Trees and Flowers

Arborist Fragments 2011

38cm x 30cm

Paper quilt with found skeleton leaves, ink, thread, gesso.

More colour??

An amazing field in Staffordshire. Makes the school run a pleasure!

Moving on from the finished paper quilt...

It's so interesting and infinite what one can generate from a finished piece. Well is it finished? I thought so but when I started manipulating the photo I took of this paper quilt in Photoshop I can see that this could just be the start of a whole ongoing series stretching to the ends of the Universe!

Simple really. I used the pencil crayon filter and then the liquify filter and ended up with a piece that looks for all the world like totally crazy free embroidery based on a loose Paisley design. This could be printed on to fabric and stitched...

Finally a shot taken from another angle and "pencil crayoned".

Warning! -Paper quilting could be addictive....

My husband's uncle (or to be more precise my step-uncle-inlaw!) is having his 60th birthday soon (shhhh). A friend of his has decided to put together a book for him and has asked all family and friends to produce something up to A4 size, paper-based, to insert.

Of course my eyes glazed over at the prospect given my new-found paper quilt making skills!!! (See last post).

This was fun to make. The background is a picture I took of the hand-dyed banners, which hung from trees at his wedding last year, printed in colour of course and then copies of pictures we had of him and his family in black and white collaged over the top. This was then mounted on to medium vilene. They were then stitched on with a zigzag in colours of the banners. We even found an old penny printed in 1949 - the year of his birth (sorry Dave it's out in the open now!!) and stuck that on with superglue. It was fun to do and I hope a welcome addition to the book!

"Long Distance Memory" - a paper quilt

Last night we had a "sit and sew" aka "sit and chat, eat biscuits, drink tea and not sew a lot" evening at my group. The idea was to each make a paper quilt about 8" square for an exhibition we are having in 2010.

I have recently enjoyed collaging in my journal, having at last realised that it doesn't necessarily mean sticking bits of scrunched up tissue paper on to sugar paper like it was when I was 6.

Anyway I decided to use stamps and airmail envelopes as my theme. With this in mind yesterday morning I opened my trunk to look for some old letters. Boy did that revive some long lost memories!

There were letters from all over the world to me in London and at University and letters that I had sent from all over the world on my far flung travels as a musician and general vagrant.

There were love letters like I couldn't believe from men I mearly dangled so of course the morning flew by in a trice reliving those memories of old flames! I also included some lovely notes which were well worn from pockets twenty five years ago or more. There are roubles and a note from Uzbekistan.

There is part of a letter written on flimsy airmail paper and it made me realise how the advent of email has destroyed the art of the letter virtually. Also how technology means that we rarely have those beautiful stamps and postmarks - a franking machine doesn't have the same feel does it?

Pieces of my memories from a quarter of a century ago are now together in a very personal little quilt.