Little time, little cloth

I have so little time these days, I'm finding it hard to settle into something that I really want to work on. I also forgot to bring the iron again!

It has to be little. So I have the sense of possibley finishing something. For me that's become important somehow.


















I found these scraps, which looked pretty nice together. Many are just thin strips an inch or so wide. What to do with them?...

I notice that alot of you lovely people have been busy weaving cloth. So I thought I'd try my hand at it.


















Not to copy... but to learn more about technique.


















I know so little, and it's easy to find oneself doing the same old-same old thing.























I'm playing with this pale little cloth. Maybe as a gift for another friend who has a birthday coming up? Lots of raw edges.


















Some simple outlining.

I want to show you the amazing moths that have appeared here over the course of the weekend. Someone might find inspiration here!


















The perfection of carved wings...


















The vibrance of color and pattern...























The smokey rainbows of shadowy scales.

On a black moon in summertime, we get hundreds of beautiful and bizarre looking insects. And I often look at them and wonder how many of these have ever been seen before!


















The Summer is finally creeping in here, and now we can see again the blue mountains of the Cerro Rincon.

Just look at this from Arlee and this from Karen.

I have so much to learn!

Almost!

I have two more weekends to finish the piece that I've been working on all month.























Still impossible to photograph!


















There are still many green flecks and a few more leaves to stitch around the edges, and the petals of the third flower in the central (vertical) row to fill. Then I have to make it into a pillow cover. But I think I might just get it finished!

Calmly at it like crazy

I was planning to post this last night, but then the power went out, which meant that I had to shut down my computer and get back to the house. My workspace (i.e. the dining room) is seperate from the house. Too complicated to explain that! Anyway, luckily, a draft had been saved and I just needed to add a couple of the final images. So here it is!

I'm later than usual today. Probably nobody will see this until tomorrow. I've been happy (and hot!) all day, whizzing around on the internet, studying all kinds of truly amazing things, and my head is nearly popping off. I always get tonnes of ideas like that.

I want to share this with you. I have to say I was very impressed. I can't remember the last time I visited a gallery and liked so many of their artists. I looked at every piece (not all to my taste it's true) and was inspired by many. And I think you will be too! Especially all of you who work in cloth. Enjoy!

Before all of that, last night I did abit more on the frame of my soft pale cloth (which has no name yet). And here's what I did (see the upper line!)















This is the back-to-back buttonhole stitch, single woven.















Just weaving in and out of the buttonhole stitches as shown in the above image, with 2 strands of DCM silk thread #436 (Ha! I saved the number band this time), which is a lovely golden yellow color (Susan, that kind of came from your comment, so thank you for that!)















Here it is again, but this time double woven. Now you can see the complimentary color better. This is what's known as a composite stitch as it is made up of more than one type. It has a name... it's just that I can't remember it!


You probably haven't noticed, but I am slowly deconstructing this piece ;} Little by little, I'm taking out the stitches on the wheat. Maybe they will disappear altogether?... Or, maybe they will appear soon with a darker outline?... I haven't decided yet!















I've also now added this little rectangle of also solar dyed (with bark) cloth. It's a shade or so darker. And I did abit of mini kantha stitching over it.



















Up close it looks like this. I like it! I love the way the texture of the cloth changes when you do this. The stitching gives the cloth a very lovely weight, a kind of gentle rigidness.

When that was done. I went surfing... the net, that is! I started out by Googling for images of Ancient Cloth. Well, that was fun! I found this and looking at it at first, I couldn't be sure if it was cloth, or if it was stone carving. I went to the site's homepage, and here I found quite a selection of images of Ancient Iran: Sasanian dynasty. More stone sculptures?... or are those really cloth too, do you think?

That all got the old grey stuff quivering. Thinking about stone... and cloth. Cloth... and stone, (probably you know the game, when I played it as a child, it was hammer, rock, cloth/paper.) Then I started thinking about how one might go about working from images of stone carvings, converting them to cloth. And that made me think of Deb Lacativa and her amazing work and her technique of brushing on acrylic medium. I bet she would do a great job on the stone-carvings-to-cloth idea! I might even have a go at it myself!

