Yesterday I followed up on how those gifted knitting samples unravel and separate out into 6 strands, with which I hand stitched on Moth Buffet a couple of years ago. At that time I was 100% all in for hand work, and it never occurred to me to try to sew with it by machine, apart from couching, which didn’t interest me particularly.
At the top of the sample are two sets of the stitching with the wool strand feeding from both the top and the bobbin. Of course I had to loosen tension, use a jeans sewing needle, and set the stitch length to the longest on my very basic Bernina, and found it gave a great line.
The top pair are what the underside looks like, a little wonky. I then turned the fabric over for the next pair to compare the results, and did a little stitching between them as that is a border possibility. Different, better.
The pieces of the pewter metallic finish I’m so interested in are shown with several treatments. Also, a bit of distortion occurs when I unthinkingly (a) pull the thread a bit firmly and (b) use the needle on a slant – it needs to enter and leave the fabric as vertically as possible.
Plenty. Among the most consulted texts in the English language are those dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms – thesauruses. Using the most appropriate word is very important to me. My parents were well read and my sisters and I grew up with word games – the Scrabble set was very worn last time I saw it, and on sunday morning ABC radio (Australian Broadcasting Commission, modelled on the BBC) we listended to a word game program called My Word
I’ve written several times here about the hand stitch / slow stitch thing, and this post https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=8160 summarised my thoughts pretty well I thought, until just now. I was browsing ‘for a few minutes’ on Pinterest and this one came up in my feed along with a bunch of other images of contemporary hand stitch. It’s a lovely embroidered flower, with heaps of stemmed fly stitches and french knots and many straight stitches. Someone who found it elsewhere pinned it, but did not attibute the maker, and she just labelled it ‘slow stitch’. As there are several similar pins of hers in my feed, clearly she has a thing about the look, artistic potential and restorative benefits of all kinds of hand stitching.
But why did she just label this pic ‘slow stitch’? She was not the maker, so she probably had no idea whether the work went fast or slowly, and whether the maker was mindful at the time, meditating, listening to the radio or an audiobook, or chatting with someone while she was stitching it? Why didn’t she just say it was hand embroiderered or hand stitched ?
This little thing irritated me quite disproportionately, and I don’t blame you for seeing me as just as obsessive about hand stitch as the slow stitch fad followers whose posturings get up my nose! In my view, the old fashioned word ’embroidery’ covers it all, including the vast dictionary of stitches and embroidery styles from different cultures since the dawn of time, and some amazing favourite contemporary textile artists who work in fabric+stitch – Carolyn Nelson, Emily Barletta, Roberta Wagner, Stephanie Fujii, Dorothy Caldwell among them. And in a big project with heaps of hand stitching, whatever kind and whatever speed you’re working at, the stitching does become rhythmic, adding the calming benefits that slow stitchers so ardently extoll.
At least ten years ago or more I attended a Studio Art Quilt Associates conference, at which there was a merchants’ mall where I just couldn’t resist buying two rolls of artisan woven fabric, one cotton, one silk, and each about 30cm wide and ~4m long. Perhaps I wasn’t very well, or perhaps I got caught up in the ooooh-aaaah group frenzy of a bunch of fibre artists being seduced by fabrics and threads laid out in front of us…. but blue’s an unusual colour for me to consider working with. And I bought some wonderful threads, too, that I have never used for stitching or anything – I think they’re actually weaving threads as they’re in some quantity on large cones….
Detail Untitled (#4 in ‘Spirogyra’ series)
Most of my works are neutrals and earthy colours. However, SAQA currently has a call for entries in an exhibition to be titled “Colour in Context, Blue” and since I’ve had this blue fabric sitting in my stash for ages, it seemed reasonable to whip up an entry. It’s a small work, and if not selected would fit within the parameters for entry into the Australia Wide 10 biennial for 2026.
So as entries close at the end of the month I’m scooting along with it and about ready to commit to a photography date for it and another recently finished work, #2 in the Spirogyra series – here shown in the early stages.
Even as I write these words I am mentally going through some possibilities of something wildly experimental and really quick…. so enough writing – I’m off for a walk to mull over a couple of ideas, and then up to my work room to do a sample or two with them.
SAQA juror Pat Forster selected one of my works,“The Shimmer Effect”, for an online exhibition, Geometric Expressions, which opens on the SAQA website on January 3rd next. I’ll post that link here when it’s available.
I never show a completed work on my blog or website until it’s been exhibited, ie published somewhere, so for now here’s a close detail shot of the surface texture, along with my statement about it: “A square symbolises balance, solidity and stability. Hand stitching over concentric squares in gentle neutral colours calmed my unease at current disorder and chaos in the world. Metallic threads in my work signify value or importance, here referencing tradition and hope.”
