Month: November 2023

art

Winter Hare

For the first time in several years I thought I might send some seasonal greetings cards. Lots of scrap material and lots of thread awaiting a little effort, as well as plenty of card and dance paper, so here we go. My favourite animal will be the theme, the much persecuted hare, in winter costume.

Embellishing scraps of fabric is fun, but the embellishing needles have become rather costly at around £3 each – they break easily. So it’s important to take care using the embellishing machine, needles move fast but fabric movement must be slow. I also use embellished fabrics for doll costumes.

Once the fabric is available I cut the hares out and began stitching, might have been easier to stitch first then cut out. Hand stitching is kept to a minimum, whiskers and a little finishing. Anyway the results are just about ok, I think.

I printed some text onto hand-made paper as a backing for the fabric hares, printed a greeting on A4 card with a small name label on the reverse. Once the hares are complete I stitched them onto the backing paper, then glue the whole piece to the card.

I work with both the printers – one laser and one inkjet – the mac computer, a Husqvana/Viking sewing machine, an embellishing machine and many threads, pens, fabric scraps etc. and with music playing, often BBC R3 classical. The pics show the dry work area, I’ll be gluing elsewhere.

Tags art, card, craft, drawing, embellishing machine, embroider, fabric, gkue, greetings cards, hare, inkjet, laser print, print, seasonal, sewing machine, stitch, text, thread

art

Meltdown 9

Tags art, crazy, embellish, embroider, fabric, machine embroider, meltdown, nuclear, sewing, stitch, textile, textile art

nuclear

Fukushima 0n-going

The 2011 disaster at Fukushima continues and shows no sign of being cleaned up within any of our lifetimes. In that year, almost inconceivably the whole of central Japan was almost rendered uninhabitable with the possible evacuation of 50 million people being seriously considered by the Japanese government.

The Netflix drama, The Days certainly captures the sense of disaster (I found it rather slow for drama but then is it entertainment?) and correctly states that no one knows why the reactors didn’t continue to meltdown, destroying half of Japan. Fukushima now pours irradiated water into the Pacific and since there are no solutions in sight that will continue, perhaps with pauses, for the foreseeable future.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the sales force for nuclear power continues to promote nukes large and small, regardless of the disasters and in denial about the carnage, death and destruction wrought by Chernobyl and Fukushima, just two incidents, neither of which can they in any way deal with.

Tags 50 million people, carnage, Chernobyl, death, Fukushima, IAEA, Japan, Netflix, nuclear, Pacific, The Days

art

Meltdown

After a busy few days in London, several art galleries as well as street actions culminating in the gigantic – 800,000 peaceful folk – Palestine demo I’m doing some sewing, revising some old ideas. Meltdown, a series of fabric pieces, embellished, embroidered and heavily stitched, begun in 2015 as a response to the disaster at Fukushima (2011 on-going).

The subtlety of colour and stitch is rather lost in these photos.

I enjoy creating something – maybe not beautiful but hopefully of interest – using the tiniest of scraps picked up from the studio floor or stuffed away in waste bags.

Most of the thread I use for larger pieces or clothes (rare now) is organic cotton which is a little heavier than ordinary cotton, but for this work rayon, made from wood pulp is perfectly good. Not a plug just that these are widely available, Marathon rayon threads are very low cost and although they can be a little weak for some work they have a pleasant lustre and strength isn’t an issue here.