Working on samples for a Mark Making with Stitch Workshop.

Working on samples for a Mark Making with Stitch Workshop., a photo by stitchworks-jackie on Flickr.

Waiting for his Whiskers.

Over the weekend I have played with some of Anne Bagby’s techniques for printing paper. She uses bookbinder’s tissue paper and deli paper, neither of which I have, and prints directly onto the paper whereas, mostly, I adapted some of her ideas to use with the gelli plate.

 I liked her way of mixing colours to avoid  poster paint bright colours and she has some other good methods, in summary she is very professional, knows what she is talking about and her DVDs are packed with information. Basically I have just been having fun.

 I used drawing paper, copy paper and some baking parchment. I particularly liked the way of raising an image off the surface by gluing it onto fun foam.

Whiskers found:-

Rust Plus

Working in my sketchbook I have been playing around with the rusted pages adding stitch and wax.

I took photographs and manipulated these using Sketchbook Pro and Pro Create on the ipad.

Its easy fun to then change them further and print out to add to the sketchbook collection.

With a layer of wax,then, below, photographed and manipulated in Pro Create.

This was adapted for my group by using letter stamps, stencils and a wax stylus.
Thank you to Jennifer for the suggestion to try green tea,must put it on the shopping list.

Rust Candy

Inspired by seeing Alice Fox at work I have decided to do some rust dyeing with one of my groups. Our theme is paper so we will be working on paper, perhaps some of the precious handmade paper we made a fortnight ago.

 Alice Fox’s method is to soak with tea and is much simpler than the layering method I have used previously. 

Practising in a small handmade book, I firstly tried just tea, but then I added some vinegar, which to me seemed to give more interesting results although much smellier. The best page was definitely the one left to dry over night, see header, but that takes so much patience.The one below has a good 

deal of interesting detail.

 Also shown  are a couple of small areas of a previously made wall hanging;the colour is much lighter without the addition of tea.

Festival of Quilts 2013

I was lucky enough to be offered a place on a coach to go to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham on Friday. I amazed myself at buying nothing but a few postcards, but I did come back with lots of ideas and inspiration. I hope some of you were lucky enough to have seen the show for yourselves.

The highlights for me were:

Seeing in the ‘flesh’ one of Dorothy Caldwell’s quilts; her piece ‘How Do We Know When It’s Night’ won the new juried exhibition called' Fine Art Quilt Masters’.  It is difficult to take photographs quickly there due to the lighting but I took a few at the start as a record for myself. This is the large quilt, and I took lot of photos of the small details which are so clever and so simple at the same time.

I always enjoy the working studio and this time Alice Fox was there showing some of her rusting techniques and also her fascinating sketchbook; you can follow the link on my sidebar if you have not seen her work. She often combines rust marks with print and stitch.

Overall I think one of the lasting memories will be of the artists’ sketchbooks which they shared, including those of Laura and Linda Kemshall, which I have seen on-line but which were interesting to see in real life.Their work was included in the 'Through our Hands' exhibition, in which there was also a mock up of a working studio bench which was fun.

I also met up with Chris Gray another ardent blogger whom I have met on line but never had the pleasure of a real hug from before!

Dianne Firth ' Red Stones 2'

'Evidence of Bodies' Terri Hitchcock and Sue Chapman

It really was such a big show this year that there was no time to even try and see everything in a few hours; in fact I know some people never even found the second large exhibition hall.

How to make cheat's silk paper.

Lots of people are on holiday at the moment so for a recent group I decided to have a ‘show and tell’ rather than plan out a full session, however, some people had shown an interest in basic silk paper so I thought I would show the cheat’s easy way to make it. I thought some of you might like to see this too.

Start with some Carded Cocoon Strippings. Here they are:

You may find they are a little more expensive now as I have had mine for ages.

Lay them out on a piece of fine net or in this case a j-cloth. You can make the ‘paper’ thicker by adding more layers. I tend to lay mine out as if making felt, that is  a strip one way and then the other, but I don’t think it matters, just cover over any gaps.

Spray with water, another good use for my handy spray bottle.

Cover with j-cloth or net. Spray on both sides lightly.

Iron to set. The strippings still contain natural serecin glue so this is what fixes the fibres together.

Threads and other bits can be added before setting, one time I added pine needles:

 there was a reason, it was a little book about my mother who lived at Pinelands. Down-under Dale currently has the book for 'My Artful Journey'  an exhibition at the WA Craft Show in Perth which opens this weekend. 
You will not see the pine needles though as I slid them out, thinking there could be a problem with them in the post.

The ‘paper’ can be coloured with inks etc. It’s nice to add to projects and is easily stitched. Recently someone told me about adding sharpening s from coloured pencils, I've not tried that yet.