Using the barge cement I brought back from the USA with me I have found the hold of the leather onto the fabric is just so much better – I still may do a few holding stitches in some places but the hold is good – thanks Katy K for that tip. Checking one of the other glues I already have here I discovered I had not been applying it properly – like rubber cement you need to apply it to each surface, wait a little, and press the surfaces together. Katy then recommended laying into it with a rubber mallet, and so that’s what I have been doing – it works. Barge cement at least is supposed to strengthen with a little more time, and I am assured it will remain supple, so rolling it or further working it should not be difficult because of the glue hardening.
OK – so now, here are the beginnings of a new piece I am now working on, and the first of several more things I have in mind to be inspired by some work I did about 20 years ago – see “Sleepless in Perth WA” blogged in april this year, see archive for that month. I am still in love with this metallic gold leather, of which the leather man had a bit more on his stall last sunday. The background fabric looks black – I really tried with the fill lighting but what worked on the one seemed to effect to other at the same time – the pics were taken at different times of the day, different lighting etc, so this is the best I could do – but its a really nice medium grey with just a touch of greenish hue, rather like hail-laden clouds about to burst. As for a name for this 1.5m x 075m wall quilt, I have no idea, but something will come to mind while I am making it. The blocks, seen more clearly as outlined with gold machine quilting, are about 10cm sq.

On the quiltart list a week or so back someone asked how to deal with older work – she was clearing up her cupboards and work area, finding lots of much older work some of which she’d forgotten about, and taking inventory, all that. I think she has now been persuaded that her current collectors would be a bit upset if she sold stuff off cheaply just because it is old. Cutting up and recycling bits into new works, rather like an artist sometimes paints over an old canvas, never seems to be an option to m, but I do know some who have done it. I also think it is a good idea to go back and revisit your work occasionally – and pieces look quite different in the flesh than on slides. I certainly have a slide record of my first solo exhibition in 1987. All the pieces were carefully photographed against a blonde brick wall!!! which I now know to be a total no-no, but I had little idea then other than I needed to keep a record of what I had done. However, the sharp details and excellent colour are superb – the photographer’s day job out in that isoloated Western Australian country/mining town was staff photographer for the largest mining company out there – no doubt his work was excellent for company records, reports and promotional material – he’d just never done any textile/needlework pics before. I still have several of the stitched works exhibited at that time, and they occasionally they see the light of day. For various reasons, it often rather surprises me to see what I did back then.