Struggles

My darling girl is going through a difficult time at the moment, so needing lots of support and help with life while she is signed off work. This of course means that creative pursuits tend to take a back seat, though we do sit and stitch/crochet together in the evenings. We've spent the past week cleaning her flat, which she and her husband haven't really lived in for the past three years for reasons that would take far too long to explain. Her Dad has been living there however (again for reasons that …..), and so the place is reminiscent of student digs crossed with an ageing hippy bachelor pad. Much floor sweeping, several packs of anti bacterial wipes and liberal amounts of hot soapy water have helped bring the flat back to a habitable (by normal humans) state, along with an entire afternoon (and almost a whole can of oven cleaner) just to make the oven useable again. The plan is that, once she feels on a more even keel, she will move back into the flat and, hopefully, her Dad will learn a bit more domesticity. Her husband should be able to rejoin her in December, but at least she will be there to get things back to normal again for them before he arrives, and negotiate the domestic routines with her Dad who will remain there for the time being.

All this activity meant that I missed two sessions with Christine at Studio 11. However, I had forgotten I'd put my name down for a catch up session yesterday. As Jen is feeling a bit better, I toddled off to Eastbourne with a box of "stuff" in my boot to have my first session in the Poetry of Decay class that Christine is running this year. She has taught this several times before as a stand alone workshop over several days, and will be doing so again in Italy this October, but she is also teaching it as a one day a month class at Studio 11.

So, having gathered together mark making tools, tissue and other papers, and the aforementioned stuff, along with 100 6x4 pieces of weighty cartridge paper and six photos for inspiration, I spent the day yesterday working on 50 of the cards with:

white primer manipulated with mark making tools to add texture;

matte medium (similar to PVA glue) with various things scrumpled, crumpled and otherwise stuck onto the card;

distorting the card itself by folding, scrumpling and distressing or embossing in various different ways.

I came home with a stack of 50, 50 more to go.

The next stage is to add layers of colour with various media; walnut ink, rust powder, oil pastel, dyes, to evoke aspects of decay, using our photos as starting points. As with the Eszter course, I am rather outside my comfort zone, I've not done a great deal of mixed media work in the past, being rather a "cloth and thread purist", but I really enjoyed just messing about with sqidgy, scrumply, sploodgy stuff yesterday and am really looking forward to the next stage. Another student who is on the same course was also doing a catch up, but of day two, so I know what to expect - it looks like great fun.

And the photos I took for inspiration? I couldn't decide on six so there are twelve - here they are

Rusty bolts hold sea defences together

The wall in Hastings underground car park. Built by Sidney Little and completed in 1931 it was the worlds first large scale underground car park

 Rusting structures at the end of Eastbourne Pier

Lichen on wood

Patterns of rust on Hastings seafront

ancient decay in Istanbul

barnacles clinging to sea defences

more sea derived rust

some Lake District mushrooms

a Venetian door

and Bhutanese rooves

A real treat

For four days last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop led by Eszter Bornmisza, hosted by Studio 11 as part of Christine's programme of "re-treats". She always has inspiring textile artists, and I have been on several over the years. This one was called "Captured in Nets" and was a marvellous introduction to the techniques Eszter uses to craft her beautiful artworks. If you've not seen them, pop over to her website to have a look. If you have seen them in person you will understand how evocative they are; ethereal, yet firmly grounded in the townscapes that are her primary theme. Eszter was a generous, patient and supportive tutor and we learnt a great deal. In addition to nurturing and broadening my textile skills, the four days gave me an even deeper appreciation of her art, and of the time, skill and meticulous planning involved in each creation.

Our first day was an introduction to net making with soluble fabric, machine stitching into it to create a web that, once the fabric has been dissolved, will hold itself together. This is harder than it sounds as you have to make sure that wherever your stitching goes, it is tied in with what has been before, otherwise bits will fall apart. I found the first day challenging. In part this was because my Janome was misbehaving. Once I'd  popped home and returned with the Bernina; my preferred machine for embroidery (but heavy to move about), the rest of my time was undisturbed by machine failure. Having not done much machine embroidery for a long while; my shoulders and upper back were tense and intensely painful, my stitching unruly. However, I managed a couple of samples, and began to understand more about its creative potential.

