Sketchbook - day 30's stitching

It turned out to be a lovely day yesterday after all the rain we've been having, so I thought I'd take my sketchbook outside and finish the stitching / painting excercise out there.  Sat down and realised the table was filthy so decided I'd just clean that before I got started.  Then...with the bucket of hot soapy water there just thought I'd wipe over the large pots....and sweep up the decking....oh and the pool needed skimming of leaves....
An hour and a half later I finally got the paints out.......but I like to think it benefitted from the tidy surroundings!

Picked some of the large palms in our garden for the subject of this.

I used crochet perle cotton to sew over the leaves in buttonhole stitch.  I didn't appreciate how dark these stitches would become once they'dd sucked up the ink, so not a very accurate painting, but I loved the wet print achieved on the facing page.

And this was the result on the following pages - back of stitches on the left and their print on the right.

Sketchbook - monoprinting in perspective!

Initial sketches of my sewing chair and reels, ink bottles-

Then went over the lines on the right page above, over a printing ink plate under the page to give the following couple of images:

The second one used the remains of the ink left on the plate after the first was printed, and I think gives a clearer image of the cylinder shapes.  I used fabric printing ink as it was at hand and the right consistency.

 I printed a couple the same in turquoise and in green with scraps of handmade paper as resists, then swopped over the paper scraps in the prints.  The one above shows the turq monoprint (ink a bit thick) with the green printed scrap in place.

Here the bottle was printed in green then the glasses were overprinted in yellow and red.  The imprint is shown on the right. 

This got quite addictive - must try some on other paper textures after seeing Sian's prints on Tissutex.

Resolved sample

For chapter 13 and the required resolved sample I chose one of the designs in chapter 12 that I'd created using a section of an original photograph.

13.1

In order to integrate the photo a little more, I drew into the design, particularly the photo strip, with white and blue crayons to attempt to link the strips.

The original photo I printed out onto thin canvas, the kind used to print banners, so that I could embroider into it without hoop support.  The 'strips' of colour were made by embellishing wool tops into the canvas from the back.  I didn't want to give the appearance of solid felt but I did want to cover all the photo background and create soft edges to the strips.  The canvas was also selected because it withstands the needlefelting well without distortion.

13.2

At this point I added in a piece of his ear into the design to give a bit of balance to the sample.

To cut a long process short, here is the finished sample with a couple of closeups. 

13.3

The sample is sewn mostly using underside couching / cabling with cotton perle 5 and 8 in the bobbin, but I've also used whipstitching for finer lines and shading areas.

13.4

 I used copper metallic thread to give an indication of the original underlying layer of orange paint in the blue background of the paper design, through specks of whipstitch.

13.5

The sample is approximately A5 size taking around 5 hours to compete.

chapter 10 - translation of starch and shisha designs

Back for the moment to Chapter 10 where I took a few of the designs created from chapts 5 and 6 and translated them into embroideries principally using the stitches featured in this module eg. couching, metallic threads.
I looked at 3 starch paste designs and 2 designs from the shisha chapters.  The design is first followed by the stitching.

10.1a



10.1b

 The background was made using a mixture of bias cut rouleaux and strips of metallic shears, couched down.  Clusters of whipstitch were scattered about using green in the bobbin.  Cords made on the machine were couched down last.



10.2a



10.2b



10.2c

A woven pattern was made using dyed silk dupion strips edged with couched cords as the background.  Gold and copper threads were stitched on top in loose whip stitch.

10.3a

10.3b

10.3c

Background is dyed homespun with cablestitched circles.  Green wool roving needlefelted through from the back to make the circle patterns less distinct.  The white 'needlefelt' effect came from the stiff interfacing backing embellished through in the process.  Spirals of copper mesh were couched down with free motion whip stitch using metallic thread in the bobbin.

10.4a

10.4b

10.4c

Background was black boiled wool for texture.  Twisted dyed perle cords were couched down using black thread, densely in places to break up the 'lines'.  Scattered whipstitch in black with yellow in bobbin.  Copper mesh couched down, black thread.

10.5a

10.5b

Stitched on a background of black wool again, the coiled shapes were cable stitched from the back using different thicknesses of white, yellow perle and copper metallic threads.

Sketchbook - days 21,22

I did some testing of my layers for scrafitto work as Sian suggested:

This page below uses Caran d'Ache Neopastels on the bottom layer and oil pastels on top.  I used various lino cutting tools to scratch.  The lines here weren't too clear as the paper is quite textured and a solid colour from these oil pastels on top is harder to produce.

I was surprised to find that my oil pastels scraped off successfully from Koh-i-noor paints so my next uses bright Koh-i-noor paints on the bottom layer with dark oil pastels on top. Once the page was wet and painted, the oil pastels seemed to cover the surface more easily.  I used a mini-screwdriver to remove the pastel as I needed a wider tool.

Let's face it again!

Sorry, but "more faces" just seemed a bit of a boring title for the remaining part of chapter 12.

12.15

After the silhouettes, I looked at sections of the face, particularly my husband's face and ended up with a kind of animated drawing of his features.  A bad version of Homer emerged, thanfully husband never goes near my blogs.

Using a couple different decorated papers I cut out the sections and played around with them in various designs, omitting a few and duplicating a few others.





12.16



12.17



12.18



12.19


I think I prefer the 3D look.

I did some drawing exercises based loosely on his face using wax candle, oil pastels and watercolour inks.  Like other students before me this got quite addictive - these are just a sample:

12.20



12.21



12.22




12.23



12.24



These were torn vertically, some horizontally, to divide up their facial features then rearranged to develop a series of designs.



12.25

12.26

12.27

12.28

12.29

I then thought it might be fun to replace some of the features with 'real' photographed features of his.

12.30

12.31

12.32

12.33

I think perhaps further integration of the photo elements needs to happen with additional lines on top and if I take any of these into a resolved sample I would do that.

Sketchbook - day 19 ish!

The weather has started to warm up this week so I managed to get outside and arrange some frames.  The next door dog thought I was definitely a bit strange and kept sniffing them, so I quickly took photos and moved the frame on......for fear of them getting 'christened' if you get my drift!

It got up to 26 degrees today - hottest August day in 5 years or something - not bad for Sydney still in winter.

Anyway the day was somewhat more successful than my pages turned out to be.

My knife was too sharp and I kept slashing the pages so I changed on to a thickish sewing needle to scratch into the page.  This didn't prove to burr the paper enough and so had to overlay oil pastels to make the veg leaves apparent.

The next one worked a llittle better but the scratchings are still not apparent in the photo.  I found I could only make them dark instead of greener than the background -

- then turned over and found that the imprint (left below) of the next page when wet allowed stronger green lines to show through - a serendipidous result.

The lines on the page on the right are again not very prominent.

 I think I'll have more luck with the scrafitto at the weekend when I can show paler lines from the bottom layer coming through.

Happy scratching guys!