Graffiti quilts

On reading this post on the Subversive Stitchers blog, I remembered my favourite quilt in the 2010 London Quilters exhibition - it's by Veronica Chambers and is kantha stitched -

I also liked this free-motion quilted "graffiti", part of Leah Day's 365-day free motion quilting project -

At the other end of the spectrum there's "Subway Graffiti No.3" by Faith Ringold -

Sky birds and friends

The exhibition is over, but for the record, here's "The Flocks of Sky Birds" in Slough Museum. Jane and Sandy did a great job of organising and hanging the show, and are looking for further venues.

Japanese linen

"The beautiful Yuzen-dyed Shirayuki towels comes from Nara, an ancient capital city of Japan near Kyoto, are made of a fabric that was once woven into mosquito nets called "kaya". These cloths are very soft, durable and absorbent and are perfect for using as dish cloths and wash/hand towels. Over time, the cloths become really soft and supple, and eventually they make great rags. The starch needs to be washed off before the first use. "

""Furoshiki" is a Japanese wrapping cloth that has traditionally been used for transporting gifts, clothes, grocery shopping, etc. Today, furoshiki is becoming very popular in Japan as "eco-friendly" material. Traditionally, "furoshiki" cloth is only to carry gifts and is not to give with a gift that is wrapped inside but to keep it and re-use endlessly. "

""Hana Hukin" is a beautiful cotton cloth made of pure cotton fabric formerly used as mosquito netting which is a specialty of Nara Prefecture, Japan. Mosquito netting fabric (kaya) has high absorbency and durability and is perfect in dishcloths. The cloths are large yet thin, easily folded for use and then spread out to dry. Over time, the cloths become soft and supple, and eventually, they make good rags. "

It's true - some fabrics do not "make good rags", and you end up buying paper towels.

(For more, much more, on "fancy" and traditional Japanese fabrics, and techniques, visit John Marshall's blog, johnmarshall.to/blog)

Seal gut parkas

For protection against the wet - waterproof seal gut parkas made by the Inuit. Sometimes grass was sewn into the seams - it swelled when it got wet and made the seams waterproof. This one is in the Glenbow Museum, Calgary -

and these (photographed in 1910) both seem to be decorated with feathers -

This is what they start with (read about the process here)

The Deluge

The year is 2343BC - fortunately, mapmakers were on hand to record the progress of the deluge (Image from the New York Public Library collection.)

Different readings

How do you combine texts in languages that are read differently - back to front, as it were? Here's what Veronika Schapers did in combining Japanese and German text in here "A Safe Method to Pass University Entrance Examinations in the Subject of Japanese" -

The German text starts at the front, the Japanese text at the back - and where they meet in the middle is the imprint. After coming across her work some time ago, I'm glad to be reminded of it and learn more (here with a link to a video - in which she says the stamping of the pages took three months - "hard, boring but also sometimes like contemplation/concentration work"). The thin pages allow some show-through, and the book has a japanese binding stitched with a paper thread. The case is in the form of omamori - magic charms that you can buy at shrines where you pray for success in exams, and take the charms to the examination.

Other language combinations are equally tricky - Hebrew with English, for example - here is jewellery artist Esther Knobel's "The Mind in the Hand" - showing her work with iron thread -

On the back of the book is the "back side" of the embroidery - behind which, the Hebrew text starts.

Eki-stampu

In Japan you can find, at train stations and temples, stamps and ink pads to stamp into your book as a memento of your journey or visit. It is suggested to take your own (red) stamp pad as often the pads are dried out.

See more here (where this image is from) and yet more here. This blog (in Japanese) is completely devoted to eki stamps.

Dubuffet-Benoit collaboration

Dubuffet isn't exactly my favourite artist, and I hadn't heard of Benoit, but this "wild, enthusiastic, and self-consciously naive" book, Oreilles gardees, pleases my eye. The image is plundered from the Princeton Graphic Arts blog, where you can read more about the collaboration and the book. It says of the poet and publisher Pierre-Andre Benoit:

"Artists either came to him or mailed their art to him (often simple sheets of celluloid scratched with a needle), to which he would add his own poetry and print limited editions for their friends."

Printing from scratched celluloid ... hmm ...

Email pleasure

This is what an empty in-box looks like. Those hackers did me a big favour by emptying it out -- and I'm doing myself a big favour by keeping it that way.

