Out of my Comfort Zone

 

End of the first week and 4.5 days of playing with paint and gel plates.   Some prints were successful, some were rubbish and some were so-so.  I expect I’ve learned something from it - I just need to ponder what!

If you have followed me for a while or have chatted to me about textiles, you will know I don’t do samples and I don’t just play.  So these few days have been a struggle.  I was playing and getting results but to what purpose?  When I’m making textile pieces, I know what I am aiming for and what it might look like, and then get on with it.  Sometimes it ends up looking different - but that doesn’t matter.

So on Friday I made the decision to stop making prints and to cut some of them up and make collages, They are 15cms square.

Earlier in the week I had made the horizontal collage (pictured at the top). I was going to make it into a concertina book but it looked better vertical.  I also added some marks with pen.

So what else have I done?  I took the train to Sydenham and visited a textile exhibition of work by Dijanne Cevaal.  I was the only one there for quite a while so was able to have an indepth conversation with her.  Some of her Bush Sentinelles.

Whilst I was in that part of Sydney I went to Reverse Garbage - a massive version of our UK Scrapstores.

So you may be asking why I entitled this blog post - Out of my Comfort Zone.  Well that’s because of the other things I’ve done!

I went food shopping in 2 different supermarkets.  I don’t do that at home - Roger does the shopping.

I’ve prepared my lunch everyday.  I don’t do that at home - Roger gets the lunch, and I do the dinner.

I’ve washed the dishes after meals.  You’ve guessed it!  Roger does the washing up. 

I washed my clothes.  I don’t do that at home - Roger puts the clothes in the washing machine.  I do the sheets and towels.

Next week I have to put the bins out -  Roger does that at home.

At this point you may well be asking what exactly do I do at home.   Not a lot obviously. Although I do sort out the technology problems that we both run up against.  Does that count?

On Friday night I was invited to the opening of a new exhibition at Hurstville Museum and Art Gallery.  I’ll tell you about it next Tuesday.

See you then

Bernice

In Residence

Well, here I am.  In residence in an amazing one bedroom apartment in Carss Park, Hurstville, NSW.   The studio is an amazing space.  This was before I unpacked!

And here’s the view

I unpacked and set up my work space.

I spent the afternoon playing with paint, stencils and the gel plate.  I also watched some of the videos from Jane Faase’s course ‘Next Level’ Laser Image Transfer - however my image transfers didn’t work, so back to the drawing board.  

I’m pleased with the results from trying out the stencils and using cling film to create a background.

I have spent so much time in the last 2-3 years on textiles and neglected the mixed media side of things.  It’s great to get back to being messy.  I’m looking forward to seeing how this develops.  I particularly want to experiment on taking what I’ve learned from Jane Faase and developing my own style.

I wrote this poem 12 months ago.  I’m glad to say that I had the opportunity last night to chat with this particular friend on a video call before I went to bed.  I had a much better night’s sleep than I predicted in the poem.  Mind you, we had a torrential rainstorm and I suspect the creatures that would have produced the rustlings were sensibly holed up somewhere.

In Residence 2026        

My dearest friend, how I appreciate
your prayers. In the night’s almost silence
they comfort me. Unknown rustlings
in the shrubs and trees surround me. 
I’m alone in this apartment, alone in the park.
Only the twinkling lights across the river mouth
assure me that human life continues.
Sleep comes slowly. Reading past midnight,
in the hope that sleep will overcome
the apprehension of living companionless, 
in an unfamiliar apartment,
in an unknown city, in a foreign land.
Daybreak. And messages from home.
Early morning risers jog past my balcony.
The café next door is open for breakfast.
The anxiety of the nighttime has passed.
The curtains opened to another day
of unexplored creativity.

And so onwards with my experimentation and play.  More creativity and hopefully more ideas.

See you on Saturday for my next update.

Thanks for joining me today

Bernice

Not necessarily packing light!

You may be wondering what I have brought with me to Australia for my Artist in Residence time which starts next week.    Of course you might not be wondering but I'm going to tell you anyway!

My plan, such as it is, is to actually read 2 books that I've bought and follow the instructions rather than just look at the pictures.  In addition I am going to do the Making Books and Gel Plate Printing online workshops I've signed up for, but not done anything with.  For example, Jane Faase courses on gel printing and Toni Harthill's workshop Unbound.

So of course, I needed to bring gel plates and brayers.  There were more gel plates and brayers originally but they were culled due to weight.

With gel plates I need paints.  I was going to buy the paints in Australia - another weight cutting exercise - but Hobbycraft had a half price sale so each of these tubes was £2.  On Amazon Australia they are around £8 each.

I will be buying a ream of printer paper here in Australia to use, but have brought a plastic bag full of a variety of tissue papers, and 3 Khadi concertina books.

