JOLLIETEXTILES

An entire field of ox-eye daisies! This lovely sight is adjacent to a local wood I sometimes walk to in nearby Groton. The daisies really do go as far as the eye can see. This reminded me of a long unfinished project from years ago, so in actual fact this daisy book was already constructed many years ago and I have just started to make some additions to my original attempts. The book was made on a Frances Pickering workshop, one of several I attended over five years or so. The cover was made with pelmet vilene using D’UVA Chroma Coal pastels and I used both stencils and my own drawings on top of the blended base. It looks as though I used a small amount of hand stitching on the daisy centres and finished with some machining.

The pages take a long while to fill, even with these small books and so I have made some quick daisy paintings throughout and hope to add some verse or relevant quotes. There is a lot of folklore linked wild flowers and there seems to be some text I can add around the pictures. The pages themselves were made with brusho on wallpaper lining paper.

I made a second book at the same workshop, also using Chromacoal pastels, but this has a different finish as I coated it with acrylic wax. It makes it more durable and gives a slight leather appearance. It looks as though I used the soldering iron on the cover too. Pages the same colour – but nothing in the book at the moment!

I have worked out that I have attended three workshops with Frances Pickering but only ever completed one book! I thought I would show this below – it took absolutely ages to finish, but I did enjoy every stitch. It is made entirely of cloth and is a chunky little book – why I made so many pages I don’t know! I used a mixture of fifties fabrics and motifs from some fifties wallpaper I had to compile a little book of household hints. Plenty of writing in it with a fine liner pen and all the stitching was by hand.