Lazy Days Calling to You

My first week of vacation has flown past with mixed activities. In the first half of the week I did quite a bit of decluttering. One of my bookcases was overflowing with stuff, so I took care of that, and I threw away heaps of paper. I also spent time drawing. I did my first page for The Sketchbook Challenge, where I decided to use dragons to illustrate the four elements. I started with water. You can see the page on Flickr, where I’ve created sets to organise the stuff that I upload. In the set called ‘An Object a Day’ you’ll find the objects that I draw for each day I’m on vacation. I’ve managed to follow the rule to draw an object every day so far, even though it has meant that I’ve had to draw late in the evening, on a shaky train and after a glass of wine. Drawing every day, even in funny circumstances, makes it more spontaneous, and counteracts my need to create masterpieces every time I put pen to paper. I used to draw all the time when I was younger, but the habit dwindled down to less and less, and for a number of years I didn’t draw at all. I wanted to, but felt totally helpless and blank as soon as I had paper in front of me and a pencil in my hand. Worst of all: it had become too much of an effort to draw –  too much work, too demanding, to much pressure. Crazy Days. I decided to upload my pages to Flickr, because it helps me stick to my plan. It makes it more difficult to cheat.  ;-)

 My travel sewing kit, drawn on a shaky train journey

 

However, by Wednesday I was starting to feel a bit desperate, because I didn’t feel that I was really enjoying my vacation. The days were like any old weekend where I potter around the house. (I can have weird reactions in the beginning of my vacations. I’m sure there’s a psychological term for it…) I decided to take a train and visit a good friend in Snappertuna on Thursday. She met me at the train station and we set off to Fiskars Village. Those of you who use Fiskars tools: this is where it all started! Check out the cakes we had: 

Divine! This is when I felt that my vacation really started. Later we took a walk and ate wild strawberries that grew along the sides of the road. It was a great day.

On the train I started working on a shibori project. I was very inspired by Sue Cavanaugh’s article ‘Extreme Shibori’ in Quilting Arts Magazine (December 2009/January 2010 issue). I decided to try both the mokume and the ori-nui techniques in the same piece and prepared a piece of cotton beforehand:

In mokume you sew stitches through one layer of the fabric (red thread), whereas in ori-nui you fold the fabric and sew stiches through two layers along the folded edge (white thread):

This is what the fabric looks like when all the areas have been filled with stitch. The ori-nui stitches distort the fabric even before you start pulling the threads:

The treads are pulled and the fabric is ready for dyeing. It looks like I’ve created a little shrimp, doesn’t it? I’m quite excited about this technique, but I’ll have to wait a week or so before I can continue, because I’ll be out and about a lot.

Right now I’m back in Ostrobothnia, where my partner Jarkko and my parents live. I’ll stay here for a few days until Jarkko’s going fishing to Lapland and Mum and I are going off to bonnie Scotland. When we return from Scotland, I'll probably stay in Helsinki and then I'll get out those Procion MX dyes that I'm burning to try again.

We went swimming yesterday, but the water was too brown with humus for us to even consider snorkelling. We need to go by boat to the outer parts of the archipelago to find clearer water, but I suspect that the water is considerably colder there. I do miss swimming in Thailand. The warm, clear water and the funny, cute and handsome water creatures that I met there. Um.. speaking of funny creatures...

We had a little uninvited (but not unwelcome) guest the other day:

I almost stepped on this young cat that had snuck unnoticed into Jarkko’s flat through the open door to the backyard. It was extremely friendly, unafraid and curious, and made itself very much at home here.

It tried Jarkko’s keyboard, but it left the mouse alone.

Here, finally, is a sneak peak of my next project that I’m preparing for the next train journey back to Helsinki. More about that later.

A bag full of fun.

Cooking just got more fun...

… with a cute apron.

Last time I presented four new projects that I’d started. I haven’t made very much progress with three of them, but the apron is now finished and ready for action. It’ll be a relief to put the old apron in the rag collection. As I already mentioned last time, I made the apron following Meg McElwee’s pattern for the Emmeline apron, and it’s reversible. One side is for everyday cooking, and the other side is for Christmas. I used my granddad’s old table cloth for the Christmas side. That will be a nice reminder of Christmas Past. On the other side I used two different fabrics – one patterned and one plain. I cut out motifs from the patterned fabric that was used for the bodice and fused them to the skirt, securing them with stitch.

Apart from sewing an apron, I’ve been busy drawing and painting fish for the Sketchbook Challenge. Head over to my Flickr Photostream if you want to have a look at 10 of my new-found finned friends. The yellow boxfish and pufferfish are my favourites. They’re so goofy and loveable. 