Other media that made the cut were my Neocolor 1 wax oil crayons, 3 ArtGraf water soluble graphite blocks, a Koh-i-nor watercolour palette, Inktense Blocks - I have the pencil crayons but these are lighter, and my favourite Matte Medium.

 

Choosing a sketchbook has always been my difficulty.  I actually use them as workbooks rather than sketchbooks and over the past few weeks various combinations of sketchbooks have been laid out and then discarded.  I eventually settled on 2 8" square Pink Pigs and an A6 concertina.

 And finally various tools which eventually included paper scissors, a ruler, pens and pencils.

I will be blogging my progress, hopefully twice each week, during the 4 weeks of the Residency.

I applied for this in May 2024.  And now it's finally here.  It starts on Monday.

Watch this space.
Bernice 

Summer School

I have spent a lovely 4 days at Littleheath Barn taking part in Summer School.

During the first two days we printed our fabrics.  The theme overall was the colour of the seasons.  I chose Autumn, not because I want to do work about a season, but because I'm hoping to do some work on my Australian Connections.

These are my fabrics washed and ironed.  The brown pieces, bottom left, are actually more purple than brown.  Despite all my years of breakdown printing, my screens didn't breakdown and the fabrics look more stencilled - not a look I particularly like.

 

However I carried on and started making a book.  I tried out some Cotton Woven Fusible  Interfacing as the base layer.  It's okay but not really suitable if the fabrics are also lightweight eg. muslin, cotton lawn, organdie.

 

Here are some of the pages for the book. 

 

 

I also started making another book in a different colourway.

I didn't like the big orange bit in the top one and eventually covered it up.  I experimented with transferring images to the pages using a paper lamination technique with bondaweb.  The original pictures aren't very good so I'm pleased that it worked at all.

At the end of the 4th day we had a Show and Tell.

You can see how I covered up the bright orange next to the ship!

I've got lots of fabric left so who knows what will become of it!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice 

A finished series

Over the past year I have made a series of work about the negative labels we put on ourselves and that society puts on us.  I also looked at the positive labels and how we change our view of ourselves.

I started with a piece called I'm Fine -NOT!  This started with a sketch a friend had made of me during lockdown.  I had it made into a Thermofax screen and printed it onto the fabric.  I painted the grey dye over the fabric leaving the white masks.  I embroidered the words that you might want to say when someone asks you how you are and you answer 'I'm fine' when you really are not fine.

Three months later I did a workshop with Leah Higgins and dyed and printed the fabric with the theme of labels in mind.  The workshop was about building layers of print so these fabrics were busier then the fabrics I had been printing previously.

I didn't necessarily make all the next pieces in the order they make sense but here I'm going to show you them in the order they will be exhibited.

Piece 2 is called Negativity Chained.  There's a possibility this title may change!  

Following on from this is Cancelled.  On this piece I stamped the words and machine stitched a line through them to cross them out.  I embroidered the opposite word over the top to cancel out the negative with the positive.

Piece 4 is a transition piece between the negative and positive thinking and feeling.  It is a fabric hanging attached to a canvas.  It is the smallest of the pieces but shown large here.  The gold scar uses the repair idea of Kintsugi.

The next piece represents how we change our thinking from the negative to the positive. It's currently called Restored.

The final piece takes the original I'm fine - NOT! and becomes Confidence.  I put the original drawing into ChatGPT and asked it to remove the mask and give the drawing a nose, mouth and chin.  Then I asked ChatGPT to give the drawing a smiling mouth and then asked it to remove the shadows.  I had each of the three images made into a screen.  These were printed onto the undyed calico with yellow ochre fabric paint.  The words below the faces are positive words that give you confidence.

These 6 textile hangings will hopefully be hung in order at Forge Mill Needle Museum in 2027 when Becca and I have an exhibition entitled Expressions Too.

Thank you for joining me today
Bernice 

Bricks and Water

Next let's look at the pieces I've made for the Stitch in the Middle exhibition in Ledbury in October.  The title of the exhibition is Bricks and Water, with the emphasis being on industrial.  The exhibition will also be at Forge Mill in 2027.

If you're a regular here you know that I am a big fan of the canals built across the West Midlands and the redbrick industrial buildings.

I went on a workshop at Littleheath Barn called Abstract Landscape.  I took with me left over fabric from my previous canal pieces and some odds and ends from my stash.  I wanted my landscape to reflect the canals.  It's called Along Industrial Canals.

It has wavy horizontal machine stitched lines across it and some hand stitching which yo uhave to get quite close up to see.

I made a hanging book for the second piece based on photos I had taken at Forge Mill when I was on a course there.  I transferred my photos onto the fabric with bondaweb.

