Fetching Fibers

www.flickr.com/photos/mizdenise/3334780710/sizes/o/

Unusual for me to use a heart motif in my artwork. Yet, during a 5 week period in Jan & Feb, my husband and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary, my birthday and valentine’s day. So, thoughts of our lives together come naturally.

I was mostly content with my single life and lived alone for almost a decade: although I dated, I ultimately controlled my own life. In the months before meeting my husband, my life changed dramatically, altering my views on the world and on marriage. Shortly thereafter, I met my husband. Although we were acquaintances for a number of months before dating,  our relationship seemed to burst forth almost fully formed – we married within 7 months of our first date. Over the years, our relationship has grown and changed, and we have grown and changed with it. Now, almost 20 years later, we approach an empty nest and I can see that our relationship will change again. Yet, I am hopeful, looking forward to this next stage in the relationship and the changes to come, knowing that we will be stronger and better because we face them together. Yes, sounds sappy, I know, but I know of no other way to describe what I know to be true.

This month I experimented with my Caran D’Ache Neocolor II watercolor pastels on cloth. Before coming up with the final background, I tried a number of different fabrics and brushes. In the end, I decided that my design was too finely detailed for this medium – it is better for larger surfaces, or those where lots of blending is desired. I do love the range of colors in my set of 15 pastels and will use them again with a different background design. Perhaps I will also try them with a glue gel resist, as described in the Jan/Feb Quilting Arts magazine.

Once again, I learned that I should have gone with my first idea. Though I drew out other ideas – and sampled other techniques – in the end I came back to the one that popped into my head initially. Hopefully, I will grow more comfortable with following my initial instincts. However, in my own defense, however, I was “missing” a crucial color for this piece until I found it in a beaded garden ornament in a closeout store. Once that color bead was secure, I was off and running with the piece I’d set aside earlier in the month.

Last month, I allowed my beads to direct their placement and ended up with a pretty blue flower. The previous owners of our house planted daffodils, but we rarely see them because they are near our basketball goal and get trampled early on. This year, they’ve bloomed in all their glory — with quite a surprise for me, as their shape is remarkably similar to January’s blue flower! Daffodils have always been a favorite of mine, but these are not the variety that I’m used to seeing. Perhaps I remembered what they looked like from years gone by … but I thought I’d share them with you as well.

 Here’s my January BJP piece – nothing like I expected, but one of my favorites.

I was heavily inspired by beadwork and advice I’ve seen on the web, particularly letting the beads speak for themselves and sewing one bead at a time, without a preplanned design. In my (temporarily stalled) November/brown piece, I placed several focal beads around the background fabric and then added beads to fill in the gaps – here, I started with the center button and worked outwards. As I dropped two or three beads of each prospective type and shade on the piece and moved them around until their placement spoke to me, the beads themself chose the flower design.

I don’t see much symbolism here: the color was chosen because it was the largest in my stash and the large flower center resulted from trying to disguise the look of the button underneath. For January, I had several goals: use a single color group with one or more buttons, use items from my stash, and let the beads speak to me as I stitched one bead at a time. I expected to end up with an abstract, heavily encrusted piece.

It was challenging to stick to my original goals – I kept wanting to branch off to other ideas and add other colors. I am proud of the final project and of the discipline it took to stick to my plan. (I tried to make notes of the other ideas, so that I might use them on other projects.) I hope you like it as well!

Here’s a view from the side, showing the height of the flower center. (A tube bead on top of the original button, with seed beads on the threads coming out of the top)

Here’s my October BJP.

After a false start earlier this month, I went back to my list of goals/guidelines for the year and started over. I knew I wanted to try a more encrusted beading this month, but was restricted somewhat by the size of my stash on hand. I decided to look for a bold design from one of the clip art images I’d collected over the years. I drew the final design on tracing paper and transfered the pattern to stiffy felt, coloring the design with Sharpie permament markers. As I stitched, I realized that the leaf image looked better stitched as a negative space.  The colors of the picture are a little “off”, but I’m pleased with the finished page and hope you like it!