Inspiring Raw Materials

December 12th, 2020

A few weeks ago I met a local stitcher, Maria, who put me onto a very good merceria/haberdasher in another part of the city I don’t know well. As errands in the pandemic have become ‘outings’ of some significance, it was a treat earlier in the week to visit it and find some more flourescent threads, which I’ve been collecting and using for a while now – some of them are in this photo.

The background fabrics I bought yesterday, on an outing to a wonderful store where every fabric is priced per kilo. I had shopped there once years ago, but as it’s out of my normal ‘circuit’, I’d forgotten it until I met Maria. So yesterday’s outing was to that shop. Outside the closed door to the shop are hand gel and number dispensers. Only 5 customers are permitted inside at a time, so by the time my number was up, I’d focused on two clear goals – (1) to ask to see some black and grey fabrics, and (2) see if there was anything in non-knit flourescent fabrics.

These are not fabrics for patchwork but use as backgrounds for appliques…. I’m thinking of those leather bits. I found a great polysester, almost gabardine weight. The vibrant flouro greeny yellow really pulsates, quite irresistible, and I snapped up the 2+m left on the bolt. The grey was very pleasing (2m) and of course they had black (2m) My tally was 6+m of 1.8m wide fabric for $535 (pesos) which is about US$12.60.

As a side note – I’ve always thought grey and yellow work well together, and was pleased with the recently announced Pantone’s colours for 2021 – a gorgeous video clip (1min). For only the second time ever, this year Pantone chose two colours, Ultimate Grey, a middish grey, and a very bright yellow known as Illuminating.

Lines, Marks And Stitches 8

December 11th, 2020

I have elected to go along with appliqued annuli, and for this section am finding it’s actually easier and faster to hand baste these down as I go. While I have gone further than in this pic, I have deliberately maintained a mix of sizes and thicknesses of the rings, and the two solid ones you see here had centres cut out after all – didn’t look good. In fact, once I work through all the annuli I have already cut out – another 50 or so, I think it will be even quicker to cut just the full ‘circle’ shape, sew it down and then cut out a middle bit.

It’s a large project, and it’s just as well as my enjoyment of the process isn’t flagging. Every now and then I find some way to rationalise, economise on effort or speed up the time for a step, and hand basting this area is one example.

The zig-zag stitching you can see is machine basting, to be removed. In a different light from the photo I put up in the previous post, the black fabric and the soft gold colour of the fabric are both clearer. This excellent quality photo was taken by my phone, and really shows up the stitching super clearly. The zone of circle patterning is roughly 25cm wide.

As I stitch I have time to either listen to recorded books , or put the radio on to a favourite music station and think about ‘things’, including my next projects, which will be a quick one in the Stitch Club workshop series, and then the next Pandemic Pattern. Yesterday I finished off a Great Courses lecture series on the Ancient Civilisations of North America, and today I started listening to A Time For Mercy by John Grisham. I have Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s In Her Own Words waiting, and I will soon return to Michelle Obama’s Becoming in which I was interrrupted several months back.

Lines, Marks And Stitches 7

December 5th, 2020

I rarely carefully draw out a design in advance – as I’ve said before, I go from thumbnail sketches to making any samples I need to.

A thumbnail from my sketchbook: ‘garter stitch’ is the technical term for the most basic knitting stitch
Dreamlines 3, 2015, 70cm x 40cm,

On monday I couldn’t resist tackling an idea to start using some of the seductive leather scraps about which I posted recently. Importantly though, I also needed some time to think about a couple of emerging aspects of this work:

  • The two wide horizontal stripes were the first pieces sewn down,
  • after which I attached the arches, arcs, partial circles – however you see them.
  • My feeling that those first two horizontal stripes really were too thick was confirmed once the solid ‘semi’ circles were in place.
  • So I did a couple of runs of widest/longest machine zig-zag basting, (lower left corner) and started cutting and removing a mid section to make two narrower strips that will be more harmonious with the rest.
  • The two circular rings pinned up are a possibility I’m considering – if I use them in a patterning segment I think they’ll be smaller and finer.

So this is both improv and slow stitch – two hot button terms in the textile art at present, each bearing auras of mindfulness and virtue signalling. It’s way too early to be certain how this will all look when it’s fnished, but that’s normal for the way I work. At an expected 1.8m x 0.9m it’s a fairly large piece for me, so I know there’s a lot more stitching to work through, but I have several more audio books waiting for my enjoyment, because once design problems are sorted, I listen as I stitch through to completion. Still, there’s a pandemic on, and I have plenty of time.

Pandemic Pattern 2, WIP

December 4th, 2020

This week I have worked to finish the applique using stemmed french knots in flourescent green. Once that was done, I needed to work out a quilting pattern.

At such times I make samples, ie audition several approaches, as in the lower image. I worked black and hot yellow options in fine thread in the centre of the collaged images below.

I wanted to use the yellow, but the effect was nothing special. The best result was the very fine black free machine embroidered motif echoing the corona virus molecule. Even with all the practice I did, it wasn’t easy to make them very small, but I am at least achieving a variety of sizes 🙂

Pandemic Pattern 2 Under Way

December 1st, 2020

I normally get to the binding or facing stage at least before seriously starting out on another work, even if I have an idea ready to go. The only excuse I have for currently having three works under way at the same time is that there’s a pandemic on, and here at home I need a change of activity+focus every now and then. That bag of new leather scraps has been calling me, though, telling me it is time to quit the sample making and just start!

I know that the leather is going to be great for another motif I have in mind – the coffin. The pandemic stories are piling up horribly.

Against a red background representing danger, the circular shapes of black leather are held in place with stemmed french knots in a luminescent green. Those stitches really pop out, almost pulsate, though the drama isn’t apparent in this pic.

I’m happy with the effect, and can’t wait to start on the next. Or perhaps I should go back to the little landscapes for a while. On that piece there are still a few more little Aussie motifs to embroider onto some of them, and something needs to be done about the sea areas between them all.

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