Exhibitions

My 'Taplow Vase Reconstruction' made in response to a Roman vase in Slough Museum is having another outing - currently at Gallery @49 in Bracknell as part of 'Whatever Floats Your Boat' exhibition. Hope to get there on 17 December to sit and stitch and chat to anyone who might pop in.

On Thursday , went to a presentation to staff by David Nash about the  exhibition of his work next year at Kew Gardens.  The lecture theatre was packed and due to technical difficulties with slide projector (everyone uses Powerpoint these days) there was the opportunity to catch up with colleagues . Talk was mainly about how the strike had gone  but also found that the Hardy Orchid book I've been working on for 6 years will be published on 16 December!

He was such an engaging speaker, particularly recounting the construction of the Ash Dome and travels of the Wooden Boulder . Existing outdoor works will be situated throughout the gardens and these will be supplemented with new works created on-site at  a  'wood quarry'. There will indoor works in the temperate house, Shirley Sherwood Gallery and Nash Conservatory. It sounds fantastic!!

On a different scale , tomorrow afternoon I'm going to the gallery talk by Lesley Millar at Japan House on current textile exhibition 'Bite Size' which so many people have raved about. I'll be reporting back in my next blog post.

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.

A Private View

 An outing to Slough today for Private view for TVCQ of exhibition'Whatever Floats Your Boat' at Slough Museum. Despite long delays on the train from Ealing due to vandalism  and lack of 'natillas' (custard tarts) at the Portuguese coffee shop it was great to see the hugely varied textile intepretations inspired by items in the museum and/or environs of Slough. It certainly encouraged me to work beyond my comfort zone. Jane, Sandy and others did a tremendous job to put the display up in 2 days rather than having 2 months to plan it!!

 I always feel a bit awkward posing in front of my artworks (not helped by 'hat hair' - sunhat was very necessary today in the heat) - I always look more relaxed in work photos, my 'natural ' environment.

The Clone Ranger

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! )

Ancient Shards, New Materials

Besides having a go at making books , the TVCQ meeting on Saturday was also useful in putting flesh on ideas for exhibition in Slough Museum  next year. I'd decided to work with the 'Taplow Vase' as inspiration and had got as far as playing around in Photoshop combining different viewpoints. I'm thinking of doing something large transparent 2d using organza and pojagi techniques but was struggling to work out how to stabilise the edges so it wouldn't be too floppy. People were very helpful suggesting wire etc. Then Vicki  introduced me to 'crin' and very generously gave a piece to play with.

It has amazing properties both flexible and  structural at the same time having a mesh of nylon fibres a bit like a trellis!  Never having heard about it before I found some little gems of information about it.
'Crin' is short for 'Crinoline' and  the name was invented by the fabric's manufacturers, who combined the  words crinis (meaning hair ) and linum (meaning flax) or alternatively from  the combination of the French  words crin (specifically meaning horse-hair) and lin (again, meaning flax).
It's also called horsehair braid ( as that's what it used to be made from) and is  applied to the hemline of long frocks to add body without weight , supporting the shape of the hem. Also found a great tutorial on using it. Now just need to order some and start playing !

Little Books

 It's been a while since I've been to a meeting of Thames Valley Contemporary Quilt Group and I've really missed it. How it's grown over the last 2 years!An excellent session on making books with Margaret Cooter (who's doing an MA in Book Arts at Camberwell ) and a brainstorm on forthcoming exhibition at Slough Museum. In the morning we made folded  'secret' and 'flutter'  books

 And in the afternoon we made examples of stitched pamphlet and stab -stitched books.

 I was particularly taken with the wrapped pamphlet - the cover offering more structure and protection as well as hiding the stitching!!I've already had a go at the stitched pamphlet format to make  watercolour sketchbooks as I couldn't buy ones I liked. I either glued on a backing (wasting a couple of pages in the process) or stitched it into a leather cover as for my Tunisian Journal.Putting  a cover on in  the way we were shown opens up all kinds of possibilities.

 It also made me think about getting down to changing the paper in the Moleskine Cahier supplied for the Sketchbook Project. I did a trial run replacing the horrid thin paper with decent cartridge (actually the contents of the leather journal I'd re-filled  with watercolour paper! ) Worked pretty well apart from the rounded corners but I've got a punch for that now! My theme is 'Inside, Outside' and I made a rough start with consideration of vegetables!!