Classes with Karen Ruane

I've been hugely influenced by Karen Ruane, an embroiderer whose work makes my heart flutter.  I signed up for two of her classes - Embroidered Pockets and Swathed in Stitch (links here).  Her work with paper and ledgers in particular has really fired me up.  She combines paper and stitch beautifully.

I purchased a few things for my sketchbook and ledger work:

The Stabilo Point 88 set of 20 fineliners are lovely colours and write very smoothly.  I much prefer fineliners to the pencil crayons I used to use.

The Zig Memory System 'Writer' acid free permanent markers will used on fabric.  I'll heat set them with an iron, and I'll be sure to test them first.  They're double sided, one fine point, one medium point.  I'm not sure how I feel about them on paper so far.  Some colours are smoother than others.

I've never used watercolours before, but I'm excited to try this basic Pentel set to add washes of colour to my ledger pages.




An idea was sparked while I was cleaning and I temporarily stacked some fabric baskets.  I wondered if I could do something with cut outs on a design sheet.

So from this imagery:

Stacked fabric baskets

Detail of stacked baskets

Detail of stacked baskets

I created this design sheet:

It's just card stock.  I used the basket holes as a template and cut out the shapes with a small utility knife.  I need way more practice to get smooth shapes! 



Two pieces of white card stock with identical cut outs, a coloured piece of card stock underneath, and slits cut on a piece of paper.

The piece of white card stock that's on top is not taped down and freely moves around to create different views through the windows.

Another window.....

And another window.


I'd like to expand on this idea with both paper and fabric.

This one is just practice, it's sloppy.  I'll make nicer ones for my ledger.







And last but certainly not least, I've started collecting images to develop design sheets based on the theme 'Masquerade'.  I've had some ideas for this theme scribbled in a sketchbook for years, but it was one of Karen's embroidered pieces that gave me an 'Aha!' moment.  And I'm currently reading Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard series, so this theme is prominent in my mind.