sea junk:
one man's sea junk is another man's treasure...
take some rusty bottle tops and bobbing corks,
salt bleached rope and sea-gnawed drift wood,
a mystery spoon and a tin can.
sew the sea junk onto a fabric that speaks to you.
add fragments of material in a wildish manner.
build up texture with fibre, as if creating layers to your soul.
become rich with layers.
wrap up any frayed thoughts in swaddling,
and give them a burial at sea...
pebble:
So it's now term two of my textile art course. The theme for the term is "Underwater Extravaganza" which initially felt far too lively for me... I did not want an extravaganza, preferring something more murky for my inspiration - like an old sea monster emerging from the seaweed maybe....
Luckily I had recently visited Tankerton and done a spot of beach combing, so I took some of my finds to the class which included drift wood fragments, a smooth pebble and weathered fishermans rope. I liked the worn layers and frayed edges and the way the colours seemed muted yet when you explored closely there were fantastic hidden oranges and cyans and rusty pinks...
In todays class we experimented with felting. I have to admit I had little interest in felting before the class and have never been inspired to work with it before. But it is good to explore new things and challenge my preconceptions about stuff so I rolled my sleeves up and got stuck in.
First I chose wool in the basic colours I needed (inspired by my beach combing finds):
Oooh, and lets ensure there is some of the hidden exciting colour in there....
Then blend the colours.... (called carding):
and make the colour pallet:
....place the blended wool in layers
and add some interesting things like cheese cloth and stranded wool for some texture...
then lots of soap and hot water and rub and roll and rub and roll...
and more soap and hot water and roll and rub and roll and rub...
and maybe chant or sing or hum an ancient Inuit melody...
and eventually you have some pebble inspired felt:
It ended up more interesting than I thought and the colours blended kind of as I had hoped, which was good. But... (can I admit it?) ... I suppose felting just doesn't really *do it* for me.... hmmm, Ill keep an open mind about it though and maybe try further exploration soon...
burnt toast:
Today I burnt some toast.
I also destroyed stuff and stitched it back together.
This helped sort out my soul a little, which was feeling kind of fragile. The process felt like I was patchworking up myself, but without the instructions.
(Hmmm, which piece goes where? oh. lets just stick it here...)
Thus some of my patched-up-soul ended up a tad wonky.
Shit happens....
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