Creating Texture - With Old Tomato Paste Tubes!

Sometimes, I do weird things. 

It's kind of fun, and keeps the people around me shaking their heads...

Today, it's been reclaimed tomato paste tubes. (Yes, I cut it open and washed it carefully first - after we ate the spaghetti bolognese, which was awesome, by the way...)

The inside of the paste tube is the loveliest, soft, buttery gold colour, and it's easy to bend, fold and generally manipulate. Here, it's got some painted vliesofix and a chiffon scarf ironed over it, which gives it that orange-y colour in patches. Keeping it company is a piece of copper shim, with many holes poked through it with my trusty - and very blunt - awl. Don't worry, I keep an old awl just for nasty, tough jobs like this. There does exist another pointier, sharper, better looking awl for the tasks awls were really designed to carry out. 

The copper shim becomes a kind of 'claw' to set the glass bubble in, and after a bit of free machine embroidery (plus three broken machine needles and countless broken top threads), the end result looks like this:

This little lumpy treasure is destined, along with some other lumpy treasures, to be the focal point on a canvas that's been evolving in the studio.

If you promise to eat all your vegetables, I might even show it to you when it's finished. (Yes, Carmel* - that means you!)

*Carmel is my Mum - who is awesome - and also happens to be the worst vegetable eater in the history of the universe!

Tea Bags, Doiley's and Linen Napkins

Lillian's Legacy 101cm x 76cm 

Acrylic, tissue, damask, tea bags, silk, oil pastel and paper collage.

© 2012  Tracey Hewitt

For the longest time, I have had these panels tucked away safely - waiting for the wonderful day when I might finally know exactly what to do with them. (It's embarrassing to even mention how long...)

I am very lucky to have had a Nana who kept special things - like boxes and boxes of hand embroidered doiley's and damask napkins, which she enjoyed giving to me to 'do something with'. One of the napkins made their way into a natural dye bath. 

And waited. 

One of the doiley's was used to take rubbing's on used tea bags. 

They waited.

Until one day, some silk strips from the natural dyeing episode came to join them, and they were fused and seed stitched together.

As a pair of 'panels' they waited....for many years.

Lillian's Legacy - detail

Every so often, they'd get pulled out, caressed, admired, promised something special would be done with them, and carefully put away.

To wait some more.

Finally, their wait is over. I've been wrestling a bit with work for the next exhibition. I'm not sure where my muse had been on holidays...but when she came back, this was what she brought with her. Quite a bit more subtle and restrained than my usual works - yet it feels good. There's much more to explore here - I'll keep you posted!

The Latest Scarf

How good is your imagination? Can you imagine this scarf wrapped around a living human beings neck, rather than around the not-at-all-humanoid form of the citronella oil burner? Mabel, the dress form, has been called to perform a higher purpose, which has been fine - right up until I wanted to share the latest scarf creation with you, and had no model. (I'm kind of frightened of that hold the camera up in front of yourself and click style of portraiture...basically the camera is too close, and at that range there are too many wrinkles and saggy bits. I care for you way too much to subject you to such an ordeal!)

I'm a bit excited about this scarf...

Finally, some of that lace that's been languishing in the lace box for who knows how many years, is finding a home. I discovered a great paint - on dye from The Lace Cottage, which has given colours that worked really well with this vintage look ... Added to dyed silk tissue, and a somewhat random assortment of yarns and silks - It turned out pretty much as I'd hoped.

All that's missing is a model...I enjoy 'my girls'* company so much that when I have them here to visit, I don't think of suggesting we stop chatting (and laughing and drinking wine or eating choc chip cookies) to do a photo shoot; so I'm left with the outdoor furniture to do the holding up of the latest creation.

I guess I could always ask Garfield to help me out... the colours would flatter his complexion, I'm sure!

*FYI - 'my girls' are in fact my handsome princes significant others...I'm blessed to have them in our home often, and after many years of being the lone female in the herd, it's a treat to share these baffling males with some equally baffled- by- them women.

Coptic Book Binding

A few days ago I had one of the best days in a long time...



