maandag 31 augustus 2020

clever kid !

Today school started again after six weeks.
The youngest grandson
made something special
while he was on holiday
.....
a machine for fun drawings

He had been busy
sawing.
with a glue gun
and a soldering iron


Of course he had to show off at school and at our house



Ha !

THAT is FUN !!!

zondag 23 augustus 2020

only blanket stitch !

Last week the Stitch Club project
was stitching with variations of one single stitch :
the blanket stitch.
Julie B. Booth (American) was the teacher
who set out her workshop as a game !
We had to randomly pick a number for the format
and three more numbers for adjectives
that were used to play with the stitch !!!
A piece of cotton, big enough for a 10 x 10 cm square,
white or black
and limited colours of thread,
preferably black or white with some gray or beige ...

I made sketches of the possibilities and then I chose one
(out of three) prepared plan.


For this one the format was : cross
and the adjectives : short - horizontal - organic.
(Oops ... I was daring and took a lovely uneven dyed dark red
with white and pink threads for contrast)

This wasn't the first one of my "lottery" but I liked it best
but later I also made the other two.

Well I can say I was truly amazed by the versatility of that "simple blanket stitch"





For this week Anne Kelly
(who did also one of the Textile Artist Stitch Challenges)
made the new assignment
for which I need to sort through my stuff
to find all the right things for it, so :

to be continued 
...........


vrijdag 14 augustus 2020

a HOT day .....

Ahhhhhh ... that is
how I remember the walks on the moor when I was a child :
a HOT day in our summer holidays !


(Just like the HEAT WAVE we have now ???
Noooo, it surely wasn't thát hot then ...)

The memory still holds :
the colour of the purple heather,
the air vibrating in the distance,
and tired feet on the sandy path ...

That memory was also a good start for another landscape

a third piece for the Cas Holmes "momigami" workshop.


A bit more detail

*

In the garden
the planted seeds for the empty spot
have transformed into a wild patch of colour
(colours I normally would nót choose,
but this is OK for now !)


Yesterday and the day before that
we hoped op some rain after all those days of heat we had.
We had a weird kind of yellowish light
and strange clouds ...
but hardly any rain as relief for the garden



Hoping for some rain tonight ...
or at least tomorrow !

(it's too damn HOT !!!)

zondag 2 augustus 2020

paint, words, paper and stitch


It is amazing the inspiration we get
from the STITCH CLUB !

In this third bunch of workshops
we used paint on paper or cloth
there were words on a "medal"
and scrunched up paper

For Gregory's task (American)
I took an old unfinished acrylic painted portrait,
divided it into three with tape
and got going with three different colour schemes.

This is so far the only one I finished stitching into



And let me tell you, that was NO FUN :
ouch, punching holes into thick painted paper !!!
(so no 1 and 3 might never be finished at all ...
yet I'm thinking about painting some cloth) 
_

The "medals" were inspired by Haf ( a Welsh artist)
who started with these medals last year,
processing her emotions being ill in hospital.

Many of the STITCH group used words in connection
of the strange times during the pandemic
these last few months,
but I chose a lighter path.




Three "medals" finished
_

Yesterday was the release of the workshop of
Cas Holmes.
I've followed her blog for many years and I like her work !

She showed us to make a little landscape
out of fabric strips and pieces of kneaded paper
in Japan (where she studied) known as momigami .
It is amazing how the feel structure and even sound of the paper
changes by kneading it !!!

Of course Japanese paper (with longer fibres in it)
works best, but (brown) paper bags , some wrapping paper
and even pages of magazines work as well !
(and you get nice warm hands hahaha !)

One piece finished !

Scraps of fabric and paper are mixed together,
tacked onto a cotton backing,
and stitched with different stitches and threads
to suggest the specifics of a landscape


The cloud ("Hollandse wolkenlucht") was a piece
of a full-page photo of a winter tree with snow
from a Dutch Nature-magazine
("Natuurmonumenten")

I think there will be more of rthese ...

:-)