A case of Kindle ...

I do love my Kindle. So handy - like carrying an entire bookcase with you. Anyway, I used to carry mine in my handbag using a bubble-wrap envelope to protect it.

But then I saw my boro-lappie where I had left it months ago, sad and forlorn, taped against the wall above my desk. Perfect for a case for my Kindle.

And much more stylish, don't you think?

Journey.

Gosh,  I have been a busy little bee lately. With proofreading projects finished, I finally have time for my art class, my fiddlings with fabric and paper, and a second workshop (on drawing) is starting soon. I love this journey I have embarked upon. Learn as much as I can, have fun with it, and create things on the way ... What more could one want? For me it is not really about the product at the end of it. Maybe that will change, but for the moment I am just playing and experimenting and not obsessing too much about the end result.

I have been wanting to make 'paper fabric' since reading Stitch Alchemy by Kelli Perkins. Paper fabric is formed by combining layers of tissue papers, strips of other paper, fabric and ephemera, paint, stamping, etc. Everything is pasted together using acrylic gel medium - delightfully messy and gooey work. Best to cover the desk completely with cling wrap before you start!  Once dry you then use this as the background for other work. I iron on vilene so that I can stitch or embroider on it.

Journey (tissue papers, wrapping paper, newspaper, maps, shopping bag image, paint, raffia, fabric images, embroidery yarn, bamboo - photocopied, stamped, painted, hand and machine stitched.)

The quote is by Lao Tzu:
" A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."

By-product.

There are two aspects I particularly like about making stuff. One aspect is how something can change from one thing to another. I often put a 'lappie' or other creation on to the wall of my study using masking tape or prestik, and in time I see how I want to change it - what might be added or subtracted. Sometimes something gets incorporated into another piece - for example, I have used some of the batik & embroidered squares from an earlier workshop in the flags I am currently working on.

The second aspect I like is the by-products that are often the result of experimenting. I was exploring different  birds for my fabric sculpture, decided against using them, and then made a mobile with the discarded birds and bits of cotton fabric.  

Birds mobile (bird from Ikea fabric photocopied in various sizes onto tea-dyed cotton, torn cotton strips, string, buttons, stuffing)

Art.

I purchased a new art work last week. It is part of a series by Roz Hoek based on the Anglo-Boer War. When I saw it I immediately thought of my grandfather who was a young boy during the War, and whose father (my great-grandfather) was killed in front of him by a British officer.

(Playing at War - acrylic on canvas, by Roz Hoek)

I also (eventually!) got Leenie's amazing watercolour crows framed - don't they look just beautiful?)

(A Murder of Crows - watercolour, by Leenie Black)

A Spotty-breasted Russian Bird.

Okay, so this is how the story ends:
I had to make her face shorter so I cut off part off the head, which meant that I also had to remove the hair. I had to make her face wider so I used the section that I had intended for the hair on the side of her face as part of the cheeks. I had to make her neck thicker so I inserted panels on the side of her neck. I had to make the neck shorter so I took in about an inch of fabric on the neck. Then I had to cover the head because I couldn't face sewing all the hair back on, plus there was no space left to sew on hair except at the back of her head. So I made her a headscarf, a  Russian-peasant-kind-of look. Then it looked too bland so I stamped the headscarf with fabric paint and a cork. But then  the headscarf looked a bit funny - there was nothing to tie in with it. So I made her boobs spotty too. At this stage I have only pinned on the spots; I wasn't sure I would like them so I didn't want to stamp directly onto the fabric.
So there you have it - a spotty-breasted Russian bird.

Tell Me How the Story Ends (a fabric bust by Anairam, hand-stitched and embroidered on rooibos-dyed cotton, hand-stamped.)

Learn.

Unfortunately my sculpture is in no state to be shown today. She is undergoing major reconstructive surgery. When I finished stuffing her earlier this week, she was pigeon-breasted, hunch-backed, had a scrawny, wrinkly chicken neck, and her face got completely distorted (basic geometry - I should have realised ...)

Anyway, I am reworking her, so for today (and in tribute to my Learn word-of-the-year) I leave you with this interesting article from the NYT, and this game.

Oh yes, and this picture which I took at a picnic a few months ago.

Bust 2.

She is serious, the kind of person who worries and has all kinds of anxieties, hidden and untold ...

Sometimes she is not very organised and a bit scatterbrained - see, she's forgotten to comb her hair ...

She has a pair of rather nice boobs ...

She likes stories, in books and movies and also people's stories, and she spends a lot of time wondering about them ...

And on Friday I will tell you how her story ended ...