Tomatoes and Flowers in the Garden

Our community garden plot has been doing well despite (or maybe because of) the summer heat. The red cabbages are HUGE, and the six tomato plants we put in at the end of May have turned into a hedge. We started harvesting our first cherry tomatoes on the August long weekend, and they’ve been ripening steadily since.

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The Gazania Kiss Orange started out with a single flower when we planted it in June and now it is a cluster.

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We’ve also harvested kale multiple times, as well as the Thai and Sweet Basil. All have been turned into yummy things. I love having a garden plot.

The Leeway Studio Residency: More Screen Printing and Sculpture

Last week at The Leeway Studio I worked on a new batch of layered screen prints with the intention of turning these into more small pyramid shapes. I did five or six different layers of colours and shapes on the paper, and ended up with some very sloppy prints. These are photos of that work in process.

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Stencils cut from butcher paper.

Stencil pulled away from the screen
Stencil and screen covered in ink.

Screen print on newsprint
A detail of an ink test on newsprint.

Screen prints cut into pieces
Pieces of the finished prints cut into pyramid templates.

At the end of my session last week I’d only just begun to cut the paper into pieces, and will work on assembling some of these this week.

An Update on the Unexpectedly Orange Braided Rug

Last night I decided to take apart and redo the centre of the braided rug. I disliked the colours I started with and the farther along I got with the rug, the more it bothered me. I was hesitant to do this because I wasn’t sure if the process of undoing the braids would somehow mess up the rest of the piece. Thankfully it worked out fine.

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The centre of the rug was a mix of red, navy blue, and orange yarn, and it was the orange I decided to replace with a bright blue. I think it ties in better with what is currently the blue outer edge but will eventually be just another stripe of colours in the rug.

Work in Progress: Braided Rug
Before

Work in Progress: Braided Rug
After

The new colours make the centre stand out better, and toned down the overwhelming orange. There will be more red and blue in the rest of the rug, and a few other colours I haven’t decided upon yet.

I have a lot of work left to do because the braided rug is currently only twenty-two inches wide, and I want it to be about five feet.

Work In Progress: Pattern Paper Cut Installation

I’ve been slowly continuing to work on the installation of paper cut patterns that I started at the beginning of the summer. This are some of the recently completed pieces.

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Japanese pattern design

Islamic pattern design

Work in progress: Paper cut patterns

I still have a looooooong way to go before there is enough individual pieces to make a substantial installation.

Unexpectedly Orange Braided Rug

Boris and I were over on Bowen Island for the long weekend, and I brought along the materials to begin work on my second braided rug project. I want this one to be colourful, and a long oval shape.

My biggest struggle with this one will be figuring out how to make the colours flow. I started working with the orange yarns because I have three balls in various shades and I will use these and the red one to carry throughout the entire piece. I wasn’t expected to make an orange rug, but now that I’m this far along with it, an orange rug is what it’s going to be.

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To give you an idea about the scale of this (because it looks small in the photo) the centre section above is about ten inches long. The colours are way off in this first photo, but the third photo is closer to what it actually looks like.

Work in progress - second braided rug

Work in progress - second braided rug

I’m pleased with how much progress I made on this over the weekend because I also spent a lot of time outside walking, swimming, and reading a book. I would love to finish this rug by the end of August and have it brightening up our bedroom floor in the fall.

The Leeway Residency: Transforming Prints into Objects

Some of those screen prints I shared recently have been transformed into an army of tiny pyramids. I started out with the idea of turning one print into a single 3D object but decided to maximize the paper by making multiple small 3D objects from each prints.

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The first image above is of the larger piece I started out with next to my first tiny pyramid. I made about sixteen of these last week while working at The Leeway studio.

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This week in the studio I decided to use up the remaining prints to make as many of the pyramids I could. They are each unique in pattern and it’s interesting to arrange them into a variety of configurations. I love them so much more now than I did as prints.

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I keep wishing I had enough prints to make about one hundred more of them because that many tiny pyramids would look amazing!

My Completed Braided Rug From T-shirt Yarn

I finished my first braided rug last night and it looks wonderful. I did most of the work on it last week and this past weekend after procrastinating on it for most of the month. I watched a lot of Netflix while I did it.

Braided rug

Braided rug

Braided rug

I still have about seventeen balls of t-shirt yarn to use up and will be working on a second larger and more colorful rug for our bedroom because colors set the mood for me. If you’re interested in making your own braided rug (or t-shirt yarn), find the tutorials I used in this blog post.

Thank you to Boris for purging so many of his old t-shirts to make this project possible.

The Leeway Residency: Screen Printing Too

The screen prints pictured here are tests to see how the paper I use in my paper cutting work will take to the ink. I wanted to see how much this type of paper would warp, and what it will be like to cut with the ink on its surface. It has actually held up pretty well.

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I cut two of the same stencils using a compass cutter and didn’t worry too much about a design. This is four layers of ink using the two stencils. I used the same colours as with the previous batch of prints.

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The next step is to see what this paper is like to cut.

The Leeway Residency: Screen Printing

This week I’ve been doing screen printing during my time at The Leeway, and OMG (!!!) do I love the pieces I produced. My intention was to rework some initial prints I did about a month ago which I wasn’t happy with. I cut a few simple stencils at home using craft paper and decided to print multiple layers over the same paper and see where things would end up.

I tried screen printing for the first time about a month ago, and only now do I realize I didn’t share any of that work on my blog (but I did post it to Instagram). I was given a lesson in screen printing stencils by Vanessa Hall-Patch, the Shop Technologies Coordinator at The Leeway studio. She is an expert at printing processes and I feel lucky to have access to her advice and knowledge as I mess about.

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The first set of prints above ended up being about six layers of ink using three different stencils. I made my decisions about colour and composition on the fly, and used remains of ink Vanessa brought for me from the print making studio downstairs. It was enjoyable to have access to so much colour!

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The second batch of prints has five layers of ink and was done with three stencils (two are identical because I cut multiples at the same time). I worked in the same way as the first batch of prints, making things up as I went and stuck with the same colour scheme because I liked it. This series of prints is my favourite of the two.

My original intention was to rework these prints with more colour and texture, and eventually transform the paper into a three dimensional object. Now I like them as they are, and I’m not sure if I will go ahead with my plan.

Modular Origami With Colour and Pattern

Earlier this week I mentioned recently spending time in the studio experimenting with more paper crafting techniques. I shared the iris fold piece in a previous blog post, and now here is a modular origami sculpture I started on the same day. I think working with the colourful patterned paper, with dots on one side and stripes on the other, was half the fun.

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This project is inspired by a tutorial I’ve had booked marked on Pinterest for months -> DIY Origami Art by Coco Sato for Design*Sponge Her version is more elegant than mine, but I think the crazy colours and textures make it more interesting.