Stitched by Hand, Hand Printed on Silk

Took a print I had made of one of my childhood drawings, and hand stitched "hightlights" on the print. Print was made using gum arabic, printers ink, and water. Basically you make a toner based copy of the artwork (or photograph), apply a gum arabic/water solution, roll on printer's ink, sponge it off to a degree, and run it through the press on silk (or paper). Is washable if you use printer's ink. Don't know what else I would do with this...framing it in flat frame doesn't seem to the be answer. Have stuffed the "merely" printed ones, which you can find on earlier blog entry.

Stitched Drawing

Took drawing from my niece, and stitched on linen. Need to figure out display idea for it..turning it into a pillow is an option, but perhaps that makes her drawing seem less than art, which I don't want to do...the freedom and imagination in it is something to elevate.

Used sewing machine and hand stitching.

Book

Saw results of long term project -- self created book of the art of my father. I started this a couple years ago, taking photographs, writing and organizing on Shutterfly. Found the site cumbersome for words, and limiting in formats. Moved to a Google "blog," which I formated as pages of a book, front to back entry by entry. Blog format was much easier for me to maneuver and edit. Became relatively easy to move from blog back to book. Tried Bookemon, but went back to Shutterfly, as a lot of the book is pictures, and Shutterfly seems better for that, and the paper stock is heavier.

The above shows some spreads from the book...12" x 12", 100 pages in total.

Bar Cart

Re-finished a somewhat rusted bar cart. Steel wool sanding, metal brush brushing, and naval jelly to clear some of the rust. Practiced my skills of painting metal surfaces that have a lot of angles. I smelled a fair amount of spray paint.

Felt Lampshade

Figured out way to make my nuno felt piece a working light filter, which was the intention from the beginning. For shade: the framework is a tomato growing metal thing --  snipped the bottom off so that I had one section of the size I desired. Felted the brown section as a solid piece of fabric.  The white flowers are leftover from another felt project...stitched the orange lines to lend a "kind of flower/something"element.

 I am not wild about how this looks overall (though it looks better in person than in photo, as in photo you don't get to see the depth of the cloth), but glad I figured out way to make acceptable shade framework...may be of use in future.

Lampshade

Took picture my four year old niece made of unicyclist, traced on silk treated with rabbit skin glue (for stiffness). Stitched on sewing machine, not using any fancy computer program, just my hand and the sewing machine, back and forth and on and on. A few hand french knots for effect, and then put on lamp base that I had spray painted to coordinate. Spray painting on metal 3-d object is an area that I have room to improve. Put the unicyclist on 3 times, so it was a fair amount of effort, but I like it. Need to clean up some of the stitches that show through, particulary evident when lit.

Stitched on felt

Planned to make this a plane to defuse light. In the process of laying thread on the hand felted rectangle, saw how brilliant a single thread could be. When I started stitching them into the felt, they lost a lot of their brilliance, though you could still see parts of them.

I began to equate that to what happens to many -- burdens, obligations, outlooks can take hold, and diminish the glow. Of course, some obligations are pleasant, burdens are commonly necessary, and outlooks often change as we encounter things/thoughts. I remembered something that my friend Candace had said about a mustard seed of hope, that little bit of hope that a person needs sometimes to turn despair or less dour a circumstance into to a more uplifting spirit.

So, in the next section, I stitched in a mustard seed, and surrounded it with some of the threads, stretching to the top, or meandering on offshoots. The next section has the threads un-stitched, to a large degree, allowing their potential to be most free.

All of this is subtle, mainly because I chose very thin threads, and of course conceptually it is a bit obtuse, at least visually. And, yes, positive thought does not always guarantee excellent outcomes, nor is worry or despair useless, avoidable, or whatever. However, uncool or not, hope is my ally, not blind, not unaided by action, but there.