Recently I posted some of the time-saving benefits of making samples, but samples are also memory savers, just like taking brief notes or making a list on a page in your artist diary.

I’ve been stitching over and around ‘donut shapes’ for some years, and they feature in a large section of my “Abstract Landscape Textures”, for example.

The most recent works in my Out of Order series feature damaged, disorderly grids that become progressively more distorted, and recently I came up with constructing rougher looking raised 3D elements to go with/on them – think ‘donuts’. Far more interesting than just overstitching flat rings are stitching over raised ones, and the stemmed french knots I used in these next two works really pleased me with how they seemed to burst out of the centre of the rings as if erupting or leaping outwards.

I tore fabric into narrow strips and formed them into raised rings which I held in place with a pin while sewed a few carefully placed tiny invisible stitches in toning thread, and once the pin was removed the overstitching was much easier. As the circle is held in place by the invisible stitches in toning thread, there is the freedom to place the overstitching as close or far apart as I like, without worrying whether it will be enough to hold it all together…. And as I wrote that sentence, a sudden thought popped out – if some of the coils were to appear to unravel, that would fit the theme of disintegration – right? … and that demonstrates another value associated with making samples – just writing about them invites more ideas to emerge…

Stemmed french knots are one of my all time fav stiches – but stemmed fly and chain stitches would also work well, I think. The fabric and thread on the red one are synthetic – so hold their profile, but the brown ones are natural fibre, so would flatten if rolled/folded for a long time.

Where did this idea come from? Since beginning my Out of Order series, I’ve been exploring textural elements to place on or within the grid lines. Certainly I’ve been influenced/inspired by things I’ve seen on line – such as the very textural embroidery of Jennifer Jones or Penny Behrens’ frequent use of stitched down vaguely circular rings as a texture, and I guess my method emerged from experimenting on the best way to make a ring without too much tedious cutting out.

Torn strip constructions are an exciting thing I’m keen to take further in my stitched reactions to the rough, ragged state of the world today.

Uruguay is a major fine merino wool producer, right up there with Australia and New Zealand, so here in Montevideo yesterday (Saturday June 13th) together with a good friend Dalehl and my patient hubby Mike, I visited the 6th Expolana.uy. I confess I was a bit surprised to find I’d never heard of the previous five until a couple of weeks ago 😉 and wonder how did it not appear on my radar until now?

Last year I bought a remnant piece of fine, moss-green 100% wool fabric, thinking I’d back another work with it, but then didn’t, but as green is my favourite colour, it’s grown on me while it was sitting around my studio all that time. So I’ve decided to work something on it as the front of a wall quilt. Once a Girl Guide, always a Girl Guide, and their motto “Be Prepared” was motivation to attend this expo from the time I saw it advertised, and I took along a snippet of the green wool… I was on the lookout for “materials” to use for something to enter into ArtQuiltAustralia 27 wool quilt category, but I’ve since learned there probably won’t be a wool quilt category in ASA27, as the sponsorhip agreement has not been renewed, so far anyway. However, this one needs making, and there’ll be another worthy entry call for it.

Vendors were principally selling wool and various equipments for use in the common fibrearts and crafts, and there was everything from crochet hooks and knitting needles to spinning wheels, from wool roving to knitting and embroidery threads, and small weaving looms to needle felting thingies. There were some finished items like knitted beanies, scarves and jumpers, ruanas, and even some jewellery featuring wool fabric inserts, but it was specifically oriented to crafters – the knitters, crocheters, stitchers, felters, spinners and weavers among us.

As a stitcher, I was pleased to find this box of fine, eco-dyed 100% merino wool from Patagonia, Argentina, suitable for embroidery, just after I’d bought the skein of multi-colored hand spun wool. The spun wool vendor, from Minas UY, invites interested kids to choose a few colours of rovings, which she then uses to demonstrate spinning, and sells these demo samples at subsequent shows. From our conversation we’ll meet again, for sure, and if needs be I’ll be able to get more, I know.

