Stitching Dyed Papers

With head down working on piece for FoQ and visiting relatives and friends over the holiday weekend , haven't had much to show and tell here. While I was away I did however start stitching into one of the paper collages I'd started on Amanda Hislop workshop. The joys of variagated threads - I only took one skein , needle and thread with me! Big stitches emphasise the colour changes - have to be decisive as stitching leaves holes in the paper.

I hadn't been very happy with the initial results (above ) of collaging the dyed papers - first of all too pastel and patchy then too gaudy using Koh-i-Nor watercolour dye palette. I've had a couple of goes at it since I got home with Neocolour crayons and layers of acrylic medium, trying to unite the different areas, losing some of the freshness and textures in the process but improved overall. I like the ridges where I embedded dyed hemp string

I backed the piece with a fused piece of cheesecloth, mainly to give stability to the edge when trimmed and stitched with a zigzag (variagated thread again -machine one this time). I liked the raggy edges but it didn't work compositionally so trimmed it to CQ Journal size (6" x12"). I'm off to CQ Summer School tomorrow with Jae Maries , so it may get superceded as my June piece Looking forward to seeing everybody and making a mess with inks!

May Journal Quilts

Both my Journal quilts for May have a sea theme. 'Bexhill Pixels' ( CQ 6 x 12 inch) is a souvenir of my birthday outing , based on photos manipulated in Photoshop inspired by the Susan Collins 'Seascape' installation at the De La Warr Pavilion, particularly the projection of images onto a window framed by real seascapes beyond.

Susan Collins: Stokes Bay 08-09-27 14.13

My favourite digital print at the exhibition (detail above) contained bright splashes of colour: "Pixel interventions where ships, yachts, people, birds, windsurfers etc pass in front of the camera when a pixel is being captured."

Using Neocolour II crayons, I ruled lines of colour on a used colour catcher, lightly sprayed with water to diffuse the colours then painted with acrylic medium to seal the surface. I found half a shirt from a charity shop (imitation ikat print from Mauritius), perfect for the background. Stitched with variagated threads by hand and machine. I was aiming for a less regular size to the hand stitches to indicate the pixels but it's so hard to be random! Back to the drawing board.

The indigo back (below) has possibilities.


The BQL Calendar Challenge for May was trapunto ( using an additional layer of wadding stitched behind the letters as stuffing) Following a workshop with Angie Hughes on lettering, I've used words from an August Strindberg quote in a couple of pieces so continued the theme using 'sea' and 'sky' in 'Jazztext' font size 400.

Having got carried away looking through my indigo stash for something suitably marine, I neglected to read the bit in the instructions about choosing PLAIN fabric. I tried to make the letters stand out a bit more with some FMQ and some hand seeding stitches but it's decidedly subtle. Only by taking photographs at a jaunty angle then cropping could I emphasise the shadows.

I'm afraid I'm just reverting to type - in our family we consistently applied the principle:

'If all else fails, read the instructions'.

Garden Glove Dyeing

After a weekend working in the garden I washed our grubby trousers with the gardening gloves. Big Mistake! Despite 2 long washes involving numerous colour catchers, Ian's jeans (admittedly rather faded and worn) have been dyed yellow and his garden gloves are much paler.

The Colour Catchers , the Culprits and the Canary Jeans

We're pleased however with the evidence of our labours. We spent Saturday digging out the buried post for the rotary dryer from the middle of the lawn and relocating it to the end of the garden. Sunday was spent turf cutting in preparation for paving and gravel - Ian doing most of it and me doing the tricky edge bits. Half way there. As it rained on Monday (well it was a Bank Holiday) we gave up on the idea of more digging and visited Homebase in Isleworth, walking back a mile along the Great West Road clutching a rake , a hoe and 4 fence posts! Just as well don't mind looking ridiculous. They've got some interesting plants and large ceramic pots there. I wonder if I could get one back in my bicycle basket......

Pixelated Seascapes

Thanks to Olga with her post on her trip to the seaside, Ian and I caught the train down to Bexhill on Tuesday for my Birthday Outing. It took about 2 hours with only a change at Clapham Junction :we had a walk along the beach ; a look at the Susan Collins exhibition; a delicious leisurely lunch of local produce and a bottle of Rioja overlooking the sea;another walk along the Prom and a final look at the exhibition before heading home. What a blissful way to spend what should have been a working day!

Although the large scale digital prints in the exhibition were intriguing (particularly those with odd coloured pixels where ships, birds etc had passed in front of the webcam), it was the 5 real-time projections set against a window with the seascape panorama behind that absorbed us. I've download one from the website but it's not quite the same without the backdrop. Visiting the exhibition twice, at midday and then around 4pm , made us much more aware of the nuances of colour depending on the direction of light and the weather conditions ( it was supposed to rain , but despite some clouds , it remained sunny all day). As soon as we got home I downloaded the photos I'd taken and had a go at using the 'Pixelate Mosaic' filter in Photoshop. Not quite the subtlety of those in the exhibition but worth exploring further.

