Creative Striking

 I'm  on strike today over pension reform - the first time ever and not a decision I made lightly but having said 'yes' in the Prospect ballot I felt I should.  Although not strictly 'Public Sector' as we're  one of those 'Arms Length Bodies' , we are part of the Civil  Service Pension scheme. As I  was in my 30's when I joined the scheme ( up until that point I had been contributing to a private pension)  I am buying 'additional years' to make sure I am paying enough in to the tune of 14% of my salary. With  a 2 year pay freeze ( and then a 1% cap!) it's going to be difficult  to pay an additional 3% on top.  Our pension  benefits are part of the package to make up for the lower pay that scientists and other specialists  receive in comparison to the private sector - we're deeply committed to our work (conservation is long-term)   but there are limits to how much they take that for granted
                                     
Anyway I've been making the most of my days unpaid leave, testing paints on  my red and cream ebay purchase , taking photos of the red stick against it.

 After cleaning the kitchen,then baking rolls and ginger biscuits, I've been sorting through my fabrics , making a gradient of blue/green tones with a larger 'Anavriti' door piece in mind.

So it was quite opportune to read  '29 Ways to stay creative' posted on Linda's blog. Not doing too badly on several fronts (apart from 4- get away from the computer!)  No. 25 resonated' 'Stop trying to be someone else's perfect'

Fusing and Reusing

 A most enjoyable meeting of Thames Valley Contemporary Textile Group in Bracknell on Saturday.
I haven't been since January so it was great to catch up with people. We had a  talk from Ali Mesley (CQ co-ordinator) in the morning and then spent the afternoon fusing papers with Sandy.  I'd had a good dig through stuff I had finished with for the popular 'Been there, done that' stall run by Delia but couldn't resist a bundle of her hand dyed fabric.
When I got home, I realised  the colours  were  the same as the buggy cultures I found in the broken cold store at work! Inspiration in all kinds of places. I couldn't resist taking a photo to put in my talks to MSc students to demonstrate the need for sterile technique!!

 Rather than fusing small pieces of paper together and applying to fabric, I  made tissue/handmade paper 'sandwiches' with new sketchbook project 'surfaces and stitch' in mind.

 Our BT Homehub has given up so we had an internet free weekend. Time to catch up with house hold chores, 'inkaid' some more colourcatchers, stitch into my indigo sea piece and contemplate chopping up this old red and white quilt I bought on ebay ( detail on right) . It's actually only 2 layers , the backing an interesting heavyweight homespun  twill but it's beautifully handstitched with chevrons.

 I bid for it thinking it would make a suitably distressed background for the 'stick' inspired fabrics  produced on Jo Budd workshop. I did like stitching into canvas for 'Violet Seas' but that's her technique  - rescuing and giving new life to old textiles makes it more mine.

Bexhill Breakwaters at Quilt Museum

As the 'Breakthrough' Exhibition by Contemporary Quilt has now opened at the Quilt Museum,
I can finally reveal my entry displayed there "Bexhill Breakwaters"


It is 60cm square, based on photos and sketches of Bexhill-on Sea last year , constructed from an old Durham quilt, stitched and painted, with inserts of old Japanese Kasuri fabric.
I made lots of preparatory materials including the handling sample required and a 'toile' to solve problems along the way. I'll share more about the process in next few posts- good practice for the Gallery Talk I'm giving at the Quilt Museum on the 28th April!

Sea Struggle

My last drawing lesson was again concentrating on our own projects - I revisited painting a sea scene in acrylics, trying to analyse pattern and make it more abstracted. It was a piece of old Durham quilt that I'd gessoed - it was a coaser weave cotton than I'd used before and after 10 minutes I was wishing I was working on canvases like everyone else! While the effect that the quilting has on the paint application is intriguing, don't have much control over the paint but have to work with it. A bit of a battle.

I perservered however and had some useful comments(as ever) from Sandra on how to improve it - she suggested using pen and ink to add detail in places, something I will continue with once its fully dry. She'd also suggested using oil pastel as a resist - unfortunately it didn't work on this surface but got me thinking how I could use this method. Hot wax, like batik?Oil based paintsticks('Shiva')?

At the end of the session we had a longer review than usual looking at everyones work. It's been a great course, building up confidence and expertise in use of materials and techniques regardless of starting level , and always been interesting to how varied peoples work is and what can be achieved in just a 2 hour lesson. Lots of fun too.

Sandra will not be teaching next term, concentrating on her own work( hope to get an invite to her show) As I would only have been able to make half of the classes due to training courses, work conference and a painting holiday, I'll leave it registering again until September. I'll miss it!