(I just had to throw in a pufferfish)

Branching Out

This month’s theme in The Sketchbook Challenge is ‘Branching Out’ – expanding your skills, sprouting new ideas, discovering unknown territory. One pretty unknown territory for me is stamping. I seldom use stamps on fabric, I’m not a scrapbooker, and since I’m still struggling with regular journaling, I haven’t got a habit of using stamps in my journals either.

However, I can see why stamps would be a good addition to my repertoire, so when Melanie Testa recently published a fun little tutorial on incised foam stamps, I decided to branch out.

I know a lot of people love to use stamps, but I’ve discovered that for some reason my relationship to stamps is complicated. I love to look at stamps in the shop, but if I feel like buying one, I often stop myself with the questions: When am I going to use it, and how many times? Is it really worth buying it? Shouldn’t I make my own personal stamp instead of using a commercial and impersonal one?

Then, when I’m faced with the task of making my own stamps, I get confused by the endless possibilities. Which motif should I go for? Which one will I want to use over and over again? Which one is worth the effort? I find it difficult to make a stamp unless a have a clear idea in my head of what I’m going to use it for.

I guess I just need to make more stamps, and play with them. The more stamps I make, the less pressure is attached to each single stamp. The more I play, the more I will come up with ideas on how to use them. It’s as easy as that. And Melanie’s tutorial really makes it easy. The materials are simple and accessible, and if I mess it up, I can quickly make a new stamp, or alter the one I’m unhappy with. This is where I’ll start. And if I get hooked, I can branch out even more and finally use that linoleum block and block of speedy-carve that have been sitting in my cupboard for far too long.

ps

If you think that you don’t have the right equipment for the method Melanie describes, use something else. I didn’t have sticky back fun foam, so I used normal fun foam with double-sided tape. You could also use glue. I didn’t have an awl, so I used a thick sharp needle. And a blunt needle for the indentations. Use the things you have around the house.

Dig where you stand. 

I love Celtic knotwork, so that was a good place to start.

How about a motif without a background?

And how about a background without a motif?

Then, how about rejoining the motif and the background?

Minnenas trädgård

Det har inte hänt så mycket på det textila området sedan jag blev klar med Aurora-tavlan. I stället har jag ägnat min tid åt att försöka komma tillbaka i mina rutiner och reda upp stöket här hemma, och åt teckning och målning. Jag deltar i två olika kurser i konsten att föra skissbok, eller visuell dagbok, vilka båda är gratis och online. Jag nämde tidigare den ena, The Sketchbook Challenge, och den andra ordnas av Strathmore Artist Papers. Vem som helst får delta och man får själv välja hur aktiv man vill vara. Det är alltså under mycket fria former, vilket passar mig som redan har alltför många järn i elden.

I Workshop 1 av Strathmore online workshops får vi lära oss att använda oss göra collage av arbeten som vi gjort tidigare och att på så sätt skapa helt nya konstverk. Denna uppgift fick mig att återvända till min mapp med gamla teckningar som fått vila ostörd under många långa år och vandra i minnenas trädgård en stund. Det var med både igenkännandets glädje och sorg i hjärtat jag bläddrade genom mina gamla teckningar. Glädje för att jag kom ihåg teckningarna, när de var gjorda, varför de var gjorda och för att jag en gång i tiden produerade alla dessa teckningar. Sorg därför att de påminde mig om en svunnen tid, då jag kunde sitta i timtal och teckna otroligt detaljerade teckningar av allt från seriefigurer till illustrationer av litterära verk till noggranna anatomiska studier. Den tiden är onekligen förbi, för nu finns det för mycket andra saker som pockar på uppmärksamhet.

MEN. Efter att ha konstaterat att den där tiden är förbi, står en sak dock klar. För att komma vidare i min textilkonst behöver jag återvända till tecknandet (och lära mig måla). Och tecknandet har också ett värde i sig som jag vill återinföra i mitt liv, eftersom det har funnits ett stort hål inom mig sedan jag mer eller mindre slutade teckna för ungefär 10 år sedan. Men jag behöver något som puffar igång mig. Därför hoppade jag på skissbokståget för att se vart det för mig. Ni kan följa mina framsteg på Flickr, dit deltagarna i kurserna kan ladda upp sina skissbokssidor här och här.

