spacious makings

textural completion

Textural explorations completed, for now. Click pic to see it Large.
Thanks to the Fab Hoop, I can stitch thick wool, and that opens a bunch of possibilities...
I kept it fairly frugal on the beading front, and I didn't get to exploring some of the stitches Sharon gave us in the final lesson. Still, I'm quite fond of how this became, and I like that it brought me to looking again at a previous green stitching - from years ago, which remains unfinished, and which may now enter the department marked "I know what I want to do with this, when it seems like the job of the moment". There are Quite A Few things in there already...

I am looking forward to all kinds of charmerie and metal play - some of which is underway...

I had a really good time with this six-week course. I'm pleased I kept up a rhythm with the documenting too.

From here on, spacious makings is freeform. Let's see what that brings..... At some point it may bring a 'finished' something of all six of these stitchings, but that's not top priority right now. Really, I am itching to get cracking with this other work which I've been gathering towards for a while.

My thanks to those who've followed the stitching progressions here; it's been nice to have your company and the support of your ongoing interest. Y'know who y'are. 

The next chapters of spacious makings will be happening here at some time...
I hope you'll join me again for them.

xxx

textural 2

A bit more work...
and some more to come...

xxx

textural

Week 6 of the Stitching Course begins.
Textural explorations.
Say no more, and let me at it...

The little squares here are some sort of papery-fabric, domestic wipe, sort of thing, painted with leftovers from the Spring Sprite making session.

I finally got the hoop going - it's good.
I like the way the thick wools and silks are happy to glide through the fabric stretched in it.

I used to use hoops, and hadn't for a while. Sharon's suggestion to bind the inner hoop with cotton tape has made a big difference to the feel of it. Well; not to the feel of this particular one, since it's an especially purchased new one. But different from the feel of previous hoop-work. This boundness is bringing a cushioned quality to the whole unit as I work, which feels nice. Nice, too, that it means less stretch-marking of the stitched fabric.

The outer hoop is more smoothly finished, and of a heavier wood, than the ones I used previously. It shows me how important the quality of the working materials are. It's so much more pleasurable to hold a hoop that oozes carefully-made-ness and quality material itself. And that will add in to the good resonance of the stitching - It'll show subtly in the finished Thing.
Process informs the product, and the tools we choose are part of the process of producing. I always enjoy hearing of and meeting folks' favourite creativity tools - their brushes, pens, needles, pliers... Things made to make other things can carry such elegance of purpose and creative intent.

The sap is rising in this final stitch-course week.
xxx

simple, direct

Sunday afternoon stitching. Directions and shapes....

I wasn't so tuned with the directions of the lesson this week as with the previous ones.
I did reach some kind of resolution.... and I do like what I made, which is the approach I decided to aim for. Making something that was guided by suggestions in the lesson, and which I liked the look of. That's been effortless in previous lessons, and this week simply took a little more remembering that it is all finally for my own happiness.

I reckon that some of what was being looked at in this lesson is so innate in me, so intuitive, that to dissect and consider it are quite alien for me.
Like if you are asked to think about how you write letters - as in 'a', 'b', 'c' - not as in correspondence. The flow of the writing shifts and slows as you consider.

Anyways - shifted flows were negotiated as skillfully as I could muster, and here is the product of the process.
All the pics can be clicked for larger viewing.   

I feel to explain a little about my choice of stitches - there is a vast choice of ornate stitches to choose from, and while I did enjoy a dabble with a few new combinations this week, still I love to keep it simple.
There is something about the pure simplicity of straight stitching (especially in circles!) that is essential for me, I find. Many of the technically complicated stitches leave me cold when I see them. They just don't appeal visually to me, and I don't feel called to become mistress of the techniques involved in making them. Maybe on another round of considering my stitch vocabulary, I will look at them and feel differently about them. This time has been valuable, in a kind of renewing-my-commitment-to-keeping-it-simple way. It's good to really Love what you Love. 
I don't think I will ever tire of simple straight stitching. And it's nice to have a large vocabulary, even if the choice is subsequently made to keep the sentences basic. Eloquence can be monosyllabic, too.
(Could they have made a longer word to describe 'monosyllabic'??!! It's one of the ironic ones...)

