Unravelling Intarsia, and exciting news from Rowan

I absolutely love colour and am fascinated with different colour combinations and how colours play against each other for different effects, so I was in my element last Saturday with my Intarsia Unravelled Workshop. We had a great time getting to grips with yarn bobbins and the like, and the group were a lovely bunch so there was plenty of fun and banter to be had too.



 


And talking of colour, Rowan have recently launched Pure Wool Worsted, 100% superwash wool which comes in an amazing 50 different shades. To celebrate they are also about to launch their first global Knit Along to make a fabulous mystery Afghan designed by the wonderful Martin Storey - you can see a video about it here. The knit along starts on 21 April and you can find out more about this on Knit and Purl Garden's Blog,  the Rowan website and on Ravelry

Road trip to Torhole Bottom

My friend Jane & I headed out to the wilds of Somerset on Saturday for a textile workshop with the lovely Judy Alexander. Titled Paper, Paint, Cloth & Stitch Judy's workshop involved a number of techniques to transform painted or photographed paper into pieces of textile art showing stitched flowers on layered paper/textiles. 

Artwork by Judy Alexander

These beautiful pieces were created by manipulating painted papers and stitching this with layers of sheers added, then heavily stitched by machine

Detail of one of Judy's artworks

My painting onto paper

First off we were thrown straight out of our comfort zone to quickly paint a picture inspired by flowers - I'm no painter so it was a little eek-worthy! After the initial horror, and Judy's expert guidance, we soon got cracking and found it to be a really enjoyable way to spend a rainy morning.

Once dry we than had fun scrunching up our hard work, and started the fun bit of adding stitch. The day went amazingly fast, and I have plenty more work to do to my piece, but I made a start and hopefully you can see what a difference the processes are starting to make.

I'm looking forward to finishing it before too long, and will definitely add some sheers to the surface - maybe I'll show you the finished item then :-) I enjoyed these techniques and can think of a number of projects I might use them on.....just need a few more hours in the day!

Birthday celebrations

It's been a busy time with birthdays this last week or two in our house with my husband, my brother & my birthdays all falling within the same 10 days. So I've had a pretty hectic yet fabulous birthday week all in all, kicking off with a trip to London to celebrate with my brother where I managed to catch one of the last opportunities to view the Paul Klee exhibition at the Tate Modern. Klee is described as major figure in 2oth century art, and was a great creative innovator. Most of his artworks were painted on papers, but he experimented a lot with surface textures and colour so is a great inspiration to those working with textiles.

I also had the joy of hubbie returning safely  from his India tour with folk-jazz band Burum in time for my actual birthday and bearing gifts - some beautiful hand made & printed papers and 2 gorgeous scarves.



And then I had this fantastic surprise made by my lovely friend Jane - I've been talking for ages about making myself a decent needle case - well now I don't need to as I have the mother of all personalised needle cases, with every sort of needle you could desire, a fantastic pair of high quality embroidery scissors, a  matching substantial pincushion to boot, and all wrapped up in lovely pink tissue paper which I can keep to use for collage and the like :)


  






The case opens up to no less than 6 felt 'pages' for all different types of needles, each carefully labelled with hand stitching- she is hoping to inject some organisation into my crafting habits methinks - and how can I fail to keep things organised in this beauty :-)

Inside the front cover is a set of pockets designed to hold my machine needles, and inside the back cover a wee pocket to store my lovely new scissors - am I a spoiled stitcher or what??!




Then to top it all, Knit Today magazine have featured my Birdy pattern in this month's issue along with a number of other birdy offerings by other designers. It's always a thrill to see your stuff in print :-)

I hope you've all had a good week too?

Making a start for Stitches Coven Summer Exhibition

I've managed to take a leaf out of my own book to stop procrastinating and actually make a start on a new creative textiles project. I am a member of Stitches Coven, a local creative textiles group, and to help us all focus and keep moving forward with our design & technical skills, we set ourself a yearly challenge of making new work for a themed exhibition. This year's theme is Architecture, which is a great topic as it offers a huge range of interesting visual material to work from, and can be approached in many different ways. This can be a bit problematic for the chronically indecisive though as there are so many choices!

A recent jaunt to Birmingham solved my problem of what to focus on though, as when I saw the new Birmingham library I knew I'd found my subject! The whole building, both inside and out, was really impressive, but I found it's highly decorative exterior 'shell' to be completely fascinating, so I thought I'd use this as my design source. I started a Pinterest board on the library, and now I'm playing around with ideas on paper to help me come up with more of a plan, and yes I'm afraid that has involved the 'D' word! Just the mention of this word (drawing) can strike terror in the heart of many of us who consider ourselves as crafters rather than fine artists, and many like to play with the materials rather than take a pen or pencil to hand, but as I make my own creative journey to develop and grow in this area, I am finding that drawing plays an increasingly important and necessary part in how I go about my creative work. 

