And while we're talking about books...

Here's a book I made for Fibrecircle recently, as part of a challenge I created for them.

Running challenges for that group is always interesting. We all work in very different ways and we pretty much know how we want to work, so there's no good setting a challenge that requires people to work in a specific way. Experimenting is one thing; making work is another.

The challenge was a Scavenger Hunt. Each person had to bring along:
a second-hand piece of paper - i.e. paper that has been used for something else, by someone else (not you). It can be newsprint, advertising, an envelope from a letter, a page from a magazine... whatever you like.

2. something from a plant - leaves, flowers, roots, twigs, fruit, tea leaves.... use your imagination! It has to have come fairly directly from a plant, without much processing - mulberry leaves are fine, mulberry paper isn't. You don't necessarily have to incorporate it into your work, but you do need to use it in making the work.

3. words - three words from your life during these three weeks, i.e a book title you've read during the time, a sign you've seen, a headline... anything from these three weeks. Be prepared to explain!

4. something, anything, blue

5. three embellishments: beads, buttons, metallic elements, small samples or embroidery, stamping ... to become part of your work. It doesn't have to be three of the same thing.

6. an insect. Any insect. (No, spiders are not insects.) This can be a picture, a fabric, an embroidery, a three-D model, a stamp, a real insect....

7. something long and thin. Yarn, ribbon, braid, paper strips, embroidery thread.....

The idea was to make something from your elements on the day, in whatever way you like to work. A finished item or a part of something else...

I brought along used envelopes, a twig, the words "dancing in silence", blue card, dragonfly and gold brads, a dragonfly punch and some wire. I also grabbed some net yarn that Helen was trying to rehome.

The cover was a monoprint from a glass board, using acrylic paints and drying retarder. I marked the paper size and painted quickly on the plate in blue, black and white paint, mixing the colours a little on the plate. Then I printed, burnishing with my fingers and a spoon. I touched up a couple of areas on the print while the paint was still wet.

I made the envelopes into book covers, with the patterned side out. I added a layer of gesso, which, I was told, can make the blue stand out more. 

I'm not sure it did, but it was an interesting effect, especially once I added a layer of folded blue card inside them. I made some signatures and used more blue card as a concertina spine. Helen, who had nothing to do, sewed the booklets into the spine with a simple pamphlet stitch.

 I also made an envelope as a place for more private things.

 I added some words from a song by Leonard Cohen that seemed particularly resonant.

I'm really happy with how this one turned out, which is unusual, since I'm usually not happy with things until a little time has passed!

Day 3 - finished!

Apologies for the delay - I was struck low by a Very Friendly Coughing Bug, who leapt from son to husband to me in as many days. I've been keeping myself to myself since it arrived, hoping not to let it leap to anyone else.

I have finally finished my little treasure, though I think it may need a little dab with the hot glue gun, as a couple of spots are determined not to stay glued. Me and glue... sigh.

First, the inspiration... this gorgeous little High Renaissance objet from the collection of the Walters Art Museum.

The manuscript dates from about 1550 A.D. and, at 1in x 7/8in (2.2 x 1.67cm), is so small that it's been mounted with a chain for wearing as a pendant.

It's made of gold sheet and an enamelling technique called champlevé. The stones are rubies or spinels. The artisan who made the book is unknown but it's "in the style of Giulio Romano", Italian, probably made in the years 1499-1546. The tiny manuscript inside (identity unknown but I assume a religions text of some kind, perhaps a Book of Hours or a missal) was created by Jacobus Romanus, (1515 and 1560). Sadly, this item isn't on regular display at the museum, though it has featured in several exhibitions.

Mine isn't that tiny, I hasten to add! Mine is roughly double size, 5cm x 4.67cm or about 2in x 1 3/4in and that was quite fiddly enough, thank you. And needless to say, mine isn't actually made from gold and precious jewels.

I photographed it with the catches open, so you can see that they actually exist and do work. That was the hardest part. Sadly, my "jewels" are the wrong colour, since the available options were a wishy-washy purple, this red or hot pink!

 

The hinges are actually brass. I was going to make piano hinges from paper when I found these ones, designed for jewellery boxes, at the hardware store. I even found tiny 12mm ones for the catches, although this meant that the catch shape couldn't be curved like the original.

The tangs for the catch are square brads, larger than I wanted but I couldn't find anything else small enough to suit.


I painted cartridge paper with a pale brown watercolour wash and cut it into signatures. Because of the size, I could only put three signatures into a pamphlet, so the book is made of 12 individual pamphlets, sewn together with pamphlet stitch. I attached the book block by adhering the front and back pages to the inside covers as end papers.

