putting it together

Just to prove I am getting near the finishing line.

Don't think the Bayeux Tapestry has much to fear, but it has some idiosyncratic qualities, let's hope the museum wants to adopt it.

rolling on

I am decorating all with big wheels now........................with the aim of unifying the splodges of design. Why do I always make things so big?

progress

I have stitched some scenes from the Steam engine museums past, and then patchworked some more for the embroiderer's guilders as we studied the artifacts

Evidence of a bit of progress at last

Can't get it the right way up!


This guilder is a bit small and miss-shapen, don't know if I can bear to do it again tho.

stitching now

Against all the odds and evidence the piece is moving along, I will take a pic tomorrow and post it as sometimes I can see more clearly when the work is in a different form...................

Francophile

I actually managed to get my head together enough to dye today [careful how I spell that], I wanted some kind of dark background and while doggy walking I thought a burnt orange with black line stitches and blue highlights might work.
However once I start dyeing anything can happen.
Too impatient to check instructions I can never remember, i used the direct dyes, salt and hot water, seems to have worked.
The orange is a beautiful glow on the washing line even now, but maybe under burnt. i added some violet as you do, and now the loose weave stuff is brown, so I have draped it over the rusty mattress springs in the garden to see if I can get some rusty circle stains. Added salt and water so it will either mark or disintegrate ere long.
good fun, I don't know why it takes so much effort to get me going, maybe something to do with the results, who knows.
I have installed a new screen saver this week, one of my pics from the Bayeux Tapestry multiplied itself to fill the screen, so now I have lines of excited Franks rampaging across the screen.
Have to take my Dancer pieces to the Stowmarket exhibition and visit the Deadly Virtues at Raveningham this w/e, so feeling productive. Mostly the effect of a holiday and the continues sunshine I expect.

remember to breathe

More going on in my head than in practice.

I had to finish my Awakening Anger for the seven Deadly Virtues exhibition, plus Envy Lurks which I now quite like, tho as ever i doubt I have pushed it far enough.

I guess that is why one is supposed to work in Series, to push and explore the idea instead of a series of One Offs which once I have finished I realise I could have done better tra la.

I think when we get back from getting wet on the South Coast [not in the sea sadly] i will try and get the dyes and paints together and construct a back ground for my figures and machines. I suspect it should be dark so they ...........mmmmmmmmmmerge.

I could maybe use the wheel middle thingies from the Cleo when they wired a new set on, and dared me to knock off. I have done my best. Hub caps!

Maybe I could get circles and bumps from them, maybe spray thru?? dunno. Allison is using plumbers washers and screws sewn on, but she does neater work than moi.

However I am trying to keep in mind Sue's advice to be more kind to myself and not to feel I should rush at everything, usually gritting my teeth.

I am reading a costume drama novel set in the 1870s by Cynthia Harrod Eagles [coo] and including Elizabeth Garrett Anderson as a character so maybe that will inspire moi too. I checked her use of the terms mum and dad, suspecting anachronism but they came into use in the mid C17th so i am more willing to trust her research.

Daughter, whom we will see in November, when she sprogs, wants me to do a stitching based on Tamara de Lempika's Woman with Dove. I started but it all looked too ghastly, pink stitching yuk; i think my daughter would like something more muscular.

However i shall take Dovey Lady with me and see if I can't make something of her.

steaming ahead

Ah ha now we have a Garrett steam engine, well sort of. Not sure what to do, possibly cut out whole engine tomorrow and print again. Do some wheels and spanners? Would all be much easier if i could find more lino cutter heads, only have the pointy one at the mo.

Also now working with S on a family stitching. Lots of thoughts and explorations of printing on fabric.Also crocheting shawl for daughter and knitting floppy bunny for g'son to be, so a bit over excited.

radio girls

Some decisions have been made, so i suppose that is progress, even when they are changed it will count as movement.

I reckon I am going to have to design this thing vertical, much as i would like to do it in the style of the BT, it would just present such difficulties hanging it etc. i don't have a cathedral or castle to drape it round the walls.

