Karen Ruane

This piece from here has moved on. If you remember I was unsure whether to continue this as a design sheet or use the open space on the left to create a kind of artist book with the already embellished area as the back page. I still haven't decided. I have a plan for another circular piece which will cover the open space lower left. Once that is done this would qualify as a finished design sheet. If I then want it to become an artist book I will need to add more pages at the reverse of the circular pieces. That idea excites me, the possibilities that would give rise to for further embellishemnt so I am most likely going to go with that. I best cut out some more circles....

a quick video explanation

You last saw this around a week ago when I tried to explain my plans for it....I have worked a little more on it since then and this moring made a quick five minute video for you in which I explain myself more clearly.....

 

design sheet or back page for a new artist book?

This one was crying out to be created. It popped into my head and took up permanent residence. Initially it was going to be a stand alone design sheet but now I am considering another option. There's an awful lot of empty space on the left hand side which definitely could be filled as this design sheet develops but now I'm thinking a little booklet might live on that side, making this the back plate for said little book. What do you think? You know how much I love a little book.....

books, pages, design sheets...

The most relevant piece here, the most current piece is the circular piece which is prominent in the last image. (It's in the centre of the first image)  That piece which was worked yesterday evening is again from my current ledger class, work from which you have been seeing a lot of recently, yesterday's work was from the same class.

The reason the other work is here is because I'm pondering, kind of reminding myself what's going on round here creatively as it's easy to lose sight of things, of particular pieces. This is a good way to refresh the brain cells.

What has happened though and what nearly always happens when doing this is it inspires, creates an urge to begin a new piece from the imagery and the composition here.

Ledger girls.....pay particular attention to the next bit....

can you imagine a large design sheet which is inspired by and loosely replicates the first image?

Oh well, I can't complain about having too many ideas because it certainly beats having creative block.

lace and stitched papers

The girls in ledger class will most likely be happy to see me working on this page as it's been languishing untouched for quite some time. There is still work to do here but already it has given me another idea which I will feed into class over the coming months.

The little book doesn't belong here. The little book, for now, is a moveable prop to fill blank space for photographs....very underhand of me I know. I speak about where the little book will live in this post but for now it has other uses.

headers, edges and linings

I picked these little cloth pages up again last night after leaving them to one side for a couple of days so I could progress my class work. They all need backing, the edges finishing and headers attached. Only one of these two here is finished. It's surprising how long it takes to double edge four sides of a small piece of cloth with buttonhole lace. The headers are being kept simple.....white Broderie Anglaise, no surface embroidery but again edged with two rows of buttonhole lace.

Of course, me being me I couldn't resist adding one tiny decorative thing....the white crochet bead you can see in the last three images.

stitching stories

This where we are up to in my new class stitching stories. Well it's where I am up to, the girls are all way ahead of me. I'm working in two books, a children's colouring book and a little blank sketchbook. There are two stories 'on the go' here.

You will notice the absence of words here, of annotation. I'm not big on annotation. I know what I'm doing, what this story is all about, I don't need words and I have the most appaling hand writing you will ever see. There is annotation, description, text in the group though and some amazing imaginations are at play.

I never fail to be inspired by the work produced in all my groups.

This afternoon, to create a little diversion for myself, I am thinking about creating a header for one of these little cloth pages. It needs to at least be considered if not actually started so I'm cracking on with it because I have a spare hour or two.

faffing

I think I need to start working in a sterile box, no distractions, no embroidered cloth or inspirational images....nothing. The thing about this house is there's always something visible out of the corner of my eye that calls me, compels me to look again and fondle. That leads to a new idea...(no wonder I never get anything substantial accomplished)

The pieces today are a perfect illustration of that. One of these comprises three joined embroidered hankies, the other is a very long strip of embroidered paper and silk. Yeaterday they caught my eye so I picked them up and looked. Bad mistake. Now I want to line one with the other and create a kind of rolled, soft book with a fold over front.

I am inspired and irritated in equal measure. This is in my head now but there are other equally inspirational yet more pressing things to do. Oh dear.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Karen Ruane (@karenruane) on Jul 7, 2019 at 4:47am PDT

more ledger work

If you read my post yesterday you will remember me speaking about how I struggle at times to finish things I begin in my embroidery class demonstrations as my task is to keep moving forward, share information, provoke thought, inspire ideas..... meaning I tend to work to tight deadlines. That's not to say though that I don't become inspired myself and have a desire to finish things, to explore ideas. So today I'm showing you similar images from the same class, namely a little piece from that class which I am striving to complete, to develop and which I don't think I have spoken about in detail before. The little booklet with the pink paper strip on the cover and the dangly sequins was created to fill the space in the first image below. In truth though, after I played with it a little this morning it would live just as easily in the space you can see in the second image below.

When we created these little booklets in class they were intentionally left blank, to be embellished at a later date after more techniques had been explored. It was hoped by doing that we would have a greater pool of information to draw from and that each page would become a development of what had gone before. My little book has only minimal embellishment at the moment, one page is half done, adorned with beads and tiny pom poms. I'm aiming for a 'scattering'. I think I'm getting there.

This class is still available. It runs until January 2020 so there's still a long way to go. You can read more here.

 

 

surface design, isolating pattern

We're cutting out templates in Ledger class. We're isolating pattern in order to make decisions on what comes next, examining work created so far, the details, the little marks which are easy to overlook when a whole page of embellishment is staring you in the face.

I was leafing through this ledger this morning just before I took these photographs and was pleasantly surprised at how full it is getting. Often I can't work at the same pace as the girls in terms of finishing specific techniques as I need to move on to the next stage allowing me to post fresh ideas each time. Sometimes I feel guilty that I haven't finished a page or an area of a page but then I tell myself that isn't what I'm here for. It doesn't matter if I never finish any of this so long as I have shared and demonstrated the process and hopefully inspired at the same time.