Starting at the middle and working upwards

The first thing I learned yesterday - really, this is something we're told time and time again - roll with the face of the quilt on the outside. As you can see, I didn't - when unrolled, the bottom half was very creased; it'll be ok, it was rolled only for a few hours, and the quilting will sort it.

A view of the back, after a bit of tidying up. Still lots of dangling threads!

In a tangle

Late-afternoon sunlight

 Evening - and under the needle again - must get to the top, time is running out -

It does seem to have gone more quickly later in the day, after hours of practice. It helped to be able to stitch a few rows, then deal with the threads, then go back to stitching. I listened to a lot of History of English podcasts, and a new one, Naked Genetics.

This little heap gathered, over the course of the day -

Next step - go back to the middle and work downwards. It's taking rather longer than I thought, isn't that sometimes the way?

Today's dilemma - to keep on with tying the threads, or to start gluing in hopes that will be faster? But is it the tying that takes the time - the threads still have to be pulled through to the back, and those that have been sewn over have to be released. Trouble is, my fingertips are very sore. Should have used tweezers ...

So that's another thing I've learnt: have the right tools, avoid sore fingers. Also - use handcream, it helps with the tying not to have rough fingertips.

Basted before breakfast

Didn't quite get finished with the basting last night - had to put the project away and lay the table for dinner* - so I got on with it immediately on coming downstairs this morning, and now, at last! it's ready for the machine -

Start in the middle... The horizontal pins mark 10" intervals, and the masking tape will be moved along so I can keep an eye on the straightness of the quilted lines.

While handstitching (and listening to continuous podcasts!) I've been looking forward to the quilting, and its sense of systematic progress after the many revisions of the layout. Of course the tidying of ends will be tedious, but I'm looking forward to more continuous listening, catching up with some favourite radio programmes.

The machine awaits - not the newer model that fastens the stitching at start and finish, and cuts the thread, which then unthreads itself. No, not that one, with all its electronic "leave me alone, I'm thinking!" noises.

I'll be using the non-computerised straightstitch, quite old now, one of the first "speedy" models with a big throat (for bulky quilts, ah when did I last make one of those...) -

Before the back could be basted on (yes, it could  have been fused on, but that would have meant a search for the fusible!) I stitched round the edges of all the pieces, and for the lightweight and slippery silk pieces, put in some background stitching - perhaps to remove later, perhaps to leave in. That handstitch took raaather longer than expected, and in the end some tonal adjustment was needed -

Once a few rows have been stitched, I can estimate how long the quilting will take - current guess is 6 hours, but this could be a wild and grievous underestimate! Only five days are left till the deadline. The race is on!

*When he came for dinner last night (and stopped my basting) my son brought these, which gladden my heart and adorn the now-serene surface of the table -

Spot the difference

 The footballers have been lying on the floor for the past week, and today they made it up onto the table. It was time to baste them to the background, and at the end of a long day all the little bits were held down by stitches, ready to go "under the machine" -

Up close to it for long hours of stitching, you get so used to seeing the various bits, you don't really "see" it after a while -- but it's obvious from the photo that the brown bits were just not working. There will be some unpicking tomorrow! This shows the brown areas covered up, but they need to come right out -

Nor is it quite ready to go under the machine - the backing needs to be done, an extra layer that will make it just that bit firmer, hopefully to hang better.

Even though there seem to be more questions than answers, I'm enjoying the making process. Listening, as I stitched, to many consecutive episodes of History of English podcast, was pleasant. I learned about "the anarchy" in the 12th century, caused by the dispute between Stephen and Matilda about who should rule England; goodness what a terrible time, 20 years of civil war...

Starting and stopping

It being half term at Morley College as well as at schools throughout the land, instead of printing woodblocks I am stuck at home with The Footballers. The piece has been lying on the floor for a week, and six scenes are still to be painted, plus there's the tricky matter of laying out the fabric in between the scenes, after which it will be quilted in parallel, narrowly-spaced straight lines, avoiding the figures. So, it's a long way from being finished, at the moment.

The quilting will lead to a lot of loose threads on the back, like in this sample -

I intend to darn them all in. And I'll keep checking that the backing fabrics behave themselves. Adding the backing as a facing, with just a bit of stitch to hold it in place, is getting to be an ever more attractive possibility, though.

As the morning slides past and lunchtime approaches, everything is ready for the painting - but here I am at the computer, pursuing other objectives: booking tickets for talks, answering overdue emails, doing a few "lessons" in the current online courses (music notation has been started, palaeography awaits). I wonder why I'm so avidly "filling the time" - to have an interesting life, right! - and am concerned that still, in the wisdom of age, I'm not able to do the important things until they become urgent. Deadline? oh, it's more than a week away ... no need to panic just yet - even though one of the delights of not having a day job is that tasks can take as long as they need ... panic is supposed to be a thing of the past. (As for emotional panic, that's another matter, and mentioned only in passing.)

So there it all is - several tubes of useful new paint, and lots of brushes, and three images off to a good start. 

The great insight that hit me is this - having it lying there is a disincentive. The ritual of getting the materials out, and putting them away after the session, is so important. Going into the studio to collect the paints, brushes, palette-plate, etc takes only a minute - and that action is the start of the actual work, it's like starting the flywheel turning. One thing will lead to another - the paint will be squeezed out, the brush will be chosen, the first mark will be made, and another and another.

Then there's the difficulty of stopping. I like to have a time in mind, even though this harks back to the day job and subverts the dream of having allllll dayyy in the studio. "Little and often"? And the putting away of materials - good studio practice! - is part of the stopping; time has to be allowed for cleanup. 

Stopping in the middle of a sentence, as it were, has its advocates - it's easy to pick up the thread, they say. Tidy people, though, might want to finish the task, and have in mind what needs doing next.

