Rooms with pond and moon

 

More mapping, on two planes.

Quarantine and the Studio

Like so much of the world, we are isolated here, and if I did not have the studio I would have been locked away months ago for my own and others' safety. In that time I have concentrated on exploring my stitch world. Part of this exploration has been to find the Unfinished Pieces box and to re-evaluate. Other work has been new, some in response to COVID-19. As there is no end in sight to the spread of this virus, I will begin sharing some of these things, hoping always for better times. 

One good thing to come of this has been that I am using what I have rather than popping out for supplies. It seems a risky thing for someone with asthma to go into an infected world to buy a length of cloth, or thread, or paint, but this restriction did not turn out as badly as I had initially feared. I took these months of waiting to assess what I have, what I really need, and what I could do with it. I have been dyeing thread for years, but not always winding it onto bobbins so some color or texture could be easily accessed when I needed it. Fixed that. 

When I brought together the (scattered) stacks of cloth that had been cut into manageable sizes and dyed, I found I now have a fully-loaded cupboard, ready for use.  The pieces are stacked by color family, so even just standing in front of it all with both doors opened is inspiring. When things are all in one place, they can be impressive. 

I have also sewn several items of clothing for myself.  Inspired by the idea of the odd and interesting draped over me, I've begun to draw into the surfaces of some of these new-found fabrics to make collaged cloths that will become my fall wardrobe. This wardrobe I think of as "Studio Wear," because I am always a little reluctant to dress in my crazy creations and go out into the public. As there is no "public" available to me now, I have the freedom to dress in these crazy items as I work or play in the studio. Sometimes I look down and see that a spot needs a line of stitch, maybe another pocket (you can never have too many pockets), or some odd button (maybe you CAN have too many buttons). I even have a pair of comfortable linen trousers made from a pair of old curtain panels. I will press that outfit and put it on my dress form and share it with you another day. 

Our Stitching With A Twist (SWAT) Dogwood Chapter EGA group in Atlanta, was asked to stitch our response to COVID-19. My first reaction was to express just how frustrated I had become with the narrowness of my world, the sameness, the lack of stimulation in sheltering in place. This piece is about 4" square. The ground is a rip of cardboard onto which are sewn a piece of interfacing from a deconstructed garment, and over that a scrap of hand-rusted fabric. The stitches are made with a silk fiber that is wirey and filled with its own ideas about where it wants to lay on the cloth. It has not been twisted, which adds to its instability. A perfect choice for my first response.

The second response is larger, about 10" tall, and is assembled from scraps and off-cuts of clothing or stitch projects. The red strokes represent days, until there were so many they could no longer be counted meaningfully.

There is another, but it still needs a good deal of finishing.

Now to get some more items camera-ready. And maybe add another pocket to the vest that is weary from handling and being stitched and re-stitched. Back in a few.

Sun, Rain

This piece is about 6" square (-ish), with a surface of silk and very loosely woven muslin.  It is stitched in different types of silk, most of which I dyed.

The theme is a response to the September weather.  It was stitched during the Texture and Pattern class with Sue Stone, and felt wonderfully freeing to do it completely in straight stitches.

Winter and Spring

Two pieces finished, the "Spring" only this afternoon, "Winter" last spring.  For some reason, stitching seasonal pieces in their proper season is not easy for me.

The spring trees are treated playfully, each almost circular foliate set on even more improbable trunks.  Layered, both appliqué and the stitches.

Winter, the older piece, is a more thoughtful treatment of the bare trunks, in somber shades of grey, white and grey-brown.

December in the studio

Daylight has been in short supply lately, and in the abbreviated light, I have contracted my thinking to small scale as a doorway into some larger ideas to explore in 2017.  My favorite way of doing this is with a bowl of scraps, a smaller one of threads, and an overflowing pincushion.  Through the movement of fabrics from the bowl to the flat workspace, there never seems to be a reduction in little scraps.  All magic, I'm sure.

This project was originally meant to be a line and shape study, not really to draw in color elements, but the pull of color is very strong, even when working in palm size.  Last month, in anticipation of this project, I made a book to corral these ideas in one place rather than falling back on my usual practice of stuffing things into plastic bags and relying on the Good Fairy Of The Studio to retrieve them for me.  Rather than pages of paper however, it is a book of pockets made with Lutradur.  I've found that Pellon medium-weight interfacings also make good pockets.

