I have been so absorbed in my work this past couple of weeks, that it has been hard to find the time to share it. I have managed to get my posts out through Instagram, but I have so much to catch up on here, as my hands have been busy and my new collection of pieces is almost complete.
Everything just feels right at the moment – I am living my best fibre artist life! After months of feeling like I have been in some sort of creative tussle, with myself, I have accepted that my soul needs to make things that take as long as they take. There can be no speeding up, or prioritising efficiency – Five in the Nest is not a business, it’s my creative practice, which happens to help pay our bills.
I need to take the time to find joy in every stitch, to make what I need to make, no matter how long it takes, because then it feels natural and everything starts to fall into place.
So what have I been up to?
I have been continuing to combine jute with fine linen thread and hand-printed textiles, to create two baskets and the first of a series of small wall hangings.
November began with me completing the first of the baskets in this collection.
Based around the markings of a beach pebble, printed onto canvas, I set about creating a basket that would feel at once ancient and contemporary.
I chose colours of bronze and gold for the cocooned canvas, with earth colours for the printing. I wanted it to feel like a treasured artefact, which had been incorporated into a basket made of a humble material – the strong and fabulously hairy jute. It rises up above the rim of the basket, like the sun rising over the horizon.
I had to alter the way that I usually join two areas of work for this one, to allow for the difference in yarn size between the linen and jute.
I worked a single round of coil around the cocooned canvas and ran a length of 1 ply through the core of the main basket, where I was going to join it together. In that way I could pick up the 1 ply for the joining stitches and connect to the round of prominent coil on the centrepiece.
I moved straight on to the second basket, which had been coming together in my mind while I worked on the first. I watched an interview with Kay Sekimachi recently, in which she talked about how the next piece started in your mind while you working and so the process never stops, and that is so true!
If you’re not familiar with Kay’s work, do look her up. She has been so influential in the world of fibre arts for so many decades and I only found her work by chance, when looking for a documentary on Ruth Asawa. Both are amazing artists and inspiring women as well.
I began with the base basket for the second piece, because getting the round-bellied form right, was essential to this one.
To work on a form in one simple material is a very special thing, because it allows you to immerse yourself entirely in that shape, as it slowly grows in your hands, so this was something of a treat for me!
Once the basket itself was complete, I printed and stretched five canvas pebbles, which I then cocooned in shades of tarnished and oxidised copper. These were then joined to create a chain that sits perfectly on the widest part of the basket.
This week I have been working on the first of a series of small wallhangings. I will keep adding to this series over the coming months, because I love the idea of having many of these self-framed pieces – each with a different centre and each frame slightly different.
Based on the idea of Ripple (a piece I made a couple of years ago, with a limpet shell in the centre), I began by printing the canvas with a design based on a sea urchin shell, that I found on the shoreline, back in Orkney.
Again, I cocooned the canvas in linen thread, picking out the coppers and golds that I see so often along the coast and in the autumn landscapes here.
Once cocooned, I carried on working, round by round to create the frame.
It sits neatly against a wall, needing only a simple nail fixing. I didn’t bring the curving frame right back to the wall this time, but instead allowed the upper section to protrude slightly, like a sea anemone, anchored to a rock, with its tentacles spread out.
I have just one more to go, in this collection, before I release them into my shop. It will be another small wall hanging. But there will be no stopping, because I already have several pieces in mind, to make in December and of course I must fit in a bit of Christmas gift making too!
I hope that you enjoy my new work as much as I have been enjoying it!
Wherever you are in the world, I hope that November finds you well and enjoying life xx