These are on my list for today. You can see from the pixelation, and the rough cutting, that they are quite small - about 2" high, if that. 

Painting, and walking

The "empty" Friday filled itself up with rather less painting than hoped for (result: two footballers) and quite a lot of experimentation, exploration, and laying things out and changing them again.

At least there is a final(?) layout, and only 10 more sections to paint -

The 10" sample tries out various threads for the quilting. It's a test for shrinkage (1/8" in 10" = negligible) and also of the effect of adding a bit of green to enliven the piece -

I used the most poorly-painted snippets, including the first one painted on silk. Once the silk is quilted, its sheen is knocked back and it looks ok. It has the advantage of holding the paint solidly, unlike with the gauze, which gives rather a faint look -

Perhaps the quilting will work miracles on the gauze too? The stitching will stop at the edges of the figures - even though that leaves hundreds of thread-ends to be buried in the back. (Think of it as practice in mindfulness...)

The yellow of the heroic goalie stands out quite well with a dark background, but I don't want to mess around with underlayers and such subtleties. There's enough going on as it is -

This morning, before heading for Highgate to go on a led walk, I put in the dark areas on a couple more footballers -

 On return, I tried out the "sketch" without the colours of the uniforms etc -

I like that look and am tempted to make a drastic change in the developing piece - discard what's already done, and revert to black and white. It would take a different approach and give a very different "feel" - it would be harder to distinguish the opposing teams, and that would make it less dramatic.

The quilting would outline the figures (sort of...) but to go this route would probably require doing a whole-cloth quilt - ie, facing the dangers and risks of doing All That Painting, and then All That Quilting (the lines are about 1/4" apart, and there are a lot of thread-ends to bury!).

That's a project "for another time" - I would probably make the figures larger, and darker, and add a touch or two of red...

But first, back to reality! The paintings on gauze are rather blotchy - I'll revisit them in the clear light of morning. Perhaps they need more, better paint in some areas; perhaps they'll be ok - or, dreadful thought, perhaps the whole thing is misguided and it'll be a quick switch to Plan B after all?

As for the walk, it was short and local - and muddy - and ended in steady rain and Abney Park Cemetery, which contains the oldest non-denominational chapel in Europe -

We encountered two floral memorials, in Clissold Park and on Seven Sisters Road -

Following a section of the Capital Ring, the walk took us through Woodberry Down wetlands -

 and through Finsbury Park, its boats laid up for the winter -

 Walkers are colourful people! -

Did I mention the mud?

Sports fixation!

"This is a very unlikely subject for you of all people," said a friend. I explained about the way the camera has caught the gestures and made the bodies into shapes you might not normally see. All that action....

At the painting class on Thursday I overestimated the amount of paint I could use in two hours, and instead of throwing the rest away, was encouraged to take it home, thoroughly wrapped in clingfilm. It's taken till Saturday morning to settle down to a few hours' painting. I find it best to get started right away, before breakfast - but not before coffee -

 Trying the net + plastic again - the clear sight would save a lot of cutting out!

But even on "proper plastic", too much of the paint is left behind rather than being caught in the net -

 The patchy paint looks ok on the dark background, but won't do for this project.

Next bright idea is to use a lightbox so the details can be seen through fabric that's more opaque. A blank ipad or computer screen, covered by something firm like a sheet of perspex, makes a good lightbox.

 Again, the cutout is inside a plastic folder, and the patch of fabric is stretched on the folder by the masking tape.

Result! -

It takes me a long time to do each one, but it's fun (ie, not difficult) and absorbing.

Let's try some loosely woven linen -

 Start with the darker areas, put in a bit of shadow -

 Then try to replicate the uniform -

I'm purposely using somewhat strange skin tones, one of which is burnt sienna (as in blue-uniform in a previous pic).

Once there are a few of these I'll try laying them out and adding quilting, see if that will work with the painting or whether there needs to be another round of experimentation.

Life painting and the sports pages

The sports-pages textile piece seems to be gaining momentum. The idea of outlines has been abandoned for this project, and I'm looking at how to use the full-colour figures.

The painting course had a session last week of life painting -

Three quick drawings with a twig, and a longer pose with ink

Coloured ink for a floor pose

which wasn't too unbearable, though my results (some not shown!) were clumsy to say the least. This week we brought in our own project - mine is to find a way of painting the "boyz&ballz". Without the previous classes, I wouldn't have dared tackle "people" shapes!

The first idea was to use an embroidery hoop to layer up white fabric, the image, clear plastic, and fabric, and then to copy the image - trace it, with paint - onto the fabric. Fortunately the boxes of brushes yielded one small brush; I also use palette knives -

In progress; the fabric is cream net, almost invisible

He's done

 Unfortunately when the net was peeled away from the clear layer (cellophane, rather than plastic), a lot of the paint stayed on the plastic rather than staying on the net.

Next I used thin silk; the acrylic paint soaks in well -

Oh dear, that beard...

At home, I  haven't yet had time to get out the paints, but had a happy hour playing with ways of gluing the newspaper figures to fabric; this means that opaque fabrics can be used for the background. Net was another possibility, with the net around the figure being caught in the eventual quilting.

The first attempts -

Gluing (pva) was done on proper plastic, so that it would peel off easily. And a hair dryer was used to speed up the drying. From bottom left: when covered with glue the paper stretches and buckles. On net, sloppy application of glue leaves shiny bits here and there - but small figures do stick well. Applying glue only to the figure makes for neater net. On linen, figures stick well; glue can be applied before the figure is cut out.

From a bag of green scraps - turf. Looks good on individual pieces, but will it work on the big piece, which will be a metre long? (These figures are less than 20cm high.)

How will the newspaper stand up to the quilting process?

Or would it be better to get back to painting? Experimentation continues...

Flying