Monday, May 1, 2017

Progressing... a Few Quick Glimpses

Coming along slowly with the new piece I first showed you in this post. It's been quite a while since I completed something; as some of you may know, I've been busy studying business things. More about that later. (You can read a bit about it here and here.)

Most of the basic components are glued down, and I have added some stitching; I think it will be finished in the next day or so. In the meantime, I just wanted to share a few more details before you see the whole piece. (Is that an oxymoron?) Anyway, without further blah-blah-blah:



I kind of enjoy using the hammer and awl to make holes for the stitching.  My dogs, however, do not enjoy the noise - I suppose it sounds like thunder or fireworks to them - and when I start, they quickly find another place to hang out.



My son-in-law gave me these old engineering drawings, which I have since found out are done on silked vellum. We knew they were vellum, but when I tore a piece of it to use in a collage, I saw tiny threads, and realized it was woven. Later I heard, just by chance, that in the past very very thin sheets of silk would be somehow laminated onto vellum to make it more durable. It's a strange material to work with, as it doesn't behave like either paper or fabric, and seems to stretch when wet (or has glue on it), and is very hard to glue down flat.



Here, tree roots have been stitched with embroidery floss - a mix of two different blues. Hopefully, it will all come together soon, and I will share it with you here!


Happy Monday, everyone!






8 comments:

  1. So beautiful, can't wait to see it finished. xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks great... and what an interesting thing you discovered about the engineering drawings.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Valerianna! Yes, I'm always learning something new; of course, now I want to investigate further and find out how they did it!

      Delete
  3. ah vellum the queen of drawing materials but so easily affected by the weather! one of the reasons vellum books were bound flat with clasps was to keep the pages from warping

    ReplyDelete
  4. Did you ever hear of silking? The drawings are not warped at all, they're perfectly flat.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I haven't ever seen vellum backed with silk, it would be quite a trick to adhere the silk to the vellum !

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I'm happy to reply here, but may not always have time for individual emails.