TIF Challenge May 2

Well I didn’t turn into a pumpkin! I got my May TIF Challenge piece done yesterday (just) but too late for taking photos.

I decided to create something that included some of the techniques I love most, and to try to express how I often feel as if I’m exploding in all directions – there’s such an onslaught of possibilities it seems impossible to choose between them.

For the background I used a piece of indigo-dyed shibori I made at a workshop taught by Nell Dale. I applied scrim that I’d dyed and torn, and some little bits and bobs – hand stitching, machine stitching, felt, knitting, dyeing, batik, printing, and layered fabrics. I also love textiles with writing, so I added the phrase that Neki of A Moveable Feast picked out from my thoughts on the challenge question – ‘naming is not defining – it is choosing’.

But choosing means saying no as well as yes. I long to learn to focus enough to practise, in every sense of the word. I enjoy exploring so many things but I also value skill and mastery, and to attain those things one must make choices and leave some roads untravelled. For now, as a student, I’m constantly trying out new paths and revisiting old ones, but I also hope that on the way I’ll discover which directions take me “further up and further in”… that I will learn my name.

appliqué piece

Links to the beautiful and thought-provoking work being done for Sharon’s Take it Further Challenge can be found on her blog In a Minute Ago, the Flickr group, and the Take it Further Challenge blog.

April TIF Challenge 3

Well, I ran out of time before I ran out of ideas, so I’m going to carry on playing with April’s Take it Further Challenge during May. I think it has some connections into May’s challenge as well so who knows where it will lead?

This, anyway, is where I’ve got to.

felt samples

The piece at the top left is partly felted. The little balls of yarn are naturally dyed as well – I got them at Soay Studio on the Isle of Harris (that’s the only link I could find, but I’ll go and hunt out a photo in a minute). I’m going to do big woolly embroidery stitches into the pre-felt and then finish felting it.

Next to that is a piece with some other coloured fleece added; and then my woven samples – I overdid the felting, so they’re very hard and small! Below them is a grid with thin strips of the pink roving in one direction and colours laid across it – I want to try this again on a bigger scale.

Bottom right are the samples of knitted fleece after felting – I like the coloured one in stocking stitch and this is another technique I’d like to explore – it was very easy to bring in additional colours exactly where I wanted to.

The middle piece at the bottom is very thin and webby and the piece on the right is the one I nuno felted into muslin. It was quite a dense muslin, and having seen the lovely lacy textures of Monika’s nuno felt, I’d like to experiment with some different fabrics to see how the effects vary.

The piece underneath the nuno felt is ‘just’ plain felt. Warm, soft, comforting – and pink – it has so much in common with the fleece it came from and yet it’s not the same at all. I plan to chop it up into pieces and sandwich each between different translucent layers, to quilt into the layers and watch the subtle changes that will emerge, and the differences between them.

I just love the amazing, endless variety of textures and patterns and colours that we can make with textiles, and their physical, tactile presence.

And this is the gateway into the delightful dyer’s garden at Soay Studio on Harris, which we visited in August 2006.

Soay Studio

TIF Challenge April 1

Sharon’s Take it Further Challenge for April is about change:

How do you see change?

I suppose I see it as essential to being. Everything that is alive changes all the time. The elements are constantly shaping the earth. Whether change is slow and subtle or dramatic and unexpected, it’s a given.

Part of change is growth. One of of my favourite Bible verses is about being transformed ‘from glory to glory’ (2 Cor 3:18). And part of it is decay. They are the warp and weft of life – inextricable, sometimes indistinguishable.

I’ve thought a bit about external change in my life as well. On a small scale I crave it – that is, I dislike monotony and have to work hard to focus on one thing for very long. I often rotate tasks for 15 or even five minutes at a time to create variety and stave off… not boredom, exactly… I don’t lose interest, but I get very restless. On a larger scale – we have been thinking for ages about a big change (moving house) but we are terrible at making decisions, so actually effecting a major change like that is such a challenge that inertia tends to prevail.

But I think the line of thought that will result in a TIF piece is that creative processes are change – the transformation of cloth and thread into embroidery; skeins of yarn woven or knitted to become fabric; the potent alchemy of dyeing; the turning of an idea or a vision into a tactile, shared object. And that as we create, we also change.

And my favourite change words – metamorphosis – variegate – refashion – worn – and begin…

layers of paint

web discoveries

Two exciting finds on the web yesterday. One is a new group – a social networking site for textile artists – Fiber Arts/Mixed Media, which I found via the Flickr group Contemporary Textile Art. Having so far resisted Facebook, etc, I just couldn’t resist this one! It was started by Susan Sorrell of Creative Chick Studios and is already growing by leaps and bounds.

The other is Dear Ada, discovered thanks to Kim Carney of Something to Say. Dear Ada is a blog full of delight. The author, birdie, posts links to artists/makers in many different disciplines, each with a photo or two of their work – and the site is a visual feast. But what makes it stand out for me is the way she writes about the work, whether simply expressing her pleasure in it, or analysing more deeply the impact it has on her. Inspirational food for thought – I’m really enjoying this.

Madeleine L’Engle

I was saddened to learn of the death on Thursday of writer Madeleine L’Engle, aged 88. She’s probably best known for her children’s fantasies, which I first read as an adult and found enthralling, but she also wrote prolifically about art, creativity and Christianity. ‘Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art’ is very dear to me, but this quote is from ‘A Circle of Quiet’, which strangely enough, I bought just last Monday.

It’s all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.

Leif Enger in the foreword to ‘Penguins and Golden Calves’ called Madeleine L’Engle

… chiefly an apologist for joy – one of the rare ones who consistently upholds her own definition of art: that which speaks of what was true, is true, and what will be true.

And I would add – along with joy – love, playfulness, and mercy. A great writer and a wise woman. Her spirit touched mine and I will miss her.