Occasional jottings

Stitching with NWCQ

2012-05-25T15:03:00.001+01:00

We had a great meeting yesterday when Julie guided us gently into the joys of hand stitch. To begin with she shared some of her ideas , inspirations and favourite artists including the work of Kathryn Clark and Shelley Rhodes. She talked to us about the essence of Wabi-sabi and the calm of both the process and the finished pieces.

We all began with a small piece of white felt and my stitching became a memory of a rusting fishing boat at St. Ives but as you can see the other pieces I put together are all 'Works in progress'! Other people were far more prolific but I've always found hand stitching to be a slow process, though as Julie pointed out speed is definitely not the point when making pieces like these.

Leaving comments

2012-05-22T12:50:00.001+01:00

Has anyone else been put off leaving a comment on a blog by the word verification doodah. The one that asks you to type barely legible gobbledegook before your comment is accepted? I've decided to turn mine off - the posts appear either on my blog or in my gmail inbox, both of which already have excellent spam filters. If I get deluged with offers of undesirable products I'll turn it back on again but I suspect all will be fine as it is!

I was going to add a picture of some "pork luncheon meat" to illustrate this post - but I couldn't do it. Just looking at the images made my stomach churn. Instead take a look at this reminder of a gorgeous tart eaten this weekend:

I think I've peaked!

2012-05-18T18:34:00.001+01:00

Following on from a request to include one of my 12 by the dozen pieces in next year's Quilters Guild calendar, my Tin Mine piece has been accepted for the cq@10 exhibit at FOQ 2012. For some reason I've not blogged about either but as this is likely to be the summit of my quilting career I'm making amends now!
I can't believe that I haven't mentioned the tin mine challenge on the blog before as it was a struggle to come up with a concept, though the construction was worryingly simple. I owe a great deal to the attendees at the NWC retreat earlier this year, particularly Mags Ramsay and Judy Fairless who made sense of the random thoughts going round in my head. Thanks to them the ideas finally gelled - I'm sure that they will see their input very clearly, though whether it is what they expected remains to be seen!

Edges

2012-05-07T21:07:00.000+01:00

Having been given a rather nifty A6 notebook I had to come up with a theme to fill it, Edges seemed like a good word to use:

I began by stamping along the edge of the page:

Then I filled several pages using different torn edges as a guide:

But then I thought why not use real edges and progressively tore a wider strip from each page:

I marked the edge of each strip hoping to accentuate the exposed paper where the sheet has torn differently front and back. Although I didn't succeed as well as I'd hoped I love the shadows in this photo:

And possibly best of all are the marks on this sheet which I put between the pages as I marked the edges:

Red journal quilts

2012-05-01T17:25:00.001+01:00

The first batch of JQ's have been uploaded to the CQ site so here they are in their glory, not. Whilst they might not be exciting in their own right I learned a lot from making them. Like understanding why setting narrow parameters to work within actually makes things easier, particularly when you are looking to develop a series. And stupidly that making quilts is just like drawing - your first attempt is a bit too stilted but as you become familiar with a shape your own hand comes into play:

A different kind of day

2012-04-04T17:05:00.001+01:00

To say that yesterday was invigorating makes Margaret's visit to Manchester sound more like a cold shower than the energising day that it was. We talked, we viewed "Under That Cloud" including the piece with a "polyphony of virtual space" - What? We talked, we lunched, we saw "COTTON: Global Threads" and were mesmerised by Liz Rideal's dropped sari drapery, we talked and finally listened to Idris Khan talk about his work - the reason for Margaret's visit. Even though we only saw it as a slide I really liked* his piece "Homage to Bernd Becher". The quality of the line really makes you look really hard at a subject that would normally not deserve a second glance.
I had forgotten how much I enjoy this kind of input and it made me realise how easy it is to become lazy and miss the opportunites that are available.

*Ironic italics!

Learning to play - again

2012-04-04T12:48:00.000+01:00

This time at a NWCQ day led by fellow members Elizabeth and Judy who are excellent teachers. The theme was taking a photo as inspiration and as usual I seemed to have the wrong photos! I borrowed one of Judy's which came from the exterior of Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral (Or perhaps it was Coventry she said!) and selected a very small area.

And these were the results - not a lot for three hours work, but as ever the company was the best bit of the day!

An a-z of creativity

2012-03-27T12:42:00.002+01:00

Thanks to Hilary G. for sharing this on the CQ yahoogroup. As she says it's a fun and succinct way of reminding ourselves what we already know!

