About the coffee stirrers

I had a few questions/comments about using the coffee stirrers.

I have used them before on Connected-Disconnected. One of the pieces from a challenge I did with a small art group I was part of. (Well, we still work together, but we started the TVCT group and that used up all our time and energy!)

The coffee stirrer was at the top of a piece with translucent layers. I stitched large beads through the wood to hold the layers in place.

The Connected-Disconnected aspect of this piece was this: The layers were separated by beads, but also connected by the beads.

The particular coffee stirrer used in this piece was painted with wood stain first.

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For the coffee stirrers in this bead project, I am using a thick pin (I find them too thick for using in sewing, so I use them like nails when I need one! Grin!) and tapping the pin through the wood. First I just make a small dent in the wood with my awl because the pin can scoot out of position and you find you have tapped your hole in the wrong place! I am using one of my older cutting mats to do this on. I stagger the holes a very little bit so they are not going into the same grain line of the wood.

Pin has been tapped in. Awl is making a dent.
The other marks are pencil to show where the other holes need to be.

Then I turn it over, and can just about see where the point came through. Then I repeat the process from this side for all the holes. Some stirrers are a bit more prone to splitting than others.

Pin is poised to poke into the little hole.

With the pin having a fine point, it doesn't force the wood apart too much. and it makes a hole big enough to stick my needle through.
Sometimes there is a little spitting at the end, but if I am careful I can still work with it.
The biggest thing to be careful about is the split having minute splintered edges that snag the beading thread.

You can see how it could split the wood if they were all lined up precisely.

Besides, unprecise actually makes work more interesting...the hand of the artist and all that! Big Grin!

EquiARTeral exhibiting!

Through some connections Jane Glennie has, our art group EquilARTeral has been offered the chance to exhibit work at the Slough Museum! As you may recall, EquilARTeral consists of Jane Glennie, Merete Hawkins and me.

So tonight we met to decide what we would show from what we have. We will have one wall, and other groups will each have a wall. There is also window space. We mainly decided on the pieces from our Zoom series. and depending on the space and hanging situation, some of my Connect/Disconnect pieces will be displayed.

The Connect/Disconnect pieces I did are meant to be shown doublesided or in such a way to see the shadows of what is on the other side.


The piece from my set which they decided from Zoom was the Letter piece.

The work will be shown from the 3rd of February for 1 month.

Slough Museum 278/286 High Street, Slough SL1 1NBE
Opening Times: 11am - 4pm Wed - Sat

I am going to be setting up a blog so we can show all our work in one place! I guess I will need to do that next week, so there will be a place people can go to look up more info about us.

We also showed the progress on our Staffordshire Hoard pieces. They look very good together. And once again are so specific to each one of us in the way we work. I think it is good that we all work so differently. It means no one is "copying" and yet the others can critique your work with unbiased eyes and with a different point of view. It is exciting to be able to take this group effort of encouraging one another to a different level of putting it out for public display!

Connect-Disconnect A2 Finished!

At last I have finished the final piece in the Connect-Disconnect series for the EquilARTeral group. I am quite pleased with it.

There are 3 layers...the papery layer I dyed with coffee, a layer of cream muslin, and a layer of tan "mystery fabric". The top layer has been given a surface design treatment of crayon rubbings on rubbing plates and subsequently ironed against the thin mystery fabric to melt the colour of the wax in to both.

At the last posting about this, it was just joined with buttons and beads. Today I sliced it in various places and stitched the edges with a buttonhole stitch. Then I used different threads and stitches to stitch the pieces back together with a bit of a gap (like variation of faggotting stitches).

I have photographed it on black, rather than against the cupboard doors, and it does show it off a bit better.

front back

It was a nice quiet thing to do today...staying in, listening to an audio book and trying to get rid of this cold.

Connect-Disconnect A2

Way back in September, I started the preliminaries for the last piece in the Connect-Disconnect series I am doing with EquilARTeral.

Finally, this week I have been able to get on with doing more. Luckily, the techniques are simple ones, and quick to accomplish. So, I put on an audio book, and just started working.

Here is the front.

Here is the back.

If I can, I will begin the next step tomorrow. I will have to take a photo against a different background so you can see the detail better.

EquilARTeral -Connect-Disconnect

The EquilARTeral art group I am in with Jane Glennie and Merete Hawkins will be meeting on Friday evening. With the best will in the world, I just didn't get to work on this more in the summer. I need to finish the 3rd in the series.

I did buy some bits to add to the middle piece for Connect-Disconnect. So today I added them. I am also stitching the binding round the A1 piece from Letter from the Zoom Series.

The other delay this summer, apart from making cushions and all sorts of other things, was that I have used commercial pattern paper for the smaller pieces, but I haven't got a large enough blank piece for the A2 size piece. Originally I thought I would do nearly blank, but the way things have worked with the first two, I don't really want the strong black lines. Merete kindly gave me some white material she picked up somewhere which is actually sturdier than pattern paper, but could work. It is somewhat like thin interfacing, but more papery.

So, I thought perhaps if I dyed it with coffee, it might turn out a similar colour to the pattern paper. Of course, I forgot to photograph it before starting! But I did a sample first(See the strip in the photo above).

