Posts Tagged ‘holes’

Browsing With Pinterest

Thursday, February 22nd, 2018

Every day Pinterest sends images of things it thinks I might like.  Because I can so easily become totally absorbed and lose hours happily wandering through images, following links one after the other, I rarely take time to browse.  It’s worse than Facebook.  So I clicked on a page of enticing images headed ‘stitch’, and found myself looking at a page of pics on which was one work I knew I’d seen before, by Cordula Kagemann and as it turned out, had saved in my own board Lines and Shapes, though I’d never gone to her website.  What magnificent work, collaging with cut paper and some fabric. Textile friends in Australia, note that she will be teaching there in October of this year.  Her cutout paper overlays feature various shaped holes and overlocking rings – my mind asked could you call this paper ‘lace’?

Holes and lace have been part of my inspiration for some time: https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=2620  https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=2620  and I still have this little leather sample on my board after about 10 years  – suede bonded onto unbleached calico/muslin, and to me this is definitely all about the holes… and I’m still thinking about it.

 

Snippets and samples of holes in leather and fabric … ? lace

The surface design snippet below is part of a 12|”x12″ quilt first bought in a SAQA Benefit Auction some years back, of gold leather triangles with holes punched from it sewn to a black background with gold machine stitching forming the grid. This week it was auctioned among a collector’s pieces which were donated to the organisation to benefit SAQA a second time, and I am thrilled to hear an Australian collector it.  I never gave it a title, but with hindsight perhaps I could have called it Black Holes on Gold Triangles …

A question I’ve had in mind before is this – what is the most important part of ‘lace’ – is it the holes, or whatever it is that surrounds the holes?

Discovering A Long Forgotten Work

Tuesday, April 18th, 2017

This morning by chance I found a photo of a long forgotten quilt from 2006-2008:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also in the file I found a photo of half of it mounted in a frame – so clearly I had chopped it down and sold or given the pieces away, which I don’t remember just now; but whatever happened to those, I might have been a bit hasty in chopping it down 🙂 as I now really like it …  It’s from an era in which I applied a lot of leather pieces to quilts, the best known of which, Timetracks 1″, middle lower row, was in Quilt National 07.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many feature holes punched through leather units as part of the design, but these myriads of little holes are out of the question now given the arthritis in my hands.  The detail uppper left is Timetracks 3, one of several I made using leather for this repeat unit I have so often used. In my mind it’s a bare-bones diagram of erosion at work, one that has become important to me as the umbrella metaphor for passage of time change in all of Life itself. Interestingly there were also work-in-progress pics with my untitled discovery, so I include these partly as a belated documentation effort, but also to remind you of how my embroidery informs much of what I do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love stitch constructions on detached warps – aka needleweaving, and in 2007 blogged about these two pieces, Behind the Scenes 1 & 2,  from 1987.

 

Edges and Holes 2

Sunday, November 29th, 2015

The Sketchbook Page Today…

Saturday, February 21st, 2015

 

 

sketchbook today feb 22 blog_edited-1

With arrows, stars, words and comments, this is a typical sketchbook page.  They’re always in pencil, but I re-did this one for you in pen to get a clearer scan.  I understand my own handwriting and abbreviations in this aide memoire,  and even if it doesn’t mean much to you I’m happy to share these marks as part of my process.  You’re welcome to anything else you glean of the ideas they encapsulate 🙂  There is much reference to several previous works or things I’ve been working with in sample form.

I regret that my hand writing has deteriorated, partly age-related 🙂  but even more a sign of the times.   It is the nearest I ever come to journal keeping, but of course it is definitely not that.  I really don’t know how the beautiful artist journal keepers keep it up  🙂  This morning I was casually googling around holes, sheers, grids and marks, when a couple of ideas struck.  Not wanting to lose a second, and with the sketchbook upstairs as usual, I took a sheet of waste paper from the printer and jotted them down.  I’m a diagram person, and when epiphany strikes like that a simple diagram+words, stars and arrows captures it. One just might solve a nagging problem to do with using sheers that has long bothered me, and I must let Rosemary Claus-Gray know ….

 

 

 

Look Forward to Resuming Work

Saturday, October 4th, 2014

Since shoulder joint surgery 4 weeks ago, I haven’t been able to do any quilting or sewing, but rehab’s going well, and it won’t be long before I am making some new work.  First up will be finishing off one of the pieces for the Golden Textures exhibition in Wangaratta next February.  I posted about this piece here .   It’s about 3/4 done, and I hope my ‘hand’ doesn’t show up in stitch differences – my handwriting is far from recognizable at this stage! But every day brings new improvements so we’ll see.

Posaplato Dos detail blog copy

The detail from a piece I did some years back includes many of the elements that I’m looking at combining –  holes of course, glitter, needle woven stitchery and grid – one of the most enduring elements in my quilts.  During this week I have looked at  several artists whose works paintings, installations and sculptures are in linear or grid formats, and I have found my work has something in common with each of them:   Alan Shields, Chuck Close, Carl Andre, Guillermo Kuitka, James Sienna, Julie S Graham, Sol LeWitt, Sean Scully and Agnes Martin, whose work I had known of for many years.  Looking at images of their work and  reading about each has given me some inspiration and urged me to think about my next moves.   Roll on the day I can draw diagrams, use my cutter and scissors, sew at my machine, wield my iron, and make up some of my ideas.

 

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