Vertaal

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Layout for Exodus

Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:
It took me a long time to develop my ideas for this verse. How do I visualize 'elders' ? Or do I focus on the appearance in the burning bush? Or on the covenant God, all knowing and never forsaking?

I decided to more focus on : ...I have surely visited...and seen. Meaning: -seen their misery, -to take notice, -pay attention.
And then also try showing what has been done to the Israelites in Egypt + the context of the exodus out of Egypt to the Land flowing with milk and honey.

A few elements I wanted to include: bricks (slave labour of the Israelites), land of milk and honey, and possibly a map. After reading an article about using used teabags, I thought it would be nice if I could draw Egyptian images on tea bags and cut them into brick shapes.

These are the kind of words I scribble in my sketch book:
bricks, city, camels, desert, slaves, pyramids, papyrus, burning bush, stitch flames?, print map on fabric of papyrus?, paint left hand dark, print on papyrus?
Colours: clay, dark blue,gold, earthy, honey, cream.

I then went on exploring how to transfer maps onto fabric.

For this one I copied a map and flipped it, so I got a mirror image. I put the right side on top of the fabric, poured turpentine over it, and really pressed it down. The ink from my laser printer transferred onto the fabric quite well.

 For this one I just fed the fabric through the printer. A much easier, cleaner way :)

This is the final layout for my quilt. This time I don't have a clear design, but it's more a rough composition.
The problem I face with printing a map to A4 size is that my quilt size is bigger, so I have gaps which I need to 'fill'. How to solve that? I think I am going to use my inktense pencils to make some fabrics in blue (for the Egyptian side) and some creamy/yellow (for the top right Canaan side).

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Off track

A few other experiments, nothing to do with my Exodus quilt. But nonetheless quite exciting and hopefully useful for some later work :)

I really like my Derwent Inktense Pencils





You can draw with them like pencils, then add water and they act like inks. For the butterfly I thought I should try my shadowpainting liner (which I normally use on paper only). The pencils worked well on fabric, only disadvantage is that they bleed. Someone recommended using Aloe Vera gel instead of water. Worth a try. To get the liner of was extremely hard.

Another fun thing I tried is dying fabrics with shaving foam and inks or acrylics.

 first put a layer of shaving cream on your workspace
Then add drops of ink - I used acrylic inks

Random skewer patterns
Put fabric on top and lift off

and another one with a bit of silver ink.
I think I should try this again, but with more colours and different marble patterns. It's a fun way of making your own fabrics.




What have I been doing so far?

Exodus 3:16
Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:

So far: mostly thinking:).....and sketching. I have about a 20 possible ideas, but none is right just now. I know I am heading there and this time the idea is more taking shape in my mind than on paper. I also have been reading quite a lot of books and magazines (digging up some old Art Quilting mags), mainly to learn different techniques.  Most of them I won't use in this quilt, but some I might give a try. I really enjoyed this book:


Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth: Stamp, Screen, & Stencil With Everyday Objects

I also read an article about using old (used) teabags on fabric. By reading that all of a sudden an idea popped up: using teabags as an imagery for the bricks the Israelites had to make. I got all excited and started drying teabags and drew Egyptian inspired pictures on them.




I also remembered I had bought a piece of Papyrus when I was in Egypt. So I might try to incorporate that in the quilt. First tried to draw and paint on it with Ecoline inks, which worked quite well.
 

Then stitched over it and that worked too!

The first 5 verses


Gen 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.        


Exd 3:16 Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:        


Lev 3:16 And the priest shall burn them upon the altar: it is the food of the offering made by fire for a sweet savour: all the fat is the LORD'S.        


Num 3:16 And Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD, as he was commanded.        


Deu 3:16 And unto the Reubenites and unto the Gadites I gave from Gilead even unto the river Arnon half the valley, and the border even unto the river Jabbok, which is the border of the children of Ammon;        



The first 5 verses. Working on the second now.

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Unveiling Genesis 3:16 quilt

Genesis 3:16 "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
    Although I had in mind to publish one a month, I don't know if that's always going to work. I am already planning on the next one and thought it might be a bit confusing to work on, and write about current developments. And then have to come back to previously completed. So here it is


A few thougths: The strong colours and shapes represent the sorrow/pain of birth, emphasised by ragged, black lines. The husband rules over here, but also protects, loves and cares. She has sorrow, but also love. The flower symbolises that God didn't forsake us, but He left marriage as a flower from paradise. This is also visible in the Fibonacci spiral  http://www.icr.org/article/shapes-numbers-patterns-divine-proportion-gods-cre/
Another reason to use the Fibonacci spiral is a tribute to Donald Knuth, who's book inspired me to start this project. He, as a computer scientist  has used it in branches of mathematics and computer science way beyond simple arithmetic.

There is more to explore, but rather leave that to you :)

Detail........for some reason I can't rotate this picture.

Quilt assembly

All the fabric pieces are in place now, lightly ironed on, but nothing is stitched yet. Time to make the quilt sandwich which has 3 layers. I always use a spray glue to make sure the layers aren't going anywhere while stitching. 
Now it's time for stitching! I wanted to use black, ragged lines around the 'pains of birth'. I did a few experiments with straight stitching and zigzag. Decide to go for the small zigzag in free motion. That went fairly well.

For the Fibonacci spiral I wanted to try couching. This is a technique where you wind your bobbin with embroidery strands and don't put it through the tension. You then sew your desired design at the back of your fabric. The embroidery in the bobbin is going to show at the good side of your work. This is my practise sample:




















 This is the back of the fabric

Now the piece is ready for writing the verse on it. First applied some white textile paint around the couched Fibonacci spiral, otherwise the writing won't be visible on the darker colours.



Thursday 7 June 2012

Brainstorming

While working on my Genesis quilt, I already start thinking about the Exodus 3:16 one:

"Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt"

Which direction it's going I don't know yet. Thinking about Moses and the burning bush, The LORD who is not absent, although His people almost forgot about Him. He still wants to do with them. And even wants to lead them out of Egypt and out of their misery.

Thinking about elders, bricks, pain, covenant, Gods' goodness, land of milk and honey.
Can't put too much 'pictures' in it, because the verse is quite long and has to be in there somewhere. That's one of the challenges I am facing: putting text unto fabric in different ways. Any thoughts welcome!

experiments

Today I tried to transfer a photocopied picture to cotton fabric. I still need a flower in my quilt and thought I might use this technique I read about. But you have to have acrylic medium which I didn't have...I had some binder medium which I applied to the fabric and to the picture. Then placed the picture on the fabric and applied pressure with a brayer. This is the result I got....not particular good. Next time try again with the proper medium :)


I decided to actually make the flower petals from fabric. I wanted a bit of a white/pink fabric. Another little experiment:
Did this by dry brushing red acrylic paint on vliesofix and ironed this onto white cotton. I think I can use pieces of this fabric for the flower.