A Butterfly Break

Recently, while teaching at Farncombe Estates, I was told about a Butterfly Exhibition at Wisley Gardens and decided to pay a visit.  It had to be the best day this month and although cold, there were blue, cloudless skies. The glass houses were completed in 2007 and are beautiful. 

The tropical section was certainly a hot house - at least 30C+ and so humid it reminded me of Singapore.  The butterflies were magical and here are a few images I took that day - once my camera adjusted to the temperature.

Equally fascinating,...in another section of the glasshouse was the arid desert plants - cactus, palm trees and succulents.  I could see how they might inspire textures or graphic shapes in future work. More photos gave me a chance to experiment with my new camera.

I think I can see a sketchbook or two with the contrast of hard/soft, humid/dry, dark/light or green and browns

It has amazed me, looking at the photographs taken that day how, in under 2 hours, I had travelled between two very different climates - one with dark lush leaves, tropical flowers and butterflies - to spiky, hard, dry vegetation, as colourful, but in more subtle ways.  I know it isn't the same as being there in the real landscape, but it gave me a glimpse of what to expect.   My sister took these photos last week near Sedona, Arizona where she is on holiday at the moment..... a desert area that I would like to visit one day.  

More News.... 
Future Workshops 
Australia is my spring destination for teaching this year in Canberra, Ballarat (the FibreArts Forum), Hobart, Brisbane and Sydney.  It is always a real treat to visit this part of the world, everyone is so friendly and we all have a universal love of creativity with fabric and stitch.  My challenge at the moment is organising my one suitcase of 20kilos for that long haul flight.  On the way I will be touching down at Singapore, this time there will be no chance to see visit the Botanical Garden.  I no doubt will return in mid May after my travels with hundreds of inspiring photos.  Perhaps there is a series of work based on Australia  in the future?


The Fesitval of Quilts, Birmingham - August 11-14
I will also be teaching a one day class called 'Digital Imagery in Stitched Textiles' - which promises to be fun.  A review of Photoshop Elements, then with design and composition, one collage in paper is taken further to a transferred image on cloth.

Farncombe Estate Workshop - August 26-28  Creative Bound Stitched Sketchbooks
In two days we paint paper and stitch together sketchbooks.  Further collage and art exercises are introduced within those pages. See the Workshop and New Work pages for an idea of the sketchbook you could create on your own personal theme.   http://www.farncombeestate.co.uk
More workshops are posted on my website and again here in this site.  This doesn't include all entries in my diary but those that are open to anyone.  I will have more news in future posts about my teaching destinations later in the year.


And on a more serious note
Just to say that our thoughts are with everyone in Christchurch, New Zealand and as they continue to cope with the aftermath of the earthquake. I remember fondly a brief 3 day visit to this beautiful city a few years ago, especially the cathedral and park nearby.

Thanks for reading.....

Mixed Messages

It never ceases to amaze me how we all view the world in such different ways.  Usually, every time I am taking a photo I am practising composition as well as looking in depth at detail, colour and textures.   There are exceptions........ There was no time for planning this image when I was on the  motorway travelling near Brussels back from teaching recently.... (no I wasn’t’ driving).  Photographs of wonderful ‘marks’ -  images in the night with colour and energy as the cars were racing past. -         I love when this happens.

The workshop in Maasbracht, in Southern Holland, was
‘Mixed Messages’, and we concentrated on words and messages on a personal theme.  One of the first exercises was a collage composition in black and white.  when colour is eliminated, we have a better chance of seeing simple design shapes, tonal values and the overall composition more easily.  When black and white photos are edited by  lightening and increasing the contrast, they will become more abstract.  New detail and information emerges.  This enhanced image can be easier to work with for drawing and sketching as you see more ‘design’ possibilities.  When colour does not get in the way, it is surprising how different the images will look.

       Don’t forget to isolate these areas further with a simple template or 'L' apertures to see the new design.... the essence of the original image will always be there.

       Any black and white images printed as photocopies can be creatively collaged together with interesting results. 

Subtle colour can be added to black and white paper with coloured pencil, or a light brusho or watercolour wash. Always include a bit of personal writing and words for added interest in the composition.  Later simple colour can be added with stitch by machine or by hand.  Perhaps a layer of lightly dyed sheer could be included.  These mixed media paper compositions, kept small are good practise for ‘free machine’quilting (stitching using a darning foot) -  it is only paper after all!!     

