Hello and welcome to my second Stitching News post this month. For me, June has been mostly about the garden and collage. The garden is just a steady work in progress to keep all the foliage cut back, and reasonably tidy!! So, although my final thoughts in my last post were that I was going to be “back to working on my scrap quilt, and starting work on the 4th chapter of my book, alongside snippets of time on very necessary gardening!” I have certainly been working in the garden, but then collage took over!
I have had a yearning to make a fabric collage for a complete change, to include three eco prints. I have also included one of my lino printed houses! Some of you may be thinking that I have recently been working on something similar! However, that last collage, which I worked on back in the winter, was all created from recycled brown paper and was heavily stitched in a Kantha style. I wrote about it in the February Stitching News blog
https://stitchingnews.wordpress.com/2022/02/
My new fabric collage is now tacked up and I have just started to stitch. I intend to stitch quite spontaneously! I have no plan although I would like to have occasional unexpected “stitch touches”!
With the exception of two fabrics; the blue and white striped fabric on the left hand edge of the panel, and the darkish patterned batik which is just off centre, at the bottom edge , all of the other patterned fabrics in the piece come from a gorgeous selection of old Liberty Tana Lawn fabrics generously given to me by Patricia, my cousin, when I stayed with her very recently. We had such a lovely time catching up as we hadn’t seen each other for two and a half years because of the pandemic. Many thanks again Patricia!
I shall totally hand quilt this panel, mainly in straight lines, using my hand dyed cotton threads. I had lots of time to think through the process of creating this panel. The meditative nature of planning, gathering, sifting through the collection, auditioning sizes and placements of colour and pattern was very enjoyable! There are always so many choices when creating a fresh piece of work, whatever its size! Walking away from it for two or three days before committing to a final result has invariably worked well for me. Having tacked it up and started to stitch now, I am pleased to have a portable project to work on gradually over the next couple of months. I decided to use a piece of lightweight calico as the middle layer of my sandwich, to keep it flat.
Having prepared this collage I really had caught the “collage bug”, and went full pelt along a slightly different route; the mixed media route this time!
I find it endlessly fascinating how one activity leads to the next! Ideas naturally evolve during the slow process of bringing a piece of work together. While I was so absorbed in the process of working through the slow and meditative processes explained above I found my thoughts wandering in quite a gentle and intuitive way, and I started to focus on other forms of collage and the abundant source of eco prints I have produced over time, albeit having used many in a wide variety of projects over the years. I always have a scrap bag of papers on the go, and knew I could team some of them up together! The ones I have used I have either inked, or painted, printed, marked and textured in a variety of ways. I gathered these together and married them up with some eco prints, some of which I still have from when I started in 2015, which is when I started experimenting and learning about the process!
I have created various concertina units. The two photos above are the front and back surfaces of a 6″ x 12″ single fold card. I actually used a blank square greeting card to work onto. The very nature of collage is that you are covering a surface, so you could be incredibly eco friendly, and use an old Christmas or birthday card to try the process out! No one but you would have any idea!! The surface needs to be smooth, and matte, i.e. non shiny. Any covering papers would need to hide any colour or text on the surface of the card.
I decided to mount a selection of eco prints onto a collage of my own papers, rather than directly onto the card surface. The top photo of the two, is the outside, or “back” of the card, and immediately below it is the “inside”. In total I have used 15 whole or parts of eco prints, in a range of sizes. There is something “very rich and satisfying” about collaging on both sides of a free standing item. Whatever angle you look at it, there is a glimpse of something else to investigate! I have been careful to keep everything as flat as possible, keeping surfaces apart by protecting them with small sheets of a non-stick surface and placing a weight on them.
I have an old table top book press which I was thrilled to receive from one of our sons as a birthday present several years ago. When I am sure that all surfaces are totally dry, I have given them a final press in the book press!
When I was given it, I cut a piece mount board the size of the square bottom plate and marked the centre, by drawing the two diagonals. I cut two squares of wool blanket and place the item I want to press between these squares, before turning the long black handles of the huge screw to lower the top plate.
A pile of books will also do the job very nicely!
Below, the photograph shows another two concertina folded units. The top one is 3.5″ deep x 22″ long. Once again I have collaged from my range of papers, and then mounted my eco prints on top of them.
As yet, I have only collaged the front of the top strip, but will be completing the back very soon! The second folded strip underneath it, is 22″ long, and slightly narrower, being 3″ deep! Both sides of this strip are collaged.
The base of the strips is wallpaper lining paper, which I have in my stash. It is a slightly thinner lining paper than I use for eco printing and I could probably use an even thinner one, because the layers which build up are naturally giving a strength to the structure.
I am using Golden Matte Medium for pasting the background papers to the lining paper, but PVA glue for gluing the eco prints. My reasoning for that is that I can be less “careful” when gluing the background papers, as the medium is matte and it won’t show if I brush the medium over the edges of the papers to ensure a good attachment to the base. When dry, PVA is glossy. If some inadvertently gets onto the background papers it can quite clearly be seen when it has dried. I could see this easily when experimenting initially, so chose to use the two different glues, and the method works well for me! I am really enjoying these processes, and can see me making more which will all be for sale ultimately! It is really addictive!
I have been a member of Gate Quilters ever since we moved to Cornwall 13 years ago. Due to the fact that our membership has declined hugely since we returned from the pandemic, which has made such an impact on many of our lives, it is with the greatest regret and sadness that it is proposed that Gate Quilters, as it is now, should be closed at the end of the summer term this year, and be replaced in September by a new name for the group; Gate Quilters Sewing and Craft Group. By widening the remit of the group, we are hoping to reach a wider community of people who might like to become members and join us.
Life has changed in so many ways for all of us and I am well aware of changes having to be made to similar groups in other areas of the country. We meet in a large hall, and the committee has had to consider ways to be able to continue our meetings while covering our costs. We have already changed from meeting weekly to every two weeks and as more ladies who have been members of Gate quilters in the past are still coming forward to contact our chairman, to say that regrettably they have had to make the decision to leave the group, the situation has had to be addressed.
On June 29th, 2022, at St Mary’s Methodist Church Room, Chapel Road, Par, (just before the Railway bridge) we are holding an open day, between 10 am – 3pm. Cakes, Books, Handmade items, fabric and more, will be on sale in aid of Cornwall Blood Bikes, and Fleet – Defibrillators for Cornwall. For enquiries please ring 01726 879533
If you live locally, or know anyone who does, and would like to come and have a chat about the group, please do come along on the day, enjoy a cup of coffee and cake. You will be made most welcome.
Until next time, happy stitching!
Di
Di Wells Stitching News 