Tag Archives: nude

Another Nude — SoulCollage Card — Fertility

Fertility -- Council Suit

Fertility -- Council Suit

Just made this card — a celebration of fertility — in all its beauty, moisture, flesh, and mooniness.  This card has a parallel in the Major Arcana of the Tarot Deck– The Empress, No. 3.  Here is that card from the Rider Deck:

rws_tarot_03_empress

There are some similarities — the watery background (waterfall vs. bayou), the inclusion of grains (wheat vs. corn), the red drape, a seated female.  The primary difference lies in time of day — mine is all about the dark.  This ties my figure more to the classic associations of dark/female/unconscious.  It makes my card’s female a little juicier, I think. Perhaps more about the drive to procreate and the act of procreation, and less about the raising of offspring.  Both, however, are seated in their power and fertility.

In putting this collage up for viewing, I am thinking more about blogging and less about archetypes, however.   Somewhere I read the suggestion of putting “Waylon Jennings” and “taxes” in one’s tags to drive traffic to your blog.  I bet these days Sarah Palin might work, too.

From my own blog experience, adding any words relating to sex brings traffic.  According to the dashboard on my wordpress sidebar, the consistently most active posts of mine are the following:

  • Nude thread drawing
  • Mammogram quilt
  • Birthday buns.

The pattern is a little disheartening.  Based on my small sampling, this post ought to be an active one.

The female figure, by the way, comes from the Boston MFA’s press release on the current exhibit of 16th century painters from Venice.  I hope to go!

To read more about the exhibit, here are two links:

the bostonist
enticing the light

And here is a link to a blog discussing The Tarot and other spiritual matters (thank you for The Empress image!) —

Magic of the Ordinary

Maybe tomorrow, thoughts will return to the image.

Thread drawing for Judy’s Hope

nude-wrong-side

'wrong side'

This is the back of a thread drawing I did this morning to donate to Judy’s Hope silent auction — Judy is a friend of mine who survived ovarian cancer at a very young age (late thirties) and spun her gratitude for the care she received into an annual fund-raiser.   The funds she raises go to support the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

nude-right-side

'right side'

First, I attached the raw silk to the upholstery fabric, with a little piece of batting sandwiched in between.  This black rectangle of thread allowed me to see the ‘canvas’ area from the back.  With a green sharpie, I made a rough sketch of the figure on the back.  Since I used a heavier weight thread on the top of the machine and a more standard weight in the bobbin, the initial black lines for the figure on the right side were of a lighter weight.  (Bobbin thread goes underneath; top thread on top).  Now that I had the outlines of my figure, I could flip it over and continue drawing on the right side, with the heavier thread being laid down.  Lastly, I applied some ecru thread from the front (same thread on top and in bobbin).

It surprised me to find that the ‘reverse’ side of the thread drawing held so much more appeal.  The darker threads looked better, and even the revealed bits of green sharpie (hard to see here) added interest.

Bobbin Thread Tips — since the thread feeding up through the bobbin has much less resistance and therefore fewer opportunities to break than the thread being fed from the top of the machine, one trick quilters use is to place threads prone to breakage, like the metallic or variegated threads, in the bobbin.  Also, the bobbin can feed heavier weight threads than the top would allow, like embroidery floss.   This requires being able to ‘see’ the wrong side (which is really the right side) of the quilt, so as to know where the more decorative thread is going to end up.  Hence, my drawing of the rectangle on the portrait above first, so I could ‘see’ where I was placing the threads from the back.

Sometimes, quilters use a separate bobbin that they can adjust the tension on with a little screwdriver, so as not to mess with the tension on the standard bobbin.  I  have separate bobbins for both my Pfaff and Berninas, but I have also learned not to be afraid of changing the tension.