Stepping away from the thinky thinky

As I said last time, I've been so busy, and while it's all be wonderful and exciting, I'm really feeling the need to take some time out to consider my own creativity. Everything has been very outward looking, and keeping the plates spinning has meant it's all been very thinky thinky! 

I need to refill the well, tap into what makes me come alive, what I love. I want to go deeper into what I want to do and where I want to go with it all. I'm conflicted between loving the fabrics and threads, being frustrated with the fabric and threads (mostly the storage issues, to be fair), and the urge to do something more immediate - my sewing machine is fast, but paint is faster still!

There's was a bit of sketchbooking and sketching during lockdown, but now the fields are infested with men in hard hats there's been a lack of sources of inspiration around here. Even the woods aren't safe, as the dust from the the diggers floats like a cloud over everything. My husband has just written something for the little men in their diggers! Very tempting to print it out and fix it to their silly fences.

So I've enrolled on a rather wonderful art course. It's not exclusively for painters (which is good, because I'm not) but it does involved getting messy with the stuff to work through the exercises. 

This first exercise was fast and fun fun fun. Just what I need!

I cleaned my palette, with the unused blue paint, by wiping it onto sketchbook pages with a knife - and a seascape emerged!

I've combined some of my sketchbook inspirations from the fields with my most recent paint play, and this was my favourite so far - spot the bracken frond!

There has been a lot more experimenting since I took these photos, far too much to photograph and document - even on my arty instagram page (I keep this separate from my textiles instagram grid)

I'm having fun. I'm going back to the textiles soon as I have other things I want to do. Ideally I want to find a way to combine the two - paint first, interpret in fabric and stitch? Paint on fabric, then stitch? Stitch, then paint? Add fabric and stitch to paint?! 

It's all good!

PS Should I keep my painty instagram separate from my textile instagram? Should it all be one and the same? All the time I'm not sure what I'm doing with paint, I'm not sure. Thoughts?

PPS I'm doing the thinky thinky again! Oops!

Who will tell the birds and rabbits?

My first words when discovering that the Men in Fluorescent Jackets had started to move further around the hill to hammer in fence posts and dig out a roadway and concrete a crossing over the stream. There's also a heck of a lot of soil being shifted; they're stripping the fields to build a roundabout and road network first, and then houses.

We knew it was going to happen, just maybe not yet. We'd hoped to have the summer. 

Only a couple of weekends ago, I was happily roaming around these fields, coming home with armfuls of different grasses and weeds to draw for a sketchbook course with Helen Hallows. 

I had an absolute blast painting the pages in my book - even though it meant queuing outside the DIY shop in my mask in order to buy more tester pots of chalk paint! Here's a little video flick through the pages. 

Then I got stuck into some practice sketches, my favourite being the one where we used our non-dominant hand. 

And I've made a start on some of my pages.

But of course, everything's wilted in the jamjars and I need to go and gather more material - it's either that or perch out in the fields, amidst the thistles, and now the Men in Yellow are there I feel even less inclined to do that!

We still trespass, just after hours when they've all gone home for their tea. Yesterday we saw a black bunny, just sitting on the path. We stopped in our tracks and watched it for ages. 

Sorry there's no picture, but if you can imagine a silhouette of a bunny rabbit, sitting upright, with ears up and paws hanging down...that's what we saw. Luckily the whippet didn't...

I can't remember who said it, it might have been Brian Rutenberg, that it's important to experience a little moment of astonishment every day. Well, that was my moment for yesterday. 

Corralling Ideas

As well as sketchbooks for, well, sketching, I have a collection of themed A4 spiral-bound sketchbooks that are more like "inspiration" books. There's a book for:

• Inspiration from nature, landscape, science, ancient history (e.g. stone carvings) - you could call this Primary Sources, as there's nothing in here that has been interpreted by an artist.
• Secondary sources of inspiration: pics of other artists' work, postcards, magazine clippings of imagery and patterns that I like e.g. ceramics, printed textiles
• Instructions for textile projects: clippings from textile magazines showing various artists' techniques that might be useful for future reference
• Information book: a scrap book (now into it's third volume) of anything that may be useful for future reference (such as how to plan a vegetable plot rotation, or how to make soap) to inspiring quotes and tidbits of random knowledge. 
• Ideas book: a more portable A5 book (also in three volumes) where I noodle with ideas, sketching out how to make something. I also use a variety of smaller Moleskine journals and notebooks that go with me in my handbag or slip into a back pocket when I go for a walk.  
• Artist cards bought at exhibitions (these overflow into a box, too!)

Here's a quick flip through some of my collection:

Music: Bossanova

Ilya Truhanov

https://icons8.com/music

See those artist cards at the end? If you're like me and have your own collection of cards that you can't bring yourself to send to other people (come on, I'm not alone am I?!) there's a really interesting exercise you can do with them - for another time. 

