Revealing Psalm 4 verse 8

 

stencilling a nz flax over the fabric

Enjoy

xxx Ida

Revealing Job 3:16

 Revealing Job 3:16

"Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants which never saw light."

After a difficult start I really started liking what I was doing and I am happy to show you the end result! For peope who are interested in the process I have written a post on that.

Ponderings and Process Update Job 3:16

 Job 3:16

"Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants which never saw light."

I just quote what Matthew Henry says in his introduction of the book of Job:

"The history of Job begins here with an account, I. Of his great piety in general (v. 1), and in a particular instance (v. 5). II. Of his great prosperity (v. 2-4). III. Of the malice of Satan against him, and the permission he obtained to try his constancy (v. 6-12). IV. Of the surprising troubles that befel him, the ruin of his estate (v. 13-17), and the death of his children (v. 18, v. 19). V. Of his exemplary patience and piety under these troubles (v. 20-22). In all this he is set forth for an example of suffering affliction, from which no prosperity can secure us, but through which integrity and uprightness will preserve us."

To be honest I was dreading the idea of having to make a quilt about this verse. In chapter 3, the patient Job becomes the passionate Job. He begins by cursing the day of his birth, following with the question why he couldn't have died right after being born. In fact why wasn't he born dead.

I guess you all will understand why this is difficult to depict. I have been pondering the ideas of a baby, maybe thread sketched in black? But in the end, decided the subject is too sensitive and I thought I might be able to make it abstract and only print the verse.

Till I came upon a painting by Catriona Reid, which hugely inspired me. 

Job is speaking about light a lot. It's mentioned 32 times!

I first started painting on a creamy fabic, but that didn't really work out. Till I found a grey and white marbled fabric in my stash which I dyed in coffee and used bleach to create a stormy and gloomy sky. 

On a seperate piece of fabric I outlined a tree and  thread sketched (free motion) lots of black thread on it and cut it out and glued it on the main panel. Then secured it with lots more stitching and loose hanging threads. 

At the bottom I made a rocky outcrop with a black silhouette, fused and stitched. 

How to put the verses onto fabric is always a challenge. This time I installed a Calligraphy app and played around with it. Till I had a nice font. I tried finding a tool how to mirror image the words and print them onto Transfer Artist Paper, which in turn you can iron onto fabric.

However, I found this piece of silk organza in my stash and stabilized it with steam a seam and used intense pencils and fabric medium (so it doesn't bleed) to handwrite the verse. Using steam a seam means I could iron the silk on my piece.

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Next blog post is reveal time!!

Reveiling Esther 4:1

I already wrote a blog about some of the background of the book of Esther and the design/background research I did. 

Now for some technical details. I decided to make a fabric collage in a neutral palette. So I fused steam-a-seam on several pieces of tonal fabrics and layed it out in a square. I cut some pieces of hessian (jute) and distressed this to give the impression of torn clothes. 

I copied the cuneiform script from the Behistun Inscription, established by king Darius the Great. I took me quite a few hours, I felt like a monk ;)

I preferred it to be an abstract piece (meaning no literal Mordechai with torn clothes), but I still managed to hide a face profile in it. 
Composition is something I think long and hard about and I usually sketch a minimum of 8 different compositions. It's important the whole is well balanced and also has a little tension. Hence the teardrops to repeat the blue and the jute to repeat in the corner. 

I am very happy how my cuneiform script turned out, with the Bibleverse woven into it. It was actually very scary to quilt over it, but the irregular grid is very fitting and symbolic.

Let's show you how it turned out, hope you enjoy it!

 Revealing Ezra and Nehemiah 3:16

Ezra and Nehemiah

The book of Ezra has no chapter 3:16, but I could go on in chapter 4 and use verse 3. Instead I have chosen to put Ezra and Nehemiah together as it's the same time period and also describes the same topic. 

Nehemiah 3:16

16 After him repaired Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, the ruler of the half part of Bethzur, unto the place over against the sepulchres of David, and to the pool that was made, and unto the house of the mighty.

Ezra before him and many men after Nehemiah started coming back from excile and had it in their hearts desire to rebuild the temple: the gates were burned and Jerusalem was still in ruins. 

They got a lot of opposition.

Once I started designing a few things came in mind:

There was a lot of prayer involved and answer to prayer too. I thought about a ladder as a symbol of prayer going up and down. A ladder also would have been used in a literal way.

There needed to be ruins, grave yards, sword and trowel ( 4:18 For the builders, every one had his sword girded by his side, and so builded.) And symbols of hope.

Lot of free motion, but I thought the wall was too solid. Risking cutting some layers away.....

I was nearly finished when I started writing the verse over and under the rainbow. I really didn't like it:( So I cut of the whole top part and instead used a black, mottled fabric. This way the sword and trowel could be hand stitched and be more visible. I am glad I took the pain. It's nearly done now. Need to darken the stones and do some more free motion stitching. I have done a lot of slow stitching on this as I thought it quite fitting with all the manual labour this is depicting.