Here, my various samples at the end of the sessions in the studio

And the thought processes that brought it all about - with retrospective notes

A preparatory drawing inspired by Eridu, exploring the pattern of temple spaces and how continuous line might all hold together

stitch and imagery,

lace and thread, boundaries and mounds

The second day also had its difficulties; I stitched my forefinger - breaking the machine needle as I snatched it away. A loud bang, a sharp pain and a few minutes of feeling rather peculiar followed, but the studio had plasters and there was more stitching to be done. I still felt I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing but, following instructions, managed to produce a couple more samples and felt happier by the end of the day.

Inspired by Nirvana; a different sort of layer, that of family myth, nestled at the edge of the Rother, home to childhood dreams

and what to do with the spaces removed?

Then Babylon, drawing on an ancient map; imagery printed out several days before the workshop and pondered on

the reverse of the embroidery makes a more powerful statement - lesson learnt

By day three things were looking up, the accumulation of techniques was beginning to make sense, and I was starting to see where they might apply to the projects I am working on at my regular Studio 11 sessions. More samples were made, more stitching was done, more bobbins were cleared of thread and at end of play, a very enjoyable meal out, organised for us by Christine at a local hostelry. We began with making voids, mending them, bridging gaps. Organza carved out with a soldering iron, mended with Islamic pierced window grilles in mind, same region, later culture, more layers of history. The cutout pieces were also captured in a net with additions

Here, working with painted clingfilm and very pink organza. As I stitched I was thinking about the growth enabled by Abzu, the life giving water; marshlands, foliage, ripples, grasses waving

Flowers and leaves strewn across gaps in the fabric, supported by a web of stitching. The flowers were hand stitched into a piece of soluble fabric with chain stitch, then pinned to the base fabric, the leaves simple knots in a piece of thread.

Finally there was the "bring it all together and make a larger piece" day. So we put all we had learnt into practice on our chosen design. In my case this was based around a satellite view of Nineveh - drawn from my Mesopotamia ruminations. Here a portion of Nineveh, the hill of Kuyunjik nestled in a bend of the Khosr River, on the outskirts of Mosul

Not anywhere near finished yet, there is still much stitching of nets to be done, suggestions of cultivated land at the top, soluble fabric to be washed away, but an encouraging start. I managed to do enough to know how to complete it, and will make time to do this, which will be a huge pleasure.

So, a marvellous and inspiring few days amongst friends old and new exploring thread, stitch, time and ideas to create something fresh. I feel I have learnt  techniques that chime with my thoughts about Mesopotamia; history, layers of time and layers of man made artefacts/marks on the earth. Techniques I can hopefully exploit in my own way to move forward with my explorations of what creating textile art is all about.

Thank you Eszter and Christine for a very inspiring retreat. Definitely a real treat.

Keeping busy

We are away on our annual pilgrimage to the Lake District. With the weather forecast to be rainy and windy for most of the week I brought along some stitching to keep me busy indoors.

I will confess that both pieces are kits bought recently. But then I wonder, as I do when new stitchers at our Embroiderers' Guild branch guiltily comment that they "only do cross stitch", what is wrong with working the occasional kit? It is directed stitching, yes, someone else's design and inspiration, but enjoyable stress free creativity, which when you are away from all those tempting threads and fabrics at home, is a lovely way to continue a daily practice in stitch without taking half the sewing room along "just in case"

Both of these are intended for someone special, so only a teaser in the image above, but I am really enjoying the quiet, meditative stitching each day, and a return to canvaswork which I haven't done for many years.

It hasn't been all rain and wind though. Yesterday was a beautiful sunny fresh day so I walked up to Chapel Stile to pay homage to the Langdale Millennium Tapestry 

and beautiful stained glass

in Holy Trinity Church, a quiet gentle space nestled in the Langdale valley.

There was a delightful man making repairs to my favourite window, so we chatted briefly about William Morris and stained glass and when a tapestry is really an embroidery. A lovely way to spend a morning.