Country Living Fair was, as I feared, a juxtaposition of the excellent with the Naff and Cutesy not to mention Tawdry. I bought a scarf from Tammy Child and dichroic earrings from Sara Withers, both makers I've bought from at better craft fairs in Richmond and Chiswick. Sara had been demonstrating , not only miked up but with camera attached to her hands!

What didn't disapoint was Margaret's exhibition, her structure looked fantastic and was getting a lot of well deserved interest.

Painting Pebbles

This week and next in my drawing class is devoted to our own projects. After a lot of dithering, I decided on a return to seascapes with an attempt to simplify and find patterns rather then the 'photographic' results I often seem to end up with (probably as a result of working from photos in the first place). I'm quite pleased with what I achieved with acrylics on canvas board although I'm going to set myself some homework before next week as I struggled a bit with the pebbles.
I've been rereading 'The elements of drawing' by John Ruskin and one of the exercises is building up the shapes and contours of stones with consecutive washes of watercolour. Sounds like it might be useful observational practice - I'm going to be working larger next week, on a piece of gesso primed Durham Quilt.

QuiltWOW Article

I love a nice crumbly door with peeling paint and I know I'm not alone in this! After I'd blogged earlier in the year about my experiments in capturing the qualities of such doors in stitch and paint, Maggie Grey got in contact asking if I'd like to do an article for 'QuiltWOW'. This has just been published in the June issue. Below is the door that started it off- a phototransfer on gessoed old durham quilt with additional acrylic paint.

It was an interesting challenge writing up the techniques I use with acrylics, taking photos along the way - although I'm used to writing instructions for work, it was quite a different experience. Needless to say I produced far more samples than were needed ( which I made up as 12 inch square Journal Quilts) but this has had the benefit of me at last thinking of doing a much larger piece. I've been collecting photos and have lots of watercolour sketches but it's been a subject waiting for the right techniques to come along to give it justice. Maybe once I get my FoQ entry out of the way..... Combined Samples

Honesty: with or without?

A few weeks ago I went to the Quilters Guild Region 1 Area Day to hear Alysn Midgelow Marsden. Her work with metals is intriguing and some of her sculptural ,metallic gauze ,pieces cast wonderful shadows with the projector light cast through them. I related to her descriptions of her creative approach, particularly as she too was a scientist - something about the thought processes? The trader was Art Van Go and although I managed to resist the metals brought along to tie in with Alysn's talk, I succumbed to a bottle of Liquitex Iridescent Medium and have been putting it through its paces!
I've been using old quilting samples that already have layers of acrylic paint built up on them - the medium is translucent and works best with transparent or translucent paints (I used Golden Fluid Acrylics) so the underlying colours are important.I was particularly taken with a narrow strip of old durham quilt that I'd painted to an inch of its life with ovals and circles then saw the jar of Honesty (Lunaria spp.) on the shelf above me with just that quality of iridescence. I stitched into it with Madeira FS metallic no 20 thread ( what a find that was - a well behaved subtle metallic) and then made it up into a 12 inch journal quilt with a photo printed on fabric and some rather appropriate oval dot batik.

I love the layered transparent effect that you get with Honesty and had printed some photos on organza. One fell accidently on the 'finished' journal quilt and now I'm not sure that it doesn't improve it ! Something to do with the differing scale of image, quality of fabric and linking of the 2 sides? So what's your honest opinion? ( sorry - I've been trying to resist the pun but it got the better of me) With or without organza layer?

Savaged or Salvaged?

One of items I came across in my recent sorting sessions was this very tatty Durham Quilt. The pink and yellow 'strippy' side is very worn and patched, with the wadding showing through, although the plain back is in reasonable condition , if a rather unattractive dirty white. For many years in my previous property it served , doubled up, as a door curtain ( and very effective it was at excluding draughts). We have no use for it in our current house so after a wash ( and a lot of umming and aahing) I decided to experiment with it as a painting surface, cutting off a couple of 'strips' and priming it with gesso.

My first trial was a sketch of Gordale Scar - the quilting lines enhancing the cracks in the rocks.

Not my finest effort but an interesting start - the real challenge will be finding appropriate subject material to make the most of the inherent textures and to add stitching of my own.

Why did I initially find it so difficult to cut into and paint an old quilt when I don't think twice about spending the equivalent of weeks stitching a piece and then covering it in acrylic paint? It felt a bit like vandalism - I have several Durham Quilts in much better condition (which take their turn on our bed) that I wouldn't dream of altering. I like to think I'm giving a third life to something that's seen better days but goodness knows what the quilt police will say!!!