September TIF ideas

Sharon B's September Take It Further Challenge topic this month is lists. I don't seem to do lists except for groceries. I used to do a list to keep track of things I want to look up on the internet. It makes me think that I don't have enough to do, but that's not right... To translate this into an image, I thought I could stitch some writing like milk, eggs, laundry soap, then stitch across the letters to show that they have been crossed off the list, but this just didn't inspire me. The colour swatch also wasn't speaking to me, but the journal page spread Sharon used made me think of castles and crusades, and that led me to...

Lists - the arena, sometimes within the castle walls, where jousting takes place.

Since moving to Cathar Country in the South of France, near Carcassonne, I've wanted to do something inspired by the area. This pic is taken from my tourist guide, along with a pic of a knight jousting that I cut out. This one may take me a while - current thinking is to do the castle as fabric collage and FME, then the knights using Bayeau Tapestry stitching...

Playing with Self Portraits of the Artist

Continuing to think about the May TIF Challenge, and coming back to the idea of a self-portrait, I dug out some exercises we'd done in art class when I first moved here. I'd signed up to meet local people and to refresh drawing & painting skills. This first one was an exercise where you had to just write the same word or phrase over and over - I just used my name, Michele, backwards, upside down, forwards, large, small, printed, cursive, etc. It reminds me of a rug or mat and I think could work as a silk painting or using a rag rug technique.

Another exercise we did was to sketch ourselves, then do tracings of the dark, medium and light areas, then cut stencils from each of these tracings. We could then use the stencils to print out different images. I very much liked the cut out bits and mounted them together like this. It is part of my face, deconstructed, and reminds me of hieroglyphics - it's like you can "read" these marks and make up my face from them. This gave me the idea to applique various bits onto organza and mount them together in such a way that when you stacked them up together, you would get the whole image but individually they would only ever be bits of a face.

I didn't get the idea to work the way I wanted it to, but here are two pieces that I did make up, using up all the offcuts.

Here are some pix of a new self-portrait sketch. I think the marks are a bit better because I knew where I was going with it, that I'd have to cut out the shapes in such a way that the stencil wouldn't fall apart.

And here are some pix of experiments with collage of the cut out bits. In this exercise, I didn't use a medium value, just dark and light. Can you find the eye, nose, mouth shapes? I can see a sort of bouquet of vegetation in one collage.

I particularly like this one - it's just mirror images of my hair shape, with the shape of a nostril making a question mark at the bottom. I think it is a pretty good interpretation of "what do you call yourself", which could be read as, "fat head" or "in two minds about the question".

I copied the sketch on the computer, then cut different bits out. As you can see, I recycle paper, so both of these had printing on the back. I like this a lot, too, the cut out shape showing against the words, and may use this somehow.

Unfortunately, none of these experiments seem to suggest working with beads - o well, that's the way it is sometimes. Either I have to use another technique or get back to fishy or just do another bead design...

Almond Blossom

Went for a walk this afternoon and remembered to take the camera! The almond blossom has already started and is gorgeous against the sapphire sky, with its decorative balls of mistletoe.


The little purse now has some lines of kantha quilting on it and looks a bit like the almond blossom. I'm definitely going to do some more embroideries based on the photos I took today...

Meanwhile, back at the Februray TIF challenge, here are two more tasters taken with the macro setting on the camera - the colours aren't too far off from reality.
I "read" SharonB's palette for the February challenge as light, medium and dark blue and light and dark orange.

Went to the market in the Bastide St. Louis on Saturday for fruit and veg, and was surprised to see the mimosa already on sale.


These orange peppers made me feel springtime and happy.

As did these bright bouquets. It seems I have bright colours on the brain.

I did this "book cover" for my notes and sketches for the courgette flower bag and just thought I'd put them here to show that I sometimes do sketching and painting before leaping into a piece.
Enjoy.

I found a slideshow thing on MSN, so I've put more almond blossom pix on that blog if you wish to have a look, together with some old pieces. You just click on the album and the slideshow cycles through all by itself ... MixPix

February TIF

The challenge this month is EXCELLENT, as the old brain cell is really working. The question is very subtle in its phrasing. I started with the same ideas as KnitsOnTheBus in her Feb.5 post, having grown up in Canada about the same time.