      Remember these collages are lightly glued together and backed with a thin wadding (batting) or a piece of interfacing with a backing fabric before machine stitching. 
      In the class, the students brought a variety of themes offering a wonderful array of subjects, colour inspiration and reference design material.  It is always exciting for me to be allowed to learn about these topics whether it is to do with local history, distant travels or the recent effects of the weather and flooding in many places both here and abroad.    Here are a few of the colour collages done in class.

For the workshop we worked with a variety of different compositions and the results were amazing. Here are just a small sample of some of the final stitched pieces. They also include disperse transfer dyed fabrics, dyed, stamped and painted fabrics, sheers and net.  This ' collage and stitch' approach could create a new way of 'looking' at a subject or prompt a change of direction in one's own work.

My thanks to the ladies for allowing me to show their creative and inspired work.   

....'Mixed media with a message.'  

Please remember that all images on this site are fully protected by international copyright law and cannot be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of the artist. 

Thanks for reading.... watch this space.

Images in a Landscape

The use of photo imagery in art quilts and stitched textiles is here to stay!!

Evening at Lake Mungo, NSW

We love our digital cameras and how easy it is to record information from the world around us – from personal photos of family and friends to favourite places or details and textures in the world around us.

The ‘Landscape’ as a composition is one that we all can identify with.  The horizon line, wherever it is placed, gives us a focus and settles our ‘eye’. This composition is usually used to reflect the nature, but life in the city and the urban skyline could also be considered. The ‘landscape’ of our thoughts, feelings and memories could conjure up other images.

      It is not enough to just use a photo of a favourite scene –a local view, our back garden, or images from recent holiday travels.  The really interesting information that the landscape collage could contain might include 
a) views at different times of the day or seasons, including close-up details and textures, 
b) historical reference, symbols, images of artefacts – stories from the past,  or 
c) our own personal diary writings, poems, experiences or memories from the place. 

These different aspects, especially your writing of the subject in a collage, will enlighten and engage the viewer even more.

      A recent workshop using digital imagery at Missenden Abbey has prompted me to share some student work and ideas that came out of the class.  I am so landscape inspired in my own work, and very focused on a specific theme, that I constantly find it exciting to see how others interpret their own personal journeys.

Student examples of long and thin collages in paper

In most of my workshops I ask students to collect information and photographs on a personal subject.  They  provide black and white as well as colour photocopies that will be used in collages.  These compositions take on a different emphasis depending on the workshop theme.  In this class, students worked with a variety of subjects – from ancient trees and forests, sea scapes and beaches to Chicago, with glass reflections of skyscrapers and modern architecture.  Creating collages in a long and thin format - horizontally or vertically makes them more dynamic. First we painted the black and white copies of their photos and the handwritten personal writings with Brusho a watercolour dye (for paper only). We incorporated the colour copies making interesting collages when torn and layered.

more Missenden Abbey work

     This is done relatively quickly – these simple torn or cut compositions are glued onto thin white copy paper.  Later they would be photographed or scanned into the computer, the image printed onto heat transfer ‘t-shirt’ paper, then ironed onto cotton. Extra fabric or paper could be added to the surface. It is backed with thin wadding (batting) and  fabric they are then machine stitched.  Alternatively the paper collage could be layered and machine stitched as a mixed media piece with other embellishment possibilities.

       I work with a collage of imagery in black and white, coloured and painted photocopies in the early stages of most of my own art quilts and textile pieces.  Sometimes this inspiration is in sketchbook form or they are created on large pieces of paper.  This way, it gives me a good idea of what the end result will look like.  
      There are still many choices to be made before the piece is finally finished......What size will it be and where will it hang?  Will fabrics be purchased, painted, dyed or photo  transferred? Will interesting art surfaces be needed - screen printing or stamp effects?  What stitch techniques will be used -  machine or by hand? Will extra embellishment- wools, metal etc.be needed?    This is only a beginning to a new creative and exciting stitched textile.

Materials for a landscape collage

• Brusho paint – a watercolour dye (Colourcraft Ltd, Sheffield  www.colourcraftltd.com), strong watercolour paints or procien dyes will all work for painting paper.
• Black and white photo copies (preferably your own images) and colour copies for collage
• Writing – personal memories, poems, research information – handwritten black and white copies.
• glue stick and white copy paper   

See my wide and thin paper "Meltdown" collage in the ‘New Work’ section – which will be finished in fabric and stitch for an exhibition at the Festival of Quilts in August, 2011 with 'Studio 21'.  
Many other samples of collages that inspired new work can be found in my books.


