Pink Landscape I

In last month's post  Gearing Up for my Next Landscape , I showed some of the photographs and drawings that I had done in what I'm calling my pink landscape series. Or at least I like to think of it becoming a series because I have a few ideas that I would like to develop and I have picked this section of a photograph as inspiration for my first piece.

 

 



On Saturday I went to C2C and worked on the background for the piece. It has now had two layers of dye on it, or perhaps more accurately I should say I have had two sessions of printing because I do layer the dyes in each printing session. The picture was taken in the salubrious surroundings of my garage because that's one place where I can hang up the full length of the fabric.  

 

 

 

I'm much happier after the second session of printing, probably because the design now has some structure and the textures are starting to build up. I plan explore design options for the tree using paper before I commit any dyes to it. It may just turn out to be a shape that I add, rather that something that is instantly recognisable as a tree.  But even before I add the tree, I reckon there's at least two more dyeing sessions to go before I am happy with the depth of colour and texture in the background. It all takes time.

 

Just because I was printing on Saturday, it doesn't mean that I have abandoned my stitching for the exhibition. In fact my reel piece is almost finished and I should have that to show you soon. Just to prove that my stitching fingers have been busy, here's the current state of them!

 

If it looks a dodgy colour in the cracks and under the nail, it's just green dye from Saturday - honest!

This weekend my fingers will get a rest whilst I visit the Knitting and Stitch Show at Alexandra Palace and hopefully I'll come back with even more inspiration - I'm looking forward to it.

Reelin' down the Rhine

I'm just back from a lovely week cruising down the Rhine and we had lovely weather.

There was mile after mile of vineyards and they created some very interesting patterns which reminded me of a very large patchwork quilt.

 



I still found time to do some stitching, which is just as well, as I would like to finish this 'reels in the landscape' piece in time for the exhibition in November. There's still quite a lot of work to be done and (unfortunately) I'm not sure about one or two of the colours and may even unpick some of the stitching which won't help me get it finished but I probably won't be happy with the piece unless I do. 

 

 

Taking this photograph reminded me how much more difficult it is to take a decent photograph when there is less light around and the colours of this piece are deeper than they appear here.

You can see where my idea for this piece came from in my previous post . Hopefully, it won't be too long before I have the finished piece to show you....maybe!

Reelin I and II revisited

In a previous post I showed the two cotton reel pieces that I stitched. A friend of mine suggested, in the nicest possible way, that they needed to some more stitching to indicate shading and as is often the case, it all seemed so obvious when it was pointed out.

After that I was never going to be happy with them until I had added some shading to both pieces but little did I know just how much additional work this would be. It may not look like it but it took hours of additional stitching but I do think they look better for it. I hope you agree.

 

They are only about 4 inches square and they are mounted on a 6 inch square canvas. It was a really dark wet day when I wanted to photograph them and so I decided that I would photograph them in the light tent that I bought earlier in the year.

 

As you can see the light tent is quite large! I think it did help a little and certainly helped cut out some of the distractions that might otherwise have been in the background. Maybe it was lacking some side light? Perhaps I'll try that next time. 

 

I am planning on exhibiting them in our Taking Textiles Further Exhibition, which is going to be held at Art Van go from 2nd-30th November. See the flyer at on the top left of this post for more info.

My iPad Drawings

Last Friday, I went on a course to learn to paint on an iPad using the Brushes software. The course was held at V&A and was led by Nadja Ryzhakova. In the morning we started to learn about the Brushes software and it's potential and in the afternoon we set about drawing in the museum on the iPad. I decided to stick to my landscape theme as I thought that would be the most useful to me. Here are my first two iPad drawings. You may (if you squint!) see a resemblance to recent images I posted. 

The image above is the first image I created after exploring the tools in Brushes. Everyone on the course had previously explored the Brushes application with varying degrees of success. Everyone, except me that is because I don't even have an iPad! Maybe with Christmas coming up that might change? Anyone that has an iPad seems to love it but they always seem quite expensive to me, for what they do. Would this be the tool that would lead me to get one? Fortunately the V&A will lend you an iPad for the duration of the course but I might have struggled, if I hadn't previously used Photoshop. 