This colorful character uses hand and machine stitch.  I like the precision of machine stitches in combination with the looser hand stitch.  Additionally, there is something so mysterious about vintage fabrics captured under a translucent fabric, something that calls up old times and faces.  Here we can almost see a vehicle for transport to those times, one with many windows, many doors . . .

These verticals are my personal view of winter, grim and textural.  Not that grim is always negative, of course.  This piece is a return to that style of using the blocks of fabric as a foundation for stitch:

Because I am drawn to neutrals with textural interest, these two appeal to me for their simplicity and single, uncomplicated imagery:

Black Floss on Cotton

I embarked on an enormous journey of discovery and endurance with this piece, never thinking I would actually stitch the entirety of the 10" x 18" cloth.  My style is to make smaller, more intimate pieces.  After I had gotten bored, I reasoned, I would remove the piece from the frame, cut the work away and fold what was left of the multi-processed cloth and move on to something else.  To this end, I set out to try some different ways of doing a few things with simple, expressive stitches.  Instead of becoming bored, the challenge became so absorbing I couldn't put it down, and I worked weeks and weeks with the magic that was happening on the rectangle.

It is a study in lines, and to that end I used a single strand of black cotton floss.  I wanted to see how much energy short, dotted lines might have.  And then there was the idea of bending a longer line by keeping it under tension rather than Couching the slack thread with two needles.  Or, what if the circles were stitched as loose Detached Chains and tied down to make rough circles of many sizes and shapes?  Is it possible to get a certain depth of perception with a tiny Straight Stitch by changing the compression, working dense stitches that graduated to a little more breathing space?  Could I really do this without using even one of my favorite little spot stitches, the French Knot?  Is there personality possible in a Square Chain Stitch?  And on and on it went, more questions, more answers.

If you've ever seen geology texts where the artist has drawn beautiful illustrations of earth strata, subducting plates, layers of sediment under pressure, conglomerate rocks-- this is where the idea started, buried in my twin loves of earth science and pen and ink drawings.  My husband sees an aerial landscape here.  It is hard to say which explanation I prefer, but in the end, the piece speaks in a different language to every viewer.

A word about the fabric:  This is a soft, loosely woven cotton.  I rusted it, washed it, buried it in the garden for a week, dug it up and washed it again and decided it would do as a mop-up cloth for a painting session.  The color in the lower part of the piece is from spilled dyes and cleaned paint brushes.  More washing.  Nothing was planned, and when I last washed it I thought it might make a good lining cloth for other projects.  I've used several smaller cuts from the cloth in stitched pieces over the past several years.

This thin, loose cotton is lined with four layers of linen, including worn napkins and a piece of linen left over from dress-making eons ago (how's that for responsible re-use of materials?).  The back of the work is almost as interesting as the front-- there are times I can't decide which side to show and which to put against the wall!

Starry Night

This is a little piece that wouldn't stay within the 4" square I meant for it.  It is an example of my starting something that simply had a mind of its own, and then hanging on as it galloped  off in another direction.

The fabric is linen I dyed, and the threads are a mix of hand and commercially dyed cottons and silks.  A little white-painted bowl sat on the worktable with the brightly-colored skeins tumbled together as I stitched and planned and listened to the story the threads were chatting about as the lines and shapes unfolded under my fingers.  Working with intense colors is always quite stimulating, but to add to the mood of creativity I listened to the soundtrack of BFG as the stitching progressed.  How could anything stay sedate and perfectly mannerly with John Williams' delightful music filling the studio?

And that is how all of these little images came to dwell here: stars, even a little block of fallen stars, a blackberry "briar" patch, river road, tracks, foliage . . .  Ethan shares my passion for blue and green, so this will be my subject for our writing club meeting this afternoon.  The children write their stories, Grandmother stitches hers.  The children read their lovely written works, Grandmother tells hers and accepts the children's excited interruptions the way historians add footnotes to the body of their data.  What better way to spend the after-homework-is-done moments of an afternoon in the studio?

And yes, Beth Ralph, you are entirely right about the way the story should be matted and framed rather than stretched over a small wooden stretcher the way I usually do these pint-sized pieces.  Isn't Show 'N Tell the best part of FreeStyle?

Feathers by the water

The story of this piece is one of wondering, "What if . . . ?"

It started off innocently enough, a weaving in a variety of yarns and thread, then the idea of weaving feathers into the story changed everything . . .

