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.

Not Geology

Here is a pic showing the painted offcuts from the wedding dresses, collaged together, to use as backgrounds in embroideries.


This pic shows the beads leftover from the serpent and some threads I found in the Challenge colours. I wanted to use these to work on the geology idea.


This pic shows what I'm working on now, with some bits from the painted offcuts. I was thinking of the geology idea but it doesn't seem very rocky to me just yet. It's one of those pieces that is just making itself so I'm going along for the ride, to see where it ends up.

Having another go

I had a good old rummage through stash and found these two bags of offcuts from wedding dresses, which I bought for the regal sum of 2 Pounds Sterling per bag from a mate at West of England Lace Club, years ago. They are mostly silk or satin with some machine lace.

I had a fun morning dropping silk paints onto the wet piles, then folding them up to dry. This results in blotchy uneven colour mixes, which is what I wanted...

before I could start a collage which I stitched down onto plain calico.

This collage makes me think of summer, regatta, sails in the distance, beach, in a sort of cubist take on that bayscape. What I was really thinking was geology - I have a picture in my head of rocks by the beach in beige and blues, and I have some lovely little shells I want to use along with beads to create this image, but it's just not coming out of my hands - I got this instead. I'm not complaining - I can't wait to play with this image and embellish it with stitch, bead, shell.

What I like about this collage is the fact that it's made from scraps of wedding dresses - are those people still married? Where are they now? How was their special day? What are their stories?

Then I read Comment 66 on the June TIF Challenge and checked out the blog, and there were photos very similar to the ones at the top of this post, and a similar story about using wedding dress scraps - I wonder if she got them from the same person? Except she made a beautiful Cinderella dress. It's this synchronicity that I love so much in doing this challenge - people may start with the same design brief and even similar materials, but finish with wildly different pieces.

Here are a couple of pix of the old "Halles" (covered markets, usually for fishmonger, butcher, delicatessan, cheese merchants) in the Bastide St. Louis, that have recently been renovated. They made one section into an art gallery for sculptures and I think it's been wonderfully done, showing the charpente (the beams holding the roof) and the columns, and best of all - it's FREE! We took a shortcut through it to go to the butcher. There was also a marching band in the fruit & veg part of the market in the Place Carnot.
Had lunch at this little restaurant beside the river Aude, looking across to the Medieval City of Carcassonne. I feel back to my blissful self. Must get stitching now.

June TIF Finished

Here is a series of pix showing the June TIF Challenge in progress and completed. I think. It needs to live in my portfolio for a while before I decide whether it remains just a little mat or becomes the basis for a little purse. In the end, it didn't seem to want beads added to it, and because there's still almost half of June left, I may spend the time revisiting my original ideas and trying to come up with a bead design.

Critique:
Things I like about the piece:
The stripey-ness of the grasses, reminds me of zebras.
The softness of the chenille contrasting with the hardness of the other yarns.
This technique - I think it has potential, and I worked out a lot of things while doing it, such as how to change direction, how to change colours, what to do on the selveges, how to hold the frame while working so it's comfortable. One thing - the back is less dense than the front because when you chain stitch, the front has two threads for every one on the back if you know what I mean, so the fabric created is not truly reversible.

This I don't like about the piece:
Snakes. Yes, I admire their beauty but I can't seem to get over their creepiness. This snake in particular. I think the piece would have been better without the snake shape, just the grasses.
The warps on the left-hand side seem to show up more as ribs.
This combination of colours.
It is not really telling a story - it's just a snake in the grass - so I don't think it is very successful as a TIF Challenge. O well.