The Textile Cuisine

Not the newest of my kitchens but the one that took the longest to complete for sure! It started in 2015 ( HERE )and was meant to be done fast. Oh well... Yes, it was the amount of handwork involved that took so long. And I don't mean stitching daily for all those years but rather the breaks much needed after stitching every utensil by hand. Landscape in the background was like a fresh breeze - open space with spots of greenery here and there. And I learned a lot along the way. Not so about the stitching but definitely about history and cooking the Italian way. I love to read on the subject of my project in progress. It is like building an environment, accumulating all the facts and feelings to transform them later into stitches. Then the magic happens - you see the picture that evokes emotions and you are able to feel the atmosphere by yourself. Welcome to my world of Italian cuisine!

Feeling like a "Good wife" (pictured above) presenting her clean and tidy kingdom. Well, not all my kitchens are clean and tidy. Some are seriously touched by decay, like this "Abandoned kitchen": I'm not sure if birds are a good addition to the place where we cook but... licentia poetica works in textile art too. They say that kitchen is the heart of a home. I agree but I also love to see them as spaces with their own personalities. Sometimes bright and cheerful: Sometimes more dramatic: I can see late night shows going in the kitchen while the rest of house sleeps: And we love it when the cooking is like music, don't we? The most recent kitchen you saw in the previous POST but I want to show you the one that took the longest to complete - "My Italian kitchen" (started HERE ): The pile of ideas for more is growing up. Captured this recently and I can see a magic city with lots of pinnacles... in the kitchen, of course!

So the raspberries aren't that shining but they seem rather strong and powerful (and a bit patriotic considering these are the colors of Polish flag). Maliny okazały się nie być zbyt świecące, raczej intensywnie czerwone (i zaskakująco patriotyczne). Another kitchen landscape completed. And I thought it is a good occasion to reveal some details of the whole concept. As you know, I take the pictures of actual foods/veggies and I show them along the textile works. For example, the picture of blueberries and blackberries looked like this: Kolejny pejzaż kuchenny do kolekcji. Pomyślałam sobie, że to dobra okazja do objaśnienia całej koncepcji. Jak zauważyliście, uszyte smakołyki pokazuję zazwyczaj w towarzystwie zdjęć, na których widać prawdziwe owoce czy warzywa. Na przykład moje jagody i jeżyny wyglądały tak: Sometimes I make the artwork exactly the same as picture, sometimes differently. What I find interesting is the fact that the first is the kitchen "scene"...

I don't know about your kitchens, but mine, at this time of a year is a jungle :) Very impressive, especially compared to the early spring: Nie wiem, jak Wasze kuchnie, ale moja o tej porze roku wygląda jak dżungla :) Robi wrażenie, prawda? Zwłaszcza w porównaniu z wczesną wiosną: No wonder that one day I decided to capture all the different landscapes I can see around on daily basis. That's how my new serie of "Kitchen Landscapes" was born. Nic dziwnego, że te codziennie zmieniające się krajobrazy  zainspirowały mnie do stworzenia nowej serii "Krajobrazów Kuchennych". They are small textile collages rather than quilts (although they are quilted and embroidered and beaded too). Would be perfect for book illustration, although I didn't find a book for them yet. That's why I decided to experiment with them in printed version. As I mentioned in previous post - printed landscapes are available HERE . The jungle is not translated into fabrics...

  Here is my old blue kitchen where I'm cooking for you. Today we're serving hearts: To moja stara niebieska kuchnia, w której dla Was gotuję. Dzisiaj podajemy serca: My heart on your plate - please chew carefully :) Moje serce na Waszym talerzu - proszę przeżuwać dokładnie :) Sometimes one has to make something silly, right? But there was enough of scraps for quite serious bracelet :) Czasami trzeba zrobić coś głupiego też, prawda? Na szczęście zostało wystarczajaco skrawków na całkiem poważną bransoletkę :)

... this is an old Polish saying about the weather in March. And here goes the same - some more cabbage and some  transcendence...   ...to niby o pogodzie, ale tutaj tak samo - trochę kapusty, trochę transcendencji... As poet said: Between the passion And annihilation instinct Betweem Eros and Thanatos Jak mówi poetka : Pomiędzy namiętnością A instynktem zagłady Erosem a Thanatosem   Eros on the left, Thanatos on the right. Eros po lewej, Thanatos po prawej. And out of the blue I have to work on something totally different: I nagle, ni stąd ni zowąd, czuję, że muszę zrobić coś zupełnie innego: One day I just pulled some scraps and composed such a background. It is the best sign that the Spring is coming - I need to make something easy- breezy, colorful. So now I just keep adding greens to it :) Pewnego dnia po prostu wyciągnęłam różne  skrawki i ułożyłam taką kompozycję. To najlepszy znak, że wiosna nadchodzi - czuję silną potrzebę zrobienia czegoś ...

Some years ago I brought myself a kitchen towel from Provance. Kilka lat temu przywiozłam sobie ściereczkę z Prowansji. At first I thought it was with roses. But no, it was with different types of cabbages. This gave me an idea to make my poet's dress with roses ... and cabbage :) Najpierw myślałam, że ona jest w róże. Ale okazało się, że to różne odmiany kapusty. Stąd pomysł, żeby suknia mojej poetki była z róż... i kapusty :)  

Call me cruel but I had to add some more undone dishes :) Może i jestem okrutna, ale musiałam jej dodać jeszcze trochę garów :) And the main one - for a cabbage.  No i ten najważniejszy  - na kapustę.  Do you remember this ? Believe or not but it is finished! A pamiętacie to ? Nie uwierzycie, ale skończyłam! It was a long way, with ups and downs, but making all the handwork was like quiet meditation. And, thanks to Karen , I even discovered a poem by Katherine Mansfield with "similar picture": Trochę to trwało, miało swoje wzloty i upadki, ale też cała ta ręczna dłubaninka stanowiła rodzaj cichej medytacji. I nawet odkryłam, dzięki Karen , wiersz Katherine Mansfield z podobnym "obrazkiem":   "...Makes me think of orchard places Where the juicy apples grow, And tomatoes in a row."   And now it is hanging happily as a companion piece to the older work. A teraz już sobie to wesoło wisi w towarzystwie starszej pracy.