Grids. And more grids!

In September I told you about the Maps & More workshops at Littleheath Barn.   The next session was in October after I returned from Australia.  I realised I hadn't written about that.

We did the grid exercise where you put masking tape horizontally and vertically onto fabric and then print in various ways over the grids.  I had found some narrow tape on Amazon which was a hideous green.  However it did the job.

When the green masking tape was taken off it was thrown away.

The finished cloth is rather more orange than the photo shows which doesn't really match my Venice colour palette.  So as homework I had another go.  This time using only my Venice related stamps, stencils and Thermofax screens.  I used some of the narrow green tape because it's really easy to make curves with.

I did two versions

This time I put the masking tape into my sketchbook.

Here's another page from the sketchbook

Our next session is in December so I'm afraid you'll have to wait to see what I do with these.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

A Grid Book

I will be The Festival of Quilts at the NEC next month in the Creative Textile Studio showing the various books that I have made.  In preparing for the Show I discovered I have not shown in full how I made two of the books.

This is a calico book made when I was thinking about Grids.  If you go back to that post you can see how I built up the layers until I ended with this piece of painted calico.

I tore the fabric up into strips and reassembled them putting the torn edges onto the right side of the fabric.  Then I folded it like the diagram below and cut where the red lines indicate.

I  bonded the pages together and then machined it with orange thread for contrast.  I also added some cotton fabric I had printed using my inkjet printer.

Closed, the book is 15x13cms.

It's very different from the books I usually make.

Thanks for stopping by today
Bernice

Assembled

I've finished the stitching. Running stitch paths and X marks the spot.

The other pages are here.

This is the cover.  The book is about maps and grids so I sewed a piece of plastic garden trellis onto the fabric.

I sewed round each of the pages on the sewing machine.  I stitched through all the pages to make the book.

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

Yet more grids!

More grids! This time I played on paper.  And I had a friend come to play!

I tried to be less rigid about the spaces.

And used other shapes with the grids

The first layer was blue (see above).  Then white which you can hardly see and then orange.

After the masking tape was removed.

And the masking tape put together.

 

My friend used blue, white and yellow.

The masking tape.

I think I'm going to leave making these grids for a bit and try something else.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Another grid of grids!

This week I took part in another zoom session of Notice What You Notice.  I talked to Christine about the grid of grids I made last week and she suggested trying it on translucent fabric.  It's really difficult to photograph!

Anyhow! I put an old map on the table, stretched a piece of polyester organza over it, and taped it up with masking tape.

As with the one last week I started with indigo acrylic paint.

Added tape and printed with white acrylic.

Added more tape and printed with Payne's Grey.

I peeled the tape off carefully.

It had occurred to me that the fabric might stick to the map due to the plasticity of the paint.  However it peeled off easily.  However very little of the paint went through to the map.

Here's the painted fabric.

I put the masking tape onto a large sheet of paper and cut it into 7cm strips.  I shall probably make them into a zigzag book.  What else!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice