Maps & More update

This year's Textile Explorations at Littleheath Barn Studio has come to an end.  Over the past 9 months I have shared various aspects of Maps & More.  Today I have put most of it together.

Firstly, there's the cover to my sketchbook.

8" square sketchbook

Sketchbook cover using one of the samples I made on the back

Some pages from my sketchbook

Colour mixing dyes

I've included photos of my finished pieces.

And here they are so you can see them

 

The square books aren't finished.  The peach one needs some stitches. The blue one will have small fabric collages and some stitches.

I am going to leave the rectangular book as it is and use it as a sample for a workshop I'm teaching next month.

Thanks for being here today.
Bernice

FOQ Preview

It's almost time for the Festival of Quilts 2023.  It starts on Thursday but there's still time to get tickets.

In the Creative Textiles Studio, I will be showing and talking about my fabric books on the afternoons of Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.  I'm working at the Sales Table on Friday morning.

If you are a regular reader you will already know about my fabric books.  Here's a taster of what I will be showing.  Watch on YouTube if you need subtitles.

If you do come to the show do please introduce yourself.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Choices! Choices!

Having completed the first silk noil book I'm on to the next one or three!

I love to make books in fabric or paper but as I am demonstrating fabric books at the Festival of Quilts in August I am concentrating on fabric ones for a while.  I'm also trying to use up various bits of my stash rather than buying or making new fabrics.

While I was looking for bits and pieces for the now finished book, I found lots of cream and white bits.  I also had a piece of undyed silk noil left which I bonded to a piece of calico.  I cut it  up to make a concertina book.

 

 Here are some of the bits I found.

And also some neutrals.  I was just going to use cream on cream but I think I shall put some of the neutrals on as well for contrast.

One of my problems is that I start books - for example tearing up the fabric - but don't write down what my plans are.  Consequently I often have fabrics ready to work on but without the thinking to go with it.

This fabric was dyed in 2019.  I was ice dyeing and the silk noil didn't turn out the way I had hoped.  It's only taken nearly 4 years to get round to using it!  The book will be canal themed but I'm still contemplating how to 'decorate' the pages.

Thirdly I have this silk noil which I dyed with robin's egg blue and coral sand.  The initial dyeing was a disaster (darling) and the photos back in 2020 don't really show the colours very well.

Recently I used thermofax screens to add the grey in the hopes of knocking back the coral sand.  I tore the fabric into 6 inch squares as a change from all the rectangles I've been working with.  I wish now I had made them 5 inches but there you are. 

I have enough squares to make two books or maybe a hanging and a book.  Who knows?  I can't remember what I was thinking when I tore the fabric into squares.

And now the choice has to be made!  Which of the three books shall I continue with first?

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

A Fabric Collaged Book

Continuing with my map themed fabrics, a while ago I started making a fabric book.    I fused some fabrics I wasn't going to use onto the backs of all the pages.  I laid them out on the table.

I started placing collages on the pages.  Fortunately I could leave them all out on the table so I could walk away and keep coming back to them.  This makes the composition much easier.

It also means that some of the collages may change over the time.

All the collages are done now and I used a glue stick to temporarily attach the layers to each other and to the page.

They are all ready to hand stitch.  I may well machine stitch them as well.

I am also contemplating using the What3words little paper book I made as the inspiration for what I do with this fabric book I put together from one piece of printed fabric.

Watch this space!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Modus Operandi

Can you tell I've been reading (rather too much) detective fiction lately?

How do you approach your work?  What is your MO?  Do you start one piece of work and not start another until you've finished it?  Or do you work in a series?  Or work on several unrelated pieces at the same time?

How do you store your WIPs - works in progress?

I've been storing my latest projects in a crate!

It was hard to tell what there was so I decided to lay it all out on the table.

All of these items are unfinished.  In fact some of them are hardly started.   This is several odd pieces of fabric collaged together and stitched into using only running stitch.

These books are possibly finished but you can never tell!

This is a book made from one piece of fabric and a cover.  I described the making of it in my Summer School post.

This is a hanging book or a hanging or a book!  Who knows!

A fabric collage

Another collage made from random strips left over from making the collage above.

This was an experiment with a piece of garden plastic grid.  Not sure at all where this is going.

And finally lots of little fabric collages.

I laid them out on the table a couple of weeks ago and since then I have finished this.

I've shown you the back as well so you can see all the stitching more clearly.

I think at the moment I'm a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work I've set myself.  Plus I signed up for an online course which is distracting me from this body of work.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

4 days this summer

During the past few weeks I have been watching lots of sport on the television.  The Commonwealth Games and then the European Championships!  I've also read lots of books on my Kindle and played Solitaire - especially when it was too hot to do anything else.

But there's been a flurry of activity over the past few days, starting with my birthday last Wednesday.  Actually when I think about it I spent the day doing much of what I've described above - watching sport, playing Solitaire and reading.  However the flurry started with going out to dinner to celebrate.  I had the most enormous fish platter at a local Portuguese restaurant.

 

After eating all that lot, it was just as well that the next 4 days included a lot of walking.  I had volunteered to help at the Festival of Quilts at the NEC.

I stewarded in the Celebrating the Creative Textiles Studio on Thursday morning and Friday morning.  On Thursday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons I demonstrated how to make stitched books.

Photo by Lesley J Darnell

On Saturday and Sunday I went to the Show an hour or so before my demo time so I could walk round the show.

I'm not a fan of traditional patchwork quilts but I do like some of the quilts in the modern, contemporary and art categories.  I used to take lots of photos of the work that appealed to me but this year only 3 pieces stood out to me.

Modern: Streets where we lived by Megan Arnold

Contemporary: Fracture lines by Kathy Collins

Art: Desolation by Anna Woodhead

 

Now I need to get back to the ideas that are germinating from the four days at Summer School.

 

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Summer School continued

In my last post I showed the fabrics I had printed.  Here's what they looked liked together.

Photo by Liske Johnson

I had a Thermofax screen made of the poem I wrote and using fabric paint printed onto some of the fabrics.  Then I started tearing them up and collaging them.  This is now tacked ready to sew, probably on the sewing machine.

These were random pieces left over which looked good together.  They are lightly bonded to a piece of calico.  I haven't decided what to do with this.

I tore up the fabrics into 6x4" pieces and put them together to make a hanging book.  This can either hang on the wall or fold up.  It's double sided.  This is one side.

And this is the other.  It's all tacked together ready to stitch.

Then with a large piece of fabric I made a book.  I ironed bondaweb on the back of the fabric and then folded it in 4 one way and 4 the other.  I cut it like this

Cut along the red lines

I removed the backing paper carefully and ironed the pages together.

I made a cover with one of the other fabrics

With some of the leftovers I started making small collages.  Some of these will probably go on the pages of the hanging book.

I still have lots of the printed fabrics left, but it might be better to finish all these before I start something else.  Or not!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice