By sion, on January 31st, 2007%
By sion, on January 29th, 2007%
missing its bottom border, thanks to a small person who shall remain nameless not just getting hold of my rotary cutter while I was in the loo, but figuring out how to open the damn thing. I nearly had heart failure when she presented me with a large triangle she’d cut off one of my strips, so that’s it, it has to be hidden up in its high spot even if I’m only leaving the room for a minute. I shudder to think what she could have done to herself. I try to keep one step ahead of her, I really do …
[edit] oh yeah – the shadowboxes aren’t that wonky in the flesh. Honest! The board I had it hung on isn’t long enough, so it’s hanging all stupid where the wind was blowing it.
By sion, on January 28th, 2007%
this is what I’m doing with the autumn tree. I’d be further along, but there was a blackout the other night when I was really getting into it, and yesterday I was teaching.
When I was auditioning border fabrics, I decided I liked the broken-plane shards of background along the top, so I went with that rather than trim it off all square. We’ll see whether I still like it when it’s finished, but so far I’m digging it. The sides have sharp straight edges, which hopefully will stop it from just looking messy & halfarsed.
Re the limbs going out into the border: aiming for an effect similar to “invert” object (layer) merges in photopaint/photoshop/etc. The colour intensifies where branches overlap, through to a very bright saffron where 4 meet.
Planning to put this row of shadow boxes along the bottom. Stuff in them – leaves (life size), bugs maybe, fruit maybe. Not sure yet whether I’ll be doing them more 3D or 2D.
By sion, on January 24th, 2007%
<– sketch for the right side of spring eve.
still not sure whether I’ll have this tangly “knotwork” on both sides (not if I can help it!). May be framing autumn with trapunto knotwork instead, will see how that looks – they might work well with mostly contained trad knotwork overflowing into this more organic tangly stuff down one side.
I’m still struggling with ways to do it (the openwork parts) that I’ll be happy with. I keep thinking up brilliant ideas which take it too far away from “quilt”. Which may be great, and may actually be the direction I was trying to head off on way back when with that 3D challenge on AQL … but it’s not what I want for this. I want that hovering between 2D & 3D that quilts inherently have; one of the things I love about art quilts is that tension. I love bas relief carvings etc too, and painted architecture; doubtless it’s all linked.
In any case; experiment results thus far:
- Bias tubing with wadding or yarn threaded through & stitched into knotwork just isn’t stable enough. Sadly floppy – positively impotent in fact, which is hardly the impression I want to give. Experiment abandoned.
- heavy iron-on interfacing is not looking rigid enough, and is a pain in the ring, and I suspect is going to be too 2D even though I’ve got extra wadding in some areas. Still EIP, but I got too fed up with it to continue today.
Other things I’ve lined up to try:
- plastic tubing to either thread down bias tubing or wrap.
- very heavy (and not bloody cheap) fusible buckram. If I do go ahead and try this, I think I’ll trace off each branch separately and finish and then weave & stitch them together
By sion, on January 15th, 2007%
 started another tree, more in keeping with my original vision. The ground fabric is a cool length of purple-copper which looks surprisingly at home with the copper on the ground of the other tree. The tree is a beautifully blurry & muted mauve multicolour, with coloured lights underneath spilling out of the cracks & knots. The sky is a deep navy multicolour.
 I need to dye some more deep colours, both for myself and for classes. Mum’s doing some overdying on ick pieces today, but I think we need to do some from scratch.
the sketch is one of the fae I’d like to include amongst the knotwork I want down the side(s). I’m trying to figure out the logistics of the open knotwork. I think the problem-solving part of working with textiles is half the fun, sometimes.
By sion, on January 11th, 2007%
Remember the tree? I started work on it yesterday, over at mum’s. Got the tree itself done (well, the first layer – needs highlights & details) & compiled it onto baking paper sheets. Somebody should make metre-wide rolls of baking paper. If somebody does, they should have informed me! Or: why don’t the fusible manufacturers sell the release paper separately? That would rock.