Once the feathers were in place, weaving the last part of the piece was impossible.  The feathers changed the story, and I left off working on this for weeks, waiting for the rest of the idea to form.  That was when Sherry Mayfield suggested that I not continue weaving at the bottom of the little hand loom, but to ease the piece down the empty warp and work from the new middle toward the top.

After I had moved the weaving and feathers down, it seemed a shame to do something common to it, like weaving with ordinary (or, in my case, semi-ordinary) materials.  Instead, I made a fabric sandwich of silk paper, a scrap from a vintage handkerchief, a cutting of old linen, and covered it with silk chiffon and a small strip of more silk paper.  This was the point of initial stitching, straight stitches using a high-sheen cotton floss in horizontal lines.

When it all held together fairly well, I began weaving the embroidered block into the open warp.  That called for more stitching to secure the embroidered sandwich to the piece (or the sandwich to the warp).  For this I used silk, a pale blue Spun Silk with Flame thread from Stef Francis.   These new silk straight stitches were all done in vertical lines in contrast with the cotton.  The vintage cotton yo-yo looks on the scene with kindly interest.

Three days of intensive stitching and assessing the progress of the piece followed.  With a deep breath (carefully, carefully) I cut the piece from the loom, then began weaving the warp ends into the stitching behind the fabric sandwich.  Next came a strip of "eyelash" from Tentakulum (Painter's Threads) near the bottom and above the feathers, and stitching the little reeds in shades of indigo silk.

I believe it is done.  When I look at it I find no adjectives or adverbs in need of changing, so the story is complete.  I have never inserted a stitched cloth, large or small, into a weaving before this, but as I consider the possibilities this is a mixing of techniques quite worth exploring.  The warp threads that are left on the front of the work are the most challenging feature for future experimentation.  Thank you Sherry, for encouraging me to look at this piece differently!

A closer look at the stitched/fabric sandwich weaving:

Now, if I can keep from touching it long enough to consider mounting and presentation . . .

UPDATE on the Feathers:  Poor feathers!  One was lost in moving it about . . . I think it is time to think of a resuscitation (yet again),  as one has been lost.  Or, I should simply move on, put this hexed piece in a studio journal and note it is not something to be tried again.

*Sigh*

Dreamscape

The ladder that seems to reach into a befuddled sky . . .

Two summer strolls

In a little park, strolling, and thinking about . . .

Turquoise beads and a scrap of fringed green fabric.

The threads and I considered how many different ways we could color kid glove leather, the threads were of the opinion that the leather could NEVER be as nuanced and subtle as they.   Because it was growing late, I did not answer.  But the next day I spent a lot of time working on putting color on smooth, thin, kid leather.

Small Glimpse

Sometimes an idea and I wrestle together in the studio.  The wrestling takes many forms:  I carry the difficult piece to other places to see it in a different light; I will often try something that is absolutely wrong simply to get some movement on the idea; or in the end I take a deep breath and cut the piece apart.  

This ground was a large (remember who's writing here) woven piece built up from from strips of linen and silk.  Maybe the size of the original froze the blood in my fingers.  I don't know.  But when I cut the larger piece apart, there was instant understanding and new direction, even a bit of fun in adding more layers to the back of the ground for more stability.  The cutting resulted in a stack of 2" (approximately) squares.

From the change of direction came a glimpse of tree, water, and sun.  Just a glimpse.  It came on a day when I needed to have a pink and blue tree in my afternoon. 

Spring Musings

An examination of spring colors, spring fragility-- these two pieces have surfaces of silk over layers of hand-dyed silks and linens.  

The first is on a firm ground of so many layers I lost count as it was being assembled.  The silk chiffon over the top of all was dyed, spottily so.  But it was the spottiness that gave the center pink area more interest.  The green danglies are there because it reminded me of the texture of the spring as it just comes into being.

Here is a different look at the spring.  The small piece is worked in hand on a very thin ground of (mostly) transparent silks and little snips of linen and a dyed lace.  The tree was made separately was slipped under the chiffon before being stitched in place.  A bit of hand-dyed linen defines the ground and left of the landscape, but the tree itself still dominates the scene because of the full bushiness of its branches and foliage, even covered.  The beads are trying to tame everything, but you know how difficult it can be to tame a spring day.  Held up to the light, it changes character, in that mysterious way light has of transforming colors. 

