Another Change in Direction

Over the past few days my ideas have changed a lot and although I am still doing essentially what I planned to do at the start, my final outcome is taking a slightly different shape. I had quite a few ideas... one was to produce a quilt, almost a homage to the missing people in my family. However, I felt this was too big a project and even with screen printing and combining quicker methods like cross stitch it would be unlikely I could produce something I was satisfied with. I screen printed the finished crowd image below but it was not particularly successful or best suited for printing so I don't think I will carry on that idea any further...

I did however produce some quick sketches from photographic material, where I was trying to mimic the movements and patterns of the sewing machine and I much preferred them.

Initially I was drawn to people like Jenny Hart. Though beautiful images, for my project these types of images are too time consuming and if I wanted to produce something of a slightly bigger scale, I would have to consider other methods of image making. Therefore a more sewing machine based image would be suitable and I experimented with that and I was pleased with how they came out. I also came across another illustrator, Gillian Bates on http://www.embroideryasart.com/ who's work is mainly machine based and she has given me a lot of ideas about composition and colour.

I then moved onto the idea of creating a space you could walk into and it would act as almost a giant photo album. I had the idea of producing embroidered images from my photographic material and framing it and hanging the pieces in the exhibition space on my own screen printed wall paper. I was going to make my own wall paper from memories I had of my grandparents house, taking patterns etc from fabrics and wallpaper in their home which I associated with them. Or I was going to screen print hand-drawn text containing stories, facts and information about the missing people. However after talking to Jen I have decided instead of producing a space which represents a photo album, I am actually just going to produce a giant photo album with about 20 embroidered images possibly with ink in caption, but I will probably leave that and decide if that is necessary when it is all put together. Before I start this I am going to quickly make a mock up book, to give me an idea of appropriate materials. So this is my new plan..... Jen also recommended I look up The Marvelous album of Madame B: being the Handiwork of a Victorian lady of Considerable Talent, which contains images which have been manipulated combining photography and hand drawn images. I had been wondering whether to combine photographic images, this may become too complicated, but whilst I was researching I stumbled across this website which is useful for anyone wanting to transfer images simply and cheaply.

So plan for next two weeks... WORK WORK WORK

• Experiment with transferring images to fabric and adding extra embroidery
• Finish worksheet of images to be used in the final book, considering colour and composition mainly
• Consider incorporating text- type face? How much? if any...
• Research old photo albums and how to bind my book together
• Quick experiment with cross stitch (using photoshop to create an image suitable for cross stitch)
• Find some old scrap wallpaper (possibly from portobello market) to use in exhibition
• MAKE THE BOOK AND PUT IT TOGETHER
• Consider how it will be showed in the exhibition