I did a mindmap, breaking the question into lines:

What are you? which gave me fashion and lifestyle; this gave platform shoes, hot pants, mini skirts, etc., for fashion, and double glazing and throw-away plastic shopping bags for lifestyle. This gave the idea of a window with the panes done in shadow-work embroidery illustrating the fashions, windows symbolic of looking out on the past. For the bags, I thought I might cut up the plastic bags into strips and use them in needlelace techniques to make a paper shopping bag, but it just didn't appeal.

Old enough? which gave me age, youth, experience. This gave lace because I'm young enough to still be able to see to do it, it's something I don't think the world should lose because I'm old enough to have learned it from some of the world's experts in Honiton, and the clematis was ready to come off the pillow anyway, ready for designing how it would work with the rose.
So: I am old enough to remember Honiton lace making.

Here are some pix showing the finished clematis and rose...
which will eventually be one fall of the jabot instead of the clematis over the rose (or vice-versa) in two falls, which didn't work...
I've pinned both the pieces on my Brugges pillow and now have to decide fillings - I keep thinking of Four Pin for the negative spaces in the interior, using plain old Trolley Net to connect the whole shape to a horseshoe shape that will surround the composition. Needs more thought.

To remember? which gave me memory, forgetfulness, Alzheimers, senility. As I worked on the lace, I kept thinking of memory and became more and more drawn to that as design concept.
I'd read this book years ago (The Making of Memory, From molecules to mind, by Steven Rose, Bantam Press, 1992, ISBN 0593 021800), then using Sharon's palette of colours, I did a collage with organzas using naff orange bling fabric underneath, and here is a taster of where this is going - I can't stop working on it, it's so exciting I'm "in the flow" with it...The pic was taken just as I was losing the light and the flash was off, so hand shake made it a blur, but I think it works well as a taster. ...I got out the embroidery threads to select some bright orange, but decided on beading instead. I keep my embroidery thread stash in an old damask table cloth onto which I've sewn some strips of duvet poppers. It keeps the colours fresh and dust-free.

Inspiration in the mail

Received this lovely bunch of embellisher experiments from my friend Cynthia yesterday in the mail, and immediately began playing with them. First, I layed the lengths of the wool mixtures along the piece of blue felt and used fusible interfacing to hold them in place so I could sew them down using automatic patterns on the Bernina.

These pix show the piece before and after stitching.
I'm reasonably pleased with the result except for the residue of the fusible interfacing, so I'm going to try soaking it in boiling water, and maybe even go at it with a nail brush.

Then I started to play with the silk fibres. They made me think of fan shapes and papyrus plants. I guess there must have been a residue of purple in my head from the January TIF challenge...
I tried variations of turquoise and purple ...

including turquoise net over top which I didn't like at all, eventually ending with the screamish turquoise metallic knocked back by the purple organza.
After machine stitching, it looked like this. I tried laying it on some dark green satin but didn't like that, so I decided on a pale sky blue satin for the backing.
But before I could sew the backing on, it told me it wanted some hand stitching, so I added this.
And here's the front of what will be a little purse...
And the back... I may still do a bit of kantha quilting in concentric lines around some shapes, not sure yet. The piece is simply folded in half along the bottom. Oooo - maybe I could even do a bead fringe? A beaded cord?
I may also do gussets in a treillage technique, using the purple and green threads which are too twisty for pulling through fabric in embroidery techniques but show up wonderfully in needlelace techniques...
I really admire Cynthia and these colours sort of match the challenge, so I guess this piece counts as a second TIF for January...Thanks Cyn - a bit of Cyn-chronicity there...

A word about TIF

I've been looking at other's wonderful work by following the links on SharonB's website and I'm very impressed with people who sketch and do mindmaps and match the colours. It makes me think I took the title of the challenge too literally - o well, sigh - as there is still some time left before the February challenge, I may have a go at doing a small design for a Bead thing - page or postcard - I like the idea of the Bead Journal Project - something like that - still using Monet as the object of admiration, still using those colours.
Eye candy for today is a beaded landscape of the parasol pines at the bottom of the road that I did at this time last year. Enjoy.

Last batch of TIF pix

First pic shows the Corded Brussles stitching complete, second pic shows the start of the crochet edge to hold the horizontal threads in place, last pic shows the finished piece - I stitched a backing on to pull the loose edge threads to the inside. Now that it's finished, I don't like it, so it's going in my experiment portfolio.