Sunday 1 June 2008

Take it Further May and June

Saturday was spent in the garden trying to establish some order - it's overstuffed with a large variety of plants and while it's quite exciting watching what pops up and flowers, I'm frustrated in trying to identify some gaps to put out some of my favourite plants brought from the last property! Sunday was devoted to gathering together quilts and samples for presentation and demonstration at next Saturday's area day 'Quilting in Action' So once again although I'd planned and prepared my May Take it Further Challenge piece, it needs stitching - I can see me accumulating pieces to sew on holidays. But then for me the challenges so far have been about testing ideas rather than necessarily finished works. Anyway recapping the progress on May's 'What do you call yourself?' concept - the short answer is 'botanist'! Interpreting this in art/textiles, I did some sunprinting using weeds from my garden. As one of the areas I'm interested in is printing on fabrics using the computer, I took photos of my results, and printed it out on silk organza. What I like about the layering is that you get a ghostly almost 3d effect.
What I haven't completly settled on is how I'm going to stitch it and whether I combine it with this image of Echiums ( the view from my lab ) manipulated in Photoshop (''find edges' filter) , printed out on indigo-dyed fabrics. This is crying out for beading
Maybe I can catch up again with the challenge for June - the concept is ' stories that are, stories that are possible' with the colour scheme from a stash of sinks.
I'd co-incidentally found this photo a couple of days ago when searching for something else and think it has lots of possibilities - it's a load of discarded metal plant labels in a skip at work. Each label has species name , accession number (which links to database with all the information on that plant - where it comes from, propagation notes) . Apart from that story there's the mystery behind why they were discarded. And what's the significance of the paper butterfly? I guess I couldn't resist continuing the theme of botanical labels !

3 comments:

Deb said...

I like your botanical sunprints and am intrigued with what you're doing with the photo imaging. I hope you'll keep working on it. I'll be looking forward to seeing the finished piece.
Wow! Those tags fit perfectly with the sinks. There's something there to seed the thoughts for June.

The Idaho Beauty said...

Well, I was seeing some sort of fish as seen from above swimming in a pond. It never would have occured to me that the shape was from a weed, but of course, once you mention it, I see it clearly. Clever!

The layering lending the ghostly image is pretty clever too.

Linda B. said...

I first came across the amazing Echium plant on a Cornish holiday just a couple of years ago and ever since have (mentally)played with a means of capturing them in fabric. Can't wait to see the outcome of your experiments!