I have sent to Art van Go for some of their printing stamps and I hope to make them into wheels and spanners and such to have a go at a unifying background.

I have traced some of my sketches for the "scenes" and shifted them around the fabric a bit, still don't know whether to use the poshish scrim which looks nice and loose weave and easy to stitch of thin calico......................whether to paint and dye think i may do the calico as I can print and then over dye, but i do like the scrimmy stuff.

Thinking of calling it Garretts Girls, which goes against the grain but has a nice ring to it.

screwing

Managed to screw up the courage and energy to do some sketches yesterday, it is difficult getting the almost cartoonist level I require, but it is much livlier when I achieve it.
May try scanning in some sketches to see what they look like in another medium. Also have a new printer so want to play!

REALLY need to do some dyeing, but can't quite get the courage to start.

plans, mice and women

Hmmmmm went to bed fizzing with energy, if rather late having stayed up to watch Oceans13 on the gog, total rubbish.

Woke up at 4a.m. with migraine, having now taken magic pill I am very whoozy, and convinced that all my inspirations are useless.

The figures are a problem.

I thought i would take them from my photos on the day, but altho they may be useful I now realise they may not be relevant to the design.

The ladies should be stitching and researching more obviously..........so shall have to do some sketching - when my head settles down.

I realise now, or at leaxt imagine that Lowery might have taken his simplified figures from medieval pieces, and that kind of individual and yet minimal shapes are what i am aiming for.

I also don't have enough shots of the museum or the machines to make the arches/environments. this is all going to take longer than I thought.

I am so impatient about this part, i don't mind the stitching being slow, it is this planning bit. Mutter.

I can sort of see it all in my head, it is like a word being on the tip of your tongue but you can't quite get hold of it.

Perhaps I should make some categories..........

E,M & E sitting round the fire plotting the advance of women.

The pic of suffragists with banner

Millicent + E and E ?

The steam engine with women workers

The footie team?

The washing machine pic

hmmmmmmthat feels more positive.

stitching wars

I have several projects in my mind at the mo, hopefully blogging my thoughts to myself will help me sort thru and reach design conclusions. I think design is always the weakest part of my work, that plus the stitching of course and the fact that i know nothing about fabrics and what can be expected of them.

Present project is based on a visit to the Leiston Steam museum, we [embroiderers guild] are invited to do a "response" exhibition Spring 2009. I have a small collection of photos and hazy ideas about suffragettes and lady stitchers - can't really call my lot stitch bitches, they are far too respectable, and stout.
I am neither, a fact I have to emphasise to myself in case I become subsumed and start voting LibDem/Tory. They are OK really, maybe some are hiding a wild child within, but these days they wear sensible shoes.

The Museum is based in the steam engines manufactured by the Garrett family from the Victorian developments of same to the washing machines in the 1950s.
The feminist aspect comes from Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, both scions of the Garrett family, who sat down with a friend one day and divided up the jobs to advance the frontiers of women's' rights.




Elizabeth would take Medicine, Millicent - Politics and Emily Davies - Education.

They were all pretty successful, but maybe they too wore sensible shoes as they opposed the wild antics of the suffragettes, E, M & E were strictly suffragists, believing the best way was to be lawful and "influence" rather than oppose the power of the men.

I have a newspaper image of Millicent that might very well translate into blackwork, if only i could do it.

There are also pics of the lady war workers, including their football team, so combined with my pics of the researching stitchers I was wondering if I could construct some kind of Bayeux Tapestry of female endeavour.......................

I don't know whether to have a blank background or make some kind of design of wheeled machinery and spanners, if only for the sake of the museum to whom i shall be donating said piece, as no-one else will crave it.

They do look a patchworkers delight, unfortunately neat circles and triangles are not within my sphere of expertise.

Looking at the Bayeux, which we all know is an embroidery not a tapestry, the simplified figures are stitched in clutches with a kind of architectural arch around them to place them, so I shall try sketching something of the same and see where it gets me.