Meanwhile...

A bead with potential. Based on Indian beads made of threads held together with stitch. And I was inspired to have a go at this by http://travelfibreandthread.blogspot.com/ Guzzisue... and her spun items. Mine aren't spun it is only stitch that holds everything in place... I am working on a hairier one now and they go bigger and bolder! (This one is 3" long) Think jewellery.

My seams are falling apart

I have the start of a resource library of prints on diverse materials and show here a couple of pages - details are too subtle to show on small images but each of the 6 areas on the image reflect the different applications of grounds and gels on those areas.
It is interesting that these images could also provide a further image for printing and stitching in themselves.


Some of the most exciting areas (from experiments on nearly 20 surfaces) are shown below. Click on the image to enlarge.




I have some problems with the climate in Calgary... my skin is suffering... one big issue is the way this effects my finger ends... such that I get splits developing.. A textile artist whose seams are coming apart.

I normally gravitate to stitching difficult fabrics that have been altered by heating, often plastics that have hardened in the process. This is extremely painful with spltting finger! But..
I find that the most appealing and original surfaces I have produced using the digital grounds are lovely silk, satin and thin papers so now I am excited to try to work in these materials and lesson the pain.

Next week I will work with metals and plastics and further the resource library.

A touch of New Zealand

Above is a piece collaged from 3 photo images taken in New Zealand... I think the final piece gives a flavour of what we got up to there along the coast. Next week I will be printing onto surfaces and will try these new images - should be fun to get something going with stitch at last...

Maybe I can even get started today but I have a shocker headache which could be something to do with a weather system a Chinook over Calgary... on the other hand one of Aliya's fellow students posed the question "Does a Chinook cause migraine?" at the science fair and the scientific conclusion was "No" in which case I just have a headache end of story.

Below are windows taken from this one and the previous study after working more into it. There is a lot of texture that doesn't show on the small image (click to enlarge) I am interested in doing these as a series or triptych +1 (what is that called). So I think I will go and prepare a surface for this.

     &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Palm Garden View

Photoshop for design

Sorry for the watermark - I am just experimenting with copyright protection
I know many people out there are designing using the computer but I don't think I have ever given myself total permission to do this, feeling that it is somehow a travesty not to use paper and inks/crayons/paint... but I guess I have been heading this way for years and it is time I admitted it.

I remember the day a photographer friend of mine moved over to the digital dark side, and I guess the transition was as big a one for her as this is for me...

So I post here a couple of images I have worked on during the past week as I move along the road to printing on diverse materials (see previous posts)... It is going to be very exciting trying these images along with the shibori methods that I have been working on.

Small mushroom work

Just a bit of fun - on iron stained silk with shibori formed toadstool (doesn't come out well in photo but piece is very much 3D...) and machine and hand stitching with heat formed beads.

Fresh starts...

It still amazes me that a few colours can produce such a variety of shades and other colours when they blend... here an assortment of papers created by wet on wet and folding and tie-dye methods of colouring.

These I will use as base papers for stitch and ink.

New? use for tags from Safeway - a quick and easy way to keep those space dyed threads from tangling.

Discovered the work of Hannah Streefkerk - www.waanwaar.nl member of 62 Group and she put me on to www.artinnature.org.  I love the work of many artists from that site and want to do some site specific pieces here in Alberta. See below the pirate's shawl I made in Oman which has been hung on the palm, draped over fishing boats and has been lapped by the Arabian Sea to name a few sites it has enjoyed. Right now it is in a box in the work room... hohum.