Pixelated Cropped Image Bexhill 28/04/2009 15:18

Bexhill 28/04/2009 12:07

Bexhill 28/04/2009 15:52

Bexhill 28/04/2009 15:26

I'm thinking how these images could be interpreted in material - torn strips perhaps? These gorgeous dyed fabrics that arrived on Monday fit the bill perfectly ( a generous gift from Sandra for guessing the identity of her mystery photo correctly).

Layers in the Landscape

For my birthday present this year from Ian and his parents, I chose to have a 2 day workshop with Amanda Hislop at Art Van Go . I'd only seen her work on websites but I like her approach to landscapes. 'In the flesh' her pieces recently displayed at the 'Prism' exhibition are even more interesting and textured.

During the workshop we tried 3 different approaches:dyeing different papers and tissues then layering them on muslin; painting a calico surface with acrylics then stitching into it and building up layers; tearing a variety of papers into strips and assembling them with PVA. It was interesting with this latter technique to see how differently the papers absorbed the dyes, especially the torn edges. Dyes (procion but without soda and salt)were painted on afterwards. I loved how intensely a torn Colour Catcher (below) absorbed the dye - I'm glad I wasn't too neat with the PVA as it acted as a resist!

I concentrated on dyeing and layering papers as acrylic painting was something I'm more familar with while I don't readily have access to dyes

Art work and dyed papers drying

For inspiration I used a painting from the Dales that I did last year on a course with Katherine Holmes. Katherine also incorporates papers, grasses and leaves into her paintings.

After a morning dyeing papers (and fingers- guess who forgot her Marigolds!), these were torn up when dry(ish) and applied to a backing of scrim muslin with lavish amounts of cellulose paste, with a final layer of conservation tissue and then left to dry overnight.

I'd tried a similar technique on workshop with Cas Holmes at Cowslip workshops a couple of years ago. Whether it was the strength of the glue, the openness of the backing or that it was just papers topped off with tissue rather than a mixture of papers and fabrics , but it seemed to hold together better. The downside was the initial disapointment in the toning down of the bright colours because of the top tissue layer (above left). I'm glad a took a photo then before I started spoiling it by digging out bits with a scalpel and applying acrylic paint too heavily in attempt to recover some of the more intensely coloured areas. I was able to retrieve it in some measure by glueing further layers over the top (above right) and then giving it a layer of acrylic medium to seal it.

I now need to get the croppers out and select the best bits for further work and stitching. It's in two halves at the moment - a more traditional landscape (above) and a more abstract area at the bottom with fibres and kozo (below). I particularly like the sky area which is crumpled dyed Indian rag paper with some white acrylic paint scraped across. I really must complete my notes before I forget what I did !
The back also looks rather interesting.

We finished off with a review session of everyones work - such a delightful mix of people and variety of styles. I'm looking forward now to the CQ Summer School.

Kozo Revelation

One of the delights of doing a workshop at Art Van Go is going on a hunt for treasures in the packed storerooms. My find this time was beaten kozo (mulberry bark). The sheet form is bleached, soaked and beaten to produce the irregular 'twiggy' form. After soaking a piece of 'twig' in water for about an hour , it can be teased out into a wonderful lace of fibres - and it takes dye wonderfully. I incorporated some of it in the piece I was doing with Amanda Hislop (more about that in another post) , trapping the undyed fibres under a layer of tissue soaked in cellulose paste. It gives the appearance of trees or bushes. In this piece, I trapped some dyed, dried kozo 'lace' under some dyed tissue. I also discovered coloured hemp string which I used to outline shapes in the landscape. Just as well I like the effect of it bleeding slightly when placed under damp tissue!

April Challenges

My April Contemporary Quilt 6 x 12 inch Journal piece is based once again on old peeling distressed doors, in this case on the remnants of paint that pick out the patterns of woodgrain in this photo from Greece below.

I used a woodgraining 'rocker' tool from a decorating shop to make patterns in acrylic paint on a piece of plastic and then took monoprints using a variety of fabrics - silk noile worked particularly well

Love the patterns it made but after quilting between the paint lines, it looked a bit anaemic so added more paint with a palette knife afterwards.

The BQL challenge for April was quite different. Handbags aren't really my thing either in real life or in quilts so this challenge was well outside my comfort zone (but Good-For-Me)

But having discovered this very large African waxprint of purses to use as backing (for scale, this is 12 x 12 inch), I decided to use scaps of African fabrics and other wild prints, embellished with beads, buttons and ribbon.

The handbags were pieced from strips of background fabric around a central 'handbag' cut using a template, and then trimmed to size. I wish now I'd introduced some 'wackier' angles in the style of Gwen Marston - I used to really enjoy improvisational piecing and taught workshops on 'wacky stars'.

Ian and I were woken at 7 this morning by the arrival of pallets of paving stones , gravel and sand - the challenge for the rest of the day is to trundle these through the house into the back garden without doing our backs in!