At the end of the Cloth to Codex workshop I recently finished, I mentioned at our Zoom "graduation" ceremony that I didn't feel I had done justice to the workshop. Then I decided to take a look at what I did get done. Here are some of the photos. I have a whole table top of paper books. I just couldn't get the cutting directions straight, and most of them are held together with masking tape, but I did get one accordion book with extra pages that I'm pleased with. I have a pile of fabric painted and ready for "something" and also have three large sheets of water colour paper, used under the fabric. Happy with that. The fabric painting on large scale with paint, India ink, syringes, and whatever gave me two large (36"by45") pieces. The first was cut, re-pieced, quilted, and then cut into three. I ended up with a larger finished piece with Asemic writing and a smaller beaded piece. Both finished and ready for exhibition. I have a large scroll book and my small "Snipit" scroll. I have yet to make and add the spindles, but know how that will be done.

Actually that's quite a bit. I also know that I got a huge number of just neat tricks for getting what you vision out of your supplies (Clear Gesso? Who knew?)I had never used markers before and now have a shoe box size container of them. It was a great workshop, and one appreciate more than I can say.

I'm sorry that the pictures are out of order. The technical aspects of posting have defeated me.

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Recent Finish

There were pieces left over from the large blue painted piece I recently finished, titled "Hidden Meanings", shown in the last post.  While one was used to experiment with stitching and such, the other one became a long, thin beaded piece.  I haven't figured out a title for it yet, but was able to get it bound and finished yesterday. Neither have I given much thought to what price I might put on it  It's about 9" by 29".

A new Piece?

 I'm hoping so.  As part of the workshop I'm taking, I painted two large pieces of fabric according to the instructor's guidance, but using my own colour scheme. They are each about 36" by 45".  This week I tackled the first one.

I carefully cut it and added 1/2" strips, mainly of white, but with a few of a blue that matched the blue in the piece.

This I then cut into three pieces, one 24" by 34", and two about 12-14" by about 12".

All of these pieces will be machine quilted, but with invisible thread, and only hold all the layers together- not for any decorative reason.  I will then cut the long skinny pieces to a more appropriate length. This should give me a couple of smaller scraps to experiment with, in terms of embellishment.  Finally I'll embellish each section in some way.  My hope is to end up with a large and a small piece to add to my exhibit at Gwen Fox Gallery in May.

Getting older

 As I age, I've come to realize that no-one, other than me, knows what is in my studio, or almost more importantly, what value might be attached to my "stuff".  Lately, I've been "purging", and directing things toward someone who might recognize the value, or might actually use it.  Today I passed a large, shopping bag size, parcel of various silk embroidery threads to a friend, who is a member of The Winnipeg Embroiderers' Guild, and who had agreed to pass them along to the Guild, although she had permission to do with them as she thought fit.  It was such a relief to send them somewhere where they might be welcome and used.  This evening I decided to get all of the empty boxes off my storage room shelves, so that I could see exactly what remained for future purging.  You guessed it, I found a large box  containing a mix of specialty embroidery threads, including a fair bit of silk.  I just put it in a larger box and left it on the shelf.

This whole process is one that every crafter must go through at some point in their life.  It's a very emotional experience.  After the best part of an hour at it, I came upstairs almost in tears.  Have I been a colossal fool to have spent so much money, and it all does represent a significant amount of money, on what some would call junk?  Sometimes my husband thinks so, even as he is being supportive of my drive to create.  But in the end, I also have to acknowledge that these "things" have given me a great deal of pleasure and serenity over the years.  They have been the focus of most of my social life.  They have served their purpose, and now it's time for them to give the same pleasure, serenity, and socialization to others.

But won't send them to the thrift store.

More workshop stuff

 Over the past year, while more of less confined to my home, I've spent the time taking internet workshops.  I've posted about the results before, almost feeling as though the busy-ness of the workshop might be, at times, more valuable than the actual amount learned. This week, in my current workshop, "Cloth to Codex", with Susan Purney-Mark, the lesson was on Asemic, or meaningless writing.  I'm loving it, and added it to many of the unfinished sketchbook pages of a previous workshop.  You may have to enlarge the pictures to actually see what has been added, but I'm very pleased with the technique and certainly plan to use it again.

 

Working Vacation

While I haven't posted since December, I have been working.  Jan 4, I started a new workshop with Susan Purney-Marks titled "Cloth to Codex".  This workshop involves working with both paper and cloth, with the ultimate goal of producing unusual books out of both. The work has been somewhat new to me, and the homework load somewhat heavy. At the same time I have been trying to get up to speed with my goal of sketching as frequently as possible, aiming for producing something everyday. Not that I expect to achieve that any time soon!

However, this week the load has become les demanding, and I've found time to work on producing something for the Gwen Fox show scheduled for May 2021.  Here is the latest piece.  Again I started with a piece painted with thickened dye.  I had every intention of doing some beading following the abstract circles of fuchsia toward the top of the piece.  But when the piece was FMQ'd, and ready to bead, I couldn't find any bead, in my rather extensive collection, that added anything to the design of the piece.  Today I put a narrow border around it and attached it to a wrapped canvas.  It is 16 by 20.

Another reason for the delay in posting, is that, when my computer did some upgrades recently, I lost the ability to download photos from my camera.  I am now working from a system that sees me download to my husband's computer, send the photo to me via e-mail, and then try to save it in my computer.  Today, for the first time, the system worked.  I really need to figure out a better way to do this.

Working on modifying the dye painting.

 I had shown a couple of my dye painted pieces to my fibre art support group--The Fibre Art Divas.  They had several suggestions for modifying a couple of them, so today I attempted it.  This time I used acrylic paint combined with textile medium.  Any sort of thickened dye was too thick to work well with a fine paint brush and the result too weak to make any difference.

For the yellow-based piece, they agreed that the main problem was a lack of focal point.  Someone suggested adding a bird.  Well, if one bird would make a difference then five would be that much better.  Right?  The first is the original piece and the second the altered one.

I'm much happier with the altered version.

Tomorrow I'll show the altered Blue piece.  Still some work to do on that one.