Please Touch

The West Country Quilt & Textile Show is now just a week away and we are really looking forward to it. This year, for the first time, we will be sharing a larger stand (G48) with our friends at On The Surface. Alongside our current exhibition, Revealed, we will be collaborating with them in a collection of work, entitled 'Please Touch', where visitors will be actively encouraged to explore it by touching. This was suggested by Deb, one of our members, who has worked for a long time with Sense, a charity supporting deafblind people and people with complex disabilities, helping them communicate and experience the world.

As you can see below, we have come up with some very different approaches to the idea:

Deb

Deb has woven a varied collection of fabrics, yarns and threads to make a beautiful bag, lined with silk and decorated with dangling beads - just fabulous.

 

 

 

Bernice

Bernice just loves hand printing wonderful fabric and here she has done exactly that, after making her own printing block, shown below.  She is piecing it together with some more of her amazing hand printed stash to make a wall hanging. There are plans to sew on some added extras, which will make it very interesting to touch. Can you guess what they might be?

 

Dia

Dia's first piece may look familiar as it has been featured in our other social media - it is a sculptural felt with metal inclusions, which she made during a workshop with Caroline Merrell at the the Felt Foundry. Unusually for Dia, who often works in bright colours, this is wet felted with Piiku Finn wool fibres in a soft grey colour, which contrasts well with the shiny surface of the metal.

 

Dia has returned to one of her brighter colour combinations here, wrapping a canvas with thick wool yarn and attaching some coffee pods, which will be fun to play with!

 

Spot the difference between the previous image and the following finished piece ...

Becca

Becca is continuing her personal exploration of deafness with three stitched pieces in simple black and white but the work is anything but simple. Showing the incorporation of braille to link with this 'Please Touch' exhibition, these photos are of complex work in progress.

 

 

Vicki

One aspect of Vicki's work for this exhibition has been making some wonderfully tactile needle felted balls, as yet untitled which are also in black and white and decorated with tiny beads. They will possibly be displayed, hidden in a container, enticing you to feel inside.

 

Vicki has also been exploring ideas around consent with the following wall hangings of sculptural felt, also in muted colours with texture created by the felt manipulation and beautiful stitching. More work in progress, with a provisional title of Acquiescence ...

Cath

This last work of Vicki's reminded me of a vessel I had, lying somewhere in a container of its own, with the stitching half finished and I've resurrected it to become part of Please Touch.

Another older piece of my work has been featured here on the blog last year with details of how it was made. Painted, printed and stitched woven card, it was part of a Summer Challenge for my local Embroiderers' Guild and had never been exhibited, so I only had to mount it on a painted canvas and protect it with acrylic wax.

My final piece has also been glimpsed before on our social media but not in its finished form. I have always been fascinated by 3d mathematical forms and have enjoyed attempting simple fabric origami. I was reminded of this particular kaleidocycle form by the triangles of Bernice's folding book, 'The Road Not Taken',  and after spending some time deciding how many triangular sections I wanted, I chose this simple version and set about making the felt for the triangles with my embellisher. After machine stitching, I cut out the triangles, added some hand stitch and beads and assembled the piece, waiting with bated breath to test whether it worked ...

 

    

... and it did!

If you're coming to the West Country Quilt and Textile Show next week, please feel free to come and explore these exhibits and more from Traverse's collaboration with On The Surface. On Stand G48, we are also showing our 2019 exhibition, 'Revealed' and would love to see you there.

Cath

Hot off the press - well, actually hot off Whats App - Bernice's hanging is now complete with added extra 'fiddle bits' and looking fabulous!

Q&A with Becca

For our third question and answer session, I thought I'd answer the questions myself! I joined Traverse in May 2018, having originally done a course with the founding members of the group and then going off to do a further course before coming back to join Traverse. So, here is my Q&A!

Who am I? 

Hi, I am Becca. I’m married to Terry and we have two teenage boys. I've stitched and crafted all my life; being creative has always been an important part of who I am and it allows me the time to tune out from the world and just focus on 'being'. This became very important in 2009 when after several years of ill-health, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue. My children were just 5 & 7 years old at the time of diagnosis and instead of going back to work as my youngest started primary school, I found myself confined to the sofa trying to rest up enough in order to collect my children from school and do all the other things a parent does. It became important to find a way to make a life around my health issues, one that would allow me to cope with symptoms, flare ups and rest as needed and for me, art was that life.

