sift, sort, start

travelling is finished, company is gone

I could have written that four or five times this year but now both truly are finished for the remainder of the year and I have spent the last two days settling in to my creative work

where was I then?

ah yes...

 

nowhere really

it was a lot of sorting samples and sifting through ideas

not much actual work

the images today are the last of that and as of now the new work has begun

still banging away on the same old tune though

water, sky, plants, layers

abstraction is still top of the list

distinguishable... not obvious, that's my playbook

last year (or was it the year before?) I gathered linen in the manner of shibori and painted it with a granulating watercolour by schmincke 

it's called "forest" but dries blue and brown, sort of

the brown settled on the edges of the folds, the blue elsewhere

below,  top left

on the right is a print of a cropped, bleached out version of it and at the lower left is another, cropped even more

still looking somewhat like water though if placed in a different context, perhaps not necessarily so

a close-up

on the left below is a rudimentary plan for a weaving idea I'd like to do on paper

the other two papers are a nod to a possible colour palette

I'm exploring the idea of extreme photo crops being translated into small woven tapestries though the idea is teetering on the edge of "why?" 

time will tell...

and yet another train of thought is fighting for space just now and it's gaining traction...

still with water, still also the Gold Rush

exploring ideas of water carrying people along the path of their dreams

the clothes they wore and how they were made

a dress Martha Black wore that I have written of before

and work I did inspired by the neckline and it's edge-stitching

note the brown silk piece at the lower left, the blue silk  "waves" at the right

and here I give you a water-inspired version... pale blue-green and brown shot chiffon silk, a "v" created with hand-stitched tucks, the embroidery design taken from a piece of driftwood

a loose plan has formed... clothing, nature, the journey, as bound together in stitch as they were in life

I'm taking this further, though for now I'm making samples of the hand-stitching techniques of late 19th century clothing whilst I let my mind drift along

there's something interesting here that has my attention