More Doors

At last door 3 is finished, well I still need to add the furnature. A friend asked me if I was going to stitch the directly on the fabric (which I was) or stitch the furnature on another piece than tranfer to give more depth..... ERRmmmmm nice idea, so I am planning to explore that.

The hoop has been moved ready to start door4. I have until the border is finished to select a pattern. I wouldlike todo more hardanger this time. Door 3 almost felt like it was never going to end.

A few weekends ago we visited Shropshire including a morning at Blist Hill victorian village were I took lots of photos of doors. Shall be using those for inspiration for door 4.

More on Doors

I am almost there with door 3. As you can see below, this one does not have any hardanger, but is meant to represent a paneled door !

Also been experimenting with creating door furniture. Here are some I think work. Generally I think stitching them in gold thread works well.

Been busy creating a very personnel piece of art. The latest issue of Cloth Paper Scissors had an article about creating a collaged affirmation piece of work which would show positive messages. I was quite inspired with this and as there was a boxed canvas waiting in my studio I set about creating my verion, as you can see below. I liked that the head is off the top edge as faces are not my strong point. It is going to be hung in my studio. It was fun playing with paint and mix media instead of thread =)

More Doors !

More time over the last two weeks to start working on my final piece. The spider as you can see is now black. I am not sure if I will add more colour. I thought about adding metalic either in paint or cream but felt that this could make it look too much like a piece of jewerly. I have toyed with the idea that I add shadows with greys, but may now wait until the doors are made then see how the doors add shadows first.

I have also made progress on the book about Louise. It is concatena style with windows cut into the pages. Now I have coloured both sides , added charcoal drawings and quotes from Louise... as well as my own notes.

The front is yellows and greens, while the back is red, blue and purple. The pages are made from water colour paper and painted in fabric dye.

Now for the doors. I calculated that the doors need to be 4" by 14" !!!
Thus I now have all the materials and have started to make the doors. Mean while been making a few drawings of doors.

As you can see there are two here. A close up of the white one below. I plan each door to be a different colour. Which showed how hard it is to find colours other than white and echu in 8 and 12 cotton. After looking in the library for books on hardanger, I finally ended up in a second hand store with three great books for new patterns.
It has been pointed out that these are a little light around the edge. Thus been also making some samples to improve this ! The idea I like most is below, where two edges has added to , feel this gives a dimensional quality.

I am also considering door furnature. Started while stitching on the train. Above you can see a thread covered bead as a door knob. Also looking at using wire .

Then there is the whole throught round how to join the doors at the end. Wire is coming back as an idea which would work better with the style of the dummy and spider.. Better than the ribbon I had first thought!

I am already forming plans of how this should be displayed. A high pondum which stops the viewer from looking down into the work. Forcing them to look though the windows.

Sunday ~ Update

Been working on the covers for the book. My original cover idea was just not working out then I saw some tisue I had with images of Paris on and an idea formed.

So here it is. I was not planning to add anything more to this... Well not yet. The back contains a copy of my notes from a visit to the V&A. Includes comments from a friend who attended too !