One of the artists from our recent book collaboration, Ollie Bath, was the tutor for a Coptic Book Binding workshop, organised by Biloela Area Visual Artists - affectionately known as BAVA in these parts.

Ollie demonstrated how to cover the grey board to create the book covers...

and how to fold a delicious assortment of papers into 'folios' and 'signatures', mark, poke holes and - miraculously - hand stitch all the board and paper together to create a beautiful book.

Ollie, Judy & Liz surveying our days work...

Eight of us created these beautiful books with an assortment of handmade papers, scrap booking and specialty papers, tissue and mulberry papers, even sketch block papers torn out of the block and with the little holes from the spiral binding left on the edge (which, I have to tell you, is too cool for words when you flick through the book!)

Holding one of these in your hands imparts a kind of quiet contentment that is truly rare...It's hard to explain just what it is about these books, it's an intangible feeling. The weight of the book in your hand; the array of textures and colours...they have a special beauty I am clearly struggling to define!

I pick my new baby up at least three times a day...just to hold it and look at it. Soon I will decide what use to put it to - I think it is destined to be an art journal, but till then, I'll enjoy fondling it at every opportunity!

Thanks to Ollie and BAVA for a truly enjoyable day!

Step by Step Scarf Lesson 2

Yesterday, we stitched lots of ribbon onto some soluble film as the first step in creating a scarf. Today, thanks to my young friend Andrea, you get to see me cutting out lots, and lots, and lots of circles from silk fabric (It's possible I was about to topple off my chair from tediousness!)

But, how cute are they?! So, in the spirit of this being a 'lesson' and all...find yourself a couple of lovely fabrics, whose colours sing with your stitched down grid of yarns, and go ahead and cut out a bunch of circles. These are 3 different sizes and the templates I used were the bottoms of : a powdered stock jar, a tiny tea cup and a teeny tiny paint squirt bottle. Please don't ask me how many...I'd have to go dig out the scarf and count them...and numbers just don't make me happy! Trust your own sense of what looks good and what makes you happy...I'm all about making you happy.

Time for a little more stitching. This is my free machine embroidery foot on Bertha, my very old, and very trusty Bernina (poor Bennie - my trusty new Bernina had to go to the doctor for a check up; she's been feeling a bit scratchy lately.) You can use your machines free machining foot - sometimes called a darning foot and the Janome's call it a pogo foot. OR, you could use your ordinary straight sewing foot, and do a bit of straight stitching, throwing in some reverse and a few U turns. Till you get something that looks like this:

What you're aiming for here, is to stitch this darling little circle onto at least two different strands of the yarn underneath. also layer smaller circles over bigger ones and stitch them all in place, quite randomly across the whole scarf.

Time for the fun part! Get thee to the laundry tub, fill it up with cold water (that's what Romeo likes) and send your scarf for a swim!

The Romeo will dissolve, firstly by going kind of cloudy and gluggy (at which point you may feel dismay and panic - but don't! It's all OK!) The best thing is to pop the scarf into the water and nip outside to hang out your washing or fed the cat, or even better, make yourself a cuppa. My point is that you need to leave it to soak and soften and fully dissolve for a while. When you return, your scarf will look limp, saggy and sad. This is good. Empty the water out and run some fresh cold water over your glorious creation to remove any final traces of soluble.

Next - dry your scarf. I opted for a trip to the clothesline and the sunshine (wasn't it a beautiful day?) but, you can drape the darling over the back of a chair inside, or wherever it is you hang damp stuff to dry and drive your family nuts...

The finished product! There are a few straggly ends there that need to be trimmed off, and we're good to go. Have fun creating one of your very own!

Step by Step Soluble Scarf Lesson 1

I have been promising...well, it's time to make good on the promise! Get settled in for part one of your very own soluble scarf lesson!

Begin by procuring some soluble film. There are a number of soluble films on the market, and if you're into research and discovery, you could test all of them to see which ones you like best, or, you can take my word for it that for this particular style of scarf, Romeo is best! I tell you this because it's reasonably heavy (in soluble film terms), tolerates a reasonable amount of humidity in the air and moisture on your hands without turning all gooey, sticky and generally disgusting while you're working on it. It can also handle quite a lot of heavy stitching without tearing - that's not such an issue with this particular scarf, but makes it a very versatile film.

The Romeo is the clear plastic looking stuff in the photo above, it is joined by some hand dyed silk ribbon/yarn, which will be the 'guts' of the piece, and some silk yardage, which will serve as the snazzy details.

Begin by cutting the romeo into a long, narrow rectangle (pretty much a scarf shape...who would have imagined?!) an inch or two bigger around than you want the finished scarf. If you need to create a bigger piece - just whiz it together with your sewing machine, one piece on top of the other.

 

This little foot is an optional extra. You can achieve the same result by carefully running the yarn under your normal machine foot, but if you have one of these - this one is on a Bernina - your life will be complete!

Now - get sewing! Feed your ribbon/yarn (sorry, I can't decide just what to call it...) through the little opening in your foot and start stitching rows of ribbon down the length of your Romeo.

Keep sewing...These are stitched lining up the edge of the foot with the next row of yarn - no more than a half inch gap between the rows.

OK, now it's time to change direction. The trick with soluble films is to create a net or grid effect, so that when the film is washed out, all your yarns and stitches will be well connected to one another. You'll see up in the top left hand of the photo that instead of cutting the yarn and starting again, I've just swung it around and left a loop - saves yarn and saves time - and I'm all about saving time! We'll just snip through those little suckers later on.

Here is the piece, all stitched up, it's 'guts' in place...ready for part two, which will involve that delicious looking silk from the first photo.

You'll notice that as it hangs around Audrey's neck, I've left some more spaces between those short runs across the scarf. You can go this way, or you can stick with the even, close together spacings right along...whatever blows your frock up really!

If you're hunting for Romeo (or, like me, live a long way from anywhere you can walk in and buy some), I can share with you that I get mine from Dale Rollerson at the Thread Studio. Dale looks after her customers wonderfully well, and has all kinds of treasures that I can't live without!

Lesson 2 coming up soon!

Announcing...The Andrea Knot!

Say hello to Andrea...Isn't she gorgeous?

The reason I'm introducing her to you (besides the fact that she's young, fresh, delightful, and you need to know her) is that she has created a remarkably snazzy scarf knot; and knowing that sometime in the near future you will know how to make your own unique scarf, I thought it would be great to share this nifty knot with you to use with your new scarves. You will know this in the near future, because if I ever remember to pick up my camera as I'm beginning to build a scarf, instead of as I'm almost finished it; I'm going to post a step by step scarf making post.

Andrea and I - among others - enjoyed a Girls Night In at Rhubarb last week, and I thought it was a great opportunity to snap her in her scarf so I could show you. Only problem was, I didn't take step by step photos (there's a pattern emerging here, isn't there?)

So, here's a closer look, and I'm going to attempt to explain it to you. If the following has you tied in knots, half strangled, and not looking this swish, let me know in the comments, and I'll get a step by step photo shoot going on my trusty studio companion Audrey. (Audrey is a dress form whose name is subject to change without notice!)

So...using a long, rectangular scarf, fold it in two, so the short ends meet. pop it over the back of your neck. Now, there should be a loop on one side, and two ends on the other. Take the end that is sitting underneath the two ends and slip it through the loop. Next comes bit that makes it all cool....Your loop will have a side more to the front and a side closer to your chest. Get hold of the piece that is sitting against your chest and gently lift it to the front of the side that's at the front - you'll make a figure of eight with the loop side, slip your hand through the new loop on your figure of eight and pop the remaining end through that loop. Gently pull it into position and tighten it to where you need it to sit, and you're done!

Andrea tells me she discovered this when she had put her scarf on in the traditional slip the two ends through the loop and head off way, and had one end slip out in the course of her day, and kind of tucked it in without looking and discovered it was totally cool - it looks almost like a plait, and I can report that when tied like this, your scarf won't move or slip (at least, none of mine do!)

Andrea has generously shared this knotty technique with me to share with all of you - all I ask is that it hereafter be referred to as The Andrea Knot. It happens that Andrea's surname is French...but I think French Knot is already taken!

