The Merill Cumeau workshop exercise that I finished last week was a floral collage. I’m not a ‘floral’ person, but that exercise was the first real sample of using clear plastic as a ‘fabric’ for sewing on or in, and it has potential I am starting to explore.

Of course, such plastic is widely used as covers for new furniture, or containers for goods such as new pillows – which incidentally are the core of my fabric storage system here 🙂 but it hasn’t been widely used as a raw material for making art. I’ve been thinking about such plastic for some time, though not from the recycling, or upcycling, point of view.

I was very impressed with a work by Lillian Madfes (UY) in a 2011 exhibition of her work here. In each pocket between two layers of clear plastic sheeting stitched to form a square grid, were a small quantity of carbon and a hank of thread in tones from pale pink to deep maroon, progressing from dark to light across the work. Clearly this artwork referenced the notion of ‘quilt’, with plastic performing the role of fabric.

And in a Quilt National exhibiton around the same time, there was an art quilt made using layers of plastic. Although I didn’t particularly care for for the work itself, it was certainly innovative.

A few years ago I encountered a remnant of black vinyl faux patent leather, and as an experiment with a totally new material I made this wall quilt, Landmarks –

The silver segments on the black were nylon backed mylar, of which I had several yards @$1/yd, but finally realised I wasn’t going to do anything with it, and threw it out. But it was all interesting to work with.

On my last trip to USA I looked in fabric shops for more, but there wasn’t any around, and shop assistants gave me blank looks. However, there was some heavy duty clear vinyl, and I bought a few yards of that to experiment with. When I looked around for a suitable fabric on which to compose the collage in Merill Cumeau’s workshop, I settled on the clear plastic sitting in my workroom. It was a good result, and I need to do another exercise making more use of the sheer quality of this material / ‘fabric’ .

After my return from teaching at a patchwork and quilting festival in Gramado, Brasil, last September, I posted about the experience including what I did on my free days there . Looking through some photos this morning reminded me that I should have followed up and posted more of the pics I took of things in the very impressive museum of rock samples and fossils that I enjoyed so much. Mike would have loved this museum, but because he’d been unwell and wasn’t able to travel as we’d planned, I was in Gramado on my own.

There were just a few people in the museum that morning, and one of the english-speaking docents accompanied me around the displays, and she was very interesting, eventually realising from my comments that some of those minerals were like old friends you might say, with which I’ve become very familiar during my long marriage to an exploration geologist with specialised interest in such things 🙂

The first collage includes a pretty fancy geode, and since the best amethysts do come from northern Uruguay up around Artigas on the border with Brasil in the far north west, it was possibly mined in Uruguay. The trilobytes are familiar to me too, but the others I don’t know, but I’d have photographed them because of their beauty. The group of colour tipped crystals looks floral, and the texture of the photo in the lower left corner looks somehow organic, rather like dead grass or a close up of kuba cloth?

This next photo is of some pretty impressive items in the gift shop – these are fabricated from very thin slices of rock collaged and assembled into sheets, which are lit from behind to enhance the striped rock. We don’t have room in our lounge or entry way, which is why I didn’t have one of the black and gold ones shipped back to Montevideo 🙂 I love them.

Week 3 began on monday last with a video talk and demo from Australian embroiderer and theatrical costume maker Susie Vickery http://www.susievickery.com Susie has a strong commitment to environmental issues, and a preference for using found and repurposed materials, especially plastics, in her exhibition work, community group projects, theatre costume and installation work.

The workshop project uses several basic crewel embroidery techniques as found in Jacobean embroidery, traditionally done in wool on linen, fine canvas or wool twill. The repurposing aspect is to cut plastic bags into approx 1-2cm strips and use these as the thread for embroidery on a looser woven fabric such as a loose canvas or burlap. This all reminds me so much of a mind boggling craft project a friend’s mother did decades ago in the Country Womens’ Association craft session. Did you know that you know that if you start cutting a bread bag at the open end, and continue cutting and spiralling round and round, wind it into a ball as you go, and repeat 5-6 times, you can then knit or crochet it all up to make a bath mat or a hot water bottle cover? The pattern is probably still available in the archives of the CWA, as I’m certain that thrift and frugality have been some of the cornerstones of the CWA creed, since the dawn of time, long before ‘recycling’ became an important word. I acknowledge the anti-plastics and recycling appeal of materials and goals for this workshop, but decided to sit this one out.

