August TIF done for now

Here is a pic of the August TIF in progress, showing the mohair being crocheted and couched down, before the chiffon scarf was machine stitched over top.


Here are pix of the project as far as I want to go with it at the moment. It needs something that I haven't discovered yet, so it's currently pinned to the studio wall awaiting that inspiration or instruction.

Although I started with the idea of balance, this piece looks more like a seascape with a sail showing in the distance and the feeling of a lighthouse represented by the long skinny triangle up the middle, and the shiny fabric layer which doesn't show up in the photos.

We had two lots of guests lately, so I've neither been posting as regularly as I like nor doing as much artwork. I think my life, rather than being balanced lately, has been more like a see-saw - feast or famine - loads of time to stitch or none at all - a pendulum swinging between extremes. Hmmm, some good images/ideas if I find time to revisit this theme.

So Long March

It's been a bit stressful - I destroyed my laptop when trying to install the Service Pack for Windows Vista and had to take it to the repair shop. I lost all my files which is not so bad as I'd backed up most and the better pix of embroidery are still on this blog, but I now have to re-enter all my contacts. O well. This pic of the neighbour's cherry in blossom was from a few weeks ago, and the iris was taken on Saturday before we went to the market. Both make me happy.


Here is my March piece, which I think is finished. I'm not sure what it is - perhaps a wall hanging? I've pinned it up in the studio so I can continue to look at it in the hope that inspiration will occur.


This is a pic showing the piece before I couched the gold around the scribble shapes.

And this pic shows the couching partly completed to show what a difference it made, and also what a difference lighting makes to the colours of the pix.

I 'm not convinced I did very well on this challenge, starting with ranting about the colours then abandoning one piece and not knowing to do with this one. Still, I shall think about it some more and try to come back to the pieces later to salvage what I can from them.

Sometimes creativity is like that - if I don't allow myself to try, I lose not only the failures but the chance successes, too. Mum used to say, "The door to success is marked 'Push'."

One abandoned one to go

Well, I started the sand and burgundy colours and this is what I came up with, thinking of the idea of small blocks of time when you stop to smell the roses.

This is the point at which I abandoned this piece - I just don't like the colours and besides the olive and purple materials were on the worktable and I just wanted to get on with them. Things I like about this piece: I figured out how much to adjust the tension in the bobbin for the gold passing thread, and I like the roses just not on this background. It goes into the experiment pile for recycling one day.

Here is a pic showing my first ideas with this group of colours.

In reading through comments on the March TIF Challenge, I realised that I could actually use all the colours together if I did something small like cross stitch - doh! I guess I was just having a rant about colours.

Here is a pic of the goodies I found on sale for just 50cents Euro a tube. I've been looking at beading websites and must try some of those techniques.

Colour analysis - March TIF

I had a good old rummage through my stash in search of the colours for the March TIF Challenge , and I came up with this:

I just couldn't seem to resolve the sand and burgundy with the others, so I separated them off by themselves, giving this, in which I've added a medium sand and a lighter burgundy, so I have light, medium and dark in the two colours, with the black represented by the shot burgundy sheer jersey. It doesn't photograph well as usual.


That left the olive green with the purple and black:

And I found that I could add a touch of the sand to this using snippets under the green organza. I also want to experiment with the cone of gold passing thread in the bobbin on the machine, thinking that this gold is loosely related to the sand colour and might add sparkle and maybe even "zing" if used judiciously. Loosely speaking, this grouping has the greens as the lights, the purple as the medium and the black/purple shot jersey as the dark.

Finally, I decided I could maybe add a small amount of the green to the burgundy & sand mixture as I think that piece will be about "litte moments of time when you stop to smell the roses" and I need green for the leaves.

So it looks like I'll be doing at least two pieces with the two bunches of colours because by separating them, I feel the results will be more harmonious. The pieces may be put together in a book or used as the front and back of something, but there will have to be a separation.

I've read through some of the comments already and a lot of people like the pallette, so I shall be very interested to see what they do with it - a real voyage of discovery this month!

Using a negative reaction

Well I was really looking forward to the March TIF Challenge but when I saw the pallette of colours I'm sorry to say that my reaction was negative.

When I get a reaction like this, I find it useful to go with the dislike because it makes me work harder to create a thing of beauty. I started by naming the colours then assigning them a value: burgundy (dark), sand (light), olive (medium to dark), purple (medium to dark), black (very dark). Then I listed my problems with them:
I don't think there is enough light.
I don't usually think of the sand colour as "light" and I find the dark and medium colours depressing except for the purple.
The only complementaries, at a stretch, are the burgundy and the olive.
Juxtaposing the highest contrasts doesn't give a "zing" (sand and black).

I resolved to try to do each challenge using both the concept and the pallette, and I think it will be a stretch this month, but after all, isn't that what "Take It Further" is about?

Ideas to transform the dislike:

"Burgundy and olive" evokes lovely moments having apero during the summer, sitting on the front terrace.

"Not enough light" makes me think of moonlight.

