Every flower...

How often our posts relate - in a big or small way - to the subject of inspiration, personal reasons for creativity, and/or of finding ourselves falling unsuspectingly into that darkening pool, which acts as creative quick sand.

This week I was touched by Karen's creative questioning (and, BTW, Karen has moved here) and by Arlee's quest for originality, and was also reminded of a lovely comment left in response to one of my recent posts by Anya, saying:

"It never stops to amaze me how much effort, work and knowledge goes into creating something beautiful. It is always a labore of love at the end and the final result will always reflect the amount of effort put into it. :-)".

Which is so true!

Every flower must grow through dirt.

-- Anonymous

I'm fortunate, in that, I seem to have the inner critic - that inimical voice that says " You're so stupid... that's such a dumb idea, etc." - well under control. Also, I rarely find myself without inspiration. If anything, I have too many ideas, and it takes me a while to gather these thoughts into something tangible.

Of course, it doesn't always work out the way I imagined! And I frequesntly don't end up with a "finished" piece... oh, you already noticed that ;) But, since what I most enjoy about it all is the initial design phase, the research and exploration, and learning the process of making cloth - because I have no practical experience at this, folks! - the fact that it doesn't become something in the end, doesn't matter.

Nothing we do is useless!

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars
-- Les Brown













































Recent sketchbook page: Further developing pattern ideas from my last post.

Play time with Owen Jones and the NYPL

Owen Jones?... Owen Jones?... For those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure, Owen Jones was a British architect during the 19th Century, and famously the author of The Grammar of Ornament, which was first published in London, 1856. You can read a little bit about him here. For anyone who is suffering from a creative block, I strongly recommend that you do a google image search of "Owen Jones + The Grammar of Ornament", and I promise you, that'll get your juices flowing again!

As anyone who follows my blog has probably already noted, I am especially inspired by elements of historical ornamental design. And this stuff really does it for me!

The Textile Blog (a mine of historical and cultural information) has many posts about Owen's work. I searched the blog under his name and these are the results available, for those interested.

The New York Public Library [NYPL] has a great digital library, which happens to present some of Owen's decorative plates which you can find here. The fun thing about this particlaur site is that you can select a plate image, and from the page that opens, you can then select the zoom option, and the plate will open in a new window which allows you to explore the image in great depth. Just click on an area of the image and select the zoom again. You can pan around the image and get quite creative with it. For example...






















This came from zooming in on a plate from Nineveh and Persia. This little section reminds me so much of Jude Hill's gracefully stitched feathers. Jude has several posts on her blog which relate to her feathers, it was hard to choose between them, but I like this one alot.


And from a plate of Elizabethan ornament...






















A fabulous repeat pattern - oddly Indian in it's appearance I thought - that I might do something with one day.

And...






















From Leaves and Flowers from Nature Ornament no. 10: Passion flowers. (1856). Now wouldn't that make a cool embroidered pillow?

Now, if you'll excuse me... I am going out to play with other featured works on the NYPL digital library!

Want to join in? :)























P.S. Check out the bugs! here . This is for a new blog friend, Susan Fletcher Conaway over at Fiber Art and craft. I am really enjoying her work and posts!

Sixty minute feast

I couldn't help myself! Sixty minutes of image feasting! A quick dive into some 19th Century print images, and more thought about repeating patterns and lace motifs.

By the way, I forgot to show you this, which I feel certain you'll adore too! It comes from Poppalina a blog that I discovered recently.

A little indulgence is ok, right? ... so I did some quick sketches (and took some more poor quality images!)


















This is an initial idea for a repeating leaf motif, which would probably make a neat border.



















This is the second one.

I'm not sure yet how I'll develop these sketches or translate them into embroidery. But sooner or later I figure they'll find their way off the paper and onto the cloth. And I'm excited about that!

I stepped outside and spotted this...








A neat repeat right there in the mud! It's just where the rain has dripped off the roof laminas. And I see some opportunity to incorporate small glass beads in place of the gravel. This also reminds me of those repeating leaves that I did a while back and still really love. You can see an example here.

While I was feasting on the 19th Century prints I came across this magnificent beast! You have to admit, it's begging out to be transformed onto cloth. And moments later I found Susan Fletcher Conaway's marvelous blog Fiber Art and Craft and fell in love with her work and particularly with her strange bird. Just perfect!