Every now and then, I try and clear the backlog of things that I've cut out to be stuck in the relevant book. Once I've finally cleared the backlog (!) my intention is to have ONE book and just put everything in that. We'll see!

Because I'm so behind, and some things have just been rammed in loosely to be stuck in at a later date, I can come across totally random and wonderful ideas that I'd completely forgotten about. 

Today I came across an idea for some reverse appliqué, and an idea for making embroidered felt cuffs. The felt cuff idea is at least 17 years ago, because I remember wearing a prototype to a particular family party when my daughter was two years old. 

It's almost like having a diary (something I've never stuck at). Every now and then, I come across something that that reminds me of what I was doing at the time, and how I was feeling. Today I came across a list that just made me hoot with laughter. I might (or might not) share it another time; it has fruity language!

On the one hand, maybe I don't need all these books. You could say if I haven't done something by now, then I never will. But then again, I feel inspired now just by having a leaf through. Never mind decluttering my sock drawer, I'm a lost cause for hoarding ideas! 

How do you keep track of all your ideas and inspirations? Do you manage to keep up with yourself, or are you always playing catch-up?! Let me know!

Field Notes

Once again, I'm on a mission to discover exactly what it is I want to create and what it is I want to say. In fact, this whole blog, particularly the early days, is record of my attempts to do just that. After a few years, teaching took over, then producing work for Art Trail and other exhibitions, and I got caught up in the doing and demonstrating and trying to keep up with all the things I said yes to; I lost the time to reflect on what I actually want to do. So here we go again.

This week I've been paying attention to what I pay attention to...kinda circular! I've been out trespassing away, noticing what I notice. I've taken a lot of photos of weeds, and I've even sat in the middle of a field of them and sketched them.

I like the empty skies, the empty fields, the physical mass of the woods as viewed from the track approaching them. I like the sound and feel of the wind in the trees, the smell of the morning air, the airy spaciousness of it all, and the cloistered hush of the different spaces in the woods. There's one particular space, under the canopy of the tallest trees, that we've always called "the cathedral" because that's exactly what it feels like. Even the light's the same, dappled, as if through stained glass. 

field path under oak branches, looking towards the woods

But I'm also absolutely fascinated by the structure of dandelion and groundsel seedheads. Properly obsessed. I kicked myself for not having a camera with me the morning each fluffy seedhead was full of glassy droplets of dew. Also kicking myself for not starting a record of how the field is changing over the weeks. It's been abandoned, no agriculture, and it's fascinating to see how it's changing with no intervention. 

It's also very parched, because we've had no rain. It's almost desert-like. The old dried up corn stalks are like bleached bones or branches. 

There are some lovely tiny flowers, if you look closely. 

Scarlet pimpernels and speedwell. 

 I like them, but not as much as the dandelions and groundsel 

(the one I'm holding in the first photo).

For me to get as far as sketchbook pages, that's really something. Here's a little video I made.

Music: The Nest, Josh Woodward @ www.joshwoodward.com

International Blog Hop!

Hello and welcome! I was asked to take part in this blog hop by Hilary. I hope you find my blog interesting and maybe a little different, and I'll try and share something about my creativity and why I do this. 

I live in the south east of England, in a small and largely insignificant town, whose only fame was being spectacularly flooded in 2000. Luckily we live on a hill! We are surrounded by the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and Ashdown Forest (the setting and inspiration for Winnie the Pooh) and the South Downs are a stone's throw away. So while the town is not pretty, the surrounding countryside is!

I work with textiles - mostly with machine embroidery, but I love a bit of felt-making too. So let's make a start!

What am I working on?

At the moment, despite overflowing bags and boxes of other half-started projects, I am working on my Breton seascapes, and Celtic knots.

(no knots yet, still working out how I'm going to do that bit!)

I have been asked to teach a special workshop next year, and so I am getting my ideas together. I have loved Celtic knots for years, I fell in love with Scotland when I was 9 years old, my ancestry is Scots, my step-family home is in West Wales, and I holiday in Celtic Brittany every year. I also have dark hair, blue eyes and very pale skin - classic Celt! In fact, I'm only just realising as I start this project, just how important this part of my heritage is to me.

However, it is unusual for me to have such a clear focus, as at any given time I am working or thinking about numerous projects. For example, last week I spent a lot of time dyeing thread and fabric, even though I didn't need it for anything: I found the cotton threads in a charity shop, so I bought them just because they could be dyed.

Yesterday afternoon, I wrapped some homemade soaps

but I was actually supposed to be looking for my beading thread, to add beads to the Celtic landscapes. I had to look in these boxes

and this bag (love my Indian bag) 

and this basket (love baskets...) 

and in each place, I had to search through various different projects in different stages of incompleteness but still didn't find my thread so I had to improvise.

