinary setting.

 Same sample; using the 'poster' setting on my camera-fone.

Same again; using the 'solarisation' setting on my camera-fone. Not a fantastic solarisation effect. Needs more contrast for that, really. How easy it is to make these effects; I remember forty years ago, trying to get the solarisation effect, using darkroom techniques. Messing about with the stinking chemicals. Getting my hands dirty; in the dark, trying to make sure every speck of light was blocked out. Using the college darkrooms. Buying developing equipment to set up a darkroom at home; at first under the stairs (a tight squeeze!) then getting it all up into the loft (much easier!). Looking at Man Ray's photos; his solarisation effects.

'Negative' effect on my camera-fone.

The technical skills we used to practice to try and get these effects. All done now, with a click on the mobile phone. Is it too easy nowadays? We're all photographers now, aren't we?
The ubiquity of camera's in our mobile phones has created a generation who records their every move and posts it online.
I keep my old photos in boxes. 
I sometimes wonder; what would Man Ray have done with this technology.?What would Bill Brandt have done? How would Lee Miller have used a camera-fone when she was photographing events of WW2, and the liberation of the camps? Well; they would've been able to travel light/er, wouldn't they?
But what effect would this technology have had upon their art? They would have used it, definitely. Artists use whatever technology is there. And I'm using some of the oldest, most basic technology in the world; dyeing with plants, needles and threads. Ancient technology. Going back millennia. I like that.

heart

Stitch on tweed.
Hell to photograph!
The patterns on the tweed play havoc with the pixilations of the digital camera-phone. In 'real-life' as opposed to digital-life, the scarlet stitching stands out much better.
I started this after the 14th of February, Valentine's Day; after seeing lots of images all over the web. And thinking about the samples I'm working on currently; how they're actually telling an oblique story. So I decided this would be less oblique, and more obvious. It's not completed; but it will tell a story that includes words, and it will make reference to recent life-events. All this work will go in an exhibition for Wakefield's November Artwalk. It feels quite uncomfortable to be making work which will (for me) be so revealing.
The heart in the stitches is whole. The work is about heartbreak. The tweed comes from my dad, who died 20 years ago. Passed onto me by Rob, after my mum died last July. Weaving connections.

rend again

The fabric above is not quite that livid pink! It's cotton dyed using walnuts; the blue is the 'sig vat', cotton dyed with woad.
Both have been printed using a collagraphy plate.

Close-up; and the colour is more faded in this photo; and more 'real' to the actual fabric. Am still on with seed stitching. It's what I'm working on currently, along with another 'sampler', maybe I should call them? All these pieces are quite small. Manageable to handle. Pieced together.

heart stitched

 On such a dreach day as today, all it's fit for is to stay home and stitch!

This rain; rain; rain. Flooding in the south of England; dreary wet here in Yorkshire.

broken; mended

 close up

 away

further along



sky & stich

The winter sky, reflected in the lagoon near to where I live. Strange how the sky didn't seem quite that shade of blue when I took the photo? Cerulean.

Seed stitch on different fabrics; at the bottom is the walnut dyed silk; top left is onion dyed cotton; 2 re-cycled slices of red silk stitched onto a cotton/linen fabric dyed in a black bean dye-pot. The black on the right is gifted silk.

rend & mend #4

Completed.

rend & mend #3

This is just about completed now. The close-ups show the stitching nicely I think.

rend & mend #2

Throughout December I've been stitching this. I cut up the Rend & Mend collography print (printed on rust and woad dyed cotton), and added black reclaimed silk and plant-dyed silk pieces. Then proceeded to seed stitch over the surface. 
I've also been thinking and designing some small pieces. They're still in the early stages.
I may incorporate some beautiful wool fabric (tweed?) that came to me from my dad, via Rob. It's old; my dad was going to have it made up into a suit, many decades ago. He never did get that suit, so mum gave it to Rob when my dad died. And Rob never got that suit; so it's come to me. There's loads of it, so I've given some away; and could quite fancy a skirt, or pair of trousers made from the remainder! Meantime; I've got a lot of wool to use for my fabric work.

sample #5...again

The completed sample. A mix of cotton/linen blend fabric,with marbled colour, and recycled dyed silk. A stitched labyrinth, and some weaving.
I'm working on another sample; which has a lino-print, and stitching. Feeling that I'm cracking on with these samples for the course.

sample #2

The second sample I've completed for the City & Guilds course. It's made on a piece of re-cycled silk, a sleeve from a shirt. It was dyed with tea-bags, then printed onto it by transfer paint. Further embellishments were wool corded on (at the top) seed stitching (in the centre) and a strip of rust-dyed silk (at the bottom).

And here is a close up of those seed stitches. I seem to be quite obsessed with this stitch! Not sure why; but I suspect I like the way I can almost freewheel stitch! Can put the needle where I want, then step back, and add, or remove. In this way, it feels a bit like painting? Mark-making.