This is a wonderful thing about these Stitch Club workshops – we have the opportunity to ‘attend’ 3 x 1 week workshops per month, with none scheduled in the fourth week (designated ‘catching up’ time) I’ve signed in and watched the video, and will check now and then to see what people are doing with it, plus I’ll tune in to the live Q&A sessions on friday, because you always learn at least something from every teacher you come across.

Today I finished the workshop project for week 2, (last week) with teacher Merill Comeau.

The suggested background for the collage was tulle or net, but I’m glad I found this plastic in my stash and decided to use it. I found it far easier to work with than I irrationally thought it might be. I’ll add a couple of grommets in the upper corners and hang as a sun catcher kind of thing at a window somewhere, although sadly there are security bars across each window in the house. This will not be the last time I use this plastic – though floral motifs might not be the design I work on it.

This week, American textile artist, Merill Comeau, presented her Stitch Club workshop to 880+ students around the world. When I watched the Stitch Club video on day 1, I felt unsure I’d go for this floral subject, as flowers aren’t one of my design motifs 🙂 But once I’d done the homework of identifying and researching a flower that I related to, and assembled fabric snippets and threads, I felt more enthusiastic. Of course the workshops are not compulsory, but on the basis that you learn something new from every teacher, I plan to try everything on offer. Enrichment.

We were asked to identify a flower that in some way was important to us, and use that with her freeform stitchery methods to assemble a fabric collage. I thought about flowers I liked and considered several, including Australian natives Sturt’s Desert Pea and everlasting daisies. I also walked around our garden, where most plants are past flowering now winter’s here. But the several hibiscus shrubs are out, and I remembered that we had pink hibiscus in our first marital home, and had at least one in almost every garden since (Denver was way too cold) That seemed highly symbolic, so I took some photos and settled on hibiscus. Researching ‘hibiscus’ I found a long list of meanings and symbolism associated with them, and focused on a few that I feel say something about me:-
Hibiscus are associated with creativity, positive attitudes, optimistic outlook and as the flower is short lived it serves as a reminder to make the most of the time available. And finally, aparently the unpredictability of life is represented with a hibiscus.

Merrill assembles her richly layered stitched collage works on a tulle base, that allows a sense of looking through, spatial depth in place. Tulle- hmmm, the only ones I have are plain black, fine black with gold speckles, and a white one with small polka dot flecks. I have some very fine nylon organzas in black grey and brown – possibilities I considered until I spotted something else – and what is a workshop if not for trying things out? Last time I was in Denver CO, about 2 years ago, I visited a large fabric store and felt I really needed to buy several metres of clear heavy duty plastic, like the protective bags new pillows come in. I felt I could use it as a fabric but apart from encasing an embroidery in some, I haven’t done anything with it yet. It’s not the first time I’ve been seduced by a material of some kind and have it sit around for ages waiting for an idea to turn up.

In sewing on these two leaves I learned the plastic doesn’t need to be in a hoop or frame, and I’m so out of practice I find that awkward, but it handles just fine. Of course, every pin or stitch makes a non-healing hole in the plastic, but if any are a problem I’ll just sew something over the top.

I also have a few glitzy sparkly party dress fabrics and might add a few snippets as highlights when I see how it’s going.

This is what I’ll use for stitching my collage, as I think hibiscus requires bright. I have heaps of embroidery threads in storage 🙂 but maybe less choice is better. The luminescent floss I also bought somewhere in Colorado last visit, just another of those buy-it-when-you-see-it-even-if-you-have-no-plan purchases, and perfect. I also have plenty of metallic gold, silver and pewter metallics if needed. It’s a wet day here in Montevideo, perfect for cutting and stitching, so I’m headed upstairs for a while.