"Sand and black without a zing" sounds like a cool title and could produce a figurative piece.

I have loads of ideas for the "little things/small moments" concept though:
Seeds, those miraculous packages of DNA,
Atoms and molecules, those gorgeous units of universe that make cloud shapes shown on The Hubble photo gallery,
Sand, that can trickle through the waist of an hourglass grain by grain, counting the seconds of our lives,
Insects that colonise our patches of garden - ants, grasshoppers, ladybugs,
Rockpools that contain their own little but complex worlds.

I may play with all these ideas as I'm currently on a roll, but I still have to deal with the pallette. Wish me luck!

Fibre collage

Here's my little thread end pot. My friend Felicity made it in a pottery class and gave it to me when I praised it. It lives on my sewing worktop and I save up all my thread ends in it as I sew. It reminds me of an upside down top hat. Periodically I turn it out and sort through the colours to do fibre collages, using up scraps of fabric from various projects.

Here's a green and purple one - this pic shows the collage before I put the pale blue/gold organza over it...

...and after. The organza unites all the colours, knocking back some, enhancing others.

This pic shows the back of the finished collage.

And this pic shows the front. I added a pale sky blue satin backing and I think it is a book cover, but it may be a bag.

These pix show another collage using the screamish orange, before and after putting on the organza,

and after stitching around the shapes. I found some medium and light orange raffia which I am using to make a crocheted chain to stitch around the shapes next.

I don't know what possessed me to start these - I was waiting for SharonB's March Challenge and just decided to clear out the thread pot in the meantime. I had a marathon session ironing scraps and have now used them all except for some cotton. I suppose I could count these for the March challenge, because they are thread ends - little things - but I'm going to do a separate post for the March challenge in a minute...

Finished February TIF Challenge

Well, here it is finished, the concept being memory itself, using SharonB's palette of colours which were light and medium blue and orange and dark blue.


On the left-hand side, the colours are more intense with more beads signifying the intensity of my thoughts when something happens. As I am a visual person, there is also an eye shape there.


In the middle section, the visual stimulus has entered the brain signified by the shibori-technique light blue organza. The beads and sequins in this part represent thoughts about the original stimulus and the trails of fabric leading off represent neurones and synapses. So the brain "digests" the stimulus and saves the experience in short-term memory.

Finally, on the right-hand side, the thoughts trail off into long term memory but the beads are lighter in colour because the original experience has been transformed by the brain and by being in short-term memory. The plain orange organza of the background has also been replaced by that shot-metallic organza that I wet and wrinkled, representing the gold tinge we apply to happy memories and also aging (wrinkles). In this section, there are also rips in the orange fabric representing gaps in memory as I get older.

All around the basic shapes are concentric lines of machine stitching to give the effect of ripples in a pool, and the sense of time passing as you "read" the piece from left to right.

I enjoyed doing this piece and the thought processes behind it, but as usual, now that it's finished I have to put it aside because I don't like it very much. On the other hand, the piece I did for the January TIF challenge is back on my worktop, ready to be made into a little bag and I like it again. Go figure.

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.

More pix in TIF challenge

I think I have to add pix in separate posts - anyway here's some more showing a closeup of the work in progress and a thread I missed on the back, followed by the finished piece with some chenille on top for the branches of willow hanging down...I tried to use the chenille in the needle, doing corded brussels stitch but it's too fragile and the fluff comes off, so I decided to use it separately at the end. I had to unpick to go back to the missed thread, something I really don't like doing, but in this case it was OK because there was too much green in that section, so I took the opportujnity to change thread. I also had to take the piece off the frame to use longer sidebars as I thought the original square format was too short.

Discovering Embroidery Blogs

I've just discovered embroidery blogs and now spend happy hours in the studio on the internet checking through Sharon B's Take It Further Challenge blog/website . Although I'm too late to enter the challenge, I thought I'd do it anyway and post progress on this blog.

January challenge was the concept of admiration and a colour palette that included mauve and a sort of an olive-y green. I thought of Mom, Grandma and Monet but it was the colours that made me choose Monet. Here are pix of the work as it was completed. I can't believe how fast I did it - I just couldn't stop stitching and it grew itself - I hope the rest of the year will contain challenges that are like that... Now I just have to figure out how to add the pix...

So the picture above shows my stash of Colinette wools and various threads, and the book The Colour Of Time Claude Monet by Virginia Spate, published 1992 by BCA by arrangement with Thames & Hudson Ltd.

This pic shows the technique I used: I decided to wrap some of those tubular embroidery frames with the variegated cotton/rayon "Giotto" thread (by Colinette), then buttonhole over the cords in a take on needlelace's Corded Brussels stitch, changing threads from time to time. I was that taken with the colours and the technique that I didn't really take the time to figure out how to turn at the end of a row until I was about half way through....

I admit defeat for now - pix are showing up all together at the top, and not in the order that I'm writing about them, and I have to start preparing dins now, so I'll just Save Now and Publish Post and figure it out later...