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.

.

Next blog post is reveal time!!

Unveilling Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 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 

Finished Piece

Contemporary look, don't you think?
 The land and Dead Sea are made from batik fabrics. I printed the map on transfer paper. I spent all day on finding a good map, enlarging the right parts. Making sure it wouldn't become to pixelated, and still......I wish I could have covered the whole part in between the river Arnon and Jabbok. And I also wish I could have the areas Gad and Reuben bigger.
I like the verse printing, think that went really well.

I wanted to portray the possession of the land by the fingerprint, but also by creating a settlement. I drew the roads with inktense pencils and used my twin needle to create roads. The little houses are made by using a very small stitch length in zigzag.

Add caption

The verse is printed by using transfer paper. The river is drawn with inktense pencils and I used aloe vera gel instead of water to spread the ink. The gel works really well without bleeding the inks into the creamy fabric.

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.