Tag Archives: Art Deco

Exciting Source for Embroidery Designs

17 Tuesday Apr 2012

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I found a wonderful source of antique embroidery patterns and books on the net, all scanned and available under a creative commons licence. It’s here. There is heaps of stuff there, and it would take an age to look through it all, but by dint of looking at published dates I was able fairly quickly to come up with two or three possibilities for the cover of my commonplace book. Yesterday I went shopping and spent ages looking at possibilities for the book itself, and finally bought one. It’s a scrapbook, only a small one at 8 inches square. The bigger ones are 12 inches square, and I debated long and hard, but the big one is too llimiting in terms of paper and printing. You’d need to use A3 paper and cut it down, and there just isn’t the variety that you can get in A4. With a smaller book I’ll have many more options for printing on coloured paper, it will be easier to scan and print my drawings to a suitable size, and altogether I think better.
I’m going to do a cross stitch design for the front cover, there are at least two if not three possible designs on the site which I have downloaded. A couple are only in black and white, one of which is a bunch of flowers which would be quite easy to colour, the other is a pair of peacocks, which I can see in just black and white, or possibly red and white. Any colour and white I guess, except that black and red are traditional, although not necessarily very art deco. Then there is a very geometric design in a few colours, an oval shape, but I could find a border to put round it. At the moment I am leaning towards the bunch of flowers, if for no other reason than it has a slightly wood cut look to it, and I’m also trying to get a Margaret Preston feel in some of the other drawings.
Now that I have the book I have no excuse not to push ahead with the drawings, before I run out of time. I think I’ll start with the title page, if I’m going to put embroidery on the front cover then the design I had for the cover can go on the title page instead. That’s the logo made up of the letters of ‘book’, and the word commonplace drawn in a suitable font. Do I stick with a certain palette of colours throughout the book? I think it would be better to do so, in which case I might need to stick to one medium for the drawings. I can probably do acrylic, need to buy some more white if so since I have none, and that limits mixing of colours and tints. I’m leaning towards a purple/plum/pink palette, with some greens as well, and purplish browns. Perhaps also some peachy colour, although not orange. More an ecru, no, darker. Not sure what it is called, don’t even really have it in my mind yet. I guess all this deliberation is part of the concept development, and must be documented somewhere for assessment. I should also try out the water colour pencils, but I don’t think they will give the look I am after. I need to experiment a bit with mixing colours for them.
Here are the embroidery designs I am considering, all downloaded from the site above. What a wonderful resource it is. It would be terrific if there were a similar resource for sewing and dressmaking patterns, but I don’t know of one.

oval design    bunch of flowers   peacocks

I thought uploading the files would make the picture appear in the post instead of a hyperlink. It usually does, but these files are pdfs which seems to make a difference. Not sure why.

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Mid-semester review – the point at which I start re-thinking my design

04 Wednesday Apr 2012

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Mid semester review went OK at TAFE yesterday. Most of the other students have drawings, but not much idea of how they are going to fit a story, or put the book together when it’s done. I, on the other hand, have a very good idea of what I want it to look like, I just have to make it happen. Although, I am now wavering a bit on the style of the thing. For each of the subject title pages I was going to do a drawing, pencil with maybe a watercolour wash. Now I’m leaning more towards a woodcut Margaret Preston type of thing, like these but I’m not sure I can do it. I wasn’t going to do a woodcut as such anyway, but a drawing in that style, but they are very simplified, and I think that takes more ability than I currently have. I really want to have that Art Deco look though, which a pencil and watercolour drawing doesn’t necessarily have. I have two weeks, (mid-semester break apparently now only 2 weeks instead of 3, which means the whole thing is a week shorter) to work on getting the style right. I also have to figure out the cover, which was going to be fabric with a painted design. Peter said he’d like to see some needlework or textile work, and then when I went to the library I got a book out about painting and decorating textiles, so I’ve gone from having a clear idea to starting again. The design I have drawn is too small to applique, I could do canvas work or surface embroidery, which would be more authentic? Needs yet more research, I’m leaning towards canvas work. There is also the issue of wearability, I don’t want it to look tatty after only a short time, although in point of fact it’s not likely to get any wear at all. I’m also thinking again about the format, A4 does not leave much space for content, after allowing a bit down the side for the binding, perhaps I should go with the ready made scrapbook covers in Spotlight which are square. They had some with a cutout in the middle, I could always put a piece of embroidery in there, I think there was a clear plastic bit which would protect it.

This is a problem which I have had before when trying to be creative, getting to a point where I feel I have done the best I can, and then just trusting to that, instead of re-thinking numerous times. In this instance there is a time limitation, I have to leave myself enough time to actually do the work at the end. I have a feeling the critical point is coming soon.

On Commonplace Books, and gathering things together

04 Sunday Mar 2012

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I’ve been doing some more looking around the net about commonplace books, and came across this article by Alan Jacobs. He discusses the correlation between commonplace books and today’s blogs, which is something that had already occurred to me, but also makes distinction between two different types of commonplace book. I hadn’t previously focussed on this difference.
I also feel as he does, that it is very easy to cut and paste heaps of text without really reading it. The acid test for this, I suppose, is to close the window with the original, then try and retype it in your own words, then go back to the original and see how close the two are. Only by reading carefully and remembering accurately can you get a good match, and I know I’d often fail that test.
It’s easy to copy and paste lots of stuff on the basis that it might be useful or relevant someday. My feeling is that very often it won’t, or by the time it might have been useful you will have forgotten where you put it, or it will be in a format which you no longer have the software for.
I find that the same applies to pieces of paper. Every so often a piece of paper will cross my desk which doesn’t require any specific immediate action. Somebody gave it to me or sent it to me for some unkown reason, and I left it there because I was unsure what to do with it. Every now and then I decide to tidy my desk, and I realise the piece of paper is still there, I’ve done nothing with it, and it’s not relevant any more. That’s when it goes in the bin, or the recycling.  Often the problem of what to do with a piece of paper is solved by this wait and see method.
Lately I’ve been trying to shorten the process, by looking at the paper when it first arrives and considering whether it comes into this category. If it does I discard it straight away rather than letting it take up space on my desk. So far I haven’t discarded anything which later turned out to be important, or at least if I have I don’t know about it yet.
Another blog I found on the subject was the commonplace book of Roberta Norwich, here. Roberta Norwich is not her real name I gather, but some kind of historian’s in-joke which I’m not in with. The name caught my eye not only because it was a commonplace book, but because I grew up in and around Norwich in England. When I read further through Roberta’s blog I discovered that she and I had gone to the same school, Wymondham College, also in Norfolk. This prompted me to spend some time looking around the College website, and reminiscing about my schooldays. The old place certainly has changed since the late 60s and early 70s when I was there, but I guess we all have. I’m now considering trying to get in touch with any old students who now live in WA and maybe arranging to meet up.
Roberta calls herself an opsimath, which I had to look up. It means ‘one who starts, or continues, to learn late in life’. Something we should all aspire to I believe, and I definitely intend to be one, although my chosen studies so far are nowhere near as academic as Roberta’s.
A somewhat rambling post this, I’m trying to think of a theme to tie it all together. How about this – it’s about commonplace books, which are a gathering together of often unrelated ideas, all relevant to the creator of the book for some reason.
I’ve also been doing research on Art Deco designs for inspiration for my project, and found some wonderful designs by Pierre Legrain. I’m indebted to Alhpachannel for this link to some images of his work, outstandingly beautiful. I’d love to be able to do something on these lines for my cover, but I fear it’s beyond me.

Planning a Commonplace Book

21 Tuesday Feb 2012

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My vision of my assignment piece for TAFE is starting to come into focus. As mentioned in a previous post, we have to make a book, based ondrawings which the lecturer expects that we already have. Most of the students do, I’m sure, but I don’t, so I pretty much have to start from scratch.
After considering a cloth book of the kind babies have, either one made for babies or for adults, and a project book of embroidery designs, I’m now leaning towards a commonplace book.
Commonplace books were a little like journals, in that people wrote in them things they want to remember, but instead of dates, appointments etc., or what they did today, they would copy out parts of whatever they were currently reading and wanted to remember. Housewives might write down recipes, household tips etc., and scholars would put down whatever struck them about their current study. The idea goes back to the 15th century maybe, and I think is having a res-urgence with the practice of blogging. When I googled the term I came across this blog called commonplacebook.com, which is a perfect example. Another reason to be impressed by this blog is the fact that it has archives going back to 1998, there’s persistance and dedication for you.
I’ve an idea in my head for my book. Originally a commonplace book would have been just blank, for the user to write in, and since I’m supposed to be showcasing my drawing that isn’t going to work. So I’m going to divide it into sections, with an illustrated front page for ech section, probably with an illuminated capital letter at the start of the section heading, then a simple line drawing for each. There will be decoration on the front cover and the front and end papers of the book, and probably also a title page inside. I’m planning that the blank pages will have hand drawn lines on them for writing on, and also hand drawn numbers with maybe a little decorative motif on each. My head has been buzzing with ideas, at the moment I’m leaning towards Art Deco style, and I’ve been immersing myself in books from the library and images online of Art Deco themes. I’m particularly drawn to the fonts, and also decorated lettering for the front of the book and the title page. All of these will have to be hand drawn, but I’ll probably scan them and print them onto the pages of the book so they will be more permanent. This probably involves laser printing, or commercial photo printing, I have to research the possibilities.
My head has been so busy with this that I’ve probably been neglecting other things I should have been doing, such as writing. Writing group meets in 10 days, at the beginning of March, and I’ve only half written my article. I researched online, and found a magazine which I think might publish it, and since it was very reasonably priced I’ve subscribed, to get an idea of what sort of writing they publish. I haven’t received the first copy yet, but it’s too early to expect that really since it’s coming from the US. I’ve written most of the article, just need to fine tune, and possibly find some images. I really need to get it finished this week though. Plenty to do as always!