A new piece of work finally finished

For all the reasons mentioned in my previous post, it's been ages since I finished a piece of work but finally I have and hopefully there'll be a couple of others finished soon. As you can see I'm still being inspired by the Atacama Desert and think I will be for sometime to come. I loved it!  

I don't usually like to cut things up (cowardly me?) but found it easy to cut this one, probably because I didn't have a fixed image of the end piece in mind and therefore wasn't worrying I would ruin the thing I was trying to create. The blues in the piece represent the big blue desert sky and the underground water supply whilst the other colours represent those created by the minerals in hard salty landscape. 

The piece is made up of layers, the top layer is paper laminatation that I created from one of my designs....

...which I bonded onto a simply printed piece of fabric which just happened to have running stitch going around the edge like a frame. The under stitching is very difficult to see in the final piece but I liked the effect  this created and would like to experiment more with this technique although I'm not sure how motivated I'll be to stitch knowing that it will be covered up by another layer.

The layered fabric was then cut into squares and rectangles and moved around until I achieved a composition that I was happy with. Each cut piece was then layered on black fabric with black thread couched along the edge to neaten it.

Not all the pieces were stitched but I rubbed white screen ink on those that were to emphasis the stitching and to represent the crusty salty surface of the desert. These were then applied to a mono printed background and additional stitching added to represent the pathways linking the elements of the desert together. 

Stitching the pieces to the background should have been the easiest task, but it took ages with lots of unpicking and re-positioning until I was happy....funny how the tasks you think will be quick and easy often take much longer than you think..

When to give up?

My first piece of paper lamination was made from newspaper and I was pleased with the results. I was particularly pleased because it was made from discarded fabrics and did not involve hours and hours of planning or preparation. You can see the newspaper images I used in the piece in my previous post - Changing Times . I felt the piece would be better if I stitched into it  to add texture and bring out the red in the piece. 

 

 

When I'd finished the stitching I decided to mount the work on thick felt and that's when my beginners luck started to run out. The felt I use is a creamy colour and so I wanted to paint it in a colour that would  further bring out the red elements in the piece. But I just couldn't create the right sort of red and the more I over painted it, the more the felt took on a plasticy look and feel.  There was only one thing for it but start the background again. 

 

 

 

 

This time I was much happier with the colour. My plan was to glue the two pieces together and then to add a few catching stitches for security. Firstly I used fabric glue but the paper lamination just peeled off. So I used some 'posh' PVA which has (unfortunately) stuck very well. Although the two pieces each seemed to be cut squarely, they don't quite so square when they are layered up. I probably wouldn't make a very good patchworker. There was only one thing for it....pull it off and go back to the drawing board. By this time my beginners luck had well and truly run out and the glue was now holding it very firmly in place! 

 

I don't usually give up easily and indeed I have perservered with this piece but I think now might be the time to cut my losses. Shame! 

Paper Lamination - Tree Bark

 

In May, the North Herts and Beds branch of the Embroiderers' Guild will be holding an exhibition in Letchworth Arts Centre. The branch members have been asked to each create an A5 piece of work based on the theme of trees and this is my piece: 

 

 

 

 

The piece is based on a tree bark I saw in Namibia and this holiday has provided me with so much inspiration. I have layered two pieces of paper lamination and hand stitched it to background fabric. All the member's work will be mounted onto artists canvas. I think there will be lots of entries, who can fail to be inspired by trees? I can't wait to see them.

 

 

Textile Inspired Paper Lamination

Today, the light improved and I took a picture of my paper lamination piece and for once the colours look pretty accurate in the photograph.

The piece was based on photographs I had taken of another textile piece, an idea which I had not explored before. I have used my trusty grid thermofax to create the laminated piece, which meant that only parts of the photograph were incorporated and the original image was fractured.  The paper lamination was then layered onto one of my 'rejected' pieces of gridy printed cloth. 
 
The colours in the detail photograph below are a bit washed out (normal service resumed!) but it shows the three layers in the piece in a way that you can't see when you look at it with the naked eye.

I used my favourite sections of the lamination and pieced them together with the dusky pink fabric, which were off-cuts from fabric I printed for one of my C&G pieces. There is a little bit of stitching on all of the panels, with the stitching on the central panel using thicker thread. The outer panels are slightly raised by the insertion of wadding underneath.

I've enjoyed my exploration into paper lamination and have another piece almost finished and another piece in the early stages but I think that it will be something that I will come back to occasionally but only occasionally.

Art & fear



 

 

I have recently bought this book and read it on the commute to work. I think it will be a book that I will refer to from time to time and perhaps some parts will mean more to me later than they do at the moment. I have picked out a couple of thoughts from the book which I hope will encourage me (and perhaps you?) to do more work. From my own perspective, I am hoping these thoughts will encourage me to draw, something I know I should do more of. When I have a drawing or design that I am happy with, I need no encouragement to work with that idea in textiles and if I really like the design then there's no holding me back. Anyway here they are.....

 

1. Art is often thought of as a magical gift bestowed by gods but over the long term natural talent is barely distinguishable from perseverance and hard work.
2. Seeds of your next art work lie embedded in the imperfections of your current piece
3. A ceramics teacher divided a class into two and told one half that they would be marked on the quality of their work, the other half were told they would be measured by the quantity of their work. At the end of the term, the best work was found in the group who were going to be marked by the quantity of their work. The quantity group learnt from their mistakes and improved with each piece, whilst the quality group spent all their time theorising about perfection.

 



And to show that I have been creative and not just reading about being creative, here is a detail of the stitching I have done on my  Changing Times paper lamination piece  which I previously blogged about. The colours are not quite true but I find capturing accurate colours quite challenging.

 

Changing Times

I have a photograph that I would like to use as the basis for a new piece and thought that the technique of paper lamination would be a good way to start the piece off. I created a trial piece using a copy of The Times and some grey organza that I had kept from a bouquet I received some time ago.

 

I wanted to build the piece in two layers, the first one created from black and white photographs and the second layer built from some colourful fashion images.

I then printed grey lines on top of the piece and bonded it to a (previously rejected) piece of dyed cotton fabric. Always satisfying to find a use for those pieces that once caused disappointment. This is the piece before adding any stitching.

I couldn't predict how the piece would turn out but on the whole I am quite pleased with it. Maybe that's because I didn't have any particular image that I was trying to recreate and therefore I wasn't disappointed that it didn't match the image in my mind? I think it does help knowing that I created it from a newspaper, salvaged organza and some dodgy dyeing. Next step is to highlight elements with stitching. When It's complete I'll show you the result.