The rest of the squares

There were 46 of the 10cm squares I mentioned in my Exploding Books post.  I used 26 of them in the exploding books.

There were 10 that were a similar colour scheme so I put them into a Khadi paper zigzag book.

The rest were put in my workbook but not necessarily in the right order!

I also had some 12 cm squares cut from the fabric we put a masking tape grid on.  I used some of these as the back of a zigzag book.

The front was made from strips of fabric I had made over the last few sessions including the batik ones.

I made a few other small books during the session but I'll save those for another day.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Extex 5 Session 4

At the beginning of each session we have a show and tell of what we have done for homework.  There is such a variety of things to see as people go off in different directions.

I had sewn three of my six 'panels' and will continue with the other three during the next few weeks.

Session 4: Still Life
We had each been asked to bring three items from home for Kim to set up a Still Life for us to draw and to paint.

Kim's photo

I did these on the Saturday.

On Sunday we had to choose one of them to tear up so I used the picture above and then reassembled it and started to stitch.

Kim wasn't very impressed with the dark stitching up the right hand side and when I showed it to Roger he wasn't either.  I decided to remove it.

One of my issues with work I do is that I often stop too soon.  Sometimes it's because I don't know what to do next and sometimes because I just get fed up and go on to the next thing!  Kim encouraged me to keep stitching and this how it looks now.   I'm looking forward to showing it to Kim today to see if it's done or whether there's more to do.

In addition I sorted out some more of my workbook.   I had taken photos of the 'panels' and had printed them out in case I wanted to work out where to stitch on them.  I tore them up and collaged them onto a page in my workbook.

I cut rectangles from another page so that parts of the collage peek through.

I printed out the photos of the Still Life and put them into my workbook.

I put together some of the torn paper left over from the large picture and put that in the book with a photo of the original.

And photos of the work in progress.

I'm looking forward to this weekend which is about knitting, felting, needle-felting and weaving.

Thansk for stopping by.
Bernice

Plucking up courage or an ExTex update

I told you in my last post about ExTex 5 about the long print I made.  I used a long piece of brown packaging paper, acrylic paints, my own stamps and some dye.

Kim had suggested I ironed some lightweight interfacing on the back and cut it into 6 pieces.   It took me a while to pluck up the courage to even iron the interfacing on.  But I did.

And then I cut it into six pieces.  This makes them a peculiar size.  Just something else to deal with.

Then I was a bit stuck with no idea what to do next.  I can sort of see the big picture of the end result but not quite how to get there.  So I decided to take each photo and manipulate the image.  Here's just one of the set of images on an A4 sheet of paper.

I did something similar with each original photo.  Then I got together some paper torn out of a book of sea poems, some fabrics previously painted in similar colours to those in the photos above, a marine chart and two stamps I previously made of seabirds.  Before I started auditioning bits for small collages on top of the backgrounds, I cut the original pages down a bit.

Still lots more work to do.  Sorting out the collages and how to fix them.  Then stitching!  Probably hand stitching but maybe I'll pluck up more courage and use the sewing machine as well.

I am currently thinking these pages will become a zigzag book but who knows

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

ExTex 5 update

Last weekend was our third session together on the Experimental Textiles course.

Between sessions I had done some Session 2 homework.  I experimented with the stamps I had made on my gelli plate.  They didn't really work out how I pictured them but they are still usable.

Then I layered the papers up and used the sewing machine to make faux chenille. The first piece was stitched in straight lines and then cut.

For the second piece I used an enlarged version of the stamp I had made.

I made myself a new pair of stamps and randomly stamped on a piece of lining paper with acrylic paint and then dyed the background.

Session 3
The weekend started with us talking about the homework we had all done and then there were short presentations about artists we liked and their use of colour.  My chosen artist was JMW Turner.  I liked that he experimented with colours and tried to use the same colours in watercolours as well as oils.   This article from the Tate was really useful for my research.

In the afternoon we looked at colour theory and mixed our own  colours onto a chart.

On Sunday we were able to have individual 'tutorials' with Kim if we wished and to spend the day playing with printing, dyeing and stitch.

I printed with the stamp I made that looks like yacht masts and sails.  I used a long piece of brown packaging paper and a limited colour palette.  I dyed the paper with some red and yellow procion dye.

It's 45 cms long and I am rather proud of it.  I have had it printed full size at Staples so that I still have the original design as I am going to chop the original into pieces in order to sew into them.

I also printed on some hymn book pages and maps.

printed on deli paper

printed on hymn book paper

printed on map paper

Since the weekend I have done some more colour theory in my workbook.

I've torn up bits of my printed papers and started sewing into them - which is what I should have done for last session's homework rather than the faux chenille.

And collaged some torn up hymn book page onto the deli paper print and begun stitching.

It will be interesting to see how these finish up.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice