ATC Roundup

It's time I photographed some of the ATCs I've been working on.  The Freestylers are having a card swap on the 12th, and I thought I'd incorporate some different techniques in a few of them and join the swapping fun.  Some cards are older, though none quite elderly.  These are simply images I enjoyed developing during this past year.

Enjoy!

The one above is made from polka dot fabric and a check fabric, which I cut apart to make the stripes.  The blue is a batik.

Below is called "Summer's Long Exit," which is how I think of the dragging Indian Summer each year.  Almost unending.  The hatch marks at bottom is a Stef Francis thread variable thickness as you sew.  A dream to work with!

Next is what was actually an exercise in straight stitching different weights and types of yarn.  I would like to say "running stitch," but most of these threads were too fat (perles) or too stiff (linen). It is so much nicer than looking at perfectly horizontal or vertical lines of stitching, isn't it?

  

For Bethy, one day, when she is interested in learning to sew.  How much fun it will be to show her how to lay down scraps of fabrics and add these lovely embellishments!

Here is an ATC that is actually a bit old (but not elderly, please; a touchy subject lately).  A combination of paper, linen fabric, cotton perle, machine-made trim, perle buttons . . .

If the day has been stressful or tedious, it is good to go into the studio and pull out the tiniest of scraps and lay them out until I have a design I like.  Not a big piece.  Small.  Manageable.  The way my life can forget to be, sometimes.

Another not-so-new.  I tried to make a pair of these, but I don't think I made it to the second piece.  The lovely background fabric in center was the inspiration for this travel commentary:

An experiment from many years ago, I found the fabric I had made through several processes, ending with these postage stamps ironed onto a fabric that had been used as a protective covering for my ironing board when I was painting and printing fabrics (including dying scrim, stretching it over the muslin and ironing it dry so the color and pattern transferred over something already stained with other colors).  The textural effect is strong here:

This is a celebration piece.  I hear a brass band, chinking glasses, happy voices, all under afternoon sun.  Helen, GA during Oktoberfest, maybe?

A leaf, made this time last year.  A great deal of layering and machine felting here, silk organza and some funky fabrics underneath it, with machine stitched details.  Only a small amount of hand-stitching becaue it was very thick with layers of bonding and felt and funky fabric:

Another fabric that I discovered while cleaning and moving things.  An abstract day dream.  Something not a bit concerned with reality, time of day, or appointments to be kept— a sort of Paul Klee morning:

A pome fruit.  With some layering in right hand corner, couching, beads . . .  I'm a little hazy on the details here.  I think the shape of the bright green fabric suggested the direction more than a well-formed idea of representation.  Unfortunately, I get started on an idea, gone into the Zone, and then I lose all sense of where, why, and even the point of ending:

Stamped fabric below.  I carved the stamp from a sheet of soft rubber, bonded the fabric to a pellon interfacing, and stitched the green image in complementary red. It has suggestions of the garden.  Unstitched, as a negative print, it is still interesting.  This is a good stamp to play with, perhaps to block portions of it and do some side-by-side printing . . .

Fabric painted five or more years ago, later made into a rectangular quilt block but recently I cut the block apart into  several ATCs, each of them with different sections of that red-black painted original fabric.  Here I've added two stamped images on right in the reddish portion, and because the images were faint and not complete circles, I worked the shapes by stitching (brokenly) the rough circles there.  Then I added the hatching marks in red over the black parts.

Only hatching marks added to the painted fabric and little corner of red linen that had been satin-stitched on by machine:

Flags flying, end of summer is approaching.  I hate to be so eager for time to pass, but I am a little ready for cooler weather!  On a fabric that could have been a summer postcard, interrupted by the curve of the sandy beach . . . ? Really?

The last piece is something I could not put down, that I kept stitching, adding buttons, just one more stitch, one more knot, one more something somewhere!  It could have been twice, three times the 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" of the original, and this idea would have been soooooo much fun to continue to develop!

In fact, I think I'll keep it as inspiration for something a little larger later on.  So many ideas, so little time!

Still Elusive . . .

We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  In an effort at some late-in-life character improvement, I decided last week to learn to write the elusive (to me) short story.  I can be quite formidable when I apply myself to learning something.  I think of my life with the Goldberg Variations, for instance.  After a week, however, I have managed only to come up with a paltry three paragraphs detailing a woman sitting at an outdoor cafe table.  I've been made privy to no other details of this woman's story.  I changed things a dozen times, gave her ample opportunity to talk to me.  But the most I got from her was sullen silence and a hint that there was more to her than met the eye.

So I will confess that I deleted that bothersome page and went back to my novel.  So much goes on there— complex characters with problems to be solved, living spaces to be understood, memories to be interpreted and carried forward, mistakes to be corrected, meals to be cooked, pockets to be examined to see if some scrap of paper thought lost might be crumbled there . . .

I am officially giving up the idea of writing the short story.  As of today, Wednesday morning, 8:00 a.m., 15 August 2012.

Stories From The Studio

I have been thinking about stories, lately.  When I work on a piece, even a small one, there is always a story to it.  Some are long, involved stories, some are smaller ones, only a few lines.  But it is difficult (for me)  to work on things without thinking of the backstory.  I think that comes from classes in writing in college.  There is always a backstory to the present— and those backstories are often more interesting than the present.  Maybe I should confess, here, that I am certifiably unable to write a short story, and those backstories are the culprits.  There are just so many things that happen to a person to get them to the "now" point that it is hard for me to disregard them.  So, my short stories turn into rough outlines for novels.

That being said, I am listening to stories all the time I am working on a fiber piece.  Well, yes, I listen, because the pieces begin to tell me about themselves, and they sometimes balk at something I wish to stitch, some color I would like to use— oh, the buttons I have had to remove!  When I am a good listener, the pieces get better.

Uh hu . . .  I  can hear the wrinkling of your brow through the ether.  You just moved slightly back from the screen and thought, "She's on the way around the bend, maybe has already arrived . . ."

The truth is, in the quiet of the studio, listening to the hum of the fan, all sorts of ideas come to me.  It would be so nice to lie back in a comfortable chair and listen to the stories in my head, but then I'd fall asleep— so I don't have a deep, comfortable chair or sofa in the studio, or I'd never get anything done!  Just chairs on wheels.

Of course, the chairs on wheels have their drawbacks.  Early in the summer I was climbing up my step-stool to get something on the very topmost top of a cabinet (which shall remain nameless) and I fell onto one of those chairs on wheels which scooted out from under me and . . .  to make the long story short, I ended up flat on my back under a covering of things that followed me to the floor.  The difficult part was to get up.  The artificial hip doesn't like a lot of pressure from pushing, nor can it be bent up to my chest, so getting up became an act of great creativity.

This has caused me to think many times about the wisdom of a studio with chairs on wheels.  And to even re-consider a comfortable chair for leaning back and thinking . . . hanging my legs over the arms the way my mother never let us as children . . .  falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon . . .

So, there may be a post in the future about the perfect studio chair.  I have been looking for this elusive chair since June.  I found two that were in sadly-repair-me-please shape, but I don't feel up to re-tying springs and caring for sagging down pillows.  It must be high, with a seat at least 22" from the floor (when you are 5' 11" tall, you don't really want to sit in a chair made for Hobbits), and no skirt, so the Dust Bunnies don't have a chance to nest and multiply beneath it.  I would not even mind bad upholstery, as I can sew my way out of that objection . . .

I started out to talk about the stories my little pieces tell me as I work on them.  But the backstory got in the way, again . . .