I do this all the time - I start things, then I move on to something else. One reason is because I have a butterfly mind - I am interested in so many different things, and I like to try (almost) everything, and straight away. Another reason is that I have to change what I'm doing, all the time. For example, my workspace is a foldaway cupboard.

My supplies are in the desk cupboard, on top of the cupboard, and in three or four other cupboards around the house, and in the summer house and the loft - no wonder I can't find anything!

Sometimes (a lot of the time) my desk stays open, and I spread out onto the dining room table. At the moment I'm trying to achieve some sort of work-life balance (!!) and so I'm attempting to put my desk away at the end of each day. The upside is that I start each day uncluttered, the down side is that

I have to start from scratch each day - opening the table, getting out my bits and pieces and the sewing machine - or laptop. So I tend to forget where I'd got to the previous day and usually start something else.

Another reason for starting and not finishing so many things is because I teach two classes, and I perhaps prepare more than I need to. I like to stitch everything I'm going to teach, and I also like to have work half-finished so that I can demonstrate in class. I then forget what is MY work and what is my WORK i.e. my teaching work. Confused? I am, constantly...

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I asked my students about this recently, to try and glean some ideas for the workshop next year. The answers were many and various, but quite a lot of them said they would recognise my work because it is blue and green, and features leaves and nature, but no houses or people! They also said that my work was very well executed - the attention to detail, and in particular, the quality of the stitch. And they are probably right. I don't like to just slap things down, I take care. I worry if my thread ends may come loose. I pay attention to the details - in the work but also in how it is displayed. If I use a canvas to display work, I will paint it first. I may even re-do the staples on the back or neatly stretch the fabric all around and finish it carefully. I will never just glue work down, I will stitch it as well. I want what I make to last, so I put in the extra effort to make sure it does. If I cut paper or a card mount, I will cut it well - if I bodge something I will start over again. If I make a mistake in stitching I will unpick, cover over, do something to make it better. That probably says something about my obsessive and perfectionist personality as well as my work!

My tool of choice is the sewing machine. I learnt to use one when I was 12 and have not looked back. I love the speed that I can work and create with it. I can honestly say that taking that first machine embroidery summer school at Missenden Abbey changed my life. It is what I now teach to others and I am very lucky to have found such a creative and interesting way to spend my time.

Why do I create what I do?

I have felt the urge to create all my life, since I can remember. I seem to have an ability to work with materials - whether it is cooking a meal, icing a cake, mucking about with clay, stitching with thread, sewing fabric, splashing about the emulsion paint when decorating the house, or creating a commemorative block for our holiday campsite, using coloured cement, shells and stones:

If something needs doing and it needs some manual dexterity and a bit of creativity, people always ask me to do it. Like this cake for my sister's wedding - baked and iced by my mother, constructed and decorated by me - with no prior notice or experience of working with flowers, and having to follow directions from a magazine!

I choose to create mainly with threads and fabric because I love the tactile nature and the ease of use. But I also love the challenge of making beautiful things out of unusual materials - for example, I see something in a DIY shop and find myself thinking through how to construct things with it. I absolutely love ethnic textiles, from all over the world - traditional embroidery, the colours, dyes such as indigo, shisha, beading. My favourite museum is the Glenbow in Calgary, and I am determined to go to India and take a textile tour one day. 

I love old fabrics and patterns, traditional patterns. I rescue things from charity shops - beautiful pieces of linen or lace, and old glass beads and broken necklaces. I have more materials than I could use in a lifetime, but at least I don't spend that much money on buying them! I do wish textile pieces could be more durable or permanent - I have always had a hankering to do things with clay and glazes, to create something truly functional and beautiful, but that would involve buying a kiln. (If I won the lottery I would probably do that!)

Back to the question (sorry) - why I create what I do. I start creating for the reasons given above, but my finished work is nearly always in response to an external challenge or deadline. I stitched this spring

this "waterfall"

and this fish

and these necklaces

and this piece

all for Embroiderers' Guild competitions. When I enter a competition I tend to show-off - which I suppose is the point of competitions. But it then commits me to stitching something in excruciating detail and/or with difficult materials! The waterfall piece is all stitched on the machine - beads and all. The spring took about 50 metres of stitched cord, and no joins or thread breaks could show. The necklaces are also stitched on the machine, beads and all, and the lace and wire edge and beads on the circular piece - all on the machine. It hurts my eyes, can break needles, takes forever, but I like to push myself and I take huge pleasure in surprising people - like when I put out an internet request for an old suspension coil from a truck, to use for the spring!

