I go back to this little basic block time and time again. I was a geography major, and much of what I had to present 55 years ago was in basic diagram form, and this is a really basic, diagrammatic way of saying ‘landscape’. Today a student would most likely illustrate a paper with digital photos.
I have used this little abstract landscape block many times down the years, and though I last published this little sample in 2014, from various ‘clues’ in it the photo, I’m sure I actually put this one together several years before that.
In 2006 I made Timetracks1 with hand appliqued gold leather segments (Quilt National 2007)… and there are several others, plus many more with curvy lines that also say ‘landscape’.
I put coloured segments of organza between layers of cream organza and, in the immediate aftermath of a workshop with Chungie Lee on the Korean wrapping cloths, Pojagi, that’s how I constructed these blocks, oversewn with gold machine stitching. Sorry the pic’s a bit grainy.
I’ve gone down this memory lane this morning because, as quite often happens, I came across that little sample while looking for something else. Today I’ve got a bit of time, and in my stash have a couple of metres of gold lame, many metres of black, light grey and cream nylon organza, and several miles of lame thread…
I expect this will be the last post on this little series, as I’ve now finished and posted the last few samples of the 100day challenge that ends in three days’ time, on Nov. 10th. I made them all the same size, mounted most of them over 3.25sq.in squares of foam core, lacing them as shown in this photo –
Two 3.25sq.in samples, one showing mounted fabric laced at the back.
There are a few set in or on heavy duty clear plastic, so l now have what might be described as a set of 100 mis-matched drink coasters. However, they sit nicely in several re-purposed handy see-through plastic containers which contained certain foods from our supermarket.
Stencilled squares, cretan stitch. 3.25sq.in
Leather arcs, hand appliqued in orange neon thread. 3.25sq.in
Fused silk organza, hand stitched with gold metallic thread. 3.25sq.in
Stencilled squares, hand stitched with gold metallic thread. 3.25sq.in
Most of the other participants in the challenge are nearing the end of a quilt or other project they’ve been making in this time; several have made a few small projects, one or two have approached and practiced fabric dyeing methods, and there are a few who’ve used their time to sharpen up drawing and photography skills. Several times in the last 3 months I’ve been asked by someone what I am going to make out of all these little pieces? Each time, I’ve answered that in effect I’m not making any ‘thing’, explaining that I always intended these little pieces to be a set of exploratory samples of materials and techniques, a more orderly approach than I have had to sample making in the past. (and which it would be a good idea to maintain, too) I found as time went on that they also reflected my developing interest in several design motifs for textures and larger features of a couple of new works I now feel very keen to start. This combination learning and planning project may in time have an additional bonus – if I ever have another in person workshop teaching opportunity, at least some of them will be handy to take along for reference and inspiration.
I’ve been excited by some of the results, and others have shown that they are, at least for the moment, not something I want to pursue further. Because these samples are not meant to go together, I won’t even try to take a photo of all 100 of them; but if you’d like to see more of them, go to my Instagram page
A couple of days back I posted this one, inspired by some drawings and stitch seen in a couple of places on Pinterest. Of course, I understood making such a pattern would be easy, especially if you were going for the lightly off-straight look, and therefore no thread-count precision is required here. The neon orange heavy duty polyester thread never actually lies down on the fabric as do all embroidery threads made from natural fibres – wool, linen, silk and cotton. But I really like this quality, as it lends a kind of hand-drawn look to whatever marks you make with it.
I had used little squares of fabric in a couple of earlier samples in his project, and so I fused some on to this piece’s final row. The fusing between the background and the cotton poplin was fine, BUT once I began stitching with the darning needle I have to use to sew the polyester thread, the bonding gave way – so completing this row with the outlines was fiddly to say the least. I thought I’d further explore this idea by stencilling squares onto fabric.
I still have about 7.75m of that neon orange ripstop nylon which makes great stencils, so I cut a small one to fit inside the 3.25in. square, painted one, then decided to stencil repeats until the small amount of paint left was all gone, so I ended up with another two.
Not thinking, though, I put them onto really dark grey poplin, would you believe? (apparently I was having a slow learning day) The large stitches on the front that you can see in this next one worked ‘ok’, but fastening down the corners on the back side required a fine needle and a thimble to do, and was ridiculously hard work. Note to self – never hand stitch on poplin fabric ever again! However, I was thrilled with the effect.
“Is this going to be a series?” asked Nancy Ann, the coordinator of the 100 Days Reboot challenge when I posted it on the challenge album for that day. I answered that my series tend to emerge rather than be declared at the start, but as I’d stencilled another couple anyway, I knew that poplin or no, I would finish them. Note this next one features a lot of machine stitching and a minimal amount of hand stitch, and still needs the same tortuous process to mount it on the foam core.