Close detail, “The Shimmer Effect, 2022. Each square is ~6cm.
I posted about it while making this quilt as it was such a long project. It’s about 1m square, with each concentric square unit being 6cm, with a total of 121 squares of fused nylon organza strips oversewn by hand in metallic thread. The fabric itself has a subtle glittery texture.
“Below The Tideline” / “Debajo de la Linea de Marea” 2023, 20cm x 20cm Fibreglass, glass beads; beading plus hand and machine stitch.
A few months ago I saw a call for entries for an exhibition here in Uruguay early next year. South American artists working in glass and/or textile were invited to submit a 20cm x 20cm piece combining both textile and glass materials and techniques in some way. The January exhibition will be along the coast at Maldonado, part of Punta del Este, the summer season playground for the rich and beautiful from Europe and other latin Americn countries. An online catalogue will be presented, too, so for exposure alone I thought it definitely worth trying for.
My first thought was “fibreglass, that’s a textile!”, and my next move was to rummage in the cupboards for a long forgotten stash of large glass beads. On a visit to Egypt years ago, a textile artist friend living there took Mike and me to a glassblowing artist’s studio. I simply couldn’t resist gathering up a heavy half-full shopping bag of these huge beads, with no idea of what I’d do with them. I strung some into a necklace, which looked great, but was so heavy I could only wear it for about 3 hours. I don’t remember what I did with it, but probably gave it away.
I called a carpenter friend, PJ, who had some remnants he gave me to experiment with. through sample making I learned how to handle this stuff – and it is not at all like stitching on even weave linen! For one thing it’s pretty slippery to work with, so there were handling problems requiring creative solutions. After a week of fiddling around samplising, I followed PJ’s recommendation to visit a store where I could buy some fabric and was able to buy just one metre. I also bought some velo – (trans. veil) It’s very like a single layer of unwoven facial tissue and similarly delicate, which disappointed me a bit. Velo’s used as the final finishing layer on surfboards, for example, giving a smoother finish to the board, and probably making a difference to the performance in the water. I had decided not to get into the area of resins and toxic fumes etc, but did look up health and safety concerns for fibreglass itself, and that’s ok on its own, though it bothers some people when they get it on their skin (I didn’t). As a fibre it’s fairly heavy, and any tiny pieces fall, they don’t waft around in the air.
Considering techniques, to use,my first thought were of the counted thread and drawn thread embroideries I made when young, but the piece of fabric I had wasn’t closely enough woven, and so I turned to the creative embroidery I worked with in the 80s, in the style of Constance Howard and the other, mostly British, embroiderers of that era. Perfect – because in recent years, after a long period making quilted contemporary patchwork, my layered stitched artworks are again featuring hand stitch as a vital surface design element.
Glass beads from Egypt! The fabric is fibre glass, and the other bobbly things are another purchase I simply had to make in Egypt… they’re thread ‘buttons’ for traditional men’s clothing. I’ve always thought them quite beautiful but they’re not very robust – several are unravelling even though about all they’re ever done is travel a day or two in a suitcase, then sit in a drawer and about once a year just slip through my hands for a few minutes….
In this pic are several things I auditioned for the piece I eventually made. I had thought I’d hemstitch the edge, but the glass is too brittle to fold over into a hemstitched edge – in addition to which it is very slippery indeed – so although it looks like even weave linen, it doesn’t behave anything like it!! I had a fairly steep learning curve to handle and control it, while adapting my expectations a bit! And, in the end, I didn’t use the hemstitching, the grey ribbon or the two glass flowers.
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Appliqued puffs, and crumpled fibreglass was machine sewn down before being hand embroidered over.
These large pieces of glass are heavy ~1.5 – 2.5cm across and ~0.5cm thick. Barely visible strips of nylon organza cut on the cross secure them under the strands of wandering fine glass beading.
Strings of beading and lots and lots of French knots add the textures that suggest encrustations in rock pools below the tideline.
I avoided googling to see what other artists are doing with this stuff, as I wanted to keep what I already envisaged within the exhibition’s prospectus, and it will be exciting to see what people have produced within those 20cm x 20cm measurements!
When I did get round to googling the uses of fibreglass fabric, I was astonished at the number of industrial, engineering, automotive and architectural uses of this material. It wasn’t easy to work with, but I would consider using it again if it was appropriate, or if a bright idea strikes me!
The exhibition opens early in January, and I’ll post the details of that closer to the time.
English