Rainy Day in the Neighborhood

Obsessive stitch.  Neurotic stitch.  The sorts of stitched pieces that have their roots in a succession of rainy days.  About 4" x 4".  Layers of different fabrics, stitched experimentally-- part of this was stitched and dyed prior to the appliqué and addition of more stitching, which gives it great textural interest.

Two Trees, Moon

Roughly 5" square.  From sketches of the early autumn trees in the moonlight.

Topographies of the Mind

I had an idea about stitches suspended above a surface, and to this end I experimented with a block of wood, nails, wire of different gauges, strips of cloth, yarn of various sizes, a woven ribbon of some stiff, natural fiber, and a couple of tubes of blue and white acrylic paint.

The block of wood was a scrap of 2" x 6" lumber, painted in layers of blue, slightly distressed-looking.  When it was dry, I planned paths across the surface and  began to nail into it.  With the nails in place, I used different materials, including picture hanging wire, to begin wrapping and stitching the posts.  Before this, I would never have guessed that I could actually shape stitches with picture hanging wire.

The circular forms took shape as I connected the lines with stitch.  After the stitching was finished I hammered the nails further into the block.

The result is akin to a topographic map, some of the hills quite tall and broad, others lower, more like islands in a stream.

When the call for entries came in August or September for a mixed media international exhibit sponsored by EGA, I was still working on this piece in fits and starts, so I set other things aside and began working to finish it in earnest.  And two days ago, I got word that the piece had been accepted!

Now I have only to package and mail it to Louisville after the New Year for the photographing and set-up.  The show runs between February 3 and July 15 of 2016.

Which is by way of saying that you just never know where curiosity will lead you, or what odd materials you might find for making stitches.  Mixed Media, in the words (or near words) of Jean Littlejohn, is anything you want it to be.

Mystery of the cloth, No. 1

Layers of meaning, giblets felted into a layer of roving and scrim and almost obscured, then stitching over and beside those marks, more felting, more stitching– the cloth becomes a palimpsest of present and former marks.

Part of a series of experiments with mark-making on different fabrics.

Conversation by brook

My favorite ground for stitching is made of layers of soft fabric.  To this end I save scraps of every fabric that comes into the studio, no matter the color or fiber content.  Pale pieces can be painted or tinted, frayed or re-woven, and silk or organza act as slight masking agents to push too-forward colors back a notch.  I don’t remember ever meeting a natural-fiber fabric I couldn’t warm up to.

So when I began building the layers of fabric that eventually became this piece, I was looking for texture and shape more than color.  I used fabric paints and dyes to get the colors I needed.  After hand basting the small pieces and machine stitching the edges, the surface stitching was done in silks of floss and perle.

The conversation is an interrupted one, just as the work was not accomplished in a straight line.  Here, Art Imitates Life.

Rusting Fabrics

First efforts at rusting fabric were more than satisfactory.  I luuuuuuuve this!  There is a mysterious quality to a cloth with random marks on it that is not quite the same as a cloth that has been organized in a commercially printed manner.  The first experiment was to bundle, with no plan or organization for the shapes.  And using tea leaves, for grey and charcoal tones.  Next time I will start to organize the shapes on the fabric a bit more.

Above is a piece of China Silk, with single-strand cotton floss embroidery worked as an ATC.

Below is a lot of layering with stitches, vintage leather, buttons (the old, less-than-perfect ones match the rusting and scrappy-fabric quality of this piece), and a little twig, on right.

I am not a difficult woman to please, am I?  Rusted objects, scraps of fabric, odd threads, a handful of buttons . . .  My thanks to Tone and my sister for the old rusty objects.

Couching Favorite

Besides Bullion Stitches, I am very fond of couching.  Couched Linen Thread is a stunning texture, but even the humble cotton floss can be impressive when the couching is tiny, tight, and rather close-packed.  This is a small section of a much larger work.

Rug-Style Embroidery

This piece was laid down as a series of stripes, a sort of modified log-cabin quilt block.  With some poetic license.  From the stitched frame, you may deduce (correctly) that I am overly fond of Bullion Stitches.

This is what I call "Rug-Style" embroidery, because the surface is completely covered.  I believe this may be a piece I stitched during several church services many years ago.  The organ was in a pit, behind a low wall, and surrounded by choir members-- too tempting!

No, the Devil did not make me do it; I am perfectly capable of discovering temptation without any outside help.