printing and stitching

Thank you all for your kind and encouraging comments about the start of my C & G course-they all mean a great deal to me and I am looking forward to sharing the successes and failures and learning experiences with you.

I have been reading through the material for the first module of the course-it’s all I have yet-and getting very excited at the part where the stitching starts. The exciting bit is that I am going to be studying both the Bayeux tapestry and Bengali kantha stitching.

But first, a little matter of learning how to make monoprints and collographs. I had to research what a collograph is-and it looks full of promise.  After work today I took the train to Bath ( very Earth friendly today-walked to work, walked to the station-caught the train, there and back, walked home. Very tired now. : > ) -and bought a rubber brayer, printing ink, gouache colours-well monochromes, a couple of sketch books. Tomorrow I may start printing depending on whether this glorious autumn weather proves too irrestible and we go for a leaf scrunching walk.

I just wanted to show you progress on the Pathways what iffing. I wondered- what if there was blue pleated silk, so on this journey the weary traveller might be able to drink from cool water and wash their aching feet? There are bigger pleats this time-perhaps they are waves. There seem to be pebbles and tracks in the sand too.

The piece has a momentum -I know where it is going, in outline. I think I know now what will be in the centre. The next block is under construction-a farwell to green, an embracing of autumn. Or, if you are in the southern hemisphere, an arrival of spring,  a casting off of winter. It is all the same.