What are your creative influences?

There have been a few influences in my life that inspire me to create but the 2 main ones I guess are:

1.      My Mum and various other friends! Mum started me on my journey into embroidery and sewing as a child. When I was in my late teens, Mum did her City & Guilds qualifications and seeing the new techniques and the work she created gave me a greater insight into what could be done. Via my Mum and then later on via courses and internet forums, I've met many creative people and all have inspired me in some way. You can be an artist and be creative on your own but seeing how other people create and discussing the way they've used a material or product or technique is really inspiring and I find it often sparks a new thought, a new idea and spurs me on with current projects.

2.      As well as Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue, I am deaf. I've worn hearing aids all my life and in 2008, after losing the little hearing I had in one ear totally and having minimal hearing in the other ear, I had a cochlear implant. It had been a devastating moment when I realised my 4 year old son was acting as my interpreter, I didn't want my children to have to be my ears and to feel they had to help me understand what people were saying. I wanted them to have a childhood and for me to support them not the other way round. So having a cochlear implant made a huge impact not just for me but also for my family. My experiences of invisible disability and illness have informed my work over the past 18 months and I feel drawn to exploring ways to make the invisible visible within my work.

Describe your style in 5 words - share your thoughts on these words

Reveal

Invisible

Visible

Emotions

Layers

At the moment, with invisible disability and illness being a focus of my work, these 5 words seem to pop up most often. I'm looking at the emotions that come from coping or dealing with an invisible part of me. I have many layers (as do we all) and I want to reveal, to make visible these layers to try and make what I and many other people are going through visible and more understood and accepted by those who haven't been through the difficulties that these conditions can cause.

What are your favourite mediums and techniques to use?

I'm a 'child in a sweet shop' with techniques but if I really really have to pick a favourite, I can narrow it down to two - using water-soluble fabric with machine stitch and using Lutradur with paint, machine stitch and heat to alter the surface and create texture.

Fabric and thread form part of the mediums I use but I really enjoy including more unusual materials such as fruit nets or cassette tape and working with materials that originally came from other industries such as Lutradur, Tyvek and even dissolvable fabrics.

I do suspect I am a secret pyromaniac and vandal as I love nothing better than using heat, water and paint to change the surface of my work!!

How did find your creative style? 

I'm not sure I have totally found my style yet! As I said above, I'm like a child in a sweet shop when it comes to new techniques and methods, I always want to try something new! But over the last 18 months or so, I've been taking a couple of courses with Amarjeet Nandhra at the Windsor School of Textile Art and with Amarjeet's support, I'm slowly starting to find and develop my own style.

Do you dabble in any other crafts/art? 

I've explored many different crafts - scrapbooking, paper crafts, glass painting, lace making, macramé to name but a few. I can honestly say knitting and crochet are not crafts for me - I end up with so many added and dropped stitches as I go that the piece just looks unrecognisable! I also love creating upcycled one off pieces for my home with scrap wood but I think my husband might say those are more joint projects!

Favourite quote? 

I have a few that I keep a note of, two that relate to my art are:

"Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented – which is what fear and anxiety do to a person – into something whole" -  Louise Bourgeois

"Art is not always about pretty things. It's about who we are, what happened to us and how our lives are affected" -  Elizabeth Broun


Our next Q&A piece will be with Dia.

Becca

Q&A with Bernice

For our second question and answer session, I am going to speak to Bernice - Bernice is one of the founding members of Traverse, she is also one of the main posters on the Traverse blog and, has her own blog (link below) so if you are familiar with our blog, then you will know Bernice but, let's find out more:

Can you tell us about you?
I have been married to Roger for 36 years and we have one son. He and his wife and children live in Sydney, Australia.  After working as a teacher I spent 13 years as a Church Administrator and 18 months as an office manager for a friend's electrical company before properly retiring in 2011.

How did you get into textiles?
I took ill health retirement from teaching when I was 43 and was introduced to textile classes by my neighbour. She told me about City & Guilds Creative Embroidery and I spent 4 years doing parts 1 & 2. I stopped doing textiles for a while and came back several years later by way of scrapbooking and art journaling. I am a compulsive workshop collector and have done far too many to list. They are mostly technique workshops, so I know a lot of techniques but rarely spend time developing them into something that is me.

What inspires your work?
Anything and everything!

