this has been a good, good week
i've been putting into practice some of the things i've been reading - understanding the ways of working that can get in the way of moving forward
one thing i used to do that got in the way all the time was having too many choices - I liked nothing better than to pull out all my supplies that might relate to or be useful in whatever I might be working on but I see now that having five different white embroidery threads to choose from made getting a strand of one of them into the eye of the needle almost impossible
now maybe two get selected and if there's no obvious choice I blend them
and so on
the collages are really helping too, and the more i do them the more i enjoy them
the one below began with the two strips of watercolour-painted paper that looked like water, a fragment of another that made me think of wood and an off-cut of embroidered silk... the drawn markings taken from a piece of silvery-grey driftwood
later in the week i was experimenting with painting silk and burning the edges - trials for a piece i'm developing for a member's show at our local gallery
i had read of this process in yvonne porcella's book "colours changing hue", first published in 1995
she painted silk with acrylic fabric paints, burnt the edges and made beautiful things - the flowers were my favourite - i had always wanted to try it but back then i couldn't find the silk fabric nor the proper paints and eventually i forgot all about it
i was reminded of the technique by an artist on instagram
she posted a piece she had made using a piece of ink-painted organza with burnt edges that was dipped in beeswax - right away i remembered the painted and burnt silk from yvonne's book and off i went to try my own version
i burnt the edges first, then painted the silk with the woad watercolour i made while back, laying it on parchment paper to dry... i didn't have any beeswax so instead i rubbed it with cold wax medium
loving the watery look of it, i laid it on the collage i had made the day before to see what it would look like - it was perfect so there it stayed
the collage below was today's effort - came together in a minute or two so i was very pleased about that - interestingly enough, after it was finished i turned it this way and that and found i liked it better if i gave it a quarter turn to the left so that's how it went in the book
i think it's the colour combination i love so i'm going to swatch it with paint and play with that
and then there's embroidery... flowers, of course
queen anne's lace, one of my most favourites
i drew the stems but am free-stitching the flowers
i was thinking of painting some linen backgrounds to stitch more on but then found a piece of heavier weight cotton fabric with a soft, subtle floral print on it... yesterday i got out some of my pressed flowers and laid them on it, playing with composition and angles etc
pattern drawn and threads pulled, all ready for stitching
good, good times
3 comments:
Very good times, indeed, full of interesting ideas. That burnt and waxed silk did turn out rather beautifully!
Too much choice… yes.. nodding my head here as I survey my boxes and boxes of threads and crates of cloth and let’s not even go near the art supplies. I will think on your advice.
Burning the edges of paper and cloth, and indeed, burning holes in things takes me fondly back to college days of C&G when every day brought a new discovery. I remember many happy days with my cordless soldering iron, bought especially for the purpose and how I loved watching the cloth shrink away from it. I found that a soldering iron was easier to control than a match. Every technique was a new discovery then but we move on and some become our go to methods and we forget others so when one comes to the fore again it is like discovering it all over again. Such is the delight of our art and I love the results of your rediscovery here.
You know how I adore your flowers and I love the images of the dried flowers and the stitched together. Your embroidery skill is so fine that it is hard to tell the difference…. So exquisite!
Ah, I can read the joy in your words! I rather doubt I'd be a good candidate to be burning silk without getting the DH bent out of shape over how much danger I was creating. He does tend to spoil some degrees of my fun! I can manage to do enough damage with my iron much less open flame.
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