 

In this second picture, I really tried to simplify the image so that I could explore how this technique could be used to inspire future textile work and it was really quick to create (and it probably shows!).

 

Most of the course participants had been inspired by David Hockney's iPad images and everyone wanted to know how to create their own version. We were told that these images were good to print size A4...maybe A3 but as David Hockney's images were significantly larger than that he must have another trick up his sleeve. Not something for me to worry about just yet, I'll leave that until I have an image good enough to want to print it out large! 

If you would like to see how these digital images can be created, then I recommend that you have  a look at Nadja's YouTube channel. Here you can see how she has built up the images and you can see the potential of the tool much more than you can from my work.

One thing I really like about this method of painting is that when you get to the end of the painting session, there's no cleaning up to do and no paint splashes on you or your clothes. That's definitely worth something. 

Gearing up for my next landscape piece

Now that my Italian lake quilt is finished, I have started to consider my next landscape piece. I decided that my album of local landscapes needed updating so one nice evening I set off in my car, camera on the passenger seat, looking for some inspiring landscapes and I was not disappointed. The pinks and golden yellows in the fields in the early evening light were lovely. The only problem was that I had left my camera battery at home in the charger! So yet again I was relying on the camera in my phone. 

I started to work in sketchbook to investigate how I could simplify them and use them to as inspiration for my next piece. I started using markal sticks and wash as I had in my recent post but just couldn't get anything I was pleased with.

 

 

 

I did try very hard but I wasn't happy with what I produced and just put my previous success down to beginners luck and decided to try out another technique. This time I painted the page with gesso, added colour and then cut the page up into similar shapes I could see in the field and I quite liked this effect.

 

This is pretty small, so I decided to repeat the method but to make the design larger but again beginners luck seemed to have left me and I couldn't produce anything that I was as pleased with. 

  

Maybe it's not beginners luck but rather that more pleasing things come from being more spontaneous? Or maybe it's just that the first time you try a technique it will always have the element of surprise and interest that subsequent pieces can never replicate? Anyway, it does seem that in writing this post I am more pleased with them now than I was earlier, perhaps just because it's been a few days since I created them and I'm looking at them with fresh eyes. I'm off to Committed to Cloth next Saturday and whether I like the designs or not, it has given me a number of ideas of where to start with the piece which can only be good. Like the Italian lake piece, I know it's going to take lots of time layering the colours to get it anywhere near where I want it to be. 

The Queen's Coronation Exhibition

Last week I went to the Queen's Coronation exhibition at Buckingham Palace and it was fabulous! I really recommend that you go, if you possibly can. It's lovely to see the State Rooms, the exhibition is very well done with some lovely film footage but for anyone even remotely interested in stitching I'm sure you will love seeing the Queen's Coronation robes and all the other outfits that are on display. The photographs just don't do it justice, you have to see them for yourself.

Breakdown Printed Blouse

In a previous post I showed my breakdown printed cloth and here is what I made with it. Hands up those who thought I wouldn't do anything with it? Even I feel my own hand twitching to go up at this point! I was hoping to make a simple dress, simple because it would be easier to achieve but also because simple would mean less seams and darts to break up the pattern. 

 

 

The pattern I chose to use was Butterick 5211, the one illustrated in purple below.

I had enough to make the dress if I had the pattern going horizontally but I really wanted the pattern to remain vertical but this would have made the dress too short. I wasn't overly concerned about this as I thought it would make a good tunic. But after I had made it up, I tucked it in and I left it loose and I tied it with a belt and came to the conclusion that it looked better as a blouse.

 

I am quite pleased with it and it looks better on with real arms going through the sleeves than it does on the dummy and there are some interesting patterns on the off-cuts that I could do something  else with. Now who thinks I'll soon be showing what I have done with the off-cuts? My hand is firmly down now.