Currently my work is based on the theme for the next Traverse exhibition or the Art Textile Group I belong to at Littleheath Barn Studio. I work better with themes and with deadlines.

I am also taking a Master Practitioner course with the School of Stitched Textiles.  Currently I'm working on the 2nd module of  three.  You can follow my progress with this on my blog: Newly Creative.  My completed module 1 piece is part of the current Traverse exhibition - Revealed.

The Road Not Taken

What are your favourite techniques to use? What are your favourite mediums?
I love mixed media but I am still trying to work out how to use the techniques I use in art journaling in textiles.

I really like Breakdown Printing and spent 5 days with Leslie Morgan at Committed to Cloth last year learning the technique. I am attending 2 Leah Higgins courses later in the year to develop this technique more.

Breakdown Printing

How did find your creative style?
I am still trying to find it. Recently someone said my work looked pared down and edited. I’m hoping that was a compliment! I keep going to workshops in the hopes I’ll find something that will become my style.

How do you start a new project?
I think about the theme a lot and quite often do a mind map (or whatever it’s called these days) to see what ideas I have. And then I just jump in. I rarely do samples and I let the fabric or media tell me where it wants to go. I do a lot of thinking on the way. I ask myself ‘what if I did this or that?’ and work out what would happen in my head rather than through samples.

What do you do if you hit a creative block?
I walk away. I read or watch television. I’ve given up Pinterest because although there are lots of ideas I feel I can’t match up to what I see there. I know that is daft as my work is well done but I tend to think if someone has made a piece that they have said all there is to say. And yet I know that’s not true as what I have to say will be different. Perhaps these thoughts are what cause the creative block!

Favourite quote?
I’ve only just found this quote but I think it describes how I work to a T.
Jasper Johns: ‘Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.’

My other favourite quote and one to live by is from John Wesley:
‘Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.’

Bernice

Thank you Bernice, it has been good to find out more about you and your work. Our next Q&A piece will be with myself!

Becca

Some differing approaches to design

There are many ways of approaching design work for textiles and mixed media pieces.  I thought we might look at the various ways I have tried in the past - often on workshops.

Counterchange

I attended a Gillian Travis workshop where we worked on counterchange. This is where you cut out shapes - in this example circles in paper squares - and exchange them so that the colours are in different places.  I continued with the large heart and then the small heart.

Working in fabric I only changed one heart with another but started with several different coloured squares.

In this version there were three different pear shapes.

Taking a shape
Another way to play with design is to take a shape and cut into it and expand it.

In the examples above the shapes cut out were glued down on the outside of the original shape.  In the example below the rectangle was cut into different shapes and glued down with different intervals to expand the shape.

You can see the quilts made by Claire Higgott using this method on her website.  Click on Split Shapes in her Portfolio.


Drawing
You can take part of a photograph or part of your own drawing and make a physical stamp or digital stamp and produce various patterns.

This can lead to a piece of stitched textile.

I went on a Jean Draper workshop where we drew a small object and then expanded it on a photocopier.  This can inform structures, work on paper and fabric.  I wrote about this on my blog.

Non-visual inspiration for design
Not all inspiration has to be visual.  You could use a poem or a piece of music to inspire your work.  Earlier this year I used the poem 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost to produce a concertina book.  My starting point was the text and unusually for me through various stages of the design process I ended up with this:

Playing
Of course, there's always just letting the fabric 'speak' to you and coming up with a piece of work that results from playing with ideas without planning.  Just go with the flow and see where it takes you.

Some of my Venice pieces came from playing. I printed with stamps and thermofax screens randomly on a large piece of cotton using thickened dyes and fabric paints.

I played again with stencils and screens to make a further piece of fabric which eventually became this set of 9 Venice Tiles.

And finally in this post,  there's thinking!

Thinking
Lots of textile artists use sketchbooks and workbooks, experiment and make samples, I tend to think.  Instead of making several samples I think through what each once might be, ask the 'what if ...' questions and then disregard the ideas.  I might write a list of all the possibilities so that I have the capacity to think through each option - rather than hold the list in my head.  Maybe I miss out on some ideas by not doing samples.  I don't know. What I do  know, is that I produce pieces that work for me and really that's all that counts.

How do you design your work?

