2021 CQ Journal Quilts : INDIGO January to April

 I've been making  Journal Quilts every year  since 2003 ( and with Contemporary  Quilt  of QGBI   since 2007) .  This year  they are  to be of a  theme and shape(s)  of your own choosing  but designed  so that at the end of the year they  can be joined together in some way  for possible exhibition.   My favourite / most successful   set of  JQ's   is from  2013 when I chose 'Indigo' as my theme  so that is what I've chose to revisit  but deciding on size/ shapes  took a lot of pondering on graph paper!  I decided in the end on  a combination of : 8 x 8", 10 x 10" , 8 x 10", 10 x 8"   which  I hope will give me enough scope for experimenting.   So far I'm on track , having completed  January  to April  and  May's the current piece of ' trainstitching' 

January ( Jellyfish Bloom ) is wet bulb thermometer wicks stitched onto shibori dyed section of old quilt.

 February ( Hidden Depths)  is monoprint of net on silk layered with indigo dyed wadding and linen tablecloth , kantha stitched.

 March ( StitchResistRipples) Stitching back into a piece of Mokume ( 'woodgrain' ) shibori was almost as time consuming as doing the stitch resist ! Combined with a monoprint and a small scrap of Ndop stitch resist indigo from Cameroon.

April ( Thunderbolt Pier ) A couple of years ago  the ' Edgy Stitchers' ( CQKent)  had an outing to Chatham Historic Dockyard  as inspiration for  our exhibition later in the year.  This is  a recycled sample based  on photo of 'Thunderbolt Pier' , manipulated in Photoshop, printed on fabric  and  fused  to background of quilted silk arashi shibori.

CQ Suitcase Collection : Indigo Hill Arches ( Henry Moore)

 The ' Suitcase Collections ' of Contemporary Quilt  are very popular and give the opportunity for all kinds of groups or individuals who borrow them  to see a  diverse selection of work.   I submitted  pieces for 2 previous  collections and  for the latest,  'My Favourite Artist'  I chose  Henry Moore. 
So difficult to choose a favourite artist, I like so many! I had intended to do a piece based on the  paintings of Wilhelmina Barnes- Graham  as I'd done  several exercises inspired by her work as part of online class with Elizabeth Barton on  Abstract Art for Quiltmakers . But with the deadline looming, I decided to  cut-down and re-use a piece I made several years ago based on depicting multiple viewpoints of a sculpture.

The Henry Moore sculpture that inspired me , ‘Hill Arches’ ,was part of an exhibition at Kew Gardens in 2007. At the time I as working there as a botanist and I loved having access to these sculptures over many months, able to view them in different lights and viewpoints.  I made several journal quilts exploring ways of  interpreting  a 3D piece in 2D textiles( see below)  I liked how the sculptures and their environment interacted and the marks on many of the bronzes reminded me of stitches.

Two black and white images  of  'Hill Arches' sculpture by Henry Moore  were combined in  Photoshop. This was inkjet printed using 'poster printing' function to split an image over 4 A4 sheets onto hand dyed indigo cotton and silk treated with 'BubbleJet Set'.  Machine quilted with variegated threads, hand stitched with cotton perle thread  

Drawing Tuesday: Islamic Glass at the V&A

  Drawing Tuesday this week was  in the glass gallery or architecture section of the V&A . I love the glass gallery - I remember  gasping out loud the first time I saw the amazing glass staircase.  The problem was deciding what to draw among all the treasures there  as I was already later arriving than I'd hoped.  So I settled  on a case of  Islamic  glass  ( it's becoming a bit of a  series,  having drawn  examples  at the British Museum)

  I loved the watery nature of the shadows but as shadows do, they kept disappearing and moving !