I painted the page edges with gold paint, as there seemed to be some traces of gold paint on the leading edges, perhaps from illumination on the pages. But no, I haven't yet illuminated my pages.

I like my little book, although it offered me quite a few challenges to make.



Day 2 - painting

OK, clearer now, I think? For such tiny things, they sure took a lot of painting... and drawing... and Treasure Gold... and Rub 'n' Buff!

What did I make today?

Well, guess....

What do you think these are for?

The dimensions of the larger pieces are 5mm x 4.7mm - that's about 2in x 1 3/4in. It actually took me most of the afternoon to make them. The base is mat board, with glued string and then a paper overlay, to give the moulded shape.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to paint them. Maybe things will be a bit clearer then?

More about the book

Once I'd painted the cover picture, it was April 1 and I started work on the pages. April 3 was the first quarter of the moon in April, with the full moon on Apr 10, and the last quarter on April 17. The new moon fell on April 25. I won't show all the pages here, partly because that would be tedious to look at, but also because, when you are working quickly on the final sheet, not all pages turn out as you imagined! Here are some of my favourites:
The first page I did -

April 6, a Fibrecircle meeting day - paper tissue collage
April 11 - undeciphered scripts This page shows a page of the undeciphered script of the Indus Valley civilisation, with the letters of UNDECIPHERED SCRIPTS hidden among it. On this day, I was thinking about the parts of everyone that are hidden from view, that appear unexpectedly.
The next two are pair of pages about limitations, associated with the changing season, the waning moon and my life at the time.


Tissue poppies for Anzac Day, for those dead in war and the new moon, with the words of the poem that begins "in Flanders Fields the poppies blow", written at Ypres by Dr John McCrae, who himself did not survive that terrible war.
A fantasy landscape, just playing around with colours. Painted with Setacolor paints over the original blue background.

It actually took me until mid June to assemble the book in its final form. I added colour with Prismacolor pencils to the end papers, and added text.

This was a brilliant project to do, I really had a ball. It was structured enough that I wasn't trying to find things to make each day, but free enough to let me follow whatever elusive thread captured my attention. I learnt a huge amount by doing it, although I now see ways I could have done things better (of course!). I think I got way more out of it than I would have done making a quilt (or a bag) for the challenge. If you want to see the other challenge pieces, they're on the Kambra Challenge blog.

Lots of new stuff to share

I've been quiet here lately because so much of what I've done lately has been secret. Finally I can share one thing that took up a lot of my life back in April. I belong to a group that does a challenge every year. This year, the challenge was to make something with these fabrics, a pack of 40, 7in squares of 20 Hoffman 1895 Bali Watercolors, blue-green color roll.

I was away for some of the challenge period so I wanted to make a small project, that I had a good chance of finishing in the time frame. I thought about making a bag, or using the square to embellish a garment. But when I looked at the fabrics, they reminded me of phases of the moon, so I decided to make a book that referenced the moon phases over one month. The moon in astrology relates to emotions, and receptiveness to change, since the phases of the moon mean it is in constant change. In the past, I've made diary-style year quilts, which were about what was happening in my life during that year, but I wanted to make something that focused on my inner life, what I was thinking and learning, rather than what I was doing. So I made April Moon. (I worked through lots of possible fancy titles, but in the end, simple seemed best!)

I decided I needed to keep the pages separate until after I had done whatever I was going to do, so I was free to stitch them if I wanted. Then, as I went, I could assemble flat sheets into signatures, and stitch the signatures to the spine tape, so final assembly wouldn't be too time-consuming. (I'm never really motivated by those final fiddly bits!) The Bali fabrics would be used to edge each page, so the colours would show the moon phase. I also wanted the book to be able to stand up, but each page to lie flat when it was opened, which influenced me towards a more standard book binding, with a spine tape attached to a cover, with end papers.

First I made the cover and the base pages. I didn't want to be daunted by cream quilters' muslin pages, so I painted all the pages in shades of blue. I used the same paints to make monotypes for the end papers and the cover. The end papers were printed from a glass plate with rubber bands scattered on it. The cover monotype was pulled from paint on the glass plate. (The overlay shows where the spine was going to be) Then I began to sketch in paint details of my imagined moon garden. It was utterly absorbing, as the more I added, the more areas I could see needed more work. Eventually I stopped, and this was my moon garden cover:

Other things I've been working on

So much of what I've been doing lately can't be shown for a while yet, but I thought I'd put up these two things. The first is something I was working on throughout April, off and on. I wanted it to be a scene by moonlight. It started out with a monoprint, pulled off a glass plate: I really like monoprints, because they are so uncontrolled. They're a useful fabric to have around, because they look less obviously painted. I often use monoprinted fabrics as the basis for something else, but I also use them when I want a small amount of fabric of a specific colour, with some texture in it. So I often use up the leftover fabric paints from other projects by pulling a few monoprints off my glass cutting board, which is about A3 size, onto quilter's muslin. The fabrics go into my 'special fabrics' cupboard, along with all my samples and other play stuff.