Bernice

Q&A with Vicki

Hi, it's Becca here. I've been looking back at the past Traverse blog posts and realised that besides my intro post in June 2018, there has been no post introducing any of the other members! We have a new member to the group and it seemed a really good opportunity to firstly introduce Vicki but also to do a post on every member of the group! So over the next few months, I will post a Question and Answer session with one of Traverse's members.

Vicki

Vicki  joined Traverse earlier this year and despite the short time between joining the group and our first exhibition of 2019, she worked really hard to ensure she could exhibit with us. But let's find out a bit more..

Can you tell us about you? 

I’m Vicki. I'm trying to navigate through life’s complications whilst dipping into my accumulation of years worth of materials to make things. 

How did you get into textiles? 

  

As a child during the 1970’s, I attended what was quite a progressive primary school, where creativity was vastly important. We learned to sew - hand and machine, worked with clay, and looked at an array of creative practices. My home life also had an emphasis on making, traditional skills and thinking outside of the box in terms of gender roles.  

I have a BA(hons) in Art and Design.

What are your creative influences? 

Ooooo, where to start! Quite frequently anatomy features as starting point for any work I’m making, disease and mortality. Cliché to say Frida Kahlo but a definite influence there, but honestly, it’s a large sphere of influence including a variety of media. 

Bioscience, technology, nature and history. 

What inspires your work? 

I'm inspired by death quite a lot…

Decay

What are your favourite techniques to use?

I love stitch, the repetition, the rhythm, the history around different techniques. 

However, I do bore quite easily so I tend to have a few things on the go at once. Many unfinished paintings and small scale sculptures lurk around my work space.

How did find your creative style? 

Accidentally! 

Describe your style in 4 words 

Lazy

Haphazard

Intuitive 

Organic

How do you start a new project? 

Usually when I’m in a creative fug or bored with what I’m working on, I’ll find something else to do and experiment a bit.

What do you do if you hit a creative block?

1. Take some time away from what I’m working on. 

2. Try not to throw it in the bin or cover it in glitter!

3. I love books, so I’ll read or look through reference books for a few sparks.

Thank you Vicki, it has been great to find out more about you and your work!  Our next Q&A post will be with Bernice.

Becca

Making the Invisible Visible

The Quilt and Stitch Show at Uttoxeter Racecourse was my first exhibition with Traverse but also my first exhibition with my current theme of work 'Making the Invisible Visible'. 'Making the Invisible Visible' is informed by my own experiences of invisible disability and chronic illness and as part of Traverse's theme 'Revealed', I have been keen to show, or reveal, the emotions behind the facade that many people with invisible disability and chronic illness develop.

Traverse's stand at The Quilt and Stitch Show, Uttoxeter. April 2019.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm profoundly deaf, not that you would know unless I told you. For me, it truly is an invisible disability and throughout my life, like many deaf people, I have faced comments such as "You don't look deaf"; "You are not as deaf as you pretend to be"; "You use your deafness as an excuse"; "Can you hear me?" said in either an exaggerated way which is totally useless if you lip read as it alters the lip pattern you are trying to follow or as a whisper behind their hand as they try to 'catch' me out. I could go on, I have many examples. The majority were not funny the first time I heard them, most make me feel very embarrassed and some are truly hurtful.

But the worst thing?

It’s that every deaf person I have met, whether people like myself who have been deaf (of varying levels) since birth or people who have had a hearing loss later on in life have faced these comments. And every deaf person and every person who has an invisible disability or chronic health condition (of which I also have with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue) who face this lack of understanding and support, put on a 'face', that is a face they hide behind, an "I'm fine" face that they face the outside world with to try to minimise any vulnerabilities shown to those who don't understand.

'The Hidden Face'

Using my own experiences and those of various people I have spoken with, I wanted to try and show the emotions behind the facade, the struggle that deaf people (and anyone with an invisible disability or chronic illness) face every day and reveal how different levels of hearing loss affect what we can hear.

Although I have had many a conversation and positive response from the other members of Traverse and a handful of other artists about the work I was creating, I wasn't entirely sure how complete strangers would react and The Quilt & Stitch Show was kind of nerve wracking for that reason! Every artist, whatever media they use, faces worries about how others will perceive their work and worries about whether their work is truly good enough. But I was also wondering if what I was trying to convey would be understood by those viewing my work.

