The sources of inspiration in my designs I’ve written about before , but today I’m looking at the influences of various techniques that I now frequently use, sometimes returning to them after a long absence. Mum and my paternal grandmother always had some sewing and hand embroidery projects in process, and we grew up amongst practical examples in everyday use. The needlepoint canvases were set into firescreen panels and used upholstering dining chairs; we wore smocked dresses for best in the summer; and in our home there were pulled- and counted-thread table linens, doileys and hand embroidered guest towels. Lots of crochet and knitting was done, too, but ‘stitch’ was the most enduring influence on me.
My early interest in textile and fibreart began with the British weekly publication Golden Hands that I assiduously collected over about 18 months – I think there were 90 in total. I did several kinds of projects inspired by some things in those articles, and though the different types of embroidery really fascinated me, it wasn’t until I found myself in Darwin in the Wet season of 1976-77 and for a sanity saver in the Wet, joined an embroidery class at the Casuarina community college that embroidery really took hold in my life.
Today’s post was ‘brought on’ by coming across this photo taken ten years ago on our visit to Panama:
My regular readers know that in the last few years I’ve done at least one work featuring glass beading techniques, but that first glass+textile piece, was not in fact the first. I beaded a small wall quilt, Tidal Shallows 1 in 1995
While I added those hundreds of tiny glass beads to it, I was thinking of my late mother. I had often watched as during 1953 she beaded 3″ x 2″ diamond shapes using gold glass beads and sequins positioned around the scooped neck of a very fine knit black wool evening top she bought to wear with a black taffeta evening skirt (which swished beautifully) This top was almost certainly imported and English, so no doubt already expensive, but the hours spent applying the sequins to outline the diamonds and the glass bead filling, elevated that top to a whole new level of haute couture; and with her French Roll evening hairdo, she always looked very glamorous in that outfit. Thanks to her infuence I’ve always loved a bit of glitter, and I’ve actually found the process of adding lots of little beads to something is very soothing, so try it yourself sometime…. One important thing about embellishing with beads is that you either need to add a lot of them, or don’t add any at all, because in my opinion there’s nothing so amateruish looking as skimpy beading.
Related to glass seed beads, another favourite texture tool is french knots, but that influence came later from somewhere in my embroidery guild days of the late 70s to early 90s. I don’t recall them featuring in any of the embroidered works around me in my childhood. As shown here, french knots can be used densely placed or scattered as a filler, and they’re often used as outlines in embroidered works.
As shown below in this embroidered farm house, they can be made with stems, too, so they’re versatile.
Painted dots perform the same visual functions as knots and beads, and several times I’ve painted dot outlines in a couple of landscape inspired quilts that have no actual link to the imagery which is identified with Australian Aboriginal art today. Yet this technique is a relatively recent introduction to the Aboriginal culture (Papunya in 1971) Its use enables Aborignal artists to disguise secret details of traditional stories, enabling stories to be told but only fully ‘read’ by those who have the cultural background to understand that information. Dot paintings are tremendously popular today, and it is very clever when you think of it, that genuine Aboriginal stories can be told without offending the spirits, while at the same time delighting non-Aboriginal viewers. Some cultural groups (eg the Tiwi Islanders and some other far Northern Territory groups) do not paint that way, but many Aboriginal artists do, and they use them in lines, outlines and fillings. Perhaps the most iconic Aboriginal artist who used dots to outline shapes was the late Rover Thomas