Loving these leaves...

A while ago, a photo of a piece of silk paper made an appearance here...at the time, I thought it would make a great cuff, all stitched out with leaf shapes. The stitching was started, and frankly, it looked pretty lame and disinteresting. So much so, that I tossed it in a corner, amongst a bundle of other lame and disinteresting stuff, to be forgotten for a while. (You might be surprised just how much stuff is in that bundle!)

It was rediscovered when I was thinking about creating some special sample pieces for the Exploring Soluble Films workshop in Blackall. It may have looked lame with only stitching, but what about adding machine stitched slips created on soluble film? Hmmm...better!

Many laves (count them!) were patiently stitched on Romeo soluble film. Romeo is a plastic like sheet - it reminds me a bit of the clear, heavy plastic that school librarians were always busy covering books with. Using a slightly different variegated thread in the needle to the bobbin, some subtle colour changes were fairly easy to create. Once the leaves were finished, the whole lot went into a tub of cold water, the plastic dissolved, leaving the thread in these neat leafy shapes, ready to be stitched down on to the base...in this case, the silk paper.

The addition of a handmade bead (foiled black fabric wrapped around a satay stick, secured, and with a little embossing powder added) and a machine wrapped silk loop...and a cuff is born! I'm still trying to decide whether it needs more leaves, some hand embroidery on the silk, or if it's fine the way it is. I change my mind every time I walk past it! So, what do you think?

It's time to go pack my many bags for my teaching (and road) trip... Stay tuned for an update towards the end of next week!

Textile Tantrums

Dale Rollerson at The Thread Studio in Perth is organising another challenge this year. Here is my effort:

Deep Thought Therapy 20cm x 30 cm
© 2010 Tracey Hewitt

I had some pieces of canvas languishing at the bottom of a bundle - I wondered how they'd go painted, collaged and then stitched...well, this is how it went! I experimented with some mono printing, as well as lots of layering of paint and stamps and text from a very old book that I steal pages from for all sorts of projects. After all that, I added some assorted fibres under a sheet of painted vliesofix. Then came lots of stitching, appliqued fabric paper circles and finally, the swirly silk yarn couched down over the whole she-bang! There was a point (which seemed to last for a long time!) where I HATED this and could see no happy ending for it at all! Just at the crucial moment my Mum phoned, and reminded what I tell everyone else...if it's not working, just add more layers...Once again, of course, good old Mum was right. I quickly fled my sense of misery and quickly discovered the 'buzz' once more!

Thank heavens for Mums and an extra layer or two! The world is a better place because of them both!

Working on Pieces for Bush Christmas

Aren't these colours lovely?! There's been some paint splashed about onto a variety of surfaces, in preparation for further creative pursuits...in other words, the rapidly evaporating time till Bush Christmas has got me in a frenzy! These pastel coloured chunks are rock salt, that was sprinkled onto some painted watercolour paper while the paint dried...this gives a very cool speckled effect, and the salt takes up a little of the paint colour. It reminds me a bit of the coloured rocks the boys used to have in the bottom of the fish tank years ago. The boys weren't all that into the fish - when the last one died, it was at least two weeks before one of them exclaimed in dismay "Where's the fish gone?" Heaven, my darling, but I promise I gave him a lovely funeral....

Thankfully, my days of fish funerals beside the toilet are long behind me now! Which has nothing whatever to do with this piece...but I'm a great believer in the benefits of gratitude (and expressing same!) The text here says: Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. (Maya Angelou) It's a definition of success I respect greatly, and now that I'm no longer needed to perform fish funerals (which I didn't like doing) I think I must be free to feel successful! This piece is worked on a base of tissue bonded to felt, with handmade silk paper embedded with feathers free machine stitched in place. The little collection of discs at the bottom are from the bottom up: an abandoned grinder disc, a bottle cap, and a neat stoneware button. The disc and bottle cap have been painted and embossed to look bubbly and lava like...neat! (and fun!)

