a coming together

slowly but surely things are happening

you cannot rush book-making, not if you want a good result; a book that is flat with neat, even pages takes time... every step of the way the components have to be pressed under weight until they are perfectly dry or warping will happen

the first one here is a new structure for me, one I learnt in a course on Domestika, an online learning site with myriad courses, very reasonably priced, though often in a foreign language

this one is in Spanish but there are subtitles and terrific camera angles

and by the time the class finished I was developing a good command of Spanish terms for book-binding... to the point where I even turned up the volume when a work truck outside started beeping!

anyway, this course teaches bookbinding without sewing so it's perfect for showcasing art, especially pieces that stretch across both pages

as this was my learning piece I was more concerned with putting the book together properly than with what I would put on the pages - still, I wanted it to be something I would happily keep out and look at from time to time so I decided to use some thumbnail photos I took at McGuire Lake over the past few years

here they are, arranged in a grid format

the book opens to this as the title page... words to come

below is the only two-photo spread but you can see how it extends smoothly across the centre fold with no obstruction to the flow of the image

the cover is made from watercolour paper, three layers laminated together (glued under weight) with decorative paper for the spine

I'm very happy with this one and am already at work on the next in this same format 

another book I made recently is this one: a simple fold over cover made from cardstock with an overlay

a variety of fabric and papers were cut to resemble cattails, then collaged in layers with stitching added here and there to add definition and interest 

I like doing these kind of collages and have more ideas for other versions

it's an enjoyable but messy process and the results are never quite what I expect them to be though they are almost always much better than I had hoped for

there is a bagful of bits and pieces like this in my studio...

"possibilities"

odds and ends of this and that, too good to toss...

 nothing on their own really, but in a coming together with other bits and pieces, they're transformed into little works of art

finding my way...

this week has been full of fits and starts

more than ever in my life I'm struggling with focus, trying to figure out what I want to do only to find out that whatever I thought that might be,  it wasn't after all

I have learned over time that when you don't know what to do, do something, anything, just start

once you start, the rest sorts itself out

the other day I wrote down every single creative thing I do

then I made a note beside each thing as to whether I did it because I really enjoyed it, exploring all the possibilities, or whether I did it as a means to an end

(for example, knitting is a means to an end thing with me - I only knit when I need a knitted thing, otherwise, I could care less about doing it)

after that I took the list of what I really enjoyed, and sorted it into three columns - what I did regularly, what I did somewhat often, and what I rarely did even though it interests me greatly

(weaving is one of the latter - I like it, find it interesting in many ways, but even with all of that I don't do it a lot)

working through all of that was fairly insightful, maybe more so from an organizational perspective than anything else (things I don't use often should be in the harder to get at places - which they aren't!)

the list I was left with, the what I really like to do all the time kind of stuff, was rather short

bookbinding, sketching, painting, stitching

so which to focus on?

I chose all of the above - with a deep dive into book-making on the side

exploring different structures, playing with cover materials, thinking about the papers for the inside

I also want to make some "themed" books using different subject matter - incorporating painting, sketching and stitching ideas into each

one thing I want to do is make some books with painted covers so I began there, starting lightly and easily, using some of the inks I made recently

learning about wet-in-wet 

indigo, carbon black and walnut ink

dribbled and splattered, it was looking pretty interesting and then - into a piece of folded parchment paper for pressing under weight -  the parchment paper wrinkled and made these vertical marks - talk about a happy accident

in some places this looks like a surreal landscape, high ridges, stormy skies

I'm also working on a small book about McGuire Lake here in Salmon Arm

cutting up tiny, fragmented photographs taken there the summer of 2020

I've been trying to spend some time there this summer, walking, looking, sitting

these are some wildflowers I picked last summer

the plan is to sketch and paint these, try some printing... playing

the beginning of a pieced book cover - embroidery comes next

think of plants, silhouettes maybe

in rummaging through an old sketchbook, I found these from last year - I love messy floral paintings so this will be where I start with those

so a few things to try and see how I go

the studio is a mess

piles of paper and books everywhere 

scraps of paper with ideas and lists of things to try

a plan coming together

and a big smile on my face whenever I set foot in there!

something lighthearted...

this summer light-hearted stitching has been the genre of choice

since last week's post the smoke blew away for a day and a half. and came back Thursday evening with a vengeance... thick, choking, make your eyes burn, catch in your throat, awful smoke

the whole summer has been like that, weeks and weeks and weeks of it and no end in sight

(you know it's bad when they  suddenly decide to station 100 firefighters in the middle of your town)

staying inside as much as possible is the right thing to do 

a friend in the UK just had a birthday and I had wanted to make her something special

a few years ago, at Christmas, I sent her a small table runner of generic buildings with snowy roofs, and a dark star-filled sky

she liked it so much she kept it on her table year-round and when I learned of that I resolved to make her a summertime version

 this time though, I wanted to depict buildings of significance in her small village

we were fortunate to have been able to visit her and her husband a few years ago whilst on an England holiday and we fell in love with their tiny village in the Peak District

thinking about their life there, I scoured Instagram and Google Earth to find photos of the buildings I wanted to depict:

their house, with it's beautiful purple door

the church where we went for a music concert

the library where she worked

the bed and breakfast where we stayed, conveniently across the street from their house

and the gate to the Bluebell Wood which has appeared on her Instagram feed, both in photography and paint

the technique is one I devised for a class I was teaching back in 2013 or so... a pieced runner of same-sized rectangles, changing the colour/print where necessary to depict sky and buildings, the foreground done in one narrow strip at each end

the details of the buildings are then appliquéd in place

(I've seen patterns using this kind of technique since then but at the time there were none; I came up with it to make the appliqué portion of the class easier for my students)

if you click on the photos with your mouse they will enlarge further and you can get a better look at the stitched details

below is Millie's Tea Room and B & B, the gate to the Bluebell Wood and the house