  It was the variations in colour that attracted me in the first place but I got absorbed in drawing with 4B pencil and using eraser ( current favourite is a Tonbow mono zero, it's like  drawing with  light) . I daren't risk adding any colour having learnt from bitter experience that you can't rub it out  so I  did a very quick colouring-in of my preliminary sketch  with a watersoluble pencil (Caran D'ache Supracolour II Blue 260)

One of the sessions in Advanced Painting course was on  using Photoshop or similar  to  review possibilities  for making changes to your artwork in progress, something I do  frequently for source material, less so for  my own  work. So at home  I did some playing around with Photoshop, seeing what my pencil drawing might have looked like if I'd been brave enough ( and had more time) .  I sampled the blue from my drawing  and then used it  in combination with different 'sketch' filters.

 

Graphic Pen

'Halftone'

The same filter ( 'chalk and charcoal' )applied to the photo (  below)   rather than the drawing ( above)  is far less interesting and dynamic  as there isn't the variety of marks

   

Indigo Journal Quilts for 2013

My collection of Journal Quilts for this year for CQ Challenge . Apart from sticking to a 12" x 8" size and submitting onto yahoo group on time, we could choose our own theme.  Mine was indigo and I've enjoyed experimenting with different types of indigo cloth , both real and manipulated in Photoshop to look like indigo. Some of them were sample pieces for larger quilts, others used up scraps from those quilts, most of them were about mark-making and responding to the cloth itself. I still have a basket of pieces  and a head full of ideas.

Green Door Experiments

 The Sue Ridgewell Challenge at the QGBI AGM at Nottingham this year is a 60cm square quilt on the theme 'My World is Green'. Having  gone through several  green phases with a substantial stash remaining and with my work as a botanist I was originally thinking of doing something based on my lab work. But with deadlines looming I remembered the pieces I produced on the paper lamination course a few years ago using pictures of crumbly doors.

 

I did several experiments in photoshop, playing with opacity  to see how they would look layered over a pictures of distressed doors (Iran, Greece and Yorkshire!) which I would then print in poster format over 9 sheets.

 



 

I do however have various door pictures that I had already printed on fabric so played around with these. A bit more random piecing and perhaps cutting them up is required but interesting possibilities.

I have 2 laminated pieces to choose from : the one below is more interesting but less green - it would require stronger green fabrics behind it. Looks like I might to make both and then decide!

 

 

Sketchbook Project 2013 completed

 

The lurgy continues! Just started second course of antibiotics and third week at home signed off as 'not fit to work' with ear and chest infection. I've been deaf in left ear for 10 days now and subtitled daytime tv has definately started to pall (although enjoying the new Father Brown  series).  

I did manage to get my Sketchbook  Project 2013 posted the day before the deadline although I had to simplify what I intended.  

At the Sketchbook Project 2012  tour at Canada Water Library , I'd admired a sketchbook which had a fold out orginal print in the centre. I have a number of stone lithographs, lino prints, monoprints and screenprints that I made in the past to choose from. I chose the ones that were on the thickest paper and cut them down to  7 x 10 inch sheets. I scanned in/photographed  some of the prints and played with them in Photoshop using 'invert' to get different colour patterns and printed them on the backs of the original prints. I chose the boat lithograph as the fold out centrefold and  put the other sheets together to make the most interesting combinations . I've called the sketchbook ' Print Mash-Up'

 

Original lithographs and screen prints  

Original prints above, Photoshop altered digital prints below,

 

 

Linocut original and Photoshop altered digital print  

 

Red Boat Journal Quilts

Finished quilting and binding my red series of boats for first 4 months of CQ Journal Quilt Challenge - Jan to April below,  bonus above.  Rather than being pieced , the 'bonus' is a digital print on fabric of a photoshop altered watercolour and as it is  a bit smaller than A4 proved a useful sample for Margaret's Narrow Binding technique. By the time I did the 5th I was  getting the hang of it - saves so much time to do the whole thing by machine. I'll stick to facing for larger pieces but rather like the red 'frame' and will do something similar when I move onto yellow boats and blue boats in the months ahead.
The bonus sample already  has a potential home- Ian pounced on it for his office when the last stitch had barely been put in.  