On Friday, the first day of the show, Cath and I were stewarding the Traverse stand and it proved to be a very interesting day - for all of us as we all received lots of nice comments and support from visitors - but especially for me as I met several people who expressed their interest in my work. Three such visitors really stick in my memory of the day:

The first was an elderly gentleman who had age related hearing loss and he instantly 'got' what I was trying to convey - both from the statements that people say and from the difficulties faced with hearing loss in a hearing world. We did what seems to be a typical topic of conversation whenever I meet someone with hearing loss - have a good discussion over the difficulties of trying to hear in different situations, what different hearing aids are like and how hard it is to cope with people who don't understand that different situations affect how well you can hear and follow what is going on - I suspect some of this typical conversation comes from the fact I was an audiologist pre-children and have an inbuilt nature to want to help those I meet rather than a totally typical fellow “deafie” conversation but there is a bit of that too!

'Hidden Deafness' 1/3

'Hidden Deafness' 2/3

'Hidden Deafness' 3/3

I then had a conversation with fellow textile artist Jane Murdock, who is studying with the Open College of Arts and is also a fellow “deafie”, invisible disability and chronic illness warrior. Jane has written a blog post as part of her OCA research looking into how disability or chronic illness is portrayed in art and has included my work from the exhibition in her post. Jane understood instantly what I was trying to convey with the use of text in my Hidden Deafness series, a series of 3 panels based on the levels of hearing I not only experience each day but have experienced throughout my life.

Sound is all around us but how we hear sound is very different to each of us and much more so with hearing loss. Sound can be misheard, can be muddled or even just not heard at all and this leads to frustration, exhaustion, hurt and loneliness. The text was a piece of writing I wrote to try and convey in words the difficulties of being deaf and in each piece I distressed the writing and the stitching (which represents sound waves) to reflect the level of hearing loss being depicted and therefore, how much I could hear and understand of what was said. 

Close up of 'Hidden Deafness' 2 showing some of the text used.

My piece “Making the Invisible Visible” tries to show the hidden layers we have behind the perfect yet imperfect, strong yet fragile façade to show the frustration and irritation we feel when in contact with those who don’t understand the struggles we are facing. Jane could really relate to the feelings being expressed and felt so enthused by my work that she could see ways she could take her own work further and also as part of her OCA course, continued to explore how artists through history have portrayed chronic illness or disability in their art. You can find Jane’s blog post here.

'Making the Invisible Visible'

Finally I met two profoundly deaf ladies who were very moved by the subject matter. Deafness isn't something that comes up in art, let alone textile art very often so it was quite a surprise to them to find something that was so relevant to them - the worries, the difficulties and the frustration that occurs every day.

A full conversation proved slightly difficult as their first language was British Sign Language and mine is English –  despite the common thought that deaf people can’t speak and can only sign, I was actually brought up using oral language/spoken English so I speak but sign very little (something I am working on improving). But we did our best and following “the conversation” (as mentioned above) we discovered that we actually live very close by, in fact one of the ladies lives only 5 minutes away, not a connection I expected to make from a small show in the Midlands!

Becca

If in doubt, cut it up!

As Cath promised here is part 3 of Marvellous Mixed Media Felting Workshop.  Those who read my personal blog know that I am very prone to cutting things up - especially those pieces that I think don't work or I just don't like.  Here you will find an example of both reasons.

I liked the colours I had used with this first piece.  It was only meant to be a sample.  The original piece of felt I thought was two big so I had cut it into two thirds and a third whilst we were at the workshop.  This is the two thirds piece.

I didn't think either piece worked so when I got home I cut up both pieces into smaller pieces.  Of course I could have left it as a sample but decided I'd rather make it into something.

I tried various ways of reassembling the bits.

I stitched on each piece separately and added gold acrylic paint.

I put the pieces together and sewed them to make this whole textile called Piece by Piece 1

These were  the two pieces I made on the second day of the workshop.  And I didn't like them.  Especially the one on the right that looked like it was an African or Aboriginal mask.

So you surely know what is coming next!  Yes.  I cut them both up.

Then I experimented with the reassembly until I came up with something I liked.   Some of the pieces were very thick but by needlefelting them I managed to get them thinner.

I stitched on the pieces and sewed the pieces together.  I added copper acrylic paint.  This one is called Piece by Piece 2.

If you come to our exhibition at the British Quilt and Stitch Village from April 12th-14th you can see whether these pieces stayed like this or whether I was tempted by more stitching or more cutting up!

Bernice