Conversations with Women Friends - the choices

I have turned to these conversations because they feel unique, they feel special, and they feel enriching.  They are something I want to make small portable bits art about. The small works will try to celebrate the joy of women friends and the conversations we share.

Whilst I have bene pondering and playing with possible words for a while, I have settled on my ten descriptors/verses around different conversations with women friends. 

This is their first iteration as a set of words. I have thoughts about other ways to share them and use them, but for now I have settled on some business card sized pieces of printmaking paper, with typewriter, vintage Letraset, silk thread hand stitching and tracing paper pouches with machine stitching.

But the journey to this point has been a bit round about!

The first challenge was what sort of pouch to present them in? I tried a few origami fold style ones of different sizes. I tried some rectangular ones made of printed lightweight paper with tape holding the edges down and I tried my usual pocket pouches that I make for pebbles and some of B's jewellery.

Interesting how I came down on the side of what I know, and what I am known for.

And I decided I wanted to try out lightweight tracing paper as the pouch. Luckily I had a pad of 25 sheets I could use to test, but then I had trouble tracking any more of the same stuff down. I found another alternative, after trying some drawing/tracing paper friends had gifted me years ago. In some circumstances it would have been right; but for these, it just looked a little bit dirty, which was a real shame because I have a stash of it still!

I had typed the cards, and cut them all down to size and rubbed out the pencil guide marks and then it was down to determining how best to use the illustrations I had in mind.

I had decided on two circles with a line of running stitches between them, signifying a conversation. But first to the circles. I selected a couple of the letter O from a  few different typefaces we have and quickly stamped them using an ink stamping pad. Of course that ink ran, but I also wasn't too sure that I would get a crisp mark out of them anyway just by hand inking and stamping.

For the sake of testing I also chose to trace a few circles using a circle tool I have. They came out pretty cleanly which was good.

Then Barry asked if I had considered Letraset? And I hadn't, so I popped downstairs to the studio space and collected my bags of Letraset and set to work searching for a variety of Os that could work. Generally speaking they came out well and I thought yes, we have a solution. They aren't always perfect, but I kind of don't mind that they show their age.

And then to deciding which of the conversation lines I might use. Not the solid lines, and not the ones that were underlining but rather the intermittent lines that went between two people. I thought hard about do I choose a single style or ????

And as is often the way with me, the answer was in the ????s and it came about as I read each card and thought "that's a jumping up one" or that's a between two people one" or "that doesn't need a line between them" or "that is a very close one" and the images just happened.

And so here they are in sets of ten. I have made three sets of ten with a few spare. The idea is that they get sold individually because one of them might be just the perfect one for a friend; but that all ten could also be bought together as an art piece/installation.

The red thread harks back to my Women Friends work for The Red Thread exhibition and felt like the right choice. See here and here and here...

The wild dangling threads are just part of me and my making (dating back to A Subversive Stitch I think way back here).

I'll go through the finished cards individually next time I think.

You can see that each card is individual and unique with different typefaces and sizes of the Os, and different placement and numbers of stitches.

 Just like our friends and our conversations. Unique.