I also create daily with food - I resent the time spent in the kitchen as I'm always in the middle of three other projects when it's time to cook dinner, but I am very interested in eating good food. My interest in the traditional and authentic also applies to what I eat - the provenance and quality of ingredients, the effect of diet on health, the classic combinations of flavours. I collect recipes almost more obsessively than I collect fabrics, threads and beads. When I am in France I like to eat local food, prepared in the local traditions - and in Brittany this means seafood, crêpes and caramel - and also seaweed, but not all at the same time! This summer holiday I was very daring and took a soapmaking course using the local seaweeds. I hardly understood a word at the time, but I understood the process.

traditional methods of seaweed harvesting in Brittany

How does my creative process work?

Haphazardly, to be honest. I keep a sketchbook by the side of the bed, and sit up late scribbling designs and annotated drawings of things that have been rattling around in my head. When I'm in the shower, I work out how to construct things - the order of work. When I'm cooking I'm thinking about stitching, and when I'm stitching I'm thinking about cooking. As I explained earlier, I'm forever packing away and re-starting - and I find that very difficult. My dream is to have my own studio, with a door that can shut behind me, and a massive picture window. I would have a sink, a huge table, a dedicated place for painting, glueing, stitching and feltmaking. Oh, and that kiln!

When I am working to a deadline, I will work all hours - from early morning until the early hours of the next morning. I work hard, and I will never ever miss a deadline even if I have to miss sleep. I dream of creating steadily and fluidly all year round, but I've never managed it yet. Writing this blog keeps me on some sort of a schedule, particularly now I've started my Teaching Tuesdays and Five on Fridays - but I think I'll give them a miss this week, as this post is turning out to be so long (you still there?!)

The blog hop continues!

I now pass you on to two very different bloggers. Firstly, Alex at Under a Topaz Sky. Alex is like me in that she is a textile jack-of-all-trades, and a teacher. Unlike me, she still teaches small children and does seem to finish what she starts! I particularly love what she does with slate. It's probably just as well the Breton coastline is granite or I would be doing this to my holiday pebbles. 

My second blog offering is Ingrid Zobel. I met Ingrid in Brittany, and we have been camping next to Ingrid and her family for five years now. Our family have been going to the same place for ten years, and I'm sure Ingrid and her family have been going there for much longer! We first got talking to Ingrid when she confessed that she shared a name with our daughter - much to our embarrassment, after three weeks of nagging "Ingrid"! Unfortunately I don't speak German  - I learnt for two years when I was 12 and could order chocolate cake and ask directions, but I have forgotten almost everything. Luckily, Ingrid speaks very good English! She is a photographer, painter and a sculptor. Her blog is in German, but I find Google translate works very well in these instances.

Enjoy!

PS Please also visit my husband's poetry blog. He isn't able to take part in the blog-hop, as he's snowed under with "paid" work, but his poetry is always worth reading.

I also recommend you take a look at my friend Emma's blog for some inspiration from the Isle of Skye, and Alison's wonderfully colourful and uplifting blog.

Bejewelled and Boro-d

So here are my finished necklaces.

  

    

The dreamcatcher circle has given me ideas for this year's Art Trail. Together with the CD felting and weaving, I think there will be a circular theme!

And I liked the first, smaller blue necklace, and wore it for much of the time while making the others - so definitely wearable!

It's always difficult with machine embroidered jewellery to make something soft, as machine threads always seem to go scratchy - even if they are soft to start with. Metallics are the worst.

I then had the knotty problem of how to display them. A utensil rack found in the charity shop looked promising,

 but a shirt box from the local "gentleman's outfitters" was the final choice - perfect!

I finally made it out of the house on Friday. It's been a week of snuffling with a cold, allergies (I blame the catkins) and smog, sitting huddled over my sewing machine stitching beads for the competition, so by Friday I was ready for a change of scene.

Someone had given me a freebie ticket to the creative stitches show (which was just as well considering how much I was fleeced for a Travelcard...) so I toddled off there first. I wasn't sure what to expect, but there were some delightful surprises - including Bobby Britnell's barkcloth shoes, and Dionne Swift doing her thing. I was particularly inspired by Christine Plummer's little books made from recycled paper and Decovil.

And despite not really being a "quilt" person, this log cabin made of old shirts caught my eye (and sorry, I didn't make a note of the maker - I usually do but forgot this time).

But it was the next visit on my itinerary, the Boro exhibition at Somerset House, that made my day. Absolutely lovely. A real meditation for the eyes. And all the more wonderful as when I tentatively asked if photos were allowed, I was told to take as many as I liked! So I did...

Even Mr G was inspired. He reckoned I could "do something" with old jeans and shirts. Which then strangely reminded me of the shirt log cabin quilt. Maybe he's onto something...