Signs and Signposts

This month's photography theme was Signs and Signposts.  I haven't been anywhere this month apart from my back treatment appointments so I trawled through the archives.

Here are just a few of the photos I found:

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Saturday Story

Today I thought I would look at the letter M.  Are there particular stories in your life concerning words beginning with M?  We all have memories - good memories, bad memories!

All the travel posts on this blog are memories.  Here's a photo of Mount Hood from 2017

Obviously there are real mountains, but there are also metaphorical mountains in our lives.  There's the saying: Don't make a mountain out of molehill.

It seems to me that we can easily make mountains.  We let our thoughts run riot and exaggerate nothing into something.  We can take someone's comments about our work and make it into a rejection of us. Not liking our work is not the same as not liking us as a person.

Over the years I have chase after techniques in the hope of finding my voice - my style.  I've taken part in workshops online and in person.  Good ones, poor ones and great ones!  Basically in search of me in my work.  It's good to know techniques, but it's even better to actually make work.   It's good to find out what is a good fit for me.  I listened to this great podcast this week: Art Juice - Is Your Personality in Your Art

One of the most helpful things I have found is mentoring.   Christine Chester is an excellent mentor.  Here are the memories of the mentoring session.

Currently I am over half way through a year of faith based creative expression mentoring with Matt Tommey.  This has been an excellent way to consolidate the things I have learned over the years, combining my faith with creative practice.

Matt has an excellent podcast series plus a blog.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Another new piece

You may remember this post: Starting a new textile piece.  It didn't get any further than here:

Firstly because I think I was trying to hard to make it like the Paul Klee painting and secondly, I got sidetracked into messing about with the sketchbook.

Last year I bought some fabric from Littleheath Barn Studio and then last month Liske advertised some more which I also bought.

My mind was buzzing with what I could do with it so I put the paints and sketchbook away and starting cutting up fabric.

I stitched the strips back together.

 

 

As you know, I love cutting up my work, so having stitched it all together, I promptly started cutting it up and inserting narrow strips of a contrasting colour.

I tried out the remaining fabric in different positions

Then sewed it together.

And joined the whole thing together.

Only then it didn't look right.  I tried the contrast strip in various places before cutting the piece up again.

It still looked a bit odd and I needed to decide how to finish it.   I printed out the above photo and cut out the images and tried different versions of cutout.

I chose the last one and cut the actual fabric.  Now to decide whether to use a binding or a facing and whether I should quilt it.  I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice