Daily Drawing: December

The last  daily drawing sketchbook  of 2019: Washing machine filter  with colour catchers (!) African textiles and jewellry; maps of impossible journeys; pots ; prints; coins: shells; seaweed; journal quilts; Xmas decorations and food; Iron Wharf abstracts .

Back to prompts in January  with #30daysketchbookchallenge, excited but rather daunted after doing my own thing for 11 months.  

1000th Blog Post : Studios; quilts; doors, ceramics, travel; plants; drawing, Kew; museums, City Lit; stitching

 My 1000th  blogpost had crept up on me unawares! While I haven't been blogging so much of late ,   using Instagram and Facebook more for sharing what I'm up to, I still find it a useful tool as a 'reflective journal' when I've been doing courses to  record my thoughts and investigations.

 I decided to look back  in an organised  random way ( if that makes sense ! )at what I was  doing on 100th, 200th etc   and actually the main themes  of  what interests me  ( plants, art , textiles, travel)  all come through  even in a relatively  small selection.

My first post in August   2007 was on moving from Ealing to Brentford   and showed the studio space I  was leaving behind so it seems appropriate  to show my current studio arrangements  for the 1000th.  I would never have anticipated the traumas of losing my job and moving  to a new town  and life but after nearly 4 years I'm more settled and  revelling in the opportunities it has given me. Enjoy!

 Post 1 :magsramsay.blogspot.com/2007/08/sewing-space-old-place

Post 100: magsramsay.blogspot.com/2008/07/100th-post-labyrinths-and-elements

Post 200 :magsramsay.blogspot.com/2010/01/tunisian-shop-advertising

 Post 300:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2010/11/ancient-shards-new-materials

 Post 400:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2011/10/deductive-monotypes

Post 500:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2013/02/cherubs-at-haberdashers

Post 600 : magsramsay.blogspot.com/2014/05/across-foot-of-mount-oxa

 Post 700: magsramsay.blogspot.com/2015/08/sketching-ceramics-at-V&A

Post 800:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2016/12/drawing-tuesday-keys-and-kew

Post 900:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2018/03/contemporary-collage-week-9-cubomania

 Post 1000:  I still haven't worked out a  decent  design wall space ( I currently use  to top landing - Ian's claim I'm taking over the whole house is not without foundation ... )  but I really like my studio space with its cutting  table raised on sand castle buckets and the combination  of wall and trolley storage.

 Most of all I love my 2 sewezi tables : 1 currently has my Bernina  sewing   machine set up on it and the other with a wooden insert in  by the window I use for hand stitching ( when I'm not sewing on the train ) , looking out over the green, 

International Threads Quilts - There, Almost There and Getting There

Thanks for all your useful input both  as comments and personal emails  when I posed the question  a few weeks ago of whether  I should include the scaffolding pole in my Anavriti Door  quilt for 'International Threads'.  The consensus was to include it but there were some  questions about whether it was too dark and also  its position. So in the end I moved it over to the left so the spacing wasn't so even and chose a lighter  blue/green colour. It now  quilted  and bound with its sleeve on and I've moved on to working on a couple of others . 

I haven't decided yet whether this will be my 'lines' or 'blue' contribution. It's made up of 2  pieces of  indigo arashi shibori - the bottom layer (below detail)  is silk noile machine quilted with heavy quilting thread so it has a fairly marked relief. This layer has now been bound down the sides to the correct width  of 40cm (for once!) 





The top layer  is  silk chiffon  - I just have to hand roll the hems like I did for my 'dislocation' piece  and then decide whether I attach it at top or bottom or just at the top. I rather liked the additional ripples and waves you get when it's hanging free  but how well it will travel is another matter.

It might be a case of catching it down in strategic places but wouldn't want to lose the almost 3d effect ( so much better in person than in a photo)





And I finally think I'm getting somewhere with my red  daub fingerprinted and dribbled (?) red quilt - I strengthened some areas . I think I'll probably bind  it this weekend and then decide if its needs anything else.  If I'm satisfied then this will be my 'repetition' quilt.   Meanwhile I've just started resuming stitching on the '  shore marks' quilt  - both Ian and I had rather nasty bugs   at the beginning of the new year ( colds turning into bronchitis) and only just getting over them.

Only 3  more weeks left at Kew -eek! 

International Threads Sketch - Anavriti Blue

One of the  recent 'International Threads' group challenges  was set by Gillian Travis - to base the 40 x 80 cm quilt on a sketch. Having enjoyed putting together the change of scale door piece, I thought I'd base  it on one of my   many watercolours of  crumbly Greek doors. This particular one was done in 1998 in a village at the top of the Anavriti Gorge near Sparta.   I've long wanted to use this particular drawing as inspiration  - it was one I  also worked on during an Elizabeth Barton masterclass - simplifying the shapes and looking at it tonally was a very useful exercise.  

 

 So I've spent the  last few days trawling through my stash, sewing together strips.

 I've just finished the piecing and am very pleased  with how it's turned out.
Question- should I include the blue grey scaffolding pole on the left or not? It wasn't in the original sketch but when I saw  the same doorway again a few years ago on a return visit in 2006 , there were poles in position that I thought enhanced the composition.  Interested to hear what you think.

Mended Door- Change of Scale

Quilt number 3 for International Threads challenge is   finally completed after several months marinating on the design wall. The theme was change of scale or large/small scale.  I returned to ideas I worked on a while ago on incorporating a photo of door within a large scale detail  as in these JQ's

The smaller scale area  is a photo of part of a patched, mended door with newer wood inserts among the old on Queen Charlottes Cottage in the grounds of Kew Gardens. The larger scale  shapes and colours are based on some of the sections of the photo, a mixture of African batik, hand dyed fabric and monoprints with acrylic paint from Jae Maries course.  I  used different weight threads ( 40 and 12) in these areas to further emphasise the change of scale.

I took this  quilt along to the Thames Valley Contemporary Textiles group meeting yesterday in Bracknell - which apart from our AGM featured an interesting  talk   by Jane O'Brien  on the history of Damask ( co-incidentally I've reading through the silk route section of the 'History of the World in 100 objects). She highlighted the damask on various Renaissance paintings, many in the National Gallery which reminded me of my drawing courses there - remembering how I struggled with the patterns on cloth  in the  Bellini painting of the Doge!  
In the afternoon, it was good to be reminded of design principles, particularly the golden section  and I couldn't resist assembling a small flock from the delightful knitted sheep the Kate Crossley had brought for sale.

 

Ian meanwhile  had been picking the last of the figs from our tree  but even he admitted this time they were seriously underwhelming in taste - we need that Mediterranean sun! 

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!