Domestic Sketches

Today, in The Time Of COVID-19, I am unashamed in pursuing normalcy through examining commonplace, often overlooked objects.  This slowly-stitched, meditative process is a reminder that there is life after this, that there will be a time when we can all exhale and take tentative steps toward establishing our own "new normal."

These four sketches are stitched on rough linen scraps that have been cobbled together to make a whole.  The challenge was to stitch over the raw-edged seam lines without having any little hiccups in the lines of floss.  The green, natural and blue blocks were a learning process, but when I got to the cup and saucer, my capacity for challenge was exhausted, and I used an intact scrap of linen twill as my background block.

Summer in the Deep South, Oddments

In early June I wondered if this would be the year of extended spring that went straight to autumn.  No such luck.  We have experienced bursts of rain interspersed with temperatures in the high 80s and low-mid 90s.  Gardening time is just after daylight, then again just before dusk.

Which means the best place to be is in the studio!

One thing Quarantine time has given me is a space to reflect and put things together.  Finishing the Almost-Dones has been a pleasure, too.  I have amassed a collection of little pieces, palm-size or a little larger, and when I came across them, I began to add to the collection.  These are concerned with color and texture, some are about shapes.  None are really finished pieces, but they are ideas.  The best thing to do when you aren't full of inspiration and the muse is off visiting friends and partying, is to simply show up and do something.  Lack of Inspiration and uncooperative Muse can be my excuses for not getting work done.

With that thought, I began to arrange some of the pieces into vignettes.  Once done, I thought of filling in the white spaces between them with little oddments collected since I was a child and curious about all small things that could pop into a pocket and be pulled out later for closer examination.  I found an old frame with a front-closing door and began to assemble these bits and pieces in some order.  I call the collection "Oddments," and, with great originality, they are numbered 1 to 4.  I have not kept any of them in the frame, but I photographed the individual vignettes.  The idea of leaving them flexible and mobile is appealing, particularly in this time of turmoil and change.  Nothing seems to stay the same anymore.

I offer you a guided tour of my day of play.

No. 1:  Here the center green circle is a tag from a dress by Gudrun Sjoden of which I am particularly fond, so I did a little stitching on it.  The other stitcheries are on linen, paper, even one in the lower line (on a yellow wedge ground) is unspun silk on a piece of paper towel with paint splattered onto it.  The slice of house at lower right is what I secretly fantasize about painting my (presently) blue house one day.  Painting the dots was an inspired moment, as the linen was from a very old shift I'd worn threadbare before I would take it out of my closet.

No. 2:  The arched line is an experimental wrapping of thread and fabric scraps, really small shreds of fabric that I dug out of my waste clippings.  The upper left leaf design is stitched on paper and cloth, with the leaf shape sponged onto paper from a wet cloth I'd just dyed.  Next to it is part of a (very) old wax-painted sample.  The wood in center is from a beautiful and large lavender bush that I brought with me when we moved back home from Knoxville in 2008, and after 12 years of bewilderment at its new location, the plant simply folded up shop.  I love the wood, as even the roots of lavender are a feast for the eyes.  The little boat at the bottom center is thumb-sized, to give you an idea of scale (or maybe of the size of my arthritic thumbs).

No. 3:  The center yellow piece was stitched on a scrap from a manilla mailing envelope.  Using Cas Holmes' instructions (The Found Object in Textile Art) for momigami paper, I wadded, folded, scrunched and crinkled until the paper softened to have a fabric-like hand.  I ironed it, and stitched with hand and machine.  It is a memory of travel to New Mexico with our son many years ago.  The thumb tacks next to it are ancient, I remember them in the back of a drawer from my childhood.  And the little ladder in the lower row is from some long-lost toy of my son's saving.  It is next to a stitching on paper (right) and little shape studies (left).  The red buttons were from my mother, and the piece directly above it came from studying Gwen Hedley's Drawn to Stitch.

No. 4:  Here I realized I had gone to setting things up in something like rigid exhibition order, and this page, though it has some of my favorite objects on it, is less animated than the other pages.  I have confessed to you, with the photograph, of my love of buttons that aren't always perfect and round.  Likewise, my feeling about trees and shrubs.  The little trees were wrapped from snips of embroidery and knitting thread so they look as if they can dance and actually enjoy themselves.  The black and white piece at top left ignited an interest in zentangle drawing and stitching that lasted almost a year, along with sketchbooking with white ink on black paper.

What a huge mess I made with this project, but it was a fun and productive mess.  At least that is what I kept telling myself . . .

Autumn Leaves

It is still a bit green here; autumn is more a state of mind than a reality, at present.

But to hurry the season along I have made almost a dozen leaves.  They are for the EGA chapter meeting, to be used as door prizes next week.  Peggy is making the other half of the project.  These are to be table decorations that Carol will put together with her genius for decorating.

The leaves are decorated with straight stitches and machine stitch, backed with synthetic felt (because when I cut into wool felt my allergies rose immediately and my eyes began to swell).

The surface of these leaves is hand-painted or dyed linen:

The leaf above has quite an orderly arrangement of straight stitches, but the green one below has scattered seed stitches in an assortment of autumn colors:

Here a little patterning:

The left side of this leaf was cut from a piece of cotton print, the right side is chocolate linen with commercially-printed cotton held in place with machine stitching:

Free-motion machine stitch on dyed linen:

And a pair of stout leaves:

The last one was cut from a piece of cotton I found in a Thrift Store, a gathered skirt with miles of swirling lines-- the same print in the spotted leaf, above.  I found the shape of a leaf in the swirls and stitched with tiny back stitches to attach it to the linen:

I do not have photographs of the others, but they are all made of this same simplicity, simple shapes, simple stitches.

Enjoy!

Yellow Blouse

Here I have combined my loves of stitch and creating clothing that is just a little on the edge of whatever is called normal.  O.K.  "Funky."  In a collage, around 6" square.  Silk and linen, the blouse in black cotton floss, one or two strands.

I learned to sew from my mother, and this was all part of the woman's education she felt was important to her daughters.  It is a skill for which I am grateful on a daily basis.  A Woman's Work.

I am practicing creating stitched patterns on plain fabric on a human scale by making myself a vest for the fall/winter, using pieces from recycled clothing and lots of stitch.  If I finish this in my lifetime, I will post pictures and details of its construction.  Working in patches of color can be interesting, it gives some definition to the space to be stitched.  And I've found that if I want loosely-spaced straight stitches, I can turn the fabric over and stitch lines of Buttonhole Stitch on the "wrong" side, and the "right" side (which now holds the back of the stitch) has all sorts of interesting lines on it.  There are moments when the vest looks as if it is on its way to being reversible . . .  I write this sidebar because the vest and its slightly different embellishment is inspired by this stitched collage of a yellow blouse.

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: