Saturday 3 November 2012

Collect and Transform (at last!)

at last i have something to show and as i haven't posted chapter 1 yet i will show a few of the surfaces i am using for inspiration; so above is sea mammal gut which is transparent.
the items i am looking at are composed of long gut strips sew together and often with beautiful insertions of feather, wool, hair etc.
they are stitched with sinew and sometimes coloured with minerals.  

So as i said in my previous post i am not buying anything for this. i collected together old wrappings, mainly transparent and/or with a parchment like quality. so #1 shows sandwich wrappers and paper bag,left and middle scrunched around a ruler. right using old iron on transfer and stitch.
detail of sandwich bag with feather
next lot from left, paper serviette rushed with stitching and then waxed and ironed flat, cereal wrapper distressed, old cupcake case distressed and pleated then punctured and finally a piece of waxed tracing paper with horsehair stitching.
#4 shows more cereal wrapper with stitching, a plastic carrier with ruched stitch lines and stitched sausage skins!
#5 is a detail of the cereal wrapper and loosely stitched nylon thread.
detail of the sausage skin. more about this later but basically you wash it, blow it up, tie both ends and let it dry inflated then it goes lovely and crispy. i am a complete convert!!! and no i didn't buy it!
#7 from left shows two pieces of tissue with punched holes from the hole puncher sandwiched with melted wax plus some stitching. next 2 chop stick wrappers (we like chinese food) and then a stitched 'seam' with inserts.
detail of the wax and punched 'holes'.
and finally detail of strips inserted in a seam. it has taken me a long time to get going with these samples mainly because i have got so involved with the original products and finding it all so fascinating, anyway i am off to the Pitt Rivers next week to see what they have.

5 comments:

  1. Wow its amazing what you are doing. I think I ought to be doing something with old cereal wrappers every time I throw them away.
    And lovely silvery coffee bags also I am an absolute sucker for brown paper and those really thick paper serviettes you get sometimes, mine pile up but you are actually doing things with them.

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  2. Love your collection, it is amazing what you can create with all these found bits. I have been looking around the house for my collection but doubt I have anything as unusual as sausage skins tucked away!

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    1. Thank you both for your comments. it always amazes me just how much 'stuff' that can be used in the recycling bin and far too much that still says 'not currently recyclable' Sausage skins were a present, not something i would normally have either

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  3. What a great collection of surfaces, it's always so interesting to see how other people approach these exercises. I love the idea of dried sausage skins, amazing !

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  4. Very interesting - I love the recycled holes, strangely beautiful.

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