Exploding or Explosion Books

I have been intending to make this video for months and finally this week I got round to doing it.  I had promised my grandson that I would make the video for him.

I hadn't realised when I started the recording that the zoom lens jumped forward a little bit so the video was rather close up. As a consequence some of the visuals were up in the air and off camera.   I have left some of the close up footage and re-recorded the bits that had disappeared.   There's a bit of a funny jump in the middle!

There are also subtitles which are worth putting on even if you think you don't need them, as sometimes the written explanation is better than my actual words!

I forgot to say in the video that if you make a book with more than three squares, every time you add a square the peak or valley needs to alternate.  In the video the squares are peak, valley, peak - so the next one would be valley.

I hope you will give these books a try.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Works in Progress

How many pieces of work do you have on the go?

I decided I would try to finish some of mine before I started on anything new.  Of course that only lasted until I did Lisa Walton's Fantastic Fusion workshop recently.

However I have finished some.  I made this wall hanging at Leah Higgin's workshop Print, Stitch, Go in November 2019.  It just needed the binding around the edges .

Last week I cut it up and made it into a cover for a large sketchbook.

Last September I started working on Landscapes with Liske at Littleheath Barn.  I started a couple of pieces but stopped working on them at the end of February.  In fact I think the first piece started at a lutradur workshop in 2016, with additions in 2020!

The sewing is finished.  It needs a card mount and a frame.  It looks large here but it's actually only 19x16 centimetres.

The sewing is finished on this one and just needs a press and a piece of wood - preferably driftwood - at the top as the hanger.  This piece is 16x48 centimetres.

The next piece I tackled was this one.  When I stopped working on it, it looked like this.

I had started handstitching it, but when I came back to it I realised the machine stitching I had done around the squares was very poor.  Plus it didn't speak to me at all.

Regular readers will know what I did next!

Yes!  I took it all apart and cut it up.

I wondered whether I could take some of what I learned on Fantastic Fusion and make something with these pieces.  I put Mistyfuse on the back of all the pieces.

I started laying out the pieces and trying them out.  Moving them to different places to see if that worked.

Eventually I decided I needed to fuse them to a separate piece of fabric that was more or less the right size.

I squared the collage up and continued to add bits.

It eventually looked like this.

Now all I have to do is decided how to stitch it.  I'm going to use the machine and hand stitching.  I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Further pages in my workbook

I last shared with you the pages of workbook that related to containers and to patterns using a gondola prow shape.

I continued with this pattern, printing out the patterns I had already composed on the computer.  I cut these up and made various paper samples.  The first one is weaving the paper.

Then I tried cutting up several photos in the same way and then mixing up the pieces.

I made collages with torn strips of the photos.

The next task was to find 4 ways to transfer designs to fabric using two‘low tech’ methods and two 'high tech methods'.

For the high tech methods I first chose to print the patterns onto cotton fabric through my inkjet printer.

For the second method I had a thermofax screen made of the gondola prow design and printed randomly with it using acrylic paint.

The first low tech method I used was to make a lino print.  I cut a negative and positive 'tile' in the lino.

The second method was to use compressed sponge to make a 'stamp' of the shape.

I started working on samples for the next task.  I had been on a Leah Higgins' workshop and used breakdown printing in my Venetian colours.  I cut up some of the fabric to make the samples and used the set patterns on my machine to add texture.

I also tried out paper lamination.  I did a workshop with Christine Chester several years ago but have never done anything with it.

I moved onto painting Lutradur and distressing it with the heat gun.

I hand stitched and/or machine stitched on the samples and put them all into a hand-made book.   I'll show you the results in my next post.

Thank you for joining me today.
Bernice