And lastly I'm sending the piece 1771 which I blogged about last August. This is another piece you have to get quite close to in order to see the hand stitched outlines of cogs.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice

Fragments

Today I'd like to show you the pieces I have made for the Midlands Textile Forum exhibition in September.  You will have two opportunities to see the exhibition.

It is on at The Artery in Worcester from 8th - 12th September.  It is then moving to Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery from 26th September to 7th November.

The theme for this exhibition is Fragments.

This piece was supposed to be stretched around the canvas but ended up as a hanging attached to the canvas instead.  It's made with fragments of fabric leftover from previous projects. 

 

The next piece you have seen before.  You can read the story here: Echoes of Memory.

And my final fragments piece is called My Imperfect Messy Life and is really difficult to photograph. It is also made with leftover bits of fabric from other projects.  I used Solufleece - a water soluble fabric - to attach all the pieces and then machined over the whole thing to attach the pieces together.

This was it hanging on the line to dry after washing out the Solufleece.

 And this is it finished with something behind it!

 I do hope you get an opportunity to see the exhibition.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice 

 

1st August

I'm back!

After a longer hiatus than I had planned.  I have missed sharing my textile work on here.  I have shared photos on Instagram but it's not the same.

As I mentioned in my last post, way back in the mists of time, my focus this year has been to make work for two exhibitions whilst I'm away in Australia. I've also needed to schedule blog posts for the church website through September and October.  I've also been making pieces for the exhibition Becca and I have at Forge Mill in 2027.

And of course, finishing my entry into the 3D category at Festival of Quilts.  

I ended up making 11 little fabric books to fit the shelf.  Five of the books have mini collages in them, using fabrics of a similar colour to the cover of the book.  And four have variations of a particular stitch - chain, feather and fly, herringbone, and buttonhole stitch.  One has random other stitches and the last one has 7 synonyms for captivity and 7 synonyms for freedom.

 I tried to make the covers relevant to the contents.

 And here it is on display at the Festival of Quilts:

The judging was on Wednesday and I wasn't awarded one of the prizes.  However yesterday someone congratulated me on being shortlisted.  So I had to go back and take a look.  And found the sticker I had overlooked before.

 As you might imagine, I'm rather chuffed.

Thanks for being here today,
Bernice  

A Creative 2026

It's happening! THIS YEAR!

Yes, after 19 months since I made my application, instead of saying 'the year after next', and then 'next year', I can finally say it's THIS YEAR.  Only 9 months until I'm the Artist in Residence at Hurstville Museum & Art Gallery in New South Wales.

Hurstville Museum & Art Gallery

In my last post I reviewed 2025.  In this post I'm looking forward to this year and what's already in store.

I belong to Midlands Textile Forum and to a contemporary quilt group called Stitch In the Middle.  Both groups have exhibitions this year.  Fortunately the first MTF exhibition is the same work as that exhibited at Nottingham last September.  However I do need to make new work for the MTF 'Fragments' exhibition in Worcester in September this year.  I also need to make new work for SITM's October exhibition in Ledbury called 'Bricks and Water'.  All this new work will need to be finished by the middle of August, before I leave for Australia.

In addition I am still inspired to make pieces in my series 'Captivity, Freedom and Identity' which will be exhibited in 2027.  At least the deadline for the work isn't this year!

I recently found Ricky Tims' Convergence Quilts and that had given me ideas for a hanging.  

I'm hoping to enter a 3D piece into the competition at Festival of Quilts this year.  It's a Chained Library.  So far I've almost finished the box.  I'm planning to make several fabric books to go in it.

I probably need to write down all my ideas - just to get them out of my head!  There are so many ideas buzzing and rather too many pieces that I've started and really need to finish.

Keep coming back to my blog to find out how I'm getting on.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice  

2025: A Creative Year

It's been a while.  So how about a look back at this year.

There are times when I wonder if I've achieved anything.  Which is a bit daft because I know I have but then the whispers come (or even the shouts) that say it's not been enough.  Do you get that feeling?

So here goes.  In no particular order:

I'm Fine - NOT!

Tears of Oppression  Tears of Transition  Tears of Joy

Made a few years ago but finished this year

Promised Land

Negative Labels

Positive Words

1771

Distant Echoes: Fragments of Memory

 

I've exhibited with Becca at Forge Mill.  I've exhibited with Midlands Textile Forum in Loughborough and Nottingham.  I demonstrated my fabric books in the Creative Textiles Studio  at Festival of Quilts.

I've taught workshops in Solihull, Birmingham and Shropshire.  I've given three talks including one on zoom.

I've continued to take part in a poetry zoom workshop.  And continued to host a ladies photography group, a textile group  and a writers' group - all monthly on zoom.

So all in all it's been a full-on creative year and there's more to come in 2026.

Thanks for joing me here during this year.
Bernice