Instead of reading the news online, as I normally do ‘over breakfast’, this morning I delved into one of the Pinterest advisories from my overnight email. This image interested me:
Fabric manipulation – texture of circles added to fabric, by Diane Deziel, see link below.
and I followed the link to the YouTube video and watched how Diane Deziel did this, and wow, how inspiring!! At first I thought that to try this I’d need someone to laser cut heaps of circles for me – but not so. As she demonstrated, it’s something any of us could easily do at home.
Though the video showed me how I could cut heaps of the same sized circles at once, I didn’t 🙂 but instead cut uneven mismatched ovals, and by her method machine stitched them onto heavy duty clear plastic (always with ‘sheer’ in mind) You can just pick out the clear plastic if you look carefully at the photo, and the lines of stitching you can see are edge to edge on the plastic, anyway. It’s all food for further thought.
A week ago this year’s Quilt National 21 exhibition opened, and my quilt Pandemic Pattern is at last showing at the Dairy Barn, Athens, Ohio, where it will remain through September 3rd. this year:
“Pandemic Pattern” 2020. 72cm x 94cm. Hand stitched raw edge applique.
My artist statement reads: “People of every skin colour, all ages, different cultures and many faiths – vast numbers of struggling bodies finally surrender their souls, and are carefully laid side by side in hastily dug graves in hastily cleared fields. Others are stacked in cool storage awaiting cremation. There’s little opportunity to comfort the dying or farewell the dead, and countless burials take place with only the grave diggers in attendance. Ghastly new patterns spread out on the Earth’s surface, reflecting pain and grief that will last long after the graves are overgrown … ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
“Pandemic Pattern” detail
The Dairy Barn invited exhibiting artists to record a talk about their work, and I sent one in. With Mike’s help and a few stops and starts, we finally got a reasonable take, we thought. With both of us being novices at this kind of thing, I was amazed how little they chopped out, if any; and how when I was talking about my quilt’s inspiration and technique, they inserted images of it so viewers could see the quilt. Click to view on YouTube
My regulars know I have a thing about the value of making samples when trying out something – an idea, a new technique, or even just doing a little thingy to hold that thought until later… Most of my sample making has been just trying something before starting a new project, however, the workshops in the Stitch Club have reminded me that regular exposure to to what others are doing is very inspiring and sometimes causes a penny to drop somewhere unexpected.
Earlier this year, Studio Art Quilt Associates, SAQA, ran a 100-day Challenge for interested members – the idea being to do some creative thing – a fabric or stitch construction, dying, painting, printing, sketch, finish off a work, audition fabrics and ideas for the next project – there are heaps of things that come under this category – just do at least one and post something on it every day on the dedicated FB page. At the recent annual conference held virtually this year, one of the presentations was about this creativity boosting activity. I hadn’t taken any notice of it at the time, focused as I was on other things, but that presentation and review of what some people did during that time, made me think seriously about the next one. Influenced by that conference presentation I decided doing one little samply thing every day before getting on with whatever I’m working on, would be a good habit to get into. In the last few weeks I have managed quite a few days, some days doing more than one, mentally allowing about half an hour perhaps – and sometimes racing in to my sewing room before I go down for breakfast, just do do a little ‘hold that thought’ thing. They’re not all ‘interesting’ enough to post, but I will share some from time to time.
This next one has just started – ‘Jump Into June’ runs for 30 days, and so far so good. Here’s what I posted today. Because I’m expecting my posts to be about shapes and textures through stitch, I’m posting images in black/white so that colour doesn’t distract from the purpose of the sample.
Large fly stitches arranged crazily make a great light, airy filler texture
This morning I went into my sewing room and noticed these seed pods had been placed on a cloth by my cleaning lady – now I know, I think, why seed stitch is named so!
A week ago these were green and closed – from a nearby liquid amber tree, courtesy Mike.
It’s a lovely filler, and the finer the thread the lovelier, so not one I use much! But of course, everything is relative, so in, say, the heavy neon thread of which I still have about 5750m, on a largish piece it could be very dramatic – and I’m thinking about that. I last used it in this sample piece from Richard McVetis’ workshop last year:
Segmented landscape featuring seed stitch, 10cm x 10cm
Following up on yesterday’s experiment, I hand cut a new template, less regimented – and again using gold paint, this time on black. Again the template was stitched into place with wandering horizontal lines. I used a much bigger machine needle knowing that with bigger holes a line of tiny dots would be left once I removed the template. And I used a cotton thread, figuring this might help wicking the slightly watered down paint through to the fabric beneath. Great result.
I could even use the very very blunt large needle I have (to puncture holes in leather) to get even more pronouced dots, and it’s not inconcievable that I could texture a whole area with masses of lines of dots… that might be useful some time.
The results speak for themselves – a really great result. I think I’ll do some hand stitching on this and mount it on a 20cmx20cm canvas stretcher, of which I have several sitting around.
English