 

Memory Lane

Not much has happened in the field of textiles since I finished my Aurora quilt. Instead, I have spent my time trying to get back into my routines and clearing up the mess in my home, and drawing and painting. I’m participating in two different courses on the art of keeping a sketchbook, or visual journal, both of which are free and online. I already mentioned one of them, The Sketchbook Challenge, and the other one is organised by Strathmore Artist Papers. Anyone can participate, and you can yourself decide how active you want to be. The format is very free, which suits me, as I already have too many irons in the fire.

In Workshop 1 of the Strathmore online workshops we are encouraged to reuse older artwork in collage and to create new artwork in this way. This task had me returning to my two-ring binder with old drawings, which has been resting peacefully for many long years, and I wandered down Memory Lane for a while. It was with both the joy of recognition and sadness in my heart that I flicked through my old drawings. Joy, because I recognised the drawings, when they were made and why, and because I once upon a time made all these drawings. Sadness, because they reminded me of past times, when I could sit for hours and draw unbelievably detailed drawings of everything from cartoons to illustrations of works of literature to careful studies of anatomy. Those days are truly gone, because now there are so many other things that demand my attention.

BUT. Having said that those are bygone days, one thing is clear. In order to develop in my textile art, I need to return to drawing (and learn how to paint). Drawing also has great value in itself and I want to reintroduce that into my life, since there has been a big hole in my heart since I more or less stopped drawing about 10 years ago. But I need something to nudge me into action. That’s why I jumped onto the sketchbook train, to see where it will take me. You can follow my progress on Flickr, where participants can upload images of their journal pages here and here. 

Ett axplock ur minnenas trädgård / A few stops along Memory Lane

 Min första akvarellmålning (i går!) / My first watercolour painting (yesterday!)

Here Comes the Sun

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right

Tavlan jag började med i somras (UFO nr 2) är äntligen klar! Jag hade en lång paus i arbetet under hösten, medan jag var upptagen med annat. När jag till slut fortsatte med den satt jag och tänkte tillbaka till den fantastiska sommar vi hade 2010 och sydde in mina minnen med varje stygn. Det är andra tider nu både i fråga om ljus och temperatur, men vi har trots allt passerat den mörkaste tiden. Jag ska hänga tavlan på väggen och drömma om sol och värme.

Vid tillverkningen av tavlan tillämpade jag Melanie Testas tekniker. Basen är ett batikfärgat bomullstyg och det översta lagret är silkesorganza med monotryck. Mellan lagren har jag tygcollage. Solen är stöpplad med en permanent penna (inspirerat av Catherine Nicholls undervisnings-DVD Drawn to Pen and Ink). Frihandskviltad med symaskin. Handbroderi med franska knutar, förstygn, korsstygn och langettstygn sätter pricken över i.

Det gångna året har varit mycket givande för mig kreativt. Jag har lärt mig nya tekniker och deltagit i olika "utmaningar" som främst Melanie har ordnat för att uppmuntra deltagarna att utveckla existerande såväl som nya färdigheter. Jag har till och med startat en blogg! Nästa år ska jag fortsätta att delta i nya utmaningar. Den första blir "The Sketchbook Challenge", där vi ska få tips och goda råd för hur man kan använda skissböcker för att utforska sin värld och uttrycka sig visuellt. Det kommer att bli toppen!

Gott nytt år 2011!

Here Comes the Sun

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right

The quilt I started last summer (UFO No. 2) is finally finished! I had a long break with it during the autumn, when I was busy with other things. When I finally carried on with it, I sat and reminisced about the gorgeous summer we had in 2010 and attached my summer memories to the quilt with every stitch. As for light and temperatures, times are very different now, but at least we're past the darkest time by now. I will hang this quilt on my wall and dream of sun and warmth.

Making the quilt I applied Melanie Testa's techniques. The base is tie-dyed cotton fabric and the top layer monoprinted silk organza. Between the layers there is fabric collage. The sun is stippled with a permanent pen (inspired by Catherine Nicholls's DVD workshop Drawn to Pen and Ink). Free-motion machine quilted. Hand embroidery with French knots, running stitch, cross stitch and blanket stitch adds the finishing touches.

This past year has been very rewarding for me creatively. I've learned new techniques and participated in different challenges that mainly Melanie has arranged to encourage participants to develop existing as well as new skills. I've even started a blog! Next year I'll continue to participate in new challenges. The first will be 'The Sketchbook Challenge', where we'll get tips and advice on how to use sketchbooks to explore our world and express ourselves visually. It's going to be great!

Happy New Year 2011!

Aurora

Midvinterpromenad med Fia - Midwinter walk with Fia