We adjourned to the MAPI museum in the Old City of Montevideo for coffee and a sandwich, and as I hadn’t seen Avocado on toast on a menu here before, I ordered that with a cappucino –

Once refuelled, we took a look at the amazing central American masks that have been showing a while now. And there’s a new exhibition of forests and trees by a Uruguayan artist Carmela Piñón, beautifully painted and some forest and stream sounds played softly in the background, but it seemed bit ordinary, until I read this wordy statement giving insight into their importance to the indigenous people here. Interestingly, if the docent on dury had been able to tell me what the word jeike meant, I’d have got it sooner. In the Museum’s own collection exhibition area I was taken with some fresh archaeological items from the Andean part of NW Peru. MAPI’s a favourite museum here in Montevideo, and we visit several times a year – and a bonus is that to seniors with UY residence cards entry is free… which is always nice.

My regular readers know I’m keen on making samples., and they’re are worthwhile investments in time for the following reasons:

• if an idea, material or technique is new to me, I learn just how it works in my hands
• trying out any options and making a sample of each enables valid comparisons.
• the relatively short time spent making a sample or two really does save time (and sometimes, heartbreak) Often art quilt makers in particular talk about having so many unfinished works, and sometimes it’s obvious to me that taking a little time – an hour, morning, or day – to work through a sample or two would have saved heartbreaking waste of effort and/or materials. I don’t think that’s just an older person’s pov, though there’s a lot of pressure these days to just hurry up and get on with things – “quick and easy” everything appeals to people whose whole lives are in a constant rush. Craftsmen who take their time to be meticulous and attend to fine details are a pleasure to observe, and as I wrote elsewhere on this blog, I find it quite hard for me to produce something that looks “rough” or “damaged” as my Out of Order series requires.

Walking in our neighbourhood recently, I took this photo of some fallen Ghinko leaves. The tiny green leaflets from a nearby tree instantly struck me as little seeds/tiny grubs/and of course, stitches…. stitches in a random pattern holding down leaflike shapes….Feeling sure must I have already done something like that sometime, I found several photos just like this one, but I hadn’t been thinking of sheer fabrics until seeing it.

• so here’s another good reason to make samples – another possibility may come to mind during the process of making one
• browsing on Pinterest and Instagram I sometimes find something I need to try out immediately to keep an idea in my mind before I forget that poster’s name. Yes, I could have drawn a diagram too, but probably needed to get up and walk around, anyway 🙂 A case in point this week was discovering an IG post by well known English embroiderer Karen Turner, (who my UK stitcher friends in PINKS did know of) I was smitten with the beauty, simplicity and potential of this one so I rushed upstairs to do this quick sample to hold the idea in my head,

and instantly discovered (1) if I use it this way, the corners need either a touch of glue or misty fuse to prevent them lifiting during handling, and (2) the stitch motif itself is divine to do ! so I’d most likely use it as either a texture/filler or quilting motif.

The sample’s up on my pin board to exert some daily influence 🙂

Earlier this week my SAQA mentee and I found ourselves discussing the currently popular improvisational approach to making patchwork wall art. I consulted AI and got this: “Improvisational patchwork (or improv quilting) is a spontaneous approach to sewing fabric scraps together without strict patterns, templates, or rulers. Instead of precise, uniform blocks, the maker allows the design to evolve organically, celebrating wonky angles, unique color palettes, and creative freedom”…

Improv quilt designs are popular, and the subject of workshops currrently being offered by some popular Big Name quilting teachers, a couple of whom came up in discussion. Their students are taught to not pre-plan anything, not draw any pattern or diagram, and they only need a heap of scraps, a design wall and sewing machine to start. And they do this by (1) pulling any old fabric scrap out of the bag and pining it up on a design wall (2) adding another to it, then another and so on, continuing until what feels the right size and shape is reached (3) sandwiching the design with batting and backing layers and quilting, finishing off , and voila! it’s ready to hang. Any sense of colour the student has is fine; and I think too many self-styled improv quilters have little understanding of colour theory, or little appreciation that in the Gees Bend world, quirky colour schemes or odd print additions into a quilt had nothing to do with any kind of theory but a lot to do with the utilitarian purpose of those quilts, made largely from recycled fabric, for warm bedding in a very poor rural community miles away from fabric stores, which most of those very poor farmers’ wives were too poor to buy much new fabric from, anyway.

But improv or freehand cutting and piecing is just a technique, a construction tool which Nancy Crow quickly demonstrated to us in a 1991 workshop so we could quickly work through many design exercises for that class. She had seen both the wavy line curved piecing method of Marylin Stothers who finally published her book on it in 1988 after years of Nancy’s urging to do so; and the exciting improvisational style of patchwork pieced by the Gees Bend quilters . Both Marylin Stothers’ and Gees Bend quilters’ works exhibit some kind of general idea/plan in their makers’ minds – even if they are not drawn or planned on paper. They’re an idea the maker follows as they go, with colour or shape adaptation as deemed relevant, and substituted fabric if one ran a bit short before completion.