Button Journal Quilts

I've been making journal quilts for 9 years now so I was determined to finish  the last set for CQ challenge but  had to grit my teeth. I normally  use  journal quilts as testing grounds for larger pieces - with themes set this year that was rather more difficult and the earlier sets of 'circles' and 'text' were in the end stand alone with little  connection to my other work. I knew I would struggle with 'buttons' as  I couldn't help thinking of  Elizabeth Bartons' comments  on  embellishments - how so many people spend 3 minutes using their first idea, 3 months making it and then as it doesn't work, put beads on it!  

As I've been going through a phase  of curved piecing African and indigo fabrics , I used some of the scraps left over in the first JQ adding some mother of pearl buttons that also went in the indigo vat. I've been wanting to try curved piecing some other African kola and indigo fabrics  to suggest sand ripples so that was my second . I do feel that these pieces would work just as well or better without the buttons!
Then I remembered how I'd successfully conquered another embellishment  (pearls) earlier in the year and used a similar aproach for  the third and fourth examples. I scanned some mother of pearl buttons - some small ones and a few  very large ones that reflected light  and after a bit of manipulation in Photoshop , printed them on  indigo cotton, indigo silk and silk organza. I combined these with an altered photo of a shoreline and a fabric copy of one of my 'ghost' monoprints from city lit which used threads.
Much happier with these and in a  way they sum up  my creative year: seascapes  transparency, printing, indigo. 
Much happier too with this years Journal Quilt Challenge which has just been announced - a return to A4 and the theme of 'shades of... ' starting with red which is what I'm working with at the moment anyway. Hurrah!!

May Boat Friday

It's a while since I walked along the river looking at the boats so I left work around 4.30, fed up of filling in COSHH forms. I had my teeny paint kit with me and my mobile phone - neither of which gave great images but useful tools for looking - the tide was really low giving a different perspective.  I was using cream coloured cartridge paper in a sketchbook and struggling to use a pentel waterbrush (hardly my travel sable mix!). It made me sympathise with all those put off watercolours by starting out with poor materials and a tiny brush - it does make a difference although at least my paints were artists quality. The results were pretty terrible,still,  it made me think about simplification and what the key elements were. The photos were pretty awful too but I used their low quality to my advantage - increasing saturation and applying 'underpainting' and 'palette knife' filters in Photoshop do the job nicely.

Talking of boats reminds me that the TVCQ exhibition 'Whatever Floats Your Boat' has now opened at Slough Museum - thanks to the hard work of Jane, Sandy and many others . There's various activities on this week  and I shall be going to the private view next Saturday on my return from Bulgaria ( short work trip with v. early start and the joys of Easyjet! )

A Productive Weekend

The week didn't end too well - an ATM ate my card!! But taking  Friday off work to sort out some of the financial fallout ( and Ian  paying a brief visit to his parents) meant I had some time to concentrate on various projects and accomplished quite a lot over the weekend. I put my new Pfaff walking foot through it's paces turning up jeans  that have been in the  wardrobe for a couple of year as well as Ian's new work trousers. I also  used my Journal Quilts as practice pieces and have got ahead of myself for once!
The theme was circles and  I've tried to develop each piece from the one before, based loosely on images from work

March 'Petri Dishes' was  manipulated using 'cutout' filter in Photoshop combined with some commercial fabrics.

April ' Positive Negative' again using Petri dish images cut out and the 'holes' also used.

May ' Stained Leaf Sections' printed micrographs of cut sections of leaves showing stained cells. The letters are a transition to the next challenge block - text.

I also finished off sewing the 'secret books' to the metal frames that make up my interpretation of the 'Taplow Vase' . The label will be in the interior - just name and title. I'm  happy to sell this piece but am struggling to price it. Should I price it using the same formula as my other work  or cheaper as it's an experiment which  uses less materials and time to make (although it took oodles of planning and thought)??