A necessary break.

It’s been a while since I blogged and indeed a while since I’ve done any work, apart from the faithful, ever waiting and ready to be completed needlepoints I have on the go.

This is because my mum died at the end of February. She had been ill for a few years but over the last year had been continually in various hospitals and care facilities. It’s a common story, and one feels helpless, but you do your best to make everyday life as good for the person as possible.

Close family and some really good friends were beyond helpful, merely saying thank you doesn’t seem quite enough.

So there we are, and now it’s time to get back to the sanctuary of work. I’ve been moving on with a couple of projects, albeit slowly.

I started to make a large piece, ‘In the Blue Forest’, some time ago, but decided it wasn’t quite right. It’s been cut into portions and has now become one largish picture and an artist’s book. The piece is based on some haiku I wrote last year.

Above are some of the fabric portions I’m using in the projects, and two birds that will be in the mounted on the canvas version.

You can see the painted canvas here at the top of the image, and some Khadi paper I painted below, for the book pages.

I used indigo dye and Graphitint pencils to achieve the washes and brush marks.

I’ve printed the haiku out in rough here to plan the progression of the pages. It may be a bound or a concertina book, I haven’t decided yet. I am tending towards concertina, as the whole book can be seen at the same time and therefore will describe the walk through the Blue Forest along with the haiku.

The canvas is 100 x 40 cm; the layout of the piece is shown below. I’ll finish stitching the pieces individually and then attach them to the canvas.

 

Some pieces are already machine stitched from the original piece, and I’ll add hand stitch and beads.

I must get back to my plan of posting inspirational books; next post, hopefully.