July TIF finished and sunflowers

Here is my July TIF finished, I think. I embroidered the words, "At the half way mark - - -" on a white ribbon down the middle of the piece, from the top towards the bottom, then the words "What is it to be?" from the bottom towards the top. The idea I was trying for was looking back on half the year and thinking about "the wild blue yonder" for the second half of the year. I don't think it is very successful, but hey, that's the way it goes sometimes. It may become a book cover.



There's a gorgeous field of sunflowers I can see from the back kitchen window and I've been trying to photograph it in different lights. It's especially wonderful when the sun is behind them, making their coronas light up, but taking a pic into the sun just doesn't work with this little camera, so here's a pic of sunflowers at the market.

July TIF Challenge started

These pix are working with the idea of looking back at the previous six months. The first pic shows just the pieces I "counted" for the TIF Challenge (some months, I worked on more than one idea), followed by a pic showing all the pieces I've done (or started) so far this year, except I realised that I left out some beading and sketches - o well.

I got fed up with trying to take a good pic of everything in one go, so I put pix of half at a time. Apologies for the quality; when I have more time, I'll try again with the stepladder, spreading them out on the floor in the studio instead of trying to stand on the dining room chair with the pieces spread on the table.


These pix show a new piece using the idea of halves: the original collage, threads I emptied out of a drawer, and some threads I want to work with. On to stitching, and, o, I think this piece will need some beading, too.

The interesting thing I'm getting out of this month's challenge is looking back and trying to analyse what I've done so far, as an attempt to predict what I might do in the second half of the year. It's a real mixture, some realistic, some abstract, most technical, but I've had fun with it as well. I think I'm on a collage streak now.

Short Break

We had a short break to Liverpool European City of Culture 2008, where we visited the Tate Liverpool for the Gustaf Klimt exhibition. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pix inside, so I bought a sketchbook in the shop and scribbled notes. It really inspired me and I now have loads of ideas for new embroideries, which I will describe in a later post.

I also visited the Walker Art Gallery and saw the exhibit Art In The Age of Steam, and Ben Johnson's Cityscapes. They had this SuperLambBanana there as well. They are sculptures done by a Japanese artist to demonstrate the possible dangers of genetic engineering, combining a lamb shape with a banana shape, and "blank" sculptures were given to various artists in Liverpool to decorate. They were then placed all around the city.

I thought they were very amusing and took pix of a couple of them that we saw.

Here is the last "geology" piece a little further along, but I'm going to abandon it for now as I'm itiching to get on with the July TIF Challenge, "What is it to be at the half way mark?", about which I shall now do a separate post.

As far as it got

This is as far as I got with the geology piece, which I may put aside for now.

Well, the new July TIF Challenge has been posted in colours I really like - I think I may use some of the collaged scraps I made in June as backgrounds, and do something with beads. Some ideas:

Past/present/future. I did a thumbnail sketch where half the piece is stitched in rigid straight lines representing the past and reality and the right hand side stitched in flowing dotted lines, representing the future and abstract and what may be. With, maybe in the middle, dividing the two areas, myself looking backwards on the history side in a silhouette, representing the present.

Collage of actual pieces on one side, with just blotches of colour and abstract on the other side. Play with photos of the pieces to make them fit into a jigsaw of sorts on the one side, representing the past, with the future maybe very abstract swirls on the other, or maybe a colour wheel spinning off into the distance because sure as God made little green apples, colour will feature in any future pieces even though shapes and themes may be unknown.