Posts Tagged ‘stitch as mark making’

Raw Edge Hand Applique

Thursday, November 26th, 2020

I see the threaded needle as a mark making tool I can use with various materials and media to produce art with unexpected, improvisational effects as opposed to an element of precise technical excellence. We’re all influenced by what we see – and many artists I admire are using hand stitches in their art as mark making in addition to constructional functions.

A year ago I made this small quilt, Regeneration 2, currently on show in the Australia Wide Seven exhibition at Belconnen Arts Centre, Canberra, until December 18th. The 40 selected 40sq. cm quilts in that collection will travel between venues in Australia and New Zealand until the end of 2022.

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Regeneration 2 2020, 40cm x 40cm. Raw edge hand applique
Regeneration 2, detail.

If you look at the detail of this small piece, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you commented out loud that it looks rather amateurish. Those raw irregular edges and hanging bits of thread are a world away from finely executed traditional hand applique, which I can do, of course. I’ve done plenty of cross stitch, pulled and drawn thread work, hardanger and other traditional embroideries, all quite exacting, and I love them all. I own and take pleasure in using household linens worked by my grandmothers, and other lovely antique hand stitched linens by unknown stitchers that I’ve collected. I love them all, but I just don’t work that way – which is what I’ve always said about traditional quilts.

I have certainly been influenced by the surge in popularity of hand stitch and the growth of the Slow Stitch movement over the last decade. For the last year my surface design has centred on hand stitch, which is why I’ve enjoyed the TextileArtist.org Stitch Club workshops I’ve been taking over the past few months.

Stitches As Mark Making

Wednesday, February 19th, 2020

I’m probably 3/4 way through a small quilt, 40cm sq. The order of work is a bit unusual though, with trimming and binding already completed so I can hand stitch detail over the top of the fused machine applique, and machine quilting. The signing, sleeve and label will be last, as usual.

The hand stitched ‘vegetation’ is a joy, as I’m a fan of hand stitchery from way back, but it’s been a while, as the most recent work of this kind I’ve done was around 2015. Below are some of my favourite landscapes with hand stitched detail ranging from 1980 to 2014 –

Upper left: Sunburnt Textures 6, 2014. Upper right: Ancient Expressions 1. 1988
Lower left: Simpson Desert Sunset, 1980. Lower right: Out Back of Bourke 1987

I learned the basic stem and straight stitch needed to embroider around printed Semco doilies and place mats when I was about 8 years old. I was positively influenced by my own mother whose needlework was beautifully finished (traced designs, drawn- and counted-thread works) I don’t have my very first embroidered work from grade 3 sewing class, a yellow doll’s bed cover with a Semco design of the three bears and a mushroom or two, that year. But I do have this one from a few years later, about grade 6:

I’m pretty proud of it 🙂 and ask you to try to not to focus on that eyecatching stain – more than 60 years have passed since I stitched this and crocheted the edging. I used it for many years, and have it here with me in Montevideo in my ‘collection’. The left side of the photo shows the reverse of the doiley, the right half the right side.

I show these because, though I am perhaps better known as a maker of contemporary art quilts, my interest in hand stitch goes right back really, to early childhood. I embraced creative embroidery in the late 70s, and in the late 80’s quilt making emphasised to me the power of a stitch as a way to make a mark on fabric. Today, some of the textile artists I most admire are fabulous makers of marks using stitch on fabric – people like Dorothy Caldwell, Helen Terry, Debbie Lyddon, Christine Mauersberger, Rieko Koga and Richard McVetis, all of whom have instantly recognisable styles. I love them all, and would aspire to achieve what any one of them do.

This afternoon, browsing on Pinterest, as you do, I came across UK ceramic artist Craig Underhill. I’ve started seeing his slab constructed pots crop up since I recently saved one or two images on Pinterest, because some of his markings on them suggest overlaid sheers with very informal, freehand stitchery on fabric. That drew me to his website, where I was enthralled with his sketchbook slide show at https://www.craigunderhill.co.uk/sketchbook.html Of course, I would never copy anything he or any other artist has done; but I saved a few to remind me of the potential of similar mark-making in sheers+hand stitch, or even sheers+machine stitch, as suggested by some of his pieces.

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