The Empty Inbox really helps with reducing my computer time, strangely enough, even though I try to respond immediately. Maybe the prospect of The Empty Inbox keeps the replies shorter?

With gmail, the deleted messages are kept for 30 days, and there's an archive for important stuff (appropriately labelled, for easy deletion when it's no longer important). So it's not like everything is immediately gone forever. It's just out of sight for a while.

This is my "shiny sink" of the computer. Seeing the inbox empty, I want to have less clutter elsewhere on the machine.

Hitting that "delete" button is a great pleasure!

Plain - and fancy

Found poem, found graphic

This week at college - textile printing

It's reading week - no "classes". We didn't have classes last week either, but did have a session with the external examiner - a half hour, attendance optional, to give him feedback about how we are finding the course, the tutors, the college. He writes and submits a report, hopefully to get action on the points raised.

Apart from that, last week and this, I have been spending as much time as possible doing screenprinting, in the final weeks that this facility is available.

Several projects are on the go - the fabric for "travel bags" -

"pathways" printed on cartridge paper, to be used for tiles - this is "just an idea" under development -

"newsprint sheets" to be waxed and/or further printed with stamps etc -

random, spontaneous stuff on cartridge -

envelopes - both printing the envelope and using the shapes as negative space

and lately, scrolls - with "windows" that are actually samples of fabric laid down and printed

Keeping track of which project(s) I'm working on at the same time is confusing. I go home with rolls of this and stacks of that. It's all mounting up and there will come a time when I spend regular hours in the studio again, turning it into "books" of some sort.

The fulltimers are constantly having "catalogue meetings" to prepare for their degree show ... September will soon be here -

These are the last weeks of using the basement studio, with its crumbling floor and gurgling sink - neither of which you can see in the photo. In the Great Reorganisation, we'll leave this 1880s school behind and move into other rooms in the 1970s building at the end of the month.

"Travel" bags

Bags made (see them individually here; they are available for purchase) -

and in progress -
These capacious bags are lined, with pockets in the lining, and the handles "coordinate" with the map colour of the tube lines written on the bag. At the moment Piccadilly, Victoria, Central, and Jubilee lines are either available or in the pipeline -

Organising the piles of paper

Hot on the heels of vague thoughts about dealing with all - or some, at least! - of those piles of paper around the house, today's organising email newsletter has the "12-step program" for this very thing.

Just in case anyone out there is similarly afflicted, and is moved to do something, sometime about those heaps, here is that list in summary. I've used the headings but adapted it for my own purposes:

1. Categorize your old paperwork.
Get rid of everything over a year old that ISN'T tax files, memorabilia, and important documents. Sort the rest into To Do, To Read, or To File piles. [Reward yourself with an appropriate beverage at this point.]

2. Purge what you don't need from your files.
Most items in your file cabinet can be shredded after one year. Keep important invoices, ie for major purchases; generally tax documents should be kept for seven years.

3. Reassess your current file headings.
Your file folders should be no more than 2" thick. [I use an alphabetical system, with a list of folder names at the front of the drawer that shows where important documents, eg birth certificate, are kept.]

4. File, don't pile.
If you can't file items immediately, do it once a week - set aside regular "domestic administration" time.

5. Establish a place just for paperwork.
--somewhere, either in view or put away, to keep all paperwork until you deal with it during your weekly "domestic admin" time.

6. Keep a step file organizer on your desk.
A small filing system so that current stuff is easy to find.

7. Create a bill-paying center.
Even better, set up everything as direct debit!

8. Deal with papers as you receive them.
Daily sorting - much can probably go into the bin right away; the rest are: to do, to file, to read, and to delegate.

9. Toss unnecessary mail immediately.
And put it in the recycling.

10. Cut down on junk mail.
The fewer mailing lists you're on, the better. De-register.

11. Go paperless.
So much (statements etc) can be accessed online, when needed.

12. Use a master list.
Everything in one place!

As with any new system with a backlog that needs sorting, "start where you are" - 4, 5, 8, 9, and 12, on a daily basis, will at least keep the piles from growing.

What I discovered while tackling this little hot-spot:

-if you take "some" papers to another room (because they have A Place there), you must return to base immediately, without touching anything else in that room

-keep thinking "Do I really need this?" - the default answer is "No!"

-you really do need a proper place for the "I'll deal with this during Domestic Admin time" pile

-getting out the duster for the final bit of polishing can easily lead to other places getting dusted, and other items put in their proper places -- which can't be bad!

