from here to there...

A few years ago I embarked on a daily stitch practice

using a purchased calendar that had an ideal layout for just such a thing, I worked at making small stitched samples each day, for about five months

I ran out of calendar was what really brought it to an end, but to be truthful, I was kind of glad

it had become very difficult - the stitching often took an hour at least, and I was running out of ideas to try

much as I was happy to be done with it, I learnt so much about what I liked, what I didn't like, and tried things that intrigued me  - and at the end, I was left with an amazing calendar I could flip through anytime I needed inspiration

I've tried to resume a daily practice in one form or another but never with any success

until perhaps now...

maybe

I've been intrigued with paint and paper and cloth and stitch in combination for some time now and so I am trying my hand at something that will combine all four

mixed media, I suppose

 each morning, after writing in my journal I take ten minutes or so and create a page

to make it easy on myself I loaded up a tray with three brushes, gesso, pva glue, acid-free double-sided tape, scraps of paper, bits of cloth and some watercolour pencil crayons

in a small sketchbook of 90lb paper, I create a background using whatever I want from the tray

there are 28 pages in the book, so for 28 days I'll make backgrounds and then on day 29, I'll work my way back to the front, one page at a time, adding stitch or any other marks etc. I desire

56 days altogether

from here to there and back again...

naturally the first one was the hardest

handmade paper on the upper left, as well as the lower centre, and the bit on the upper right was an ultra-fine handmade paper that holes in it. I glued it to the page with gesso and then painted all over the whole page

I found the watercolour pencils hard to work with - they were a craft-quality set I had bought years ago and I decided to give them one more try

I did like the effect of the "paint" on the paper with holes and am glad I have a nice big sheet of it for further experimentation

Day 2 was silk scraps from an attempt to dye silk in the ground by wrapping it around the roots of sage and oregano/marjoram and leaving it over the winter... not much mauve colour came through and the various silk bits got chewed to shreds

I stuck it to the page with gesso, added gesso all over for texture and then painted it

This time I dabbed the wet brush on the pencils to get the colour which worked much better

this piece represents my love of scraggly ragged cloth and texture

On day 3 I had very little time so painted the page, experimenting with red, yellow and blue.  I used all three colours in varying proportions in each area - in the third section down on the right you can see the pencil marks quite clearly - not what I wanted, but trying to diffuse them was taking too much water and the paper was beginning to degrade

the page seemed rather boring so I "stabbed" at it with the black, softening some of the marks more than others with water

back to texture on Day 4 with used herbal tea bags

I left the edges straight and stuck them down with gesso

this created a page full of texture and one that made me very happy

 in sticking all the edges down, gesso became visible along some of the tea bag edges but I like the look - it reminds me of plaster

a painted page again

the bit on the left was inspired by the image of a door I had torn from a magazine

a beautiful old weathered grey door

the multi-coloured bit on the right was a nod to a profusion of brightly coloured flowers in an image just to the right of said door

pale, ghostly marks, lightly made and then washed with as much water as I could get away with

by this time I was more relaxed in my approach, had enough successes under my belt, and was inclined to just experiment

Day 6 involved a left-over scrap of my linen from the stitched daily practice - I really wanted to include this, but in a simple way

this page was all about being "spare"

and playing with rectangles

these were also stuck down with gesso, which I lightly washed with grey and brown

the scrap of fabric with writing is an old favourite that I save every tiny bit of

and in an effort to be more "free", I left the scraggly threads as they were, sticking them in their place with gesso

and today, Day 7, I used the picture of the door mentioned above, a bit of a handmade paper envelope and then made a flower of sorts using left-overs of the tea bags

the whole page was lightly washed with pink and then grey

this one is my favourite of week 1

to keep things fresh, I changed out the materials on the tray today

for the next seven days I have the same adhesives and brushes, new scraps of paper and cloth, two stencils, a heavy body white acrylic paint, 6 or 7 bottles of various colours of acrylic paint, a paint scraper, an eye-shadow sponge applicator and a wooden skewer

I'm actually beginning to look forward to doing each day's page, love that when I'm finished I can turn it over and go on to the next without having to figure out what else to do

I know there's a possibility that when Day 29 comes and I have to progress with stitch etc.,  old hesitancies might start up all over again

I'm hoping though that I will already have learnt that all I need to do is put one stitch in front of the other and make way along