I prefer to describe my way of constructing pieced designs as ‘freehand piecing’, a more accurate term but which still encompasses the desired organic looking result from composing with lines and squares, triangles, circles or arcs and other geometric shapes cut freehand, compared with the severity of lines and shapes cut against a hard ruler or plastic template shape. The organic looking patterns I achieve are in contemporary quiltmaking terms “improvisational”, but, as I have posted elsewhere, I myself actually do carry out some very simple-looking planning – of a chart or diagram, often jotting down lists of words beside that diagram to remind me of the thought processes I went through, even if the diagram’s not much – because those words speak to me, too!

I believe that a bit of planning is ultimately time saving, as it helps me to just start the cutting and piecing, and prevents me taking too many wrong turns as it comes together. And I certainly believe it helps prevent those piles of unfinished works that some art quilt makers confess to accumulating.

My regular readers know that since since the pandemic I’ve been having fortnightly zoom chats with a group of stitchers, that was started in a trial by the organisers of StitchClub using their Zoomn account at whatever time we decided to meet. When that trial ended, we wanted to continue our fortnightly calls, so one of our members let us use her own Zoom account, and we’ve continued, and now everyone in the group has met up in person with at least one other member. Admittedly we do sometimes veer off into general topics, but we never stray for long or go too far from things to do with stitching and embroidery as we discuss what the others are working on, workshops taken, who’s sold something, or exhibiting somewhere. We mention interesting stitch-related books, magazine articles and sometimes recommend links to interesting stitched art websites.

Earlier this week we got onto the topic of working with sheer fabrics, and as a couple of them have done a SC workshop involving tulle, I sent a link to https://www.instagram.com/joanna.kara.art/, whose works I found on IG; and Nancy of CA mentioned an artist https://www.christinemauersberger.com/ whose work she’d once seen in an exhibition. I mentioned how interested I am in sheer fabrics, but that I am sometimes a bit bothered about how light delicate constructions that cast interesting lace patterns on the wall behind so often have clunky hanging arrangements quite out of keeping with the delicacy of the work. Nancy didn’t think it mattered if the work is long and hung from high up, as such works often are, and I agree to a point, but not everyone, including myself, wants to make lengthy works. I’m considering placing a few grommets along the top in several places, which could give a drapey look appropriate for some, but I think tulle is not strong enough, as they could easily be torn out of the work – but organza would be fine.

I’ve recently posted about using plastic. and here used it as a background ‘fabric’, as in this number from 2020 https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=5666 – a StitchClub workshop project with teacher Merrill Comeau

That really led on to discussion about a question Ali raised, asking how artists cope with managing all the different hanging systems that galleries use. I guess there’s no definitive answer here, but exhibition calls sometimes stipulate that framed works must hang with D-rings or something else in particular; and I see that as a matter between artist and gallery in an ongoing relationship. For my own 2D works which are primarily wall quilts, the rod or slat through a hanging sleeve on the back works well with all systems, but in my recent exhibition I mounted some small pieces on unframed artist canvases, which I felt looked good, as these days people often simply hang them without frames. Other 3D pieces I presented as table-top works – which is how I always saw them myself, but they could also be attached to artist canvases and hung on the wall that way, or placed in a frame, or even just hung unmounted and unframed directly onto the wall. I am considering making something larger to show that way, but we’ll see.

With light 2D or 3D works, sometime a motorised slowly revolving display unit hanging from the ceiling would be lovely whether it’s made of something sheer or something more solid and 3D.

My point is that it is really important to consider how I’ll present/display my work during the early planning stages, not to have to rig up something once the last stitch is done, as such last minute solutions are often less effective and some look very amateurish. For example, in this irregular shaped wall quilt stiffening for the upper edges was built in during the construction stage: and the hanging sleeve placed so that the top of it never appears above the lowest dip in the wavy top. It’s unfortunate that many artists cut the top of an otherwise wonderfully irregular shaped quilt straight across the top to avoid those issues – but I wrote a 2020 post on it and another method of hanging such a quilt – https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=5925

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