A change of focus.

It might not be a good idea to work on completely different things at the same time, but this what I am doing.  I am drawing on cellophane jam lids and have done about 25 in a simple fine lining style.    They are lovely, and would look great, set out in a grid, but they curl up into a cigar shape when laid flat.  I don't want to glue them flat, and suspect the glue would damage the cellophane, so have come to a grinding halt.

Instead, I have been delighted with my monoprints which are highly textured and layered.  So I photographed them, put into Photoshop, made some small adjustments and created about 6 images, each in3 different sizes of 1m, 50cm and 25 cm.  I requested this be printed on hemp ramie (linen/nettle blend) fabric, thinking it would take c3m.  Lisa made a lovely job of arranging the images on the length of fabric, and made best use of the meterage.  It ended up printing on 4.5m @ £22 per metre.  I have just spent £100 on nettles!!

This is about 3m long 

These  two are 1m wide x 70 cm deep

I spent a day admiring, steaming, drying, rinsing, washing, ironing, and admiring some more.  Then Antje came into the studio.  I don't think she got the work at all, which then made me waver in confidence.  I have spent 24 hours being all anxious about how it turned out, then took the fabric to my Draw, Paint, Print class to show the tutor, Giles.  He had never had a student take their artwork forward into textiles before, and asked me to explain the process to the whole class.  I said I wanted to work up a colander image to apply to upholstery for a cook's chair, with the caption "a seat for the drained".  This might be my Christmas project.  I have a chair I can recover, and I would like to try to complete something.

Collage from previous weeks' work

Then, another idea was given to me to solve the cellophane problem.  Transfer the imagery to a crisp sheer fabric and either machine embroider the fine line directional shading, or hand sew the line drawings.  This would need high skill and perfect tension.

Two different projects, requiring different skills.  Plenty to be going on with.