Ok. Nuff chatter. Here are some more pics which link to bigger pics:

 

this way and that

Week 5 of the Stitching course begins.

Contrasts of direction and shape are the focus of explorations this week. With all sorts of other suggestions and questions in the mix. 

I had a 'just-get-started' impulse, to counteract the overwhelm I was feeling on reading and re-reading the suggestions.
In previous weeks I generally 'got' what I wanted to do with the lesson immediately. Today it took a while before I saw my possible way with it.

And then this flew together.
A yummy wool-rich felt, and a thick cotton - cut from a remnant of the lovely curtain fabric which I used for both my front door and my kitchen window.
Both sides of which are equally lovely. I plumped for the  light on dark version for this - like in the kitchen...

It's a fine start, for the penultimate lesson in the course.

More soon.

xxx

developing

So....
This is an extrapolation...
a detail; mirrored, flipped, and played with till the playing was done.
I do like what happens with this kind of Photoshop play. Actually, I did clumsier versions of this kind of image-making long before Photoshop existed: with sellotaped photocopies of pics I had taken, of trees and beaches. Astounding shapes and qualities emerge from simple mirrored flipsides.
But it's all so much Easier and elegant now, with digital privileges. 
I did some fip-pics last year, too. (There are 3 links there).
I like having experience of creating with the ancestors of the Photoshop tools, such as the actual photographic processes behind some of the effects.
I think the lower part of this one looks like a soft lino-cut.

It's all from a detail of the week 4 stitching: contrast of density and scale explorations.

Here's the completed stitching:

I backed the linen with white felt, and then stitched into it some more. That was a lovely texture to work into.

Again, I'm not crazy about this as a complete product, but I do like bits of it, and I was really happy about some of the discoveries along the way. It's the most sketch-book-ish stitching I've done so far, I think.

Here's another played-with detail:
(click all pics to see clearer)

xxx

memostitch

It's not much...but it's a kind of minimalist memo to myself, done latelate last night.

One huge single chain stitch, and one huge single fly stitch, both in buttonhole bar. Done with a soft thick chenille-ish fibre pulled from some fabric.  With more time and space available, I'm going to enjoy a bunch of Big Bar stitching.
I'm excited: I can See Potential - with that particular Seeing Potential resonance that I have learned means it'll be good to Do Something more with it.

It's been another day of deck-clearing overhere - in various dimensions. My tech wizard friend came to help spruce things up in pixel-land, and a big old bunch of cd and dvd what-are-these-anyway file piles simultaneously got sorted, too.
He left loaded up with a collection of cables, firewires, discs, headphones, a floppy (yes, floppy) drive, and so on and so forth.
I gained some precious storage space and more connection with, and clarity about, what is here.

The day flew by though, and no more stitches were stitched.  I decided to post a scan anyways, as a kind of underline echo of the singular simplicity of this littlebig addition.  Sometimes less really is more.

xxx

reconnections

Earlier today I enjoyed some time looking in, and being inspired by, Sharon's stitch dictionary.

It was so good to be reminded of a stitch I used to use years ago, having 'invented' it through experiment, and as part of more woven-ish textiles. I'll make pics, of at least some of those, visible here, at some point.
I didn't know then that it was a Proper, named, stitch.
It's the one I've done thricely on the lower middle square, and it's name is Buttonhole Bar.
I'm happy about the dimensional quality it brings, and that I can create it on this delicate background. The previous ones I rustled up were part of heavier, more solid, Things, and without S's pics I wouldn't have thought of creating them in this context.

Sometimes rediscoveries are delightful. I feel like I just re-met an old pal.

And ; continuing on that theme - I did manage to track my tutor from decades ago, whom I wrote about in an earlier post  - and I now have his current email address. Isn't the Internet wonder-full?

Stitching, and everything else, took second place to my determined efforts to clear the decks in the playroom, today. Paper-sorting, filing and, best-of-all; shredding and recycling, has reclaimed the simplicity I've pined for, on several surfaces. I'm delighted to report that backlogs from my too-ill-to-deal weeks are now vanished, and some pleasant spaciousness is reinstated over here. It feels Good.

xxx

pale and interesting

A start to my Week 4 course work.