Watch this space..... more workshop ideas and photos to come.               Thanks for reading

A New Year - 2011

Every January, despite the weather in the UK,  there is always a feeling of optimism for the new year ahead.  Looking forward to spring…. more sunshine and longer days….. buds on trees…… new leaf green, and the prospect of flowers and summer. And if you live ‘down under’, with the holidays finished, the glorious colour of autumn will begin soon.  It is a time to get inspired for all the creative challenges ahead of us in 2011.

I love the 4 seasons and in southern England, with low sun, long shadows, foggy mists, water reflections, and subtle green/browns in the landscape. There is so much beauty just around the corner - it never ceases to amaze me.  Yes, we have had our fair share of snow this winter, but last week it all melted, the sun was shining and I am looking forward to what January has in store.

Photos from Henley-on-Thames, New Year's day, 2011 

Playing with a new camera, I had great fun taking photos of grids and pattern for future design exercises. Wandering the streets in Henley, I saw them everywhere.  From shop windows, the pavement below, to gates and fences – grids and patterns were everywhere.  Laying a geometric pattern in front, or on top of any image, can give the information a completely abstract appearance. 

The background would change as I walked slowly from left to right by parallel iron bars or an ornate gate, showing different aspects of the background view.  Here, I have taken a section between the bars and enlarged it for detail.  To make the connection between design, composition and stitch, I would consider patterns with wire and threads…. holes burned in regular shapes from painted or dyed lutradur, woven networks made with stitch through soluble fabric surfaces. 

I have worked with repeat squares for many quilt art pieces in the past and found a satisfying symmetry to that regular style of composition.  Look at my gallery on www.sandrameech.com for some of my 'square' art quilts.

For more ideas on stitch possibilities have a look at Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn’s book Grids to Stitch.

Another book worth recommending is Pattern, Colour and Form by Carolyn Genders - an inspirational connection between other art and craft disciplines (ceramics, and glass) and art textiles with stitch.

Resolutions for 2011???

They are all too familiar ……  keep up the sketchbooks……allow more time for my own work…find more time for playing the piano …work on a language (you would think being Canadian I would be fluent in French – sadly not!!!)…go on a diet!      
'LESS IS MORE'  -  simplifying, de-cluttering, focusing on new work and writing.

Wishing you all a healthy and productive 2011.  

My year will include travel and teaching in Australia and Canada.   I will keep you posted.                
Thanks for reading. 

Seasons Greetings

       It's this time of year that I look back over the last 12 months.... how fast it has flown by.... and what a great time I am having at this stage of my life.  Part of the joy are my textile friends and those I meet through teaching.  I have been lucky again this year to have such had inspiring students. Before the year ends,  I wanted to share class photos and art/textile work from some of the groups that I have had the pleasure to teach.  A big thanks to them for letting me show their work.

This is only a very small selection.......... Quite wonderful!!

Cowslip Workshops and Quilt Shop, Launceston, Cornwall

Quilt Canada - CQA conference Calgary - bound sketchbook and Art to Stitch classes

West Dean College, Chichester - Imagery in stitched textiles

Roseland Mews workshop - Mixed Messages

Quilter's Guild Museum, York -  Art to Stitch workshop

Quilt Time textile group in Sheffield - Colour and Imagery in Stitch

Teaching to textile groups in Ottawa and Montreal

      It was also great to teach and lecture to other quilt, textile and embroidery groups around the country including FabBeads, Torquay, Missenden Abbey Summer school, Festival of Quilts and Farncombe Estates in the Cotswolds.

      This year was indeed special - In conjunction with the Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London,  I had the opportunity to teach a class during the event -
'Digital Imagery in Stitched Textiles'.  Students found photographic inspiration from the Ceramics and Glass galleries, we took photos, downloaded images into Photoshop, black and white and colour photocopies were collaged together and the composition then scanned., printed and
heat transferred onto cloth for stitch.

These are some of my collage samples.

All in all, a very full year.  2011 promises to be just as interesting with teaching in the UK, Europe, 

Festival of Quilts and a trip to Australia in the spring, at Fibre Arts  Forum and for other textile groups in Australia.   I will keep you posted... Until then....

 Enjoy the holidays and thanks for reading.

Please note that all images on this site are fully protected by copyright law and no image may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the artist. 

Links to many of these workshop venues can be found on my website  www.sandrameech.com

Inspiration from Art

As I was going to St. Ives…..

No – I didn’t meet a man with 7 wives
  

I recently saw a wonderful BBC 4 program on the abstract art movement from St Ives and Newlyn in Cornwall between the 1930’s and mid 1960’s.  Names like Kit Wood, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicolson, Alfred Wallis, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron were so important during that period in British abstract art. 