   Avoid negative sources, people, places, things and habits.
   Believe in yourself.
   Consider things from every angle.
   Don't give up, and don't give in.
   Enjoy life today; yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come.
   Family and friends are hidden treasures. Seek them and enjoy their riches.
   Give more than you planned to give.
  Hang on to your dreams.
   Ignore those who try to discourage you.
   Just do it.
  Keep on trying.
   Love yourself first and most.
   Make it happen.
   Never lie, cheat or steal. Always strike a fair deal.
  Open your eyes, and see things as they really are.
  Practice makes perfect.
  Quitters never win, and winners never quit.
   Read, study and learn about everything important in your life.
   Stop procrastinating.
  Take control of your own destiny.
  Understand yourself in order better understand others.
   Visualize it.
   Want it more than anything.
   Xccelerate your efforts.
  You are unique.
   Zero in on your target and go for it!

First steps

2012-03-15T21:44:00.000Z

There is a style of work that I like - it's very graphic but often quite loose, and it's the looseness that I particularly like. I've been collecting exponents of the style for a while e.g. Jane LaFazio, Jim Butler and Gillian Bates , it's Gillian Bates work that is the tidiest but she is the only one of this trio that works entirely in fabric. I've wanted to try something like this for a while but the other me has been holding back. But having challenged a group of stitchers that I meet with occasionally to become clearer about their personal challenges and plans to meet them I had to come up with a challenge of my own and this is it. My plan is to 'work in the style of' to see whether I have the skills and ideas to make something of my own. This is good for me because it is something that I can work at intermittently without fear of failure. I 'work in the style of' until either my own style and subject matter evolve from the exercise or they don't ... the first attempt:

Any feedback, help, ideas will be gratefully received! The 'What if?' part of this process is probably the bit I'm worst at.

Over the moors to Ripponden

2012-03-08T20:49:00.002Z

Today I visited Gillian Travis as part of a skill swap, my knowledge of websites for Gillian's knowledge of quilt making - I know who has come off best so far! With Gillian was Sue who was responsible for the photography in Gillian's book:

As ever Gillian was very generous with her materials and knowledge and I learned to screenprint from the beginning, rather than the middle as has happened previously! When I arrived I realised that I'd given no thought to what I wanted to work on so I came to a bit of a stand still by mid-afternoon but the drive home gave me enough brain space for lots of ideas to come flooding in!

Steps challenge

2012-03-03T08:58:00.004Z

The latest challenge for 12bythedozen is steps. I looked at so many photographs of steps that my head was beginning to spin and I was not getting anywhere. Then I decided that what I really wanted to do was use the idea of steps as representative of process, perhaps even "Two steps forward, one step back" which is more like my process anyway! But I couldn't come up with a design for that either.
Still struggling I decided to give some time to the Creative Sketchbooks course that I'm doing and falling a bit behind with and, lo and behold, the next exercise was on text. A quick search for quotes including steps and I'd found what I wanted, and I have a challenge piece that can sit happily next to my sewing machine:

Catching up

2012-03-02T11:23:00.002Z

The last month has been really full so there has been a lot of juggling going on. Last week I was back at Glenthorne with members of Contemporary Quilt. We were all working on our own projects which is always interesting as we had people sketching, painting fabric, hand stitching as well as working on their machines. In the evening we had talks from amongst our group - Judy Fairless talked about the inspiration for her 201122 JQ series on Chinese Heads and Magie Relph talked about the process of making glass beads bringing us right up to date with issues around fair trade.I had to come home a day early so missed Gillian Travis's talk about her recent visit to India but we're meeting up over the coming weeks so I'll be able to catch up and she has some amazing photos on Facebook.
Perhaps the best thing for me was that with other people's input, thanks Mags , I resolved my design for the forthcoming cq@10 exhibition. It's a juried exhibition so no more for now!
The weather was typically wet but amazingly warm - I had to go out and buy t-shirts to replace the woolly layers that I'd packed!

Big Red Moon

2012-02-08T20:17:00.001Z

Ever wanted to stop in the middle of a motorway and take a photograph? That's what happened to me as I drove along the M56 this evening. The motorway bends gently left and right and rolls over the countryside giving glimpses of the moon, which tonight appeared to be very big and red, not unlike this one over Battersea Bridge, though it was actually much lower than the one in this picture, which increased the visual impact no end!

There are plenty of theories on the web about this moon illusion, but I just prefer to look and enjoy ....

A clever little site

2012-02-01T10:43:00.002Z

There are times when I'm working in on a quilt and I know what I want one dimension to be but haven't got the heart to do the geometry to find the others. This site http://www.mathopenref.com/squarediagonals.html seems to do it all for me. Not only that, it's Java based so everything is done on a click and drag basis, live on screen:

The link that I've listed goes straight to the square diagonals page but there is an extensive subject list available.

