Home Stretch

I've couched on some red cord, added a few more circles and some stitch and now I am stitching the final quarter. And I'm adding to my journal - thinking about what I hope to get from the Nancy Crow workshop and also what quilts to take with me and what to say about my work in the presentation we are expected to give.

Cover Girl

My class with Nancy Crow is now one week away and I have begun a journal for it. To design the cover, I cut 3 inch squares from paper I painted with the idea of stacking them, cutting and exchanging the different coloured pieces to reform the squares. I haven't done this with actual fabric before, and thought using paper would be a quick way to experiment and make a cover at the same time. When I tried out the cut-up and reconfigured squares on the journal cover, I found them too busy, so I removed them and added pieces that I wanted and suddenly I saw they had formed a figure which I quite liked - only the white paper background was too stark, so I painted it green, glued on the figure (first time trying out 'Yes' paste and it worked great) and covered the whole with gloss gel medium to prevent edges from coming loose. I'm continuing to stitch my piece in progress, as well, and I am hoping to complete it before the workshop. I noticed that when I downloaded the photo of the reconfigured squares, my perspective changed and I could imagine it as an energetic quilt - although I would play further with the design. One of the supplies we are to bring to the workshop is a printer, so that we can print the photos we take of our quilts - and the value of that has been brought home through making this journal cover.

Fun and Fungi

While on a walk in the woods today, I tried taking photographs while purposely moving my camera to see what kind of blurred effects I could get. I think the top photo looks like the painted page of a sketchbook. I saw many kinds of mushrooms and in the photo just above this text, I was drawn to how transparent the leaf is to allow some of the mushroom's colour to show through. I was thinking about how chiffon or organza might be used to show that effect. In the photo of the maple leaves, I saw how they created a line on the pavement and then I combined that photo with another blurred photo I took to add a rainbow of colour. Photo play is a quick way to capture an idea and a blog can be like a sketchbook that records experiences, techniques and photos.

Sketch Stitch

Today I cut a small piece from my painted 'clean-up' cloth and stitched it to one of my sketchbook pages, then added pencil crayon and text - a small experiment following my curiosity and marking the day. My rainbow ribbons and coins page, that I did yesterday, springs from a photo I took of the stripes of my paint smock/shirt that I wore during the Sketchbook workshop. I've finished stitching the waves around the ship in the handstitch piece I'm working on and am moving on to working below the surface, in the depths.

Book of The Rising Sun

These photos show some of what I did today in day two of Gail Harker's Sketchbook workshop. I've tried to get the proportions of the different colours from my sunrise photo represented in a collage of papers. In the next photo, I've positioned a ginko leaf on papers I painted and the bottom photo is my clean up rag, which reminds me of flowers, and I can imagine adding stitch to it. While I have many journals with text and others with drawings and photos as well, I haven't yet included stitch and paint and that feels like the direction I'd like to head for my 'personal library'.

Eye Candy for Halloween

Today I've been learning new 'tricks' from Gail Harker in her Sketchbook/Visual Journal workshop. That's Gail in the third photo holding one of her 30 delectable sketchbooks open. They are truly yummy, with stitch, pencil crayon, paper collage, paint, text and pens - a visual feast. I've learned alot today and tomorrow I'll be back for more. I can see why others I know love Gail's classes!

Meaning is the Key

I am feeling really pleased with how my cloth is turning out. I began today by writing text onto the quilt with fabric pen and then added lighter value pencil crayon to make the letters more legible. Then I added pattern to the moth wings with copper paint and sequin waste. Next I added cheesecloth to my brayer and rolled it through copper and black paint and onto the background of the cloth around the labyrinth - you can see this effect in the photo directly above(I was thinking of string theory and the universe). I made a stamp with a key by taping it to a wooden block and then stamped it in gold paint into the center of the labyrinth (photo above the one of the cheesecloth design). I then added feelers to the moths with felt pen (nocturnal creatures who navigate by feel, as I liken how we intuit and create meaning) and then cut a star out of craft foam to use to rub shiva paint stix over. The light stars drew my eye more then the central key, so I thought about how I might alter that - maybe make a trail of gold glitter leading to the key, through the labyrinth? But I was loathe to make it too gilt - I was aiming for some subtlety and a sense of the ephemeral. I ended up putting gold glitter on the stamp of the key to heighten its contrast and I think that works pretty well. You can compare the difference of the key before the glitter and after in the second photo from the top. Each time I made an addition to the cloth, I felt the risk of possibly ruining what I'd done so far - yet I also felt the pull to keep making it more interesting and infusing it further with what I was trying to express. On a different note, yesterday I signed up for Gail Harker's 'A Journey of Visual Discovery: Journals and Sketchbooks. Gail usually teaches at her Creative Studies Center in Washington, but she is here in Victoria in a few months to teach this course and its an opportunity to see whether I might sometime want to take more of her stitch-related courses. I have always kept journals and in recent years I include visual information, but I want to develop my sketchbook abilities further because I still tend to largely use text in mine.