Until then the centre of the art world was in Paris, but this group in their own way changed that.

In watching I was interested in several aspects of how abstract art could inspire textile and art quilt design.  Alfred Wallis, who had been a fisherman all his life – came to painting later in life and his naïve images of flattened perspective with boats, piers and lighthouses have an innocence and strength about them. 

Ben Nicolson – looked at the rolling landscape and use curves and shapes in his own work. Although with very minimalist leanings, many of his paintings became very evocative of the colours of the west country.  I like the way he kept many of his curved and geometric lines in the frame, and I thought how it lent itself to piecing and overall machine quilted stitch marks.

Patrick Heron not only used exuberant colour – referring to the point… ‘when two colours meet each other the world suddenly pulses’ -  I liked that expression.  He talked about the ‘colour of colour’.  Another aspect of his work was to simplify shapes by ‘windowing’ the landscape.  Looking through one eye at the world will flatten the view – minimising perspective.  The ‘window’ abstracts it all further, simplifying the elements.

We can learn so much from studying modern art as inspiration for our own textiles. 

St Ives and Newland in Cornwall continue today to be a centre of creativity both abstract and figurative in the British art world.  If you can, - visit the Tate in St. Ives, www.tate.org.uk/stives  the next time you might be in Cornwall.

Latest News

I have just revamped my website and it includes workshops for 2011 if you are interested.

Quite a few classes now include exploring digital and art images on cloth and have proven to be quite popular.

Farncombe Estates in the Cotwolds is a beautiful residential centre for workshops in many disciplines.  Set in the beautiful landscape above Broadway in Glocestershire, it is an inspiriting place whatever the season.  Have a look on  www.FarncombeEstates.co.uk

Beginning with the Plan

As it is so important to work to a theme for one's own stitched textile journey, I thought it might be good to begin with the choices we make from the start. We all come from different stitch or art backgrounds with varying years of experience, so perhaps before starting a new project it might be a good idea to list all the techniques that you already know. Those skills that you are most familiar with and enjoy, will be at the top of the list.

      This might include patchwork and quilting, embroidery or surface design techniques accumulated over the years, or perhaps art training with drawing, painting and mixed media.   Stitched textile and art practise go ‘hand-in-hand’, as there is such a cross-over these days.  Dyeing, painting fabrics, discharge, stamping, screen printing, image transfer, as well as stitch techniques both hand and machine, layering, cutting back, applique, piecing –  the list is endless, might be included.  

      Then, with a special theme in mind we can ‘fine-tune’ that list, making choices that would fit the subject perfectly.

      Occasionally, there will be something new you have seen, that would really work well and you need to learn more. It may be time to investigate further with a new book or some experimentation in a class.  However, it could become confusing to just continue exploring these new products and techniques, (and there are so many at the moment), without concentrating on which ones would be appropriate for what you have in mind.  

      Here is an example to illustrate this....

"Some years ago I wanted to do several textile pieces on the subject of Alzheimers.  I knew about the condition and read about the physical changes in the brain as the disease progressed.  So, I decided to work with layers and sheers...., undefined and confused images.... faded pictures of the past that come in and out of focus.  Or perhaps the mesh of nerve endings that don't quite meet up, ... the spaces and the void... in the brain.

Deciding on several stitch and surface techniques was the next step.

• Photo image transfer on background fabrics like cotton could include words and writing - this would be with heat or acrylic medium transfer methods.
• Image transfer could also be on sheers - perhaps by printing the stabilized sheers through an inkjet printer.
• Screen printing an image on both base fabric (cotton) or sheers using an original screen made with the ‘thermofax’ screen process.
• Creating an open mesh with machine threads - stitching on cold water soluble materials could mimic loose unstructured nerve endings
• Or, burning big holes through a layer of lutradur to create the void space might work as a layer to 'look through'.
• All of these could be incorporated with sheer layers that lay together or perhaps have space between them.

      These were my thoughts at the time…..I even had a picture in my mind of how these layers could work and done some preliminary sketches for a series of pieces.   In the end, I didn't need to make the final pieces, but the journey for me, was necessary.

      Planning in advance is such an important part of the process.  

There can be occasional happy accidents, and these new skills have to be explored before we can put them on our list…..but all the new products and techniques are just tools in the end. The ideas and the choices we make are more important to a successful final outcome.

                                                                                                            Thameside 2009
In future posts - I will be reviewing the importance of Design and Composition when we begin.  New ideas will be worked through in sketchbook form, with drawings and collage.  

Stay tuned.....and thanks for reading..