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| Notebook © Karen Thiessen, 2013 |
In 2011 I was thrilled to take Sandra Brownlee's Tactile Notebooks and the Written Word workshop at the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-op in Toronto. One of the first things that Sandra asked us to do was to cover our notebooks so that they would be a pleasure to hold. I brought two stitched textiles to cover my book. The base fabric was pieced with fabrics that I dyed with onion skins and then hand-stitched. The patch was fabric from a favourite shirt that I bought while in university and then densely hand-stitched. Prior to stitching, I over-dyed this fabric in an onion skin dye bath.
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| Notebook © Karen Thiessen, 2013 |
The shirt has stories to tell, but my lips are sealed.
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| Notebook © Karen Thiessen, 2013 |
The notebook feels good in the hand and is a pleasure to use.
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| Notebook © Karen Thiessen, 2013 |
On one day of the workshop we were asked to record our walking motions in our notebooks and then to stitch the results. I walked slowly down the 401 Richmond staircase with a black Tombow marker in hand, traced my motion onto linen fabric and then couched the tracing with red embroidery floss.
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| Notebook © Karen Thiessen, 2013 |
On another day we mixed PVA glue with sieved soil that we had brought from home and then coated notebook pages with our fingers. We added marks with gesso. The soil painted pages feel a bit like sandpaper.
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| Notebook © Karen Thiessen, 2013 |
Another exercise was to coat pages with sumi ink. Sumi ink has a particular smell and if you add several coats, the page shimmers with a beautiful sheen. When I got home I decided to keep the notebook in my kitchen where I continue to keep a record of fruit and vegetable stickers.
1 comment:
I can just feel the notebook in my hand - such texture!
Thanks for sharing your experiences.
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