I really love the way Picasa lets you play with values and saturate colours, I find myself taking photos to be in that game. The business of taking reliably accurate reproductions of my work is still unpredictable and tedious at times, but playing with the random shots is great fun. These are the rotary clothes line post in a mess of weeds, a detail of chiro quilt sample 1 and a piece of fence. Or, a nightmare flooding landscape, aerial bombardment of a city on a river and a beach with the tide long out…..I would love to be able to paint or stitch that last one, but am just not good enough at satin stitch….

The next three are a bit more possible for my skill level, but then why re invent the wheel?

I’m playing round with mixed media ideas, laminating images as components in installations…….mmm….

I’m reading a couple of really inspiring books at the moment  : ‘New Canvaswork’ by Jill Carter and  ‘Collage, Assemblage, and Altered Art’ by Diane Maurer-Mathison. Lots of eye candy, lots of times when a sharp intake of breath signals a technique I can use to improve my work. Cherry Simone was round today for crafty fun and we printed and painted pelmet vilene – check out her blog for beautiful bold images, that art journalling course is really giving her wings – and I stencilled through rugging canvas and net lace again, consciously working on staining them for use in assemblages where the machine embroidered pelmet vilene will also be an element. The canvas bit is directly inspired by Jill Carter’s suggestions for alternative surfaces for stitch. I seem to be getting a new process, where I prepare and gather many components to assemble, enjoying each stage. I have so many more ways

to create and use elements now, and it’s a pleasure to enjoy the process of each stage, knowing even the trim offs will be used in something. It can be a snag keeping projects from blending and eventually muddling and using different colour palettes is what I’m trying at the moment. I’ve got the coffee/blue/maroon and a green/teal/gold running in parallel at the moment….

Both the pelmet vilene and the canvas I stencilled it through can be used with the confidence that of course they share the same hard to match palette. I’ve started the free motion on the vilene and I’m sure  Jill Carter’s diagrams for hand stitching will have me using windmill stitch  and Half Rhodes before I know it! It is lovely to see a new path before me, as I’ve said, I love to learn, and the C & G course has opened a lot of doors for me….

A new project is definitely a good reason to get up early before the clocks change tomorrow night!

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