My bloke ;} arrived home from San Jose at lunchtime this morning. He's been away since Friday. Nice to have him back of course, but the best news is that he's bought me a Dongle! Don't worry ladies... and possibly gents I suppose... nothing saucey about it. For those of you who don't already know, it's a device that fits into the USB slot of a computer and works like a phone to connect to the internet from wherever you are... WOW. (3rd generation technology in Costa Rica?... I must be dreaming!). This means that, for just 17,000 colones/month I can stay online all month if I want to. YEAH! To give you some idea, we have been paying around 50,000 colones/month for my connection (that's $100/per month folks!). So, Dongle - think I'll call him Dougal the Dongle - arrives in the nick of time, as we don't have jobs right now.















I'm A Very Happy Camper! :)

Also, remember the [s]lime green cloth from the other day?... well, the story has a happy ending. Don't ask me how, but once rinsed in the machine and hung out to dry...




















... there was hardly very much green on it. Overall, it's a pretty nice rosey biege.... again (seems that's the color all of my stuff turns out!) I've also tried to show how it's changed (in the image below). It's abit subtle, but I'm comparing it to a piece of cloth that is the same color my dyed cloth when it started out (the piece with my crazy new stitching attempts on it).















And here are some things I was doodling today without realizing. Think I can use those somewhere.

Turned out just peachy!

A while back, before Christmas time, I started some solar dying experiments. Some worked out pretty well, given that I didn't use any mordant (this year I'm going to try that!). Here's one that I untied yesterday. It was dyed using bark from a local tree species (can't remember which now, will ask husband about that and add the name later) and by wrapping small sections of the cloth around little pebbles and tying them with string, (which probably has some lovely-sounding technical name, except I haven't learnt it yet!) I don't know what I had expected, but it turned out a lovely soft rusty peach color.



















It was fun when I unwrapped it... looked like a volcanic clothscape.



















Or... belly buttons!















This is what it looked like once ironed. Very subtle color variations and little moon-flowers. Have some dusky-peachy-rose colored DMC thread. Might see how I go with that today. If I can find the sun-cream I might stitch in the garden even.













I like this... it goes well with today's cloth!


Arlee Barr kindly informed me that the technique is part of what's called Shibori. I've been admiring this technique on other people's pages, but hadn't got that the pebble-wrapping bit was part of it. If you're interested in finding out more about this traditional art, then you should definately check out this link, to where master clothmaker, Jude Hill, has a plethera of posts relating to the subject, with some fabulous examples, great explainations and links to others who are far more skilled at Shibori than I probably ever will be! :)

Eye... Hand... Mind!

As you can see, I am playing with making a new header image. I haven't decided if this one will stay yet, or, if it will become something else shortly. In anycase, I had to blog this:

I just got an email from Arlee Barr a new blog friend, and an artist with an amazing eye.... hand... mind! She's a lady with a sassy sense of humor, and reading her blog always perks up my day!

Referring to my previous header image...







she said:

"it just struck me what is also attractive about that photo--did you see the figure in it? the woman with her face turned, a gorgeous snarl of blue hair and intricate earring showing at the hairline--"

Here is the image that she attached to her message:
















By adding that simple outline, she has transformed a scraggy piece of calico and a tangle of DCM embroidery thread into the "magical maiden of the blue hair". Something classical and perhaps a little færie about that, no? Infact, with that single white line she claims the work as hers :) I would never have seen it myself!

Arlee was one of the first textile journalists that I found and loved online, and the first person to follow my blog. Visit her pages. I promise that you won't regret it! With so much gorgeous artwork - just check this out - it's almost impossible to single work out. Currently, however, I love Mitochrondria: Incubation 1 (check out the details of this piece in her slides 2 and 3 as well). this is very similar to what was tumbling around inside my head, but not yet formed by me, whilst I have thinking about gold and repossé metal work, and that cream and black, semi-sheer, fabric remnant featured in one of my posts yesterday, the one with the dots.

Another of my favorites has to be Brain Pan (also check out slides 14 and 15 for detailed views). It entertains me that, in Spanish, pan means bread... and I fondly imagine that the piece is entitled Brain bread How delicious are the variations, conotations and associations that come with that idea! It also appeals to me as I do have a hole in the old grey matter.

Arlee's work is always alive, eloquent, challenging to the mind and eye, inviting a thorough exploration of every millimeter of it's fabulous fiberous detail.

In a word, Inspirational!