Traverse & Uttoxeter

This coming weekend Traverse will be exhibiting at the British Quilt & Stitch Village at the racecourse in Uttoxeter.

This will be the big reveal of our exhibition: Revealed.  Although to be honest most of my work is the antonym of revealed - Hidden.

My Mother Said
This bodice began with writing on paper about my mother not allowing me to show even a hint of my underwear - not even a bra strap - when I was in my teens.   I built up the layers of paper and fabrics on top of the writing and then stitched it to a felt backing.

This piece is called Hidden Support.  It is about my broken fingers.  The base of the piece is made from the slings I was given.  I printed most of the photos I had taken about my hand and my teeth onto cotton poplin which was then bondawebbed to the slings.  The top layer is made from machining a grid onto the hospital appointment letters and then washing away some of the paper.  The tags are all the appointments I had between June 8th and December 31st with the consultant, the dentist and various hand therapists.  The ends are made from pencils and eraser toppers.

It's over 2 metre long so here are some clearer photos.

My third piece is from the felting course I went on.  You may remember I cut up the sample from the first day of the workshop and here it is reassembled as Piece by Piece 1.  The techniques used reveal what is hidden beneath.

My 4th piece is Piece by Piece 2.  You can find out about the two felt pieces in my Traverse blog post: If in doubt, cut it up!  It similarly reveals what is hidden beneath.

And finally my Master Practitioner piece: Hidden Meaning.  This was originally going to hang on the wall closed up so that people could unfold it to reveal the contents.  However I've now decided it will sit on a table so people can touch the different textures.

Thank you for joining me today.  I hope to see you at the Uttoxeter Show.  I'll be there on Saturday & Sunday.

Bernice

G is for Goals

In our Living Your Word of the Year group we are using a fortnightly (bi-weekly) A-Z challenge throughout the year to help us focus on our word and live it out.

Because of the way I have made my journal it's a case of going with the flow of what background the pages have when I turn to them.  Here are the pages for G.

My word for the year is Commitment, but no matter how committed you are or how focused you are, unless you lay out your goals you won't actually get anywhere.

I looked back to my page on Commitment to see what I had wanted to see more of in 2019.

• Read the Bible more frequently
• Pray more regularly
• Trust God more
• Move every day (walk, exercise etc)
• Create everyday
• Finish things

All of the above are great but they are fairly vague.  And that's the point of goals - they work better if they are SMART. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.  I decided I would set SMART goals for two of the above.  I found a suitable Bible verse and printed it out along with the goals.  I tried various placements on the page until I was happy to glue them down.

I printed the photo out again that I used in my vision board.  I really don't like putting people in my artwork but I need to keep the photo of me when I was slimmer to motivate me that it can be done.  I love Valerie's idea of using some of my washi tape stash so I made arrows with them.  Arrows represent direction.  Then I drew the dashed line to represent walking.

I drew the dashed lines around the typed words.

The pages together.

I'll let you know how I get on with achieving these goals.  I shall start working on them next week.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.

Journal Cover

You may remember that I put together a journal for Word of the Year but didn't put a cover on it.

Valerie is doing a series on her blog called Washi Tape Adventures which gives ideas for using all that lovely washi tape you have squirrelled away.   I have such a lot of washi tape so I thought I would use it to decorate the cover of my journal.   First I glued wallpaper lining paper onto my journal using Golden Soft Gel Medium.

I put it under a weight while the glue dried and then trimmed the edges.  I put an extra wide tape down the spine.

I put stripes of washi tape across the front.  I was going to do it with small bits of washi tape - so that there might be 2 or 3 patterns on one line but decided it was too complicated!

I trimmed the edges and put vertical strips.  I folded over the tape on the outside edge.

And then I did the back.  I deliberately didn't match it to the front.

And here it is.  If the tape starts peeling a bit - and it might with handling - I shall Gel Medium over it.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.