Postboxes

2012-01-31T13:28:00.003Z

Members of Contemporary quilt were asked to create a small (20cm square) on the subject of diversity and for a time, following discussions on our Yahoogroup it looked as though cultural diversity was the way to go. I liked the idea of using a typical 'British' pub menu to capture this - pizza, chicken tikka, chille, you know the kind of thing I mean.
Fortunately (As I couldn't think how to translate this idea into fabric.) the pendulum swung away from this interpretation and now the majority of pieces submitted represent the diverse aspects of Britain life.

So my challenge was to find a subject that was recognisably British, that came in diverse forms, but also displayed how narrow that diversity could be. Royal mail letterboxes fitted these requirements exactly, there are whole websites dedicated to these British icons that record the most minor of changes as letterboxes have evolved since the 1850’s. I can even tell you that the oldest postbox here is a Penfold Type PB8/1!!!

This piece is a ‘wholecloth’ which was created on my computer and minimally machine quilted to emphasize the three different postboxes shown.

Manchester Art Gallery Visit II

2012-01-21T15:43:00.000Z

I also went to Manchester Art Gallery to look for inspiration for some personal study - I was on the hunt for an artist or a style that I can learn from but also something that makes my toes curl when I look at it. I began in the Contemporary gallery without seeing anything of real interest, though I did note Peter Lanyon's Built Up Coast (http://jo-dyas-artfoundation-manc.blogspot.com/2011/12/manchester-art-gallery.html - scroll down and turn your head sideways to view!)

I decided that I might have better luck in the Craft and Design gallery and in making my way there I cut through the Pre-Raphaelite Gallery and saw the work of William de Morgan - Bingo! This isn't what I expected to grab me, and as yet I can't define what it is but I now have something to work with, it'll be interesting to see what, or even if, comes from this. All I need now is for the nice people at The Book Depository (Seriously cheaper than Amazon in this instance.) to deliver the source material, paid for by Santa!

Grayson Perry at Manchester Art Gallery

2012-01-20T12:34:00.000Z

Yesterday I went to Manchester Art Gallery to see the two recently acquired Grayson Perry works 'Jane Austen in E17' and 'Print for a Politician'. Also on display were some large vases already in the collection. The statement attached to "Emotional Landscapes particularly caught my attention as Perry talks about a "crowded cultural landscape" where "the voices that stand out are the shrill ones"
A review of the exhibition can be found here - http://thefourohfive.com/review/article/grayson-perry-visual-dialogues
It seemed to me that the idea of juxtaposing Perry's work with other work from the collection probably works better in Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman at the British Museum simply because Perry has chosen the works himself and can link to the emotions behind his work.

CQ JQ Challenge 2012

2012-01-16T14:48:00.001Z

This years challenge sounds wonderful! We are back to A4 size and portrait orientation has been stipulated but once again the challenge has additional requirements - namely that at least 75% of the JQ has to be in shades and tints of one colour; red for the first four, yellow for the second four and blue for the final four. Hmmmm - who likes a nice bit of red then ......

Yesterday I took myself up to my workroom and pulled out my red fabrics, I also had with me this sketchbook spread and some digital images that I'd created from it. I saw a whole year of kitchen paraphanalia in front of me:

So why did my first JQ end up like this?

I had previously decided that I wanted one other colour that would run through the twelve months to give them some kind of identity and once that hand-dyed green jumped out at me the rest of it just happened. The fact that Santa gave me these books this Christmas -

http://www.angielewin.co.uk/plantsplaces.htm

http://www.vandashop.com/product.php?xProd=3852

probably had nothing to do with the outcome at all!!!

Producing a piece in this style which has specific colour proportions is not that difficult as it's easy to check how much other colour you are using -

but those members who work in a more representational style will no doubt find this year's requirements far more challenging - I can't wait to see the results!

Catching up

2012-01-13T20:27:00.000Z

Yesterday I had the feeling that I was going to forget something so I sat down and made a list, and was surprised to see ten different deadlines over the next couple of months. None of them are major - but they are there, no wonder I was feeling a bit niggled. All these deadlines are textile related and most of them are for different Contemporary Quilt challenges, but it's not surprising as I haven't been doing a lot of stitching lately.
What I have been doing is the Kemshall's Creative Sketchbooks course. I haven't blogged about it as, not unreasonably, they have requested that we don't. It's their living and I would hate to be found guilty of unwittingly putting the teaching materials on the web. There are four modules and I'm just getting going with Module 3 and loving every minute of it.
One reason for me choosing this course over others was to help develop my creativity and of course that's the thing I struggle with most. Today I came across a quote from Bruce Mau which exactly describes my conundrum. "Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've been. If process drives outcome, we may not know where we are going, but we will know we want to be there." I'll think and think and think about the outcome then work towards it, never giving myself a chance to explore. This course is giving me lots of opportunities to be creative and what am I doing - thinking about what a finished page will look like and how I'll achieve it! Self-admonition over, time to go and be creative!

December JQ

2012-01-03T09:42:00.002Z

Another JQ inspired by the Glenthorne workshop. This is a direct copy in fabric of a paper exercise that I thoroughly enjoyed. We took our jug outline and created a page of overlapping jugs, then using a mask translated various shapes to a grid. The idea was to use a 2" mask to transfer to a grid of 2" squares but I found that this didn't create the simpler outlines that I wanted so I used a 1" mask and a 2" grid. I can see this being a useful exercise to repeat but the abstraction also works for me. I can see plenty of ways to play with scale, pattern, texture ...... This is just a 30 second sketch based on right hand square on the second row:

I could be here for hours!

Triaxial weaving

2011-12-22T16:37:00.000Z

Yes, that did say weaving - if basket making hadn't been so inaccessible, in terms of information and materials, it's easily a route I could have gone down rather than the quilting route. Just take a look at these beauties for example -

Anyway, as part of my research for the next 12bythedozen challenge 'Steps' I thought that I would look at weaving, because anything other than a 'one under, one over' pattern:

Weaving texture on a golden chair
by Yorick... Attribution License

anything else produces a stepped effect. I was also convinced that it ought to be possible to create a tumbling blocks pattern using weaving, and that was where an afternoon suddenly disappeared - I discovered triaxial weaving! I couldn't find a 'how to' though this page was 'interesting' http://hexdome.com/weaving/triaxial/ . In the end I spent a lot of time in trial and error to produce:

I can't say that I conquered the technique as there were a lot of adjustments made along the way, but there is a perverse sense of satisfaction in achieving the end result. This is the reverse;

I don't think I'll be using this for my Steps challenge, but I had a lot of fun and it was much better than the shopping trip that has had to be postponed until a (much) later date!!!!

Adolphe Valette: A Pioneer of Impressionism in Manchester - Adolphe Valette: A Pioneer of Impressionism in Manchester

2011-12-21T10:46:00.000Z

The exhibition - Adolphe Valette: A Pioneer of Impressionism in Manchester - Adolphe Valette: A Pioneer of Impressionism is on at the Lowry until Jan 29 and well worth a trip. It is inevitable that the exhibition is used as a vehicle to display Lowry's work but I found the juxtaposition of work by Lowry and Valette (One of his teachers) fascinating. It served to emphasize the style that Lowry adopted early on and was particularly noticeable in the drawings of 'Antiques' that were on display. I found it difficult to believe that Valette's drawings were done using charcoal.

Adolphe Valette Manchester Ship Canal
Nicholas and Anthony Goeritz Collection

Rather like Lowry, Valette is known largely for his atmospheric industrial landscapes, at least in Manchester where he lived and taught for several years, so it was interesting to see that, less like Lowry, he painted in a variety of styles and used a range of subject matter for his work.

A different take on dining ...

2011-12-20T20:43:00.001Z

... from Sarah Huxley Edwards. I love the strength of the objects in her paintings - http://sarahuxleyedwards.com/archive2.html . This collage typifies her use of shape and space and the overlapping of objects to strengthen the whole.

Pea and Potato Soup - Sarah Huxley Edwards

November JQ

2011-12-17T20:23:00.001Z

This JQ represents all the fun and some of the things I learned whilst at Glenthorne last month! In no particular order - layering stamps and stencils, quilting through felt, free bonded applique, layering stamps and stencils, walking around Grasmere, laughter, unusual chimney pots and did I mention layering stamps and stencils?

Snow and frost forecast for Google tonight...

2011-12-17T18:31:00.002Z

Occasional jottings

Stitching with NWCQ

Leaving comments

I think I've peaked!

Edges

Red journal quilts

A different kind of day

Learning to play - again

An a-z of creativity

First steps

Over the moors to Ripponden

Steps challenge

Catching up

Big Red Moon

A clever little site

Postboxes

Manchester Art Gallery Visit II

Grayson Perry at Manchester Art Gallery

CQ JQ Challenge 2012

Catching up

December JQ

Triaxial weaving

Adolphe Valette: A Pioneer of Impressionism in Manchester - Adolphe Valette: A Pioneer of Impressionism in Manchester

Adolphe Valette Manchester Ship Canal Nicholas and Anthony Goeritz Collection

A different take on dining ...

November JQ

Snow and frost forecast for Google tonight...

.....Search the words “let it snow” and watch what happens. (And yes, there is a 'Defrost' button!)

Adolphe Valette Manchester Ship Canal
Nicholas and Anthony Goeritz Collection