"Things change, you know"

Work by Egidija Ciricaite, Chris Gibson, Wiebke Kowal, Jukhee Kwon, Laura S Turull, Natalie Yiaxi at New Gallery London, 92 Peckham Road, SE15 5PY till 20 June.

Red sky at night

... sailor's delight - isn't that how it goes? But when I leaned out the window to take the photo, the rain was splashing down. Maybe tomorrow will be fine...

An un-writing of sorts

I haven't quite figured out how Kristin Prevallet arrived at the words that described each page - read about it here. The project (Merge) started when she found a copy of Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable sitting on a trash can outside a library, and dropped india ink on four of the pages ... letting the wind direct the flow of the ink. Or rather, she turned the pages so the wind could blow the ink along. A collaboration with the wind ... good ....

Desire lines

A very different desire line, in conjunction with Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirrors, is here.

Book du jour

Not finished...using wax on some thin paper, a roll of paper towels in fact -
The by-product, newsprint soaked in wax, cried out for some machine stitch experimentation -
with and without thread - (the lines are the edges of the presser foot) -
close-up against the light -

Sunday evening

Waiting for the train back to town.

Sunday afternoon

Edgy

This year's journal quilts are all getting the same edge treatment - satin stitch. I've found that a cord is useful for making the edges lie flat, so before doing the dense stitching (always with black thread) I use a narrow open zigzag to add the cord, which is actually crochet cotton -

The loop at the corners is useful for two things. First, it allows the cord to be held taut to make the edge lie flat. Also, it helps with "turning the corner" - if you stitch right to the edge, then turn, the presser foot can get stuck on the stitching already there, so having the cord allows you to pull gently to move the stitching onward.

There are always some tiny sticky-out bits, no matter how carefully you trim the edges -
To help the edges look dense, I use a black fabric pen around the whiteness of the batting (being very careful that the pen doesn't slip...).

It takes nearly 20 minutes to edge each quilt, once it's been cut to size. The narrow binding is probably quicker - and uses less thread.

Relief printing

Lots of lovely images to follow up... not to mention the how-to-do-it videos.

The joy of linocut and woodcut is that you don't need an etching press - they can be done at home. Screenprinting and monoprint are other domestic possibilities. The V&A website has a short, useful introduction.

In terms of actual imagery - where to start? ("Start anywhere" - the important thing is to get going somewhere, somehow ... the rest will develop!)

Discovery

A sewing-supplies corner at Paperchase, Tottenham Court Road.

New toys, new ways

As part of a consequential chain of family events, I have a new computer - a laptop intended to sit delicately on what was once a writing desk, which is currently occupied by a huge screen connected to a large, noisy hard drive. This monster will go to live in my son's room and replace his laptop, which has certain annoying, unacceptable habits which need not be mentioned here.

The writing desk might even be used for writing, the laptop easily set to one side....

Before then, though, programs must be transferred to the laptop. My domestic technie is finding that this is not straightforward, so I am currently without access to Photoshop - and I miss it. There's no point in downloading photos if you can't edit them for use on the blog, is there? I may have to resort to Gimp in the meantime.

Another consequence of a new machine - and the need to transfer files - is a certain reluctance to add anything other than what's currently needed. The joy of keeping an empty inbox makes me want to keep minimal files, all nicely organised of course. And that means looking at all the old files - deleting and archiving and reorganising. Which I have not yet done.

The compromise is to have an external hard drive with all that gubbins on it. "Out of sight, out of mind" - yet still within reach. The nice new empty laptop can accumulate its own files gradually, and they can be organised into a system that makes sense now.

With the new machine come new habits - getting used to the pad rather than the mouse, for instance. And (of course) - being able to use the machine away from the desk - I can take it into the studio and "listen again" to those missed radio programmes, how good is that!

Perhaps being away from the photos for a while will help me take fewer of them? It was somewhat alarming that over 23,000 were transferred to that external hard drive. (Almost as many songs as Thomas discovered he had downloaded over the past few years.)

Pixellated

A video made with dice -3 minutes 17 seconds at 22 frames a second = 4334 frames x 1000s of dice = madness!
But it sure looks good - enjoy it here.

Book becomes book

Enzo Mari's rendition of Georg Perec's Life, a user's manual. Each sinuous book is one chapter, and they fit together into a special box, which comes with a small illustrated book in which Mari traces his work and relationship with the Perec book.

Image from here.

Mari is a Milanese architect who has also made wooden puzzles (and a few other things).