This isn't quite so colour-contrasty as it appears here.
The browns here are more in the cream department, really.  The scanner got a bit confused, and Photoshop wasn't bringing it much more to a real representation, so I plumped for this, for now.

I realised in all the experimenting that a scan of pale stitching - and maybe a desaturated one would work, too - can look lovely in different hues. I'll post some versions later.

Having fun with allsorts.  The nine-squares is a form which I  love. And it makes for very manageable mini-canvases.
The Proper Linen is rather lovely to work on - thanks to Sharon, for the encouragement to try it 'at least once'. I suspect it may be the first of several...

xxx

Blank Beauty

And... Breathe.

Yes: Blank White Linen.

A whole new canvas on which to experiment with density and contrast of scale. This week is Week 4 of the Stitch course.
I bought this Proper Stitching Linen especially, in preparation for the course.
I like the word 'especially' - it has more ceremonial intent in it than 'particularly'. 'Specifically' comes close, but it sounds more scientific....  resonances, eh? Endless ...

What is to happen on this blank canvas? We'll see.

I'll keep us posted, as it happens.

For now, the blank beauty seemed simply lovely enough to merit a spacious post of it's own.

xxx

end of the lines

So... I can't say I'm in Love with this, but I did learn some good things along the way. Process rather than product, we might say...
Played with flystitch (the y-shaped one, for non-stitchers), chain stitch, blanket stitch, and saw how whipped stitches can look like a row of knitting if they are whipped in opposite directions, side by side - like the blue lines there. Stem stitch is a new friend, which I especially like on curves, and couching of all sorts still pleases me greatly.
I like the scratchy sketchy feel I could get with both fly and blanket stitches done with sketchy scratchy intent. I was interested in how lines changed influentially in the overall design when they were emphasized, or softened. And as ever the dance of colours is endlessly fascinating for me.  Here are some details, all of which can be zoomed into.
Phew. This is one piece I just wanted to be finished with before the weekend... sometimes it's like that. A bit of a wrestle that has to be resolved. Actually, it's very often like that. Just that sometimes I'm more comfy with how it looks when it's done...

Happy weekend wishes to you if you are reading this freshly posted. And thanks for visiting. xxx

lineage continued

Line explorations in progress... ----------______--------------

Click pic to zoom in.

lineage

Week 3 of the stitching course begins...
Lines are the focus, and these are the lines that have flown together this evening here in the playroom.
Again, I wouldn't have said very many lines were living in my stash  .... and then I looked with newly-informed eyes. I do enjoy the way a focus on a fresh orientation shows up what is already here, in a new light.

This is one from the not-sure-which-way-up-it'll-be department - I like it equally this way and that way, oh, and...
so, let's see what becomes of it with a bit of stitching.

I was once blessed with a brilliant tutor who saw how I was painting with the inspiration which the exquisite still-Life he had set up was giving me. He said "It seems Organised Chaos is what you are aiming at here"; ripped an end off the rectangular paper, gave me back the square, and encouraged me to turn it around often while I worked. Then he rustled up a stencil from the torn paper-end, and enthused me onwards to develop the mark-making which he saw I was enjoying, if not yet understanding.

I've been playing with that turn-it-around-and-keep-making-marks-till-you're-done advice for the best part of the twenty-three years since he gave it to me, and it continues to feed me well.

And I'm recalling now some other wonderful pointers and examples and gifts that tutor gave to me. I'll write further about them, in time. He was truly an inspired, and therefore inspiring, being who appeared as a Gift in my twenty-one-year-old Life and altered the ensuing time-lines.

Thank you, Mr Paul M. Maybe I will find you and thank you in person somehow, if that's still possible.

xxx

2 whoops

Oooohhhh The joys of Photoshop Brushes...

I made these two pics last night, entirely with brushes which I found at Stephanie Shimerdia's generous and helpful Obsidian Dawn site. I'm excited about this... (does it show?!)