I already had a rough idea of where I wanted to go, so this one didn't make it to the cupboard. With some painting it became this: A lot of the elements are roughed in here. It's very dark at this stage, because I hadn't added any light tones, except what was there as the pale blue background. After a couple more sessions of painting, it now looks like this: It was slow work because I was blending colours all the time on the leaves. It was a great exercise in tonal values. Often, the same paint reads dark in one place and light in another. It has a huge number of shades in it, because I was blending paints on the palette and often on the fabric as I went, to bring a shade up a little or darken it down. Heaps of fun! I think it's done now. The challenge for me with this piece was to make it look like a moonlit path, without making the garden look dark and scary and basically uninviting! I wanted it to look like a path you might actually go down, if you wanted a little adventure.

A second fun piece is this one: I was just playing around with paints, because I had them out anyway. I wanted to make a surreal landscape that didn't use traditional colours. I love the way it turned out. It's not anything earth-shattering, just a fun piece!

Finished!

Actually I finished the journal cover last Friday, just haven't had a minute to put up a photo. I'm really happy with it.

The front under the flap looks like this:
The butterfly hides the bead and elastic fastening. I think, next time I get out fabric paints, I might paint strokes of colour around the bead to make it into a flower. I did try adding straight stitches but they get in the way of the elastic, so I took them out again.

I've started adding pages to do with Fibrecircle, the new textile explorations group I belong to. I may share some pages later, as we go along.

Challenge quilts

OK, here are some others of the 2007 challenge group, posted with permission.
Maggie's "I wish I had a dog" quilt:

Lyn's quilt:

Robbie's quilt:

Kathryn's quilt:

Pennie's quilt:

Aren't they a clever bunch?

Pennie is currently setting up a blog for the past challenges, which you can visit at http://kambrachallenge.blogspot.com/ She's up to about 2004 now!

Those challenge pieces

So many people asked me about the challenge pieces that some of the members of the challenge have kindly allowed me to share their work here. Not all of them have blogs themselves and access to our photo files is limited to group members. Hopefully one day soon the group will have its own blog.

Most people in the group were less than thrilled with the fabrics chosen this year, and it was a real struggle for some to make anything at all!
Brenda's block, which she has promised to turn into a quilt by next year

Donna's stunning jacket....

And the back!

Michelle's amazing woven pieces, beautifully framed

Stephanie's vest....

...and the back.

Loz's trip around the world, with a clever map print on the back.


Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

Aren't we lucky?

I’ve had a great weekend, socialising with like-minded people. All are people I’ve met through the Southern Cross Quilters list, the original and best of the Down Under quilting lists. That list has given me so much over the years, including some great friendships. We're so fortunate to live in a time when communication is so simple. I can chat to people across Australia and across the world, and share ideas and techniques so easily. But most of all, I can develop relationships with people who are interested in the same things as I am but don't happen to live in my backyard. Even after more than a decade on the net, it still blows me away!

First was the great unveiling of the challenge quilts. I ran out of time to turn mine into a quilt (is anyone surprised?) but I can finally show you the top.
I’m so pleased with how it’s turned out. (It actually isn't green at all, it's black red and cream, but it seems to have been a difficult quilt to photograph today.) We only had 1/8 metre of each fabric and it was very hard to buy more, but happily we could add whatever fabrics we liked to those original fabrics. I really love the way mine has turned out. I’m afraid there’s no publicly accessible link to show you what the other members of this challenge group did with the fabrics, so you'll just have to take my word for it that they were all incredibly different and very striking.

Then we celebrated the Significant Birthday of my friend Sharon with great enthusiasm. The strangest part of the evening was the way her quilting friends, from three different groups, all congregated on the one table. Quilters must just recognise one another as kindred spirits. (When do we get to the funny handshake?)

So I’ve been partying rather than stitching this weekend. It’s also been a time of rationalisation. I’ve finally recognised that a) things take twice as long as I anticipate and b) I can’t do everything I’d like to do. Simple, isn’t it? You’d wonder why it took so long for me to realise. So, in the second half of the year, I am cutting back on my expectations, and trying to focus on specific things I’d like to get finished. So I probably won’t be making as many postcards and small pieces, though I have remembered to incorporate some playtime into my schedule, something I’ve been conspicuously without for some months. We’ll see how that goes!