Argh! The varmints got me!
Just kidding, it's quite exciting to be tagged really - courtesy of
Claire - for something called Sixth Picture. I'm not sure where it came from but the rules are (rule is!) this:
“Open the 6th picture folder on your computer, open the 6th photo and blog it. Write something about it. Then tag 6 more people to do the same.”
Simple. However, when I went to the sixth picture folder in my computer, there were only 4 pictures in it. This was the fourth, the closest to sixth that I could get.
About four years ago (I think?) I went to evening classes in embroidered textiles at Glasgow School of Art. At the time I had literally no money. It was winter and every Tuesday evening an ice cold windswept torrential rainstorm would start up just in time for the class to finish. All the people at the class thought I was some kind of mad fitness freak because I would insist on walking home in the dark/sleet/wind/thunder and lightning rather than get the bus. The truth was I didn't even have bus fare as I had spent every penny I had on the course itself. It seems crazy now but I didn't think of it that way at the time and, in hindsight, I'm glad. I don't think I've used much of what I learned there yet but there were some basics that helped me have a starting point to explore other areas of embroidery. And I think all the swanky techniques are still fermenting away in my mind - I'm sure bits and pieces of them pop through in things I make. At the end of the course there was an exhibition and we each had one board to display whatever work we wanted. My display skills are terrible but the woman who ran the course (who had us all round to her absolutely gorgeous flat for dinner at the end of the course because she was so stylish and lovely) gave me lots of help to put my board together. And this was it.
The centrepiece was an embroidered patchwork with pictures of my family peeking through holes. The photos are poor quality as I only had a disposable camera and then I transferred the images onto fabric which made them even more blurry. From left to right there is: my sister, Kerry, and brother-in-law , Gavin, and then Graham (a risky endeavour as he was fairly new on the scene back then) and then my dad and lastly my mum. Most of the other items on there are brooches made with different techniques (machine embroidery, dissolvable fabric, Suffolk puffs etc.). The fan like bit at the top right corner was my favourite things I made there although it's hard to see when it's bunched up and badly photographed. It was just a sampler to experiment with couching. I put a bit of neon pink mesh over a blue floral fabric and used wool to couch some circles. In some of the circles I cut the mesh away from inside them. I should get back into making little samplers like that as it was great creative fun and a good way to use up odds and ends. The head of the textiles department (who dropped by the class one evening) also liked this sampler. The lady who took the class told me I should be very proud of myself as he was notoriously difficult to impress. I don't know if she was just being nice but I decided I would get into art school on the basis of this sampler, live the dream and forge out a career in textiles! This did not happen. Tee hee!
A couple of people I work with are doing evening classes at the art school this year and I'm quite jealous. I have more money now than I did back then but am more inclined to feel that I couldn't afford it now. Strange. Maybe if the perfect class came up...?
Anyway, I don't normally like to tag people (I get the fear) but this has really been quite a fun exercise so, if the following people would like to do it, they can consider themselves officially tagged:
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