After the takes-the-time-it-takes hands-on-ness, of actual stitching, it's so Nice to whistle some madly fast digital deliciousness up. I'm so glad I took classes in Photoshop years ago.
Thanks to my pal Lani too, for her enthusiasm, which set me on the sleuthing trail that brought me to the Obsidian Dawn treasure - via PhotoshopSupport.

These large but low-res pics aren't as large or as deeply rich as the original psd files, but you get the idea.... And of course, I get a million more ideas... whatcanyedo? Some times are made for making.  And when gifts like those gorgeous brushes come my way, it'd simply have been rude not to have made these pics. As a start.....

xxx

point-y 3

Finished... ... ...
Pic is clickable to see the details...

And here's a taster of zoomed-in-ness:

point-y 2

Point-y progress... .  .  .    .    .    .     +     +     +     x    x    x    .    .    .

point-y

I really love what happens when I am in a class that gives me room to play.

This week's lesson concerns points - and looking at the way our eyes dance between points, if we are blessed with eyes that see. 

I had no idea I had so many point-y fabrics in my stash till I went rummaging this evening...

I'm so glad I moved my scanner. Now I can do the document-as-it-grows thing which I have been wanting to explore.

This is about to be stitched....... .  .  .    .    .    .    .     x     x     x

As with most pics here - click to see more clearly...

gathered palette

The colours that called me on Monday, in JL's Haberdashery at BX.
Starting with the wall of Anchor embroidery strands; choosing the ones that sing sweetest, and enjoying the surprise synergy there; moving on to the Great Wall of Wool, being drawn again by the same colour combos - which other people have kindly and mysteriously put together in several good textures; a few detours in the sundries stands for some nutsandbolts particulars to keep the playroom running sweetly; a scan of the kidscraft doodahs; finish with finetuning fluffing out of the palette at the mini-wall of thin threads. 
It's  a time-honoured ritual, really.
And after weeks of house-bound-ness, this was a delicious feast of sensual treats.

Week Two of the stitching course begins...

scanstills

This is A Scan.
I'm almost as happy about having moved the scanner into a better place as I am about having done this work for my first week of the Stitching Class.
I had quite forgotten just how lovely scans of stitching can be, and all the ideas I get for further work, when I see my stitches in huge detail. I used to have notions about making mini-vids, traversing the terrain of my stitchings, like flying over a landscape. I note that here, and maybe it will actualise sometime, just as my now-useable scanner has done...

I had fun in this pinkstitch week, with texture and juxtaposition, wavyline feasts; little tastings of new stitches, and good remembering of old favourites. It is good to really get stitching again, full-focus.

Couching is the business - I explored couch-stitches, and couch-substances. Not for the first time. This really anchored my recognition of couching as something which brings me joy in my creativity. I aim to couch plentifully for the duration of the course, and probably beyond. (For any non-stitching readers - to couch in this context is to stitch a fat thread, or bit of something, onto the base with a thin thread. Or, I suppose, attaching thin x/y/z's with fat thread, too....)

These stitchpics - or 'stills', we might say - can all be zoomed into, by clicking on each one.

sprite and bar

SpringySprite, made today. More pics thru at truly spacious. There has been some stitching too - pics of that tomorrow or so.
There has also been some rearrangement of the playroom fabric bar, recently. Snowies, skellies, trees and madpinks all relegated to box and basket, butterflies all herded together, while a bunch of floral cheer and the coolturquoisey blues which demanded to be visible just now all have a bit of space to bloom in. I feel the hunger for particular colours sometimes, and once I have them around, they are like Food. Often I have been seeing and wanting a particular shade, and when I venture to the shops I find a lot of it around. I like the specific way my colour antennae is tuned. It's mysterious, and enjoyable.
I've come to Love the fabric bar, for it's own inspiring sake. It really doesn't matter if I get around to Making Something from these - they are simply lovely enough in their bright harmonious encouragements, I begin to accept.

The scanner remains sub-optimally homed, and that, too, becomes a sometime-over-the-weekend job.

wavy unique

I was reminded of this stitching, earlier. I did it a few years ago - '01 - 02', it says on it...
Various gold paints on a textured  papercloth, stitched. The edge wavy lines are couched fine strings.
The words are: making tracks  // every trail has unique rhythms.

