The whole quilt is done, but since I don’t show anything new in full until it has been exhibited in public, this is all you can see at this time…. eventually it will all go up on the blog.

Once I began, and once I had tuned in to the recorded books again, the work was not so daunting and tedious as I feared when samplising.

While doing this one several ideas have gelled for another, and another….

Another of the little treasures that appear from time to time on the antique market stalls – this one bears the rust marks of pin or staple and the pencilled number 9 and other pattern markings clearly visible. I’m not going to try to wash these things out – previous experience with a similar blue marking in and around the monograms on some old serviettes I recently bought showed it to be quite inert to bleach, and it isn’t sooo obvious when the fabric is dry.

On fine handkerchief linen, the fillings seem to me to be either counted ( needing 12 year old eyes) or very accurate eyeballed sense of even spacing, for the patterns all depend on that. I have always been admirer of the various counted thread works, and among my books in Australia are numerous ones with patterns like this – I went through quite a phase, but on larger count fabrics and smaller objects like book marks, or tray cloths with one edge or a central motif…

One of my favourite books since I bought it in about 1979 is “Needlelace and Needleweaving” by Jilly Nordfors. A modern embroidery classic, of course it’s far away, on the shelves in Aus, just when I would really like to be dipping into it for inspiration – wonderful photography – but instead I am mentally going over how I used it for inspiration in the 1980’s creative embroidery. But perhaps it is better that I draw on my memory and experience without it, and I feel sure some of it is going to be appearing again in some way in the leather lace theme that is developing just now – so, I realise I am already under the influence of what has gone before; and pleased being able to see things in a different but related way. A quilting friend commented the other day on my new work, saying how naturally it seemed to follow on what has been my inspiration with the fine details of landscape.
The geologists around me are commenting that the little stemmed french knots coming out of the lacy holes in the leather are looking very dendritic in character. (little lace-like intrusions often black (due to managanese) sometimes even gold, in tiny cracks in rocks….. no doubt about how one’s background of knowledge influences the interpetation of what you are seeing with your eyes.

On one of the quilters lists to which I subscribe there has been quite a bit of discussion recently about how quilters go about naming their works – someone commented that ‘Untitled’ is a bit of a cop out – and yet, at least with such a title the viewer’s mind is then free to roam around the impressions created by the work without being influenced or inded puzzled by the title.

One quilter even asked other readers to check her website and help her name a recently finished piece pictured there ….. does this mean the work is a collaboration between artist and the one who supplied the final name? To me, choosing a title even a blah one like ‘Untitled’ is part of the creative process, as important as signing the completed work. I enjoy all the processes of making a piece, and I jot down words and ideas in my mind while I am making it, so that generally by the time I get to the end, the title has worked itself to the top of the list. To me, a satisfactory title is like a mini-statement, and IMHO all that is needed to assist the viewer regarding a particular work. People who know me know that I don’t care for wordy artist statements about every work, since so many of them are literary fabrications, so often a whole of of artspeak that may or may not offer the viewer any connection to what they are seeing. And a major pet peeve is the confusion many quilt artists display with them, often filling the allocated space with technical construction and process details, for want of anything else meaningful to say in terms of inspiration or personal feeling contained in the work. Climb down off soapbox…. er hem.

Very big this winter in the leather shops here in Montevideo are suede outfits, blouse amd shirt type tops and skirts with decorative punched hole edges ….. these and my growing collection of lacy samples are clearly influencing me … plus many fibre artists are making ‘lace’ out of all kinds of stuff, so why not leather … I am thinking seafoam, coastal landforms and topographic maps … landlace perhaps? Anyway the pile of little circular cutouts and slivers trimmed from what I am working on grows by the hour. the hands are aching a little, or perhaps this is the onset of cooler weather… but the leather punch is such fun. 

Hmmm – these need more work – all the edges of the large number of these need to be hand sewn down, from the back, and even then, although I have done with the composition I am not sure of what the final impact will be –
but since it has ‘potential’ I am not showing the whole thing just now – and again, I have put it aside in favour of the next thing…

These little samples continue to appear. From rust marks I feel it was stapled for years in a sample book – some of the others I have collected probably hav been, too. What does not show in the photo is the pencilled number 29.

This little needlelace insert worked on very fine handkerchief linen is exquisite. The diameter is aprox 6cm. Every petal has a different filling stitch, and I adore the delicate little loop/picot thingies on the zigzag cross bars.
I might have to get myself a sample book in to which to staple them all …