I love stitch constructions on detached warps – aka needleweaving and needlelace, and in 2007 blogged about these two pieces, Behind the Scenes 1 & 2,  which I made in 1987.

In that post, I acknowledged the influence of the book, Needlelace and Needleweaving by Jilly Nordfors, that I’d bought back in the late 70s, and seeing it again on my bookself this week, I realise it’s probably always been a source book for popular fibreart techniques. People with little knowledge of historic textiles think how clever and beautiful these works are, which of course they are, but these techniques used to be featured in the decorative trims and borders of domestic textiles used every day in the homes of my grandmother’s era, and older. I’m sure there would be people using these techniques in the traditional ways they’ve always been used, as decorative trims or motifs in household linens and clothing. Embroidery guilds and organisations such as the Royal School of Needlework preserve information about historic works and the knowledge of how to make them, and there’s always a steady stream of stitchers for their workshops and guild activities.

Today we all go through the world with phone cameras in our pockets, and I sometimes take a photos, or even buy such vintage things in markets, because a thing of beauty is a joy for ever, and I do occasionally use them, because, I must confess, I now have an ironing lady – but in my 75+ years, I’ve ironed plenty of embroidered table cloths and fine linen serviettes myelf, because I love using them for visitors. Even more interesting though, is that today we can see these same techniques in works online on such sites as Pinterest and Instagram, and in galleries showing installation works by contemporary fibreartists. Some examples are https://www.instagram.com/p/DcI85N1Ih6Q/ by Celia Pym; https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOuPV-QjVto/ by Cole Bun; here are lots of lovely examples of weaving in tree branches ; and some interesting contemporary 3D needlelace by several artists including Leisa Rich.

Judging by what I see on Pinterest and Instagram, I sense increasing interest in such techniques, partly because to younger generations they appear to be unusual or even novel. Young people today see them in everyday use far less often than we did when young. I can’t think of many youngsters who’d be willing to spend the necessary time away from their screens to learn the skills to embroider and crochet the fine table linens and trims for household linens in the traditional designs that have been handed down over hundreds of years. I grew up without TV in the house until I was about 14, by which time I had learned basic needlework skills and developed a lifelong interest in stitch. Our kids had TV around them all their lives and they weren’t even teenagers when computers came along, so neither of my middle aged children ever made the time available to learn those skills from me, and my grandsons have no idea.

But that’s no one’s fault – it’s just a sign of how much and how fast things have changed in modern western societies. For those who do want traditional looking things, while there are plenty of vintage things around to collect, there are also plenty of beautiful mass produced items available, at different levels of quality and pricing to suit all budgets. They’re even more appealing if they’re made from easy-care or no-iron wash’n’wear fabrics 🙂 And the same goes for silverware, too, because no matter how beautiful it looks, the young don’t want to actually live with it, because it all needs to be polished regularly with elbow grease to look good….

Yesterday I began a new work featuring glass beads, which will be small enough to fit the conditions of the 4th International Salon of Glass and Textile, The call for entries is currently open, and I hope to be selected for this upciming salon, too. The exhibition will be in Santiago de Chile next year.

It feels good to have settled on an idea and started. In the last week, I’ve spent perhaps 4 hours threading approx 15cm lengths of silver glass beads to hand stitch down onto the machine stitched grid lines, and eventually remove those gridlines. One of my mantras is “learning by doing”, so \i set out having no idea really how it would all look.

Getting the grid down went well, though I really underestimated how long it would take to actually couch the strings down to make that grid. It was quite fiddly, particularly to get the crossovers sitting flat – a bit of trial and error at most of the interstections requiring adding or removing one bead, very fiddly. Well anyway in time, that whole grid process took at least 5 hours. Beading enthusiast and expert, StitchClub friend Barbara Rucket agreed, with me that finicky is the approppriate word here.

It is only a very small piece, max 25cm, so whatever I place on those spaces will need to be small, and I’m thinking possibly in the same style of thing as in some of my earlier Out of Order works:

So next I needed to audition things to place in those grid spaces. This began with rummaging through my scrap bags and several boxes and drawers, looking for the ‘right’ fabrics to manipulate into appropriate units to go on this cream. I found the exact cream fabric and though I ripped a narrow strip off and formed some circles, but this didn’t seem exciting. I gathered another bit of the ripped strip and formed it into a frayed mound dotted with beads, but nah – not exciting enough either – the beads weren’t prominent enough. Finally I threaded some beads and wove them in and out, over, under and through each other.

At that point I left it all to sleep on, but this morning it still looked good, so I’ll take the other auditions off when I resume work later today, and do more threading for each space – some spaces getting generous motifs, others much less. It will be interesting because at last the glass beads are the feature and the cream textile is only the setting, the background, and that feels right.