It was nice that Sharon discerned, (at the stitchingforum) that I'm a wavy line kinda woman. Wavy lines and wandering trails are just fine - and I'd forgotten that I'd made this to say so, too.
So great what shows up to join the relevant harmony choir when we really focus for a while, with intently creative support.

I just ordered Lani's Wabi Sabi ebook (scroll down there to see it), too. xxx

Lani is one of my creative encouragers.  Lani-suggestions and questions often bring me happiness. Thank You, Missy L.  You're a brightness indeed.

And finally since this post has taken me into giving thanks for creative encouragers - I'm very glad to be doing what I'm doing with Pamela, too.

Today is the Sun-Mercury retro conjunct day - juss like the one I came in on. Only this one is in Pisces.  I noticed a lot of folk saying there is a Lot going on At The Moment, on my travels. There is, indeed. A Whole Big Lot!   xxx x xxxx

A Wee Note

This is a note. I noticed that I need to find a more easily get-at-able home for my scanner. I have a fine new scanner I haven't done much with, and I'd like to. So, I need to do something about that.
One thing that prompted this was looking through some of my great vintage embroidery books this afternoon. I find the illustrations so beautiful. The covers too, on some of them - I'd like to add those to my librarything pages. I'll get to that.... once I get to sorting the scanner.... tomorrow. xxx The Note Is Written. xxx

pinkstitchings

Beginnings of a sampler of a kind - exploring stitches. couchings, and wrestling French Knots into being - my first work for the Personal Library of Stitches Online Class. (click pic for more detail.)

this leads to that

*waves arms like a triumphant boxer* I got around to uploading pics from camera to laptop. Which means... now I can confidently erase pics from camera, and tomorrow I can take snaps of the stitching I did earlier.
Getting around to it, in mercury retro time, is so truly pleasurable.
Listening to downloaded-weeks-ago things while experimenting with stitchings out of my general vocabulary. And finishing all that to get around to uploading, so that I may get around to documenting. It's all hand in hand and I'm enjoying the this-follows-that flow of it just now. xxx

course notes 1

And a second post, with energy from who-knows-where, at 2.30 am. I just re-read what I posted at my new stitching course, and I want to put some of it here. It's this as-we-go-along thing that's happening. New stitch course, new blog, new work with a creativity coach. About which more will be said......laters....

Now - the jist of what I was on about earlier, in my online embroidery course forum:

Just to report triumphantly that I have made a start! ... ... I'd bought in some fresh supplies. I really didn't think I needed any more Stash, but I had no 25 linen or perle cotton - I don't normally like the sheen of the latter - but I enjoyed an out-of-usual-style buying spree, based on the recommendations. Nice to get 'special' stash for the course. The linen is lovely - white, and I may paint it before I stitch. I also got some dusky pink cotton with a wide weave.

I've decided to make little 16ish cm squares for samplers, which I may put together as a fabric book later. That's the idea tonight, anyways... it may change.

I did just a line of kind-of-Guilloche stitch. It doesn't look a lot like the illustrations - but I figure if I give the I-need-to-play urge some space, maybe I'll get to some following-instructions-properly later.
Not that Sharon is asking for proper instruction following as such, just that I think I would enjoy to follow some step-by-step new stitch learning, too. Especially the ones I've seen many times and shied from - like the knots and and and....!

Finding that place of enjoying while learning, I like that challenge. Not making it a chore, and to do work that feels good and flowing while stretching into new learnings simultaneously. I think that may be an ongoing challenge, an equilibrium to attend to, during this course. And I'm glad of it.

I thought it'd be nice to say a bit about this now, and see how that develops over time. ...

partystarter

This is to make a start. I've been thinking for a while about having a separate blog to keep a work-in-progress flow going. And here it is now. I intend to post pics of WIPs, and use this as a cyber sketchbook. And I suspect I'll find out what I'm doing here more as I go along. As ever...
For now, to get this party started, I will post a pic.... let me see now.... oh yes - that little rekke of iphoto shows me there are a bunch of things I want to put here. Let me start with this... I'll say more soon...