Today, a glimpse at my early explorations from week one of Alchemy 2023.
Also, my Sunday table.
My Alchemy work has moved on from what you see here and I promise I will show you soon how this is developing.
The lace on my Sunday table.....it was the ball buttons that atracted me, I can't resist a ball button.
When this arrived it was very yellow but with some careful laundering it looks almost like new.
There's a new design sheet taking shape this morning.
I'm at the very early stage, a few images being applied to an A3 paper base and a little choosing of thread colours.
I'm drawn to the soft patchwork in the images I have chosen here, the colours however.....there's quite a bit of pink but I'm looking closely at the more subtle greens along with pale lemon and blue.
Hopefully I will make good progres with this and be able to share more soon.
This type of work, this approach to surface design will be examined in the early stages of Alchemy 2023, my new online course which begins in September.
You can read more about that here.
Pages have been present on here quite a lot lately. They are time consuming to create, (never an issue, it takes as long as it takes and I love every stitch).
The paper pages with collaged flowers are tricky to stitch, the torn images are quite thick so holes are made before I thread my needle.
Those pages will eventually be bound into an artist book as I think I have mentioned before and they will be used alongside other pieces from that collection to inform my work for Alchemy 2023.
The Liberty print and gingham pages, which are double sided, will also be bound into book form similar to these.
That work is not as pressing however, that work is something I pick up as and when I have a few spare minutes.
If you remember, I created some collaged and hand stitched pages to hold my small stitched paper samples.
I am now creating more of those only bigger to hold the embroidered samples which are visible in the second image.
The sampling, the creation of pages for an artist book of samples is driving my imagination for this project and I will carry this work forward into my new online class which you can read about here.
There is also a short video regarding Alchemy 2023 at the foot of this post.
As I said, once these pages are stitched and the samples are mounted I hope to bind them into book form......I'm particularly excited about that!
Embellishment is continuing on this sheet.
There are cloth snippets, pin pricking and French knots along with more collage.
I'm now planning on creating a strip, maybe ruffled, of embroidered fabric to run horizontally about a third of the way up from the lower edge.
The very early stages of my next sheet.
I'm hoping to progress this quite a lot over the next day or so.
The measuring and marking out gives me a headache, is it embroidery or maths?
The collaged areas of these pages measure approximately four and a half by four and a half inches.
I wanted to keep them small as it's the sampling I will mount onto them which is important, I didn't want those samples to be overwhelmed by the background.
In the last image I have laid a few samples down just to get an idea of how that might look.
When the stitched cloth pieces are permanently mounted I will just tie them on, leaving the lower edge loose so they can be easily lifted to look at the background.
Bottom right hand corner......my first samples of collage on softer papers, fine lightwieght papers.
(thank you to my 10am Zoom group yesterday for their encouragement with this)
Mostly the torn paper strips will be attached to the finer papers with hand stitch as will the little snippets of cloth which are also present.
(if you click on the image it should enlarge and the cloth pieces will be more visible)
I'm hoping to use these pieces as a base for my small stitched samples.
This one is finished now...and there's a little artistic licence going on too.
The piece of fabric and lace which is hanging behind the embroidered cloth far right is there to suggest that cloth is draped and is a reference to the reverse of that piece.
(does that make sense?)
Anyway, as it's meant to be the reverse of the top piece it should look like a reverse. Artistic licence is my excuse.....I didn't want to have a prominent reverse on here.
So, where next? I have more samples to create and then a little time will be spent considering this whole body of work, from day one, before I make any decisions.
Progress.....this has moved on a little since you last saw it.
I filled the white space around the stitched paper with seed stitch and added French knots to the outer edge of the long piece to mimic pompoms.
A little embroidered cloth has also been added and going forward I want to collage some scraps of lace into a couple of the spaces.
My next task though....a little paint.