I am very happy to announce that my auction quilt, “Just Go With The Flow” will soon be in the hands of its new owner, Jette Quiera, of Eugene, Oregon, and I’d like to thank her for her purchase in support of Studio Art Quilt Associates.

Yes, it’s that time again, and the annual SAQA Benefit Auction starts this week. All bidding is online, and open to Anyone, Anywhere, members of SAQA and non-members alike. At the SAQA website https://www.saqa.com/auction you’ll find all this year’s 320+ donated 12″ quilts made by myself and fellow SAQA members, and access full information on how to bid for the one or more you’d like to own. There’s full information on how the reverse auction process works, and any questions you have.

My work “Just Go with The Flow” is available at ANY time for $1000, but then will be up for bidding 21st to 29th September

The first day, September 11th, is Diamond Day, on which every quilt may be bought for US$1000. After that, the 320+ donated 12″ works by SAQA members are divided into three groups for the reverse auction process – every week the price of every piece in that group starts at $750 with prices dropping daily until until they’re sold. The second and third groups repeat the process.

Yesterday I went with Mike and our friend Dalehl to see a couple of fibreart exhibitions I’d been wanting to visit for a few weeks. It was cold but sunny, a perfect day to wrap up and get out for a bit of cultural activity.

First stop was the Spanish Cultural Centre in the Old City to visit an exhibition of paper costumes there, that I’d been humming and hahing over a bit, I think because ‘paper’.., so it wowed me more than I’d been expecting. Textile art friend Felipe whose background is in theatrical costume had mentioned it glowingly, so I shouldn’t have been a bit surprised, and Mike, who’s not always especially interested in these sorties but kindly tags along, commented that it was amazing, which is high praise for someone with his genetic background.

The exhibition comprised several very elaborate C17 ladies’ dresses, copied and produced entirely 100% out of cream and white paper, by students in the final year of their course in theatre costume and design. In pairs they produced paper copies of gorgeous dresses in portraits by of that era painted by prominent artists like Van Dyck et al, … and there were videos showing some of the processes they used to achieve what they did. These costumes were all monochromatic so the viewer would focus on what they achieved in making different kinds of paper look like the fabrics and trims they represented, rather than being distracted by colours and prints. With some it was really hard to believe they were paper and we were really tempted to touch, but didn’t of course.

Downstairs in the centre was another interesting exhibition of prints of flowers, trees and birds that had been created using the cyanotype process with fabrics and paper coated with light sensitive solutions made from ingredients found in any home kitchen or garden. All the prints were in shades of brown from dark cream to almost chocolate brown which formed a very striking array around the white room. Interesting, and because I know virtually nothing about cyanotype images, have never been tempted to join what seems to be a current craze, and I’d always presumed it was only possible to get a result in blues…

Then we moved out to the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales in Parque Rodó, to see an exhibition of both the woven tapestries and some of the 3D fibreart figures by a national fibrearts icon, Cecilia Brugnini. Very early in my time here in Montevideo someone took me to meet her, and a year or two later I took visiting Australian artist friend Wendy Lugg to meet her, but I can’t claim to actually know her. This exhibition is a lovely retrospective survey of her art rather than containing anything new, but it was wonderful to see a whole group of perhaps 20 woven works hung so we could see their backs too, which often carried interesting textures themselves. These works range in size from 1-2m, and the stitcher in me saw some lovely textures on many of them, and I found the rich colour palettes very 70s-80s in style, some of them featuring touches of glitter – and I just love a bitta glitta. There were also perhaps 8 or 9 plinth-mounted 3D soft sculpture figures, in various sizes up to about 1/5th life size.

We saw several other really interesting exhibitions in the MNAV, too, including one in which a number of artists presented their ideas through works based on the concept and importance of play in the exhibition title Somos Jugando (‘We are Playing) There were a couple of videos on kids playing the hopscotch and leapfrog- which we played when we were very young, and there was a collection of some of the board games we played. All kids love to dress up in adult clothes and pretend to be a grown-up, whatever we wanted to be; and an interesting collection of hanging dress-like objects by Olga Bettas showed how we can present another identity by covering ourselves with something different.

After all that, we needed somewhere warm to have a coffee and sandwich. The MNAV’S coffee shop is nice out under the trees in summer, but we decided to head for the fish market in Buceo for fish and chips at the restaurant there. It was a good choice because without waiting we got a good table inside, and everyone’s fish was lovely. I ordered risotto stuffed moron/capsicum with mine, which reminded me of the potential of stuffing those vegetables, which I really like.