How Things Develop

The machine embroidery group I belong to has a Farmyard theme this year.
This month's is buildings and fences. Not all that inspiring, I thought. But at least it is a theme and I can think about it.

Having thought about it for several weeks now, and having taken some extremely boring photos, I decided to bite the bullet and start today.

I had looked at some people's work on Pinterest. I especially like Cinde Hoppe, a new to me textile artist.
After browsing her site I thought I might pull out some fabrics I have dyed in the past and see if I had anything suitable.

That was yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. Finally, I got into my, relatively tidy, studio today and was about to start looking at said dyed fabrics.
I don't know what made me look down at the box on the bottom shelf but I did. There were some bits and pieces left over from my Cas Holmes workshop that I did about 10 or 11 months ago.

I pulled them out. I laid them out. I radically changed my mind about what I thought I was going to do!

Now I have a piece that I think is going to be 12" square - just because that is the size I have been working on lately.
I made the image. It is rather more abstract than I had anticipated. I was influenced by a book I borrowed from the library: Art Quilt Collage by Deborah Boschert. I haven't really done what she is teaching in the book, but I was definitely influenced by reading it.

I also had a bit of sewing I had done on soluble fabric which I had done it for the Secret Garden exhibition in 2016. It was still on the soluble fabric, I had not used it but I had put it on my pinboard so that I wouldn't forget I had it. Today was the day for soaking it and pinning it out to dry.

This is it, drying in the sun.

Then I noticed that the bag of offcuts from doing the Unfinished Business challenge (2017). They went into the mix tool.

After I placed the bits and pieces and sewed them onto the background (a drop sheet from the Cas Holmes workshop), I decided I wanted some quilting-type texture, so put a cotton batting on the back. Then there was some not very planned free motion sewing.

I laid the trees in the foreground and sewed them on. 

I have cut away some of the backing, where the edge of the image is going to be. There was a slightly frayed, raggedy edge that I didn't like as it was too white. 

(I think I am going to sew it over a piece of foam core, as I have done with my other pieces recently.)

Then I remembered that I treated myself when I was overseas visiting friends late last year, by buying some Inktense Pencils. I have coloured the edge of the fabric and will hope that it has done the job. 

I needed some new foam core for the required size and it was too late to go to the shops, so I will have to work on how to present it tomorrow, after I buy the foam core.

February 2019

I used to aim for a post a week. Now I am for one a month! I want to continue because this really is my visual diary, I often come back to it to find out things. I think that is because the blog is searchable, which my actual, physical, visual diaries are not!
Also, as I change themes in my musing, I find that I will take things from an old visual diary, on a totally different topic, and reuse them. That is definitely not searchable in the hardcopy version.

So I will continue with the occasional post, which is mostly for me.

My tree is finally finished and mounted. I went to my tapestry weaving group today and finished sewing the back on (no relation to tapestry weaving whatsoever, but we do talk tapestry, tapestry exhibitions, themes, etc. while doing knitting, sewing, etc. - looms are a bother to take with you unless you are doing a very small, portable tapestry).

I took a couple of pictures when I got home, in two different locations. The difference in lighting is quite marked.  

This is the tree, after the acorn has sprouted (not really, of course, I couldn't wait the 100 years or so.  It is actually the tree and the acorn grew under it.)

It has been a hottish summer, not as bad as other parts of Victoria, and other parts of Australia, but I have found the weather challenging enough anyway.  So it has been a bit hard to be motivated. But I was with some young relatives recently and one of them remembered that I had taken a book about how to draw with me last year (Drawing for Mixed Media Artists by Carla Sonheim). One of the suggestions was to draw with your eyes closed. Another was to draw with your non-dominant hand. She combined these and drew a picture left-handed and with her eyes closed. Unfortunately it was on a whiteboard and she rubbed it off before I could take a photo. But she did do a couple of others. I managed to get a quick photo of them before she rubbed them out.

This inspired me to have a go myself! This is partly because there is a challenge for the AQC, due at on February 21st. I am not necessarily going to make it for that (it is a short time frame) but it is a theme to get me going. I think I need themes to motivate me, at least at present.

Part of the reason why I am thinking that my drawing is ok is that I was visiting a friend who lives in New York (lucky me) and went to a restaurant at Colombus Circle that had a whole lot of wire art, portraits. So the current thinking is to try to use that idea with the abstract drawing I have done and see what develops.

I haven't worked out quite how I will do it but the idea is giving me something to think about.