If we still lived in Colorado today, it is possible I would know Carolyn Nelson personally through our passion for hand stitched textile art, and I’m sure I would have seen her work in exhibitions there and be familiar with the evolution of her beautiful textile work. As it is though, I only discovered it through browsing on Pinterest the other day by pinning the image of one of her works and following the link to her website, http://www.carolynnelsonart.com

After studying art and then becoming an art educator, designer and dollmaker, Carolyn says that when she reached her mid 50’s, she finally felt she’d found her own voice as an artist. Her outline of that process is beautifully written and well worth reading.

Certainly my eye was caught by the strong reds of the piece, but closer inspection showed that the surface marks are stitches forming the word ‘YES’ repeatedly stitched in silk, hundreds and possibly thousands of times. Carolyn says people have commented on her levels of patience: “People often ask about my “remarkable patience.” I do not have patience, I have grit. The only way to see my ideas is to make them. There are, by now, predictable stages of work — imagination, anticipation, frustration, doubting, denial, ripping out, restarting, tedium, and finally, often after months, a burst of energy near the end when I start to believe in what I am seeing.”

This work is testament enough to her determination to carry out large intense areas of hand stitching, but equal and possibly more stunning examples exist in her works conveying swirling, capricious movements of air with layers of straight stitches of hand dyed silk threads over hand dyed silk fabrics, in rich surfaces of colour and texture – see Gallery 1 , Stitching Light.

Much of my fibre art builds on interpretations of traditional repeat patchwork patterns – those basic geometric shapes arranged into blocks set in grids. In the late 80s we moved to Denver for a time. Always a keen stitcher, and not having a work permit, in addition to joining the Embroiderers’ Guild of America Colorado Chapter, I began learning about making patchwork quilts – that very American of textile arts. I also joined a book discussion group to focus on reading and discussing American literature – I was all in for the cultural experiences 🙂 A new neighbour introduced me to the Arapahoe County Quilt Guild in SE Denver. I took what turned out to be some really useful classes at a Quilt The Rockies Symposium – Seminole patchwork, Flying Geese Quilts, and one on the simple math in drafting patchwork to any size you wanted. I joined a quilting bee for the cultural experience, in what turned out to be a stellar group. It was a wonderful time in my life. Retaining my bee and guild involvements, I also joined an experimental art quilt group and began making my own original designs. From the very first I had success in some prestigious juried art quilt exhibitions, and also exhibited solo. The Front Range Contemporary Quiltmakers group formed while we lived there. It was amazing how many highly creative, innovative textile artists were (and are still) in that state.

I have frequently used simple shapes, particularly squares, as units of design in grids:

The traditional Nine Patch block, formed solely of squares, is one of my favourite blocks, though interestingly I have never made any kind of quilt using that design. In my previous post I wrote of how I’ve been following the small squares surrounded by stitch that so excited me during the recent challenge I took part in. Here is the whole piece, showing the design loosely inspired by the Nine Patch block, featuring 432 hand appliqued fused silk organza squares:

Besides showing in detail how the squares have a lovely texture, this also shows the first quilting, in which I’m really still auditioning the yellowy-green neon thread. What I mean here is that I’m prepared to pull out these early rows if the effect isn’t what I envisage, but I need more rows and some crossing them, too, before I finally decide.

While the jury’s still out on that, I’ve started quilting in and around the groups of 9 squares, and absolutely love the way it enhances the little squares’ texture – they really pop up from the surface. This is due to the heavy nylon thread which doesn’t flatten down even when ironed.

Of course the whole thing would have been quicker if I’d stencilled the shapes 🙂 but that’s something to think of for the next one. This tapice, wall hanging, wall quilt is not large, and will probably be about 30″ x 40″ when finished. One of my Stitch Club friends asked the other day about how I was going to finish the edge – my answer was that I have a lot of time to think about that, too!

Moving along with the grid structured, raw edge appliqued squares design I showed in the previous post, after finishing nearly half the rows (29/64 ) I decided that I needed to make more of the pattern of nine squares in each ‘block’ or unit; the 9 Patch block being one of my favourite traditional blocks, and it’s permeating my thinking about how the work might be titled. Knowing the extra work that would be involved, a few days ago, with a heavy heart I decided I simply must remove half the little squares in every finished unit and replace them with a different colour before continuing on with the next 35 units in two colours.

To increase the complexity a little, I added 3 more colours to the palette, including a fairly strong orange silk organza which positively glows under the neon orange thread. I’m now fully caught up and moving ahead from the halfway point.

This final photo is of a section of the back of the base fabric onto which I’m applying the little ~1-25cm squares. Each square is fused into position, surrounded by two straight stitches per side and an X in the centre. Each group of 9 sits comfortably within the spring loaded hoop that holds the fabric firmly in place while I sew with stab stich motions.

Each square looks the same on the front given the sort of free form imprecise, organic, nature of my stitches, but interestingly, on the back there’s clearly no fixed pattern of which corner my needle goes to next. It might be interesting some time to sew a border or even a filling on the front, working it from the back, for example.