Back in 2012 I did some stencilling samples for a work “Tidelines 8-12” that was exhibited in an Australian exhibition, “Golden Textures” the following year. I cannot believe I have been carrying this little image around in my mind since then, and can’t find the actual sample anywhere, but I’ve been pinning grids, and yesterday decided I needed to do something with this idea.

I’ve now realised the hole in the fabric template I used was much larger than I remember; but I’m liking the idea of a small, intimate grid, with holes more oval than this first lot I made today, and much more irregularity, too.

So I did some free machine embroidery with matching gold thread, and comparing it to the sample I remember but can’t find, and clearly that one was not free machine stitching, and I think that first effect is nicer.

Overall, a pleasing effect for a first foray, with more to come.

Still thinking about landscape segments and how to applique them, hoping to work out a process of using fusing to avoid hand basting of such little pieces into place before oversewing.

I fused silk segments onto the green polyester – and they stuck together long enough to go in and out of a spring loaded machine embroidery hoop a couple of times – but by then, in places the silk had started to lift, so on this fabric I wouldn’t be able to set them all out and fuse them all before starting the oversewing.

• If the two bonded fabrics were natural fibres, not synthetic, laying them all out and bonding into place before stitching should work well.
• I also found leather bonded onto cotton really well, but held the iron in place too long, so the edges of the leather curled a bit, so tomorrow/soon I’ll do some serious samples using those materials.
• Neon green polyester fabric and neon green polyester thread … might as well for the sample, especially – I just have so much of that stuff, probably still about 2.8km 🙂

This morning, after letting the dog out just after 4am, it took a while to get back to sleep, and thinking around my Pandemic Pattern series and the grids I love so much, I realised there are possibilities here to combine traditional block layouts with motifs instead of different fabrics in the squares for 9 Patch, Trip Around The World or something else …. I’ll have to explore techniques, as I rather like the idea of some hand-drawn looking images – and I do still have at least ~5750m neon threads 🙂