I used to have an abject terror of drawing, and certainly of anyone seeing my drawings which felt as cringe making  a prospect as having to show the contents of my knicker drawer!! But over the years and with perseverance I am becoming more comfortable with this (the drawing bit not the drawers of course!), and I would encourage any other crafting sketchophobes out there to embrace the D word too for a number of reasons:

• It's the only way to get visual ideas out of your head so you can see them!
• Most often ideas do not appear fully formed in your head (unless you are extremely lucky), so drawing can be a useful starting point and allows you to work on these ideas until you have something more resolved and tangible.
• You may start with one idea, but by working on paper you may find new & better ideas develop
• You can try out/rehearse/make design decisions about ideas on paper before committing to valuable materials and hours of work
• No one needs to look at your drawings unless you want them to - they are a working tool to help you, not a piece of finished artwork for public presentation :-)

The good news too is that 'drawing' is not just about pencil & paper, nor need it be any more than a very rough & basic sketch, and it can involve numerous approaches any of which may suit some folks better than others. Some of these  may include:

• Making a print block or a stencil 
• Cutting out or tearing paper shapes
• Making rubbings and/or using colour washes of watercolours or dyes
• Making a collage with papers and/or other materials
• Making small 'try out' samples with spare fabrics etc that are not precious
• knitting a swatch!
• Using the scanner and computer to try digitally out designs and pattern repeats etc

These are just a few, and I'm sure the list is endless but you get the idea, and if you are interested in this subject I would recommend this book by Kay Greenless. (Disclaimer: any book recommendations are made according to my own experience and personal opinion. All such recommendations are made in good faith and I do not receive any incentives, financial or otherwise in doing so.)

So I thought I'd share with you some of the drawing I've been doing for my Birmingham library inspired piece. I started with these rough drawings to try to see exactly what was going on with that decorative surface

printed using a foam stamp I made

Then I isolated a couple of shapes and chose one to make 2 print blocks out of (one positive and one negative) and have been noodling around with these for a while, but not particularly enamoured as it seemed to be giving results that were neat, ordered, static & flat - none of which really do it for me I'm afraid!

The final drawing was made after isolating an area that had been photographed at an angle -  and I think this gives it a bit more movement,  interest and depth so I think I'm starting to get somewhere..............I still don't have a final 'plan' with this and will just keep chipping away until it develops into something. My next task will be to consider what sort of materials and techniques are going to  help me achieve this, and move on to some 'try out' samples.

isolating a small area to work from

sketch with pencil

I hope you have found this useful - I think it's empowering to realise that design ideas don't arrive fully formed out of the blue like lightening for most of us mere mortals, but that you can see how chipping away can lead on to some interesting avenues. I'm always fascinated to hear about other peoples ways of working creatively - Where do you find your inspirations, and how do you 'get started'?

How to Stop Procrastinating and Get Creative: Part 1 - Music in theStudio

I don't know about you, but I often find it really difficult to get started on a creative project, even though it may be the thing I most want to be doing. When I finally sit down to that 'blank sheet of paper' scenario (or what can I make with those 2 gorgeous balls of yarn?), it seems my mind starts wandering to other stuff like checking the email, looking something up on google, reorganising my knitting needles etc - and so I procrastinate and then wonder what happened with the day.... does this sound at all familiar to you?

Starting a project or piece of creative work is something I personally really struggle with, and I know I'm not alone in this so I thought I'd write a little series about tips and strategies that can help to overcome this. If you have any good hints or tips to share on this subject, don't be shy and feel free to  leave a comment :-)

I'm always fascinated by ideas about creativity and creative processes, and if you are too I would highly recommend taking a look at John Cleese's talk on the subject here. It deals too with the issue of how to get the most out of your creative time, and as you would imagine of John Cleese, in a most enjoyable and entertaining way.

Time for many of us is a very limited commodity, and even if we have the luxury of putting aside a little dedicated time, chances are it's after a full day of other (often frazzling) work, so it can be hard to make ourselves 'go and be creative'. No matter how much we love our art/craft making, all of a sudden our 'passion' seems like a huge chore and we can struggle to gather the enthusiasm to get to work. Something I have found to be invaluable in countering this is having music playing in my studio, and I think this helps in a number of different ways.

Firstly it is part of my 'going to work in the studio' rituals - a set of activities that I routinely undertake at the start of a session. Rituals can be helpful in enabling us to leave our day's concerns behind and offering a way in to our creative work - and actually I think rituals are a whole other topic for discussion that perhaps I'll cover in a later post in this series.....

Secondly, music basically helps me chill out - it seems to refresh my head after a days work, and it's only when I can relax that my mind can start to wander in a creative way - John Cleese refers to this process as the open mode, and he states that creativity can only occur when you are in this open mode.

Depending on what sort of music I'm listening to, this can also help in a number of ways: if is thoughtful and calming, this can oil the cogs when I'm thinking my way through a more complex creative problem; if the music feels playful and makes me laugh, this can help me be more playful and experimental with trying out new ideas - and who knows, I can even have a lot of fun (something I think we could all do with more of)! Some music is impossible not to dance to, so I just go with that and it can really help improve my flagging energy levels.

I'll often repeat the same album or playlist again and again over certain period of time or number of sessions, and sometimes even the same tune if it's working for me in a particular way. My current favourite albums for the studio are London Grammar's If you Wait, Katie Carr's Paszport, and Laura Mvula's Sing to the Moon. I have also been known to bounce around like an eejit (when no-one's looking!) with Ylvis's single The Fox (What does the fox say?) which I know is not everyones' cup of tea, but it somehow works for me!!

I'm also extremely lucky in that I live with a very talented musician/composer - so sometimes I can just listen to Mr fyberknitics working at his craft while I'm working at mine - how lush is that!

I'd love to hear from you about this topic and would welcome your comments below. Do you find procrastination is a problem with your creative projects, and if so how do you get yourself going? Do you play music when you are doing your art/craft/knitting etc? If so, what are you listening to of late?

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