I have another print, and will probably use it up soon. So yes, Nancy Ann, it looks like a series might be emerging – but the next ones won’t feature any poplin anywhere!
Couching is one way to lay down lines particularly, using thick threads and thin cords that you can’t sew with on the fabric you’ve using. I’ve never used it much really, but think I need to more. So in the current series of little sample thingies I’m experimenting, and here are a couple more featuring couching:
I spotted this printed paper raffia in a merceria last week. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the other 9.85m I bought, but it will come in handy some time, I’m sure.
It wasn’t easy to work with, took me a while to learn how to handle it properly. First, I did appliqued the circle (a bit clunky) then stitched the line beginning in the lower left corner finishing near the left edge, and finally added the little ring with ends sticking out. As I felt I got better, I didn’t remove the less competent start – left it there to remind me. I hadn’t seen this printed paper rolled into a raffia-like ‘thread’ so bought 10m at the haberdashery I was in, and as I say, it could be useful some time. I sometimes find unusual things speak to me and really influence a turn I take in my work, but maybe not this one – it might sit in the drawer next to the 2m string of pearlescent sequins and the 4m string of gold vinyl stars …
Stencilled organic blobs shapes were perfect to add to with an informal grid of hand couched fine cord using metallic thread.
Couching can be done by machine, too, and during the week I had some correspondence with an embroiderer who said she’d only couch if it could be done by machine. I’m sure that’s wonderful sometimes, but I am pretty focused on hand stitch myself! And, I love that it is possible to couch in such a way that the sewing thread is not at all visible, so the cord just seems to be sitting or resting on the fabric. I’m tempted to say that working by hand allows finer twists and turns in the line, but being so far out of date with fancy modern machine technology, I can accept that may not be true these days. Couching one cord over the top of another as above, may or may not be easily done by machine, I don’t know – perhaps someone will enlighten me..
In the SAQA 100 Days Reboot challenge I’m currently participating in, I’ve been using it to explore different materials and combining some surface design techniques with basic stitch. As I outlined at the start of this series, instead of just throwing them into the large shopping bag I normally use to receive my sample bits and pieces, I am mounting these ones on small pieces of foam core board cut to the same size.
Some have been excitingly successful and will no doubt lead to some new directions in my surface designs, others came out less interesting, but every one of them has shown me something, and at least my curiosity about a few dud ones is now settled 🙂 Many of them I’ve posted on Instagram @schwabealison, and quite a few have appeared in this Small Pieces series of posts, of which there’ll be another two or two before the 100 Days challenge finishes on November 3rd.
Many of you know I’ve been interested in sheer fabrics for some time, with burnt layers in some of my Timetracks series, which featured nylon organza. Sheer fabrics include tulle, organdy, organza, chiffon, and their character has been used to great effect by some contemporary textile artists in the Korean Pojagi medium , others such as Rosemary Claus Grey, and Christine Mauersberger whose installation Timelines seems to float on its fine tulle substrate.
I recently (2019, 2021) bought some clear plastic to experiment with as the ultimate sheer, a flexible but solid, soft material that could be stitched through without drilling holes in it, as UK artist Clyde Olliver often did to stitch on really solid materials, like slate and wood.
These next two samples require thinking of heavy duty clear plastic as ‘fabric’ … Working on 100% see through sheer material means you need to be thinking of what the thread is doing on both sides to make the pattern as viewed from the front.
Tailor’s tacking. ~3.5in.
Here I thought I might just as well tie a knot in the thread and leave it on the front anyway! But, if I were going to use this kind of thing as a background, to frame something, I’d probably start and end the stitching where it would be behind that ‘thing’ once that was put in place. I joined the pink to the yellow with a knot on the front for the same reason – the limitations of a completely non-traditional material can require different thinking, and here, this can be made a feature of the surface texture.
Early in 2020, I began what was for me a new technique of hand oversewing raw edged strips of fabric (Pandemic Pattern resulted from this experimental technique) While oversewing one small wall quilt with metallic gold, I realised that for every stitch showing on the front, there was as much again hidden behind the work. This meant I needed to join threads twice as often, (a handsewn metallic thread will tend to fray fairly quickly) and at the density of my stitching, I realised I’d soon go crazy turning it over every couple of minutes to finish off conventionally. So I joined those threads with knots on the outside/front, and there were so many of them that the knots made a pleasing additional surface texture. We think of metallic as ‘hard and cold to the touch’ and this surface looks brassy, but it is surprisingly soft to touch.
~3.5sq.inCouched cord – largely invisible, because I used fine toning thread.
Couching: when threads and cords too thick or textured to actually sew with are laid onto the fabric and hand or machine sewn down with a finer thread, visible or not. There are many potential variations to this technique. Couching will come up again soon.
