The travelling pigs!

It's been a long time since any of us wrote on this blog but we've just started a group project we're all terribly excited and pleased about and so it seemed the right moment to post again. Seven of us have each bought a little A5 sketchbook which we will add some inspiration and the embroidery or textile that arises each month, and pass it on to the next person. Since the sketchbooks travel between the members of the group, and since they are branded with little pigs, they have become The Travelling Pigs!

Each of us covered our own notebook and passed it on and we met this week with the first inside page done - lo, every member of the group had finished their piece (normally we should be known as the UFO group!) and each was a delight. The pieces were all wonderfully different and inspirational, with felting, hand emroidery, machine embroidery, collage and quilting all on display and all contrained to an A5 page. We were all agreed that the discipline of the size and time available was an encouragement us to try out a few new ideas and everyone is excited about the next piece.

Here's a picture of our work - it emphatically doesn't do it justice so next time I shall take some close-ups.

Collagraph printing fun

I went to a Collagraph Workshop at Cuckoo Farm Studios last Saturday. The class was taken by Maxine Fitter, a very talented illustrator. It was just me and a friend, Norah Stocker who I met at my quilting class in Lawford.  Norah hadn’t done any collagraph prints before but I have done a couple of two-day workshops with Kim Major George at Art Van Go over the past two years.

Plate made with foil, card and wallpaper and printed once

Collagraphs, for those who don’t know, are relief printing plates made by gluing various media e.g. card, paper, tissue, glue, string, foil, seeds etc. on to a mount board base which can be further embellished by cutting into the mount board surface, scratching it or indenting the surface – basically, a textural collage.  The whole plate is then varnished with shellac or button varnish to seal the various porous surfaces.  The plate is then inked up, using cloths, brushes and rollers to apply the ink which can then be rubbed in and polished away to create the various colour and shade variations.  The plate is then normally printed on damp paper using a roller press.  Plates are often really nice art objects in their own right and, as they probably won’t survive more than half a dozen printings, they form an important result of collagraph printing.

I have previously worked with plaster, masking tape and string as well as tissue paper and seeds; some of which takes several days to dry before printing is possible. So, with just a five hour workshop, I worked with very simple media this time, cutting into the mount board surface and gluing some of the paper removed back on in different places with shapes of thin card and a little frayed hessian.  I also tried a crushed foil bun tin and some textured wallpaper.  I am really pleased with the results; I hope you like them.



Sunset at Sea - Artist's Proof





Poppies in Blue



Poppies in Blue and Gold

Poppies plate made with card, board and hessian
Printed four times

Tuscan Landscape

Back last October I holidayed in Tuscany with my family. I found the landscape there fascinating – rolling hills covered in vines, trees, and crop fields, and it inspired me to try and do something to recreate it in textiles. Being a bit of a trigger-happy photo obsessive, I took lots of pictures of the landscape, including this one from a high vantage point in San Gimignano.

Returning to the UK I did some drawings based on my various photos and mused on a number of different ways of realising it, including needlepoint (too flat), canvaswork (too boring) and felt (a possibility, especially with stitching on top). However, around that time I read Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn’s book ‘Over the Line’ on couching, and that was suddenly the obvious technique for realising the rows of vines and ploughed lines

The Hockney exhibition at the V&A earlier this year also provided inspiration. His work is full of rolling fields – this time in Yorkshire – but his wonderful use of colour encouraged me to be a little bolder than I usually am and so I branched out into turquoises and yellows as well as browns and greens.

The sky was a bit trickier as I didn't want the same tramlines but did want a nice sweeping open feeling. I thought the saeme sort of approach as Van Gogh's starry night might work with white and pale blues but it looked very washed out, so I unpicked that amd just used a single dark blue couched so close you can't see the supporting strand of wool. I couched over the couching to give a feel of whispy clouds.

The end result is much lusher looking than the original photo but I think I prefer it. Now I just need to mount it :-)

.

Canvaswork completed at last!

I've finally finished my big canvaswork flower picture. I have to say it's the sort of thing I usually hate but I'm pleased with the way this has turned out. I managed to find all nice pieces of wool, tape, and cord and I think the colours are quite jolly and the stitches somehow manage to convey the feeling of a jungly background. A relief to have completed something I'm pleased with for once! It's also been quite an interesting project for my three-year-old niece who has loved sitting on my knee and doing the odd stitch - the canvas and wool are both so big (three holes to the inch, I think it was, and the fattest wool I could find) and I used a plastic needle so she could manage a few stitches with close supervision (the pink ones, of course). And with the spare bits of wool we made a couple of cord belts for teddy :-)

Suffolk Newt College Exhibition 2011 - a few photos

Isabel and I mentioned to some of you that we had had a look at some of the art and textiles work at the SNC exhibition in June/July this year. There wasn't honestly much to write home about but we were very taken with one young man who had made some extraordinary sculptures with just white plastic cutlery. His subjects ranged from crows and monkeys to tigers and a virtually full-size horse (which was not on display but we tracked down to a class-room where it was boxed up after being brought back from display at the Suffolk Show. My pictures are pretty poor (can you see what it is, yet.........?) but may give you an idea - they were really good!

There were a few other, perhaps more relevant things so here is a picture of some felted shapes - nice and colourful - plus some interesting framing (v. relevant today) of a student's textile prints.

The layout of this post is really badly designed - sorry! I'll need some lessons on arranging text and photos. But at least I know it still works and I can get in!

Taiwanese Inspiration

The pictures I posted last year from my trip to Taiwan kicked off a bit of a dragon thing for me. Then the V&A had a fantastic (although bijou) exhibition of Imperial Chinese Robes earlier this year, which I took the day off to see. Unfortunately I didn't get a the catalogue as it was of really disappointing quality - you just couldn't see any detail - but I did take my sketchbook down (yes! I am trying to ovecome the 'sketchbook' mental block!) and the resulting drawings are easily the best thing in it. The robes themselves were a delight and you almost couldn't tell they were embroidered - the embroidery had such wonderfully neat stitches and was so all-covering it looked woven.

Although attempting to match such work for anyone who hasn't had a lifetime of full-time practice is hopeless, it all inspired me to have a go at my own little dragon, based on a photo I took in Tainan. If I've learned anything from our class, it's not to do the obvious, so he's a mixture of goldwork, silk shading, and non-traditionally, crewel work. None of which I'm very skilled at, but I'm quite pleased with how he's turning out so far. As a couple of folk have asked, here he is in semi-completed state. Perhaps I should start a thread on 'partly finished work'?

As an aside, am I the only person who's slightly disappointed at the closure of the V&A textile galleries? I know ultimately they're opening again in newer, better, premises, but I rather liked the fusty wooden cases and the quiet, out-of-the-way atmosphere, and I don't know whether I see myself making a separate trip to separate premises when they open. Oh well, in the words of Bill Heslop: 'you can't stop progress'...

Look what we made between us!

Well, here it is - the baby's quilt; hope you can spot your square (or squares). I think it looks really cute and hope you all agree it will make a nice present. I do hope Isabel approves; I have just finished sewing the edging today and I'll bring it in to college tonight.