Saturday, September 14, 2013

WEEDS - theme of Irene MacWilliam



Weeds are useful

In the past few weeks I have been making fabric to the weed theme, sun prints, lino cuts, printing, painting etc various weed leaves and text .
I had a vision in my head but it did not look correct when I laid out the various bits. I cut them up and laid them down as a background and printed the text on some of the small squares. It looked lovely but I wished to represent some of the weeds so I free motion stitched in a dandelion, daisy, corn poppy and a nettle. It looked messy and the drawing did not show up enough. I free motion zig-zagged over the drawn weeds. Now everything is just one big muddle, fine if you are prepared to peer and pick out the elements; however it looks dirty, not fresh and wonderful.

The back of it looks not bad so I decided to leave it exposed just for my own interest and perhaps for use when teaching.

I think all my background pieces were too strongly coloured or maybe I needed to leave some areas blank for my drawing.

I am determined to find my way to my vision of showing the value of weeds through textiles. Much thinking needed. Just as I am writing this text a new approach has come into my mind. We will see.