 Anyway. Had intended to use greys, mostly, but discovered I need to dye some bigger pieces (or choose my fabrics before I draw & cut the fusible, which is what I usually do). Settled on a Somewhat Holy overdyed ugly sashing length which had ended up a beautiful blackened coppery bronze. Faffed around for ages trying to decide on a background fabric. Had originally intended to use commercial prints (leaves, flowers etc) in some swirly Bryeresque fashion, but changed my mind somewhere along the way. At least a bit – I was still thinking about using fussycut prints for foliage etc, on top of whatever bg I ended up with. I was envisioning twilight, and intended to have hints of light emanating from the tree’s knots and fissues, as if there’s a party going on. Chose some lovely pale multicoloured strips for the lights, and some neat fabric about the right colour for highlights where said coloured light would fall on the tree. Eventually settled on a piece of handpainted fabric leftover from when I painted some for abdabs a couple of years ago, and brought it all home.
Hemmed and hawed this morning, and in my hunt for something yummier, flipped out one of our first Really Truly Holy fabrics from when we first started doing multicoloured pieces. I think mum did it, but I’ve had guardianship for the last couple of years. Sighed wistfully because it wasn’t a big enough piece … but then I realised that with some judicious cutting & assembly, it might just be … mum rang just as I was trying to figure this out, and didn’t squawk about it finally being used, so I took a photo of it for posterity, just in case I bollix it all up. Isn’t it gorgeous? Utterly different look to what I originally had in mind, but who gives a bugger.
So, I started tracing the negative shapes (background, sky, whatever) onto vliesofix, and then called myself names and pulled out the freezer paper instead. Much better idea (esp since there’s no harm done to the fabric if it turns out there’s not quite enough). Arranged all the pieces on the fabric, and not only did it fit; I actually have a piece almost as big as a fat 16th left over. Took the iron and assorted paddings etc out to the table on the patio and carefully arranged and ironed everything in place. Spent about half an hour wandering back & forth in front of it singing WOW and I SO TOTALLY ROCK, DUDE! and stuff. Loveit love it happy. Utterly magical in an entirely unforeseen way, and absolutely not in need of faerie drek. Intending to do as little as possible to it to finish it – here tis:
So I’ll still have to do a faerie tree version, but this isn’t it. Need to hang it up for a few days and ponder on it to see how to finish it off. May – may – see if it works as a daytime/nighttime diptych if I get time to work on the faerie twilight/night version while I’m pondering this one. As of about midnight tonight, it has some ground and some body behind the knots etc:
By sion, on January 5th, 2007%
I kept meaning to blog over Christmas, but it was a bit too hectic round these parts. Looks like it wouldna have done me much good, since my hosting company moved and I lost all December’s posts during the crossover. So happy new year, everybody.
Well actually, one post I remember – I spotted this post about an “art share meme” at Marion Barnett’s blog, and – surprised that there was still a slot open – opted in but quick. So:
The first five people to respond to this in the comments section will receive a piece of artwork from me. BUT … you have to post this same blurb to your blog too and continue sharing the art with people who respond to you.
So if you wanna piece of my action, you know what to do (so far I’m pretending to myself that it’s just the holiday season and my server move behind the demoralising lack of comments on the original post …)
Okay, so, yesterday was the first session of this round of workshops. Tomorrow is the other first session (another intake). This time around I’ve got them all doing a set piece for the first day (either Thursday or Saturday) to run through the techniques quickly, and then their homework is to figure out what they want to work on in the next few weeks (Thursdays and/or Saturdays). Organised it this way so that the teachers who start back in Feb can get their 5 or 6 sessions in by coming twice a week. The set piece has only four elements + background, just enough to get in a practise with how you approach textures with your pens & machine etc, and can be taken to ready-to-quilt stage in one day so long as there’s not too much stuffing around. So here are the first day’s efforts (pics taken before they started stitching):
   
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CHITCHAT