I expected the writing on the windows to be fiddly to the 10th degree but it was surprisingly quick and easy despite my trepidation

I had found two photos of the library (building on the left below), one with a light door, in the other it was dark

at first I made it light but after more and more detail was added to both ends of the runner I felt one end had far more dark values than the other so I switched out the library door to the darker version - it turns out that was the recipient's favourite version so all's well that ends well

in debating what time to stitch on the clock other than the obvious "Timex" 10 minutes to 2, I chose the time difference between Western Canada and the UK

I could have gone on for months adding more and more of the building details but time was not on my side so I chose what I thought were the most relevant and worked from there

the tumbled floral at each end is an homage to England being the prettiest, most full of beautiful flowers everywhere, country than I know

choosing the fabrics is one of my favourite things to do when embarking on a new project - the stacks and piles come out on the floor and in minutes I'm surrounded... riffling through greys to find those that look like stone, blues for that typical soft English sky, lavender fabric for the heather, green for the hills, the narrow strips of light brown on the sides are the path we walked up into the hills... and on it goes

I rarely quilt anymore so this was a treat to do and has inspired me to work on some unfinished quilts that have been languishing a bit too long

but first it's back to the brushes and watercolour for a while

I've been looking through books by British painter Ann Blockley who has a lovely style of painting flowers

this is my version of one from her "Experimental Flowers" book

next up is book-binding...

record-keeping

I have made cards of my own design over the past two or three decades, many cards I have either sold or gifted

many of them I have wanted to make again 

the trouble is I was never very good at recording what I was doing along the way; at best I might find a scribbled diagram or drawing of sorts tucked away, but I pretty much start from scratch when it comes to choosing thread colours etc.

last year I took an online watercolour painting course and the instructor showed her technique for making "recipe cards" for her designs

I thought it was a brilliant idea so I adapted it for my embroidered and appliquéd cards

these are my first efforts...

I'm using watercolour paper for the card itself so that as my painting skills improve I can do a quick and simple painting of the design in order to have a handy visual reference without clogging up my iPhoto library

the tabs are scraps of watercolour paper that I paint with any left-over mixed paint from other painting activities - that way I have a steady supply at hand and just have to choose one to go with the fabric 

 a thread wrap of the colours I used is a great visual reference, and if I have more than one colour way I'll make a separate thread wrap for all, putting the optional ones on the back of the recipe card

 swatches of any fabrics used as well as base fabric choices if I found any that worked particularly well

drawings of design elements are also included - using a dark felt marker to make tracing easier

I also reference the size of card the stitched design piece is mounted on as well as measurements for the base fabric and any others used

stitch reference books are always noted

on the back of the card I record which thread to use for each design element, how many strands, stitch combinations and how many wraps for French knots

all of this information will help me make the card again in the exact same way or function as a springboard to changing things without having to start from the very beginning

if I think of something that would be interesting to try next time I'll make a note of that too

it does take a little while to do these up but I've streamlined the process by having several watercolour paper cards cut, scraps of fabric and painted paper ready for tabs as well as cut strips of heavy card with double-sided tape already stuck to the reverse for the thread wraps - I don't mind recording things when everything I need is handy

pretty to look at, handy to have, and interesting enough to put together when I have a little time 

win, win, win

there's another one brewing...

snippets...

raining... a lovely cooling rain has been falling off and on for much of the day

it could rain for a week solid and I wouldn't mind, even two

we've been stuck in the house for weeks anyway, between heat and the smoke-filled air, so being in for the rain is a welcome thing

the only drawback is how dark it is in the house; between the smoke and what must be dark rain clouds up above it, the lights have been all day

embroidery is nearly impossible but there are other things I've found to keep me occupied

I've been recording ink recipes in my book, replete with the blobs and splotches of ink I was wishing for

writing with a dip pen and home made ink is not quite as easy as some make it look - most of my inks turned out just fine but a few have viscosity issues, the cochineal red being the worst so I'm slowly adding gum arabic to thicken it a bit. The indigo ink is actually pretty good though it doesn't look it here - these blobs and irregularities are "operator error", but I'm getting better with practice.

for my birthday this year a very good friend made me a cloth snippet book, a place to attach all sorts of snippets and bits of cloth and thread

I've begun by taking a few fragments I've saved, off-cuts from larger pieces, tiny but precious, and stitching them in small compositions

most of these are very small, a half-inch in width, an inch and half square - hard to do anything with them, but I liked them too much to throw away

it's pleasurable to sit of an evening, with my snippet jar to hand, rooting through it for bits and pieces of pretty

arranging and re-arranging

 and thank you Karen, for both the idea of a "Snippet Jar" and the advice to never throw anything away!

next is a bit of an embroidery - not too much, I don't want to get too carried away with these, but a few stitches just to enhance things a little

a lovely way to while away the hours while the rain gently falls and the forests slowly cool