I have some out-of-date coffee. Can't remember if it was given to us sometime back and not having a coffee maker we never used it? When I found out my husband was tossing it because of the date, I rescued it for dyeing purposes (like you do!). I am talking years now. The sell-by date is 2002!

So, anyway, I made up a bucket of coffee and after finding the sample strip worked well, I put the fabric in.

Now to get it out to dry, and work out what else I will layer it with. I am thinking buttons and straps for the connect-disconnect part, but you never know! Sometimes I do the extreme plan bit and other times I do the "let's see what it wants" auditioning process. This is one of the latter situations. And while I have a bucket of coffee, I am overdyeing this flour resist piece. It may end up in a piece for the Contemporary Quilt challenge - Breakthrough. Yeah, I know the deadline is in a few weeks! We shall see.
But I can alway count it as an experiment of overdying flour resist on calico. Can't I?

I'm Back!

Well, we actually got back on Monday, but I have taken a few more days off to just read, get together with friends and putter about. Today I got back to work.

I am starting to plan the Designer Cushions course. Quite a bit of research, digging out fabrics for making samples...But nothing to show yet.

Instead, you can see what I got at Craft Basics in York. After I delivered my Little Gems in the pouring rain, I trudged across town...stopping in shoe shops as that was also on my list...and eventually arrived at what I consider to be the best shop ever for beads. It isn't a very big shop and the bits and pieces there have changed somewhat over the years, now reflecting the knitting and card making trends a bit more. However, they still have the big wooden former printer trays with all sorts of unique beads.
You may recall I was thinking about getting some brass ones for the latest Connect-Disconnect piece for EquilARTeral. I started out with just a few, but there were so many interesting ones, I got quite a selection, and then double the number of the one I think I might use. I also got a few more brass pins. I used up all the others I had, and the law of averages means that I will want to use more in other pieces, so I thought I better refill the stash. And of course, I had to go for the pack with copper ones, which also prompted a selection of copper beads as well. I have a drawer full of copper bits and pieces and a section of my head is dedicated to copper...one of these days I will actually make something from it all. The subconscious is still working on it.

As you can see, I also got a pack of felting needles. I tried it once at my friend's house, and although I do not intend to get into felting, there was something I made recently that I thought would have been easier to do if I could have felted the little pieces into the background. Can't remember what it was at the minute! But anyway, these weren't too dear and now I will have some if I need to attach something small or fluffy again.

On Sunday, we were in Leeds. So, I have some interesting photos from the church my sis-in-law is connected with. So stay tuned for a few select photos on Inspiration Tuesdays. I also got to see some of the embroidered vestments, which was rather interesting. I have made some stoles for my sis-in-law in the past.

What have you been up to lately? I do appreciate the comments now and again!

EquilARTeral - Connect-Disconnect - A4

Tonight we had our EquilARTeral meeting. I had started the medium piece in our Connect- Disconnect series, so I worked on it this week. This time the connect-disconnect element is that it is held together with brass safety pins. There is some stitch through it, too, but it is loosely knotted, which also means it could be disconnected easily.

If I can find some brass beads or something, I may sew them to the sticks at the top, so as to resemble the top of the A6 piece. There is also a section which can be disconnected. All of this disconnection discussion is about the meaning as it is really meant to be displayed as it is. As you can see, I am also still following some of my ideas about transparent pieces.

I still have to stitch the Letter piece from the Zoom series. I know what I want to do, but I needed time to work out just how I would do it. The other day, someone mentioned using freezer paper ironed onto the work and then stitched through. I think that is what I need to create areas I want to quilt with different patterns. I am hoping to get to that next week.

EquilARTeral - Connect-Disconnect - 2

Here is a start on the A4 size piece for "Connect-Disconnect". It is pattern tissue with crayon rubbings of a celtic design stamp I have. Then it was pressed between baking parchment so the wax melts into the rest of the paper. This time I painted the back with the acrylic wax before I start trying to sew through it. We will see if it holds up better.

I think this one will get some of the mystery fabric, but I haven't decided on the 3rd fabric and what it will be connected with.

EquilARTeral - Connect-Disconnect

Our new challenge for EquilARTeral is "Connect-Disconnect". Last time we had A5, A3, A1. This time it is A6, A4, A2. I have had some ideas hanging round in my head. But when I actually started to think of doing it, several other ideas came together and I am going with them.

front

In a way it is an extension of some ideas from Endless Possibilities. I am using transparent, translucent materials. This time I have pattern tissue with crayon rubbings over stamps, some of the rust dyed habotai, and some silk organza with more crayon rubbing.

back

The connection of the layers is beads. This is also what makes it disconnected. This is the A6 piece and was rather fiddly to do. I have never got into the fabric postcard craze, and this is around the size of the postcards.

detail from side

Because all the layers are separated like that, it was a bit floppy. So, it decided it wanted to hang from a coffee stirrer stained with walnut ink and with holes made to attach the piece using beads. The tissue was starting to get frazzled at this point, even though I had ironed the wax from the crayons and it had a firm waxy texture. So, I have painted the surface with acrylic wax.