The Next Installment

Well, the soluble film has been washed out of all that stitching...and, I was right..it's perfectly gutless, as you can see! Pretty in it's own way, but gutless! So, next step will be to come up with a firm base to anchor it down onto...I'm thinking maybe felt with a layer of painted vliesofix...?

In the meantime...silk base, lots and lots of snippets of threads and fibres and yarns and fabrics, some gold flake, all covered with a layer of chiffon...and machine stitched within an inch of it's life! This one is developing with a much more appropriate weight for a belt...looks promising!

But, for now, the men are all back for lunch...with more poddy calves in tow!! I might have to post a pic of them at 'dinnertime'...hungry little critters, and so cute! We have Sheila, Spanky, Cleatus...and the new babies are still to be named...Oh my!

Sharing a work in progress

I thought it might be fun to document a 'work in progress'...what you see in this photo is a piece of Romeo (a cold water soluble film) upon which has been stitched a grid of straight and zig zag stitches, with some free machined circles being worked onto it. That little steel gadget in the top corner is the darning foot for my Bernina sewing machine...he's an especially good friend of mine! The darning foot that is; Bertha the Bernina is most definitely a she... My plan here is for a belt, or waist tie - which I've not done before...so I'm making it up as I go along. As you do...or as I do, anyway! As I'm stitching I'm starting to wonder whether this will be firm enough, or whether I'll need to add much more by way of fabric or loads more stitching. Many questions and uncertainties...not many answers...but that's how this whole adventure goes! I'll know when I know...and then I'll let you know!

In the meantime...I've just realised this piece is exactly the same colour as my page for Peta's book in our Altered Artists Book Collaboration . I posted pictures of it on that blog (click the link to go straight there!) I wonder what a fixation with the colour aqua reveals about my inner most self?

This is what I've been working on the last week or so...Cuffs! Hopefully groovy, funky, fun bits of wrist adornment...
There's been silk paper bases with old lace painted to match and stitched on top; playing with layers of felt, lace, painted vliesofix, stitching and foils...

A thank you to my Mum, Carmel, for this snazzy bead - she knocked it up from some angelina film, metallic paint and embossing powder (clever, isn't she?)

There's a flurry of activity in the studio (well, at least a little more than there has been...) as I create some pieces for the couple of 'jobs' I have coming up. In October, my work will be featured in Rhubarb - the boutique with benefits. Our very own unique boutique in Theodore!

In November, I'll send some treasures off to Bush Christmas in Toowoomba, where they will join work from other rural and remote artists and artisans for a week (Check the link for dates and location!)

"Cherish" is finished!

The book for the "Curves" Exhibition is finally finished!! I've posted each page in a separate post...my computer had a huge hissy fit when I tried to upload a lot of photos in one go!

Each page inside has it's own title, and has been scanned and printed onto watercolour paper, which was bonded to the back of the page, so that I could add a small amount of text to the 'story'.

My warmest thanks to those precious women who entrusted me with their bras...and especially to Jill - trusting me with this has meant the world to me. I can't wait to show it to her in the flesh!

All the pages follow - I'd love to hear which one/s are your favourites!

Fate Knocks At The Door

The first page of the book...Fate Knocks at the Door, takes it's title from a very, very old book cover (the one I snaffled at Reverse Garbage in Brisbane ages ago). This page has a base of woven strips of silk paper, with appliqued and painted pieces of bra cup lycra, foil from tomato paste tubes, a handful of bra hooks and some little artgirlz charms

Kind of says it all, I think!

My Cup Runneth Empty

Page Two! One of my original ideas for the title of the book was My Cup Runneth Empty...I worried that perhaps it maybe a little lacking in sensitivity... But, it persisted, and became the title of this page.

The base is silk paper, with torn pieces of bra cup fabric incorporated into it, with lots of hand stitching, an embossed velvet tree and some buttons. The colours, swirling feel and 'bandage' appearance from the torn bras speak to me of anaesthetic, nausea and the haziness of being plunged into this journey...

Tides of Uncertainty

Tides of Uncertainty is consrtucted from silk paper with velvet pieces free machine stitched into place...

Here it is in place in the book..it reminds me of microscopic cells and scientific stuff, as well having a very watery, fluid, floaty feel...