Stitching News August 2020/2

Welcome to this new post of Stitching News. My focus this time is on collage.

I have been really busy getting further sampling on my assignment finished, then over the last few days I have had great fun using up some of the precious tiny scraps; as well as “not so tiny” eco prints, stitched sample snippets, unused hand made-prints, etc. that I have been looking at, in some cases just since lock down, but in other cases for several years!! I have a couple of boxes on my table overflowing with scraps that I don’t want to throw away.

I absolutely loved the collage exercises which was one of our tasks in the Colour Unit (Unit 2) of the Machine Embroidery Course.

I have never really done anything much in the way of collage, and the technique and method of choice was left entirely to us. I was hooked, and loved the essence of using colour to create exciting ideas using collections from the fabrics and painted papers we had been creating. The collages then were purely creating colour groups. I have extended my collage content now opening it up in a very different way.

In the collage on the left I have included paper; hand and machine stitch; Eco print, hand-made eraser prints on card. The list could be endless. I have found that the more I do, the more I understand the composition, colour and balance that suits me.

In this collage on the left, the two scraps with machine stitch were off-cuts from a piece of stitching where I was sorting out tensions and stitch pattern on my machine. It was lying around on my table,and caught my eye when I had added the right hand side of the collage with the pink printed flower head. I felt it gave some balance, in the colour to have it repeated a couple of times more.

Inevitably the maker is going to bring their individual style to the work. I have long loved combining hand stitch and machine stitch to my work. I have been Eco printing for several years now, and have a wealth of material to draw from there, and for as long as I can remember I have had a varied and immensely useful scrap bag of decorated papers; printed, inked, painted, textured, etc, and have dipped into them frequently in my work. The Embroidery Course design exercises have significantly stocked me up with a fresh supply!

Collages can be small or large, all fabric, mixed media, or some of both. They can include photos, found objects, paintings, prints, mark making, collections; ideas are endless. They could be pictoral, or abstract. Instagram and Pinterest will give you many ideas if you are interested in dabbling! for my work I haven’t followed anything other than my own nose, and those of you who have known me for many years, would look at these and probably say “that’s Di Wells”!!

If you haven’t attempted a collage before, but would like to have a go, here are a few suggestions that may help you to get started. Consider what finished size you would like to make. At the moment mine are 4″ square. For me this seems to be a nice size to work with. Mine are square, but you can obviously work with whatever shape and size works for you.

What are your interests? Maybe you love gardening…..lots of suggestions and imagery right outside your back door. You may well subscribe to a favourite magazine, if so study photographs that appeal to you, and look at their content, colour palette, change of scale, texture. If you can bear to, tear out imagery or ideas that you know you would use….if you can’t bear to tear it out, photocopy it. Those are just a couple of suggestions. Magazines could be to do with natural history, cooking, interiors, quilting.

We all have unfinished projects … if they are small, and you either know you won’t return to them, or you just really do not like them, consider whether something might be salvageable? That could be an excellent starting point.

The little eraser printed house just off centre in this second collage has been lying around in my sewing room for longer than I care to admit.

I began with this as my focus. I have then included part of a rejected (by me!) machine stitched sample in the top left corner, another scrap on the right when I was testing my stitch tension. I liked the leaves in this one, and felt that the Eco printed leaf I laid on last of al seemed to link to it. I also have some newspaper snippets from my “painting of papers” sessions. I always place some layers of newspaper on top of a plastic sheet protecting my work surface. This was directly underneath the range of different papers I was inking up. The bottom left hand corner shows two snippets, the red one with an arrow, and the other a flower, now turquoise! That particular newspaper page is a myriad of wonderful colours. I just tore out two small scraps. The golden pieces are recycled and over dyed colour catcher. I particularly like the change of scale and mix of hand stitch and machine stitch. The “tree” which overlays the top is an Eco print of a Pieris Forest Flame leaf cluster, one of many dozens of Eco prints in my collection! I have hand and machine stitched in areas and even added a little paper pieced triangle. As I am working I try to be aware of colour balance and tone.

Contrasts add energy. They could be: colour, texture; change of scale; space, machine and hand stitch, large and small, shiny and matt…..etc etc

I cut a 4 1/4″ square of “background to work onto. This might be a fabric or a supporting paper. Alternatively if that is too small for you to work with, cut a larger piece, turn it over to the back, and lightly draw a 4” square centrally. Thread a needle and using a contrasting coloured thread, make a running stitch along the drawn pencil lines of the square. Turn the fabric back over to the right side, and then work to the edges of the stitched lines. Allow a fraction of overlap, so that you can do a final trim with your rotary cutting equipment when the work is complete.

Those of you who did the Charity “Kantha house” workshop in September 2018 with me in the Big Barn at Cowslip Workshops will probably recognise the lino printed house, in the collage above. Those little houses have been really useful! The three collages above have been created for a specific purpose, and have certainly provided a most enjoyable and creative distraction for a few days recently.

Last year I bought a book called “Sketchbook Explorations for mixed-media and textile Artists” by Shelley Rhodes, published by Batsford. It is an exciting read, absolutely packed full of inspirational, creative advice and ideas for sketchbooks, techniques for collage, making marks and collections. Shelley Rhodes has a fantastic method and style of making collages as you can see from the brilliant book cover. The fascination is in the detail …

I have worked hard on more sampling for my first assignment, and my ideas and thoughts have consolidated now. Anne”s initial feedback was constructive and supportive and gave me the confidence to work further on my sampling. My latest samples have been accepted so I shall be moving that piece of work along during the next few weeks, as well as tackling Unit 4. So I have plenty to get my teeth into! I Have now picked up another small Turvy which has been pieced, and is at the hand quilting stage, prior to adding finer detail. (My evening project back again!)

Finally, you may remember that a couple of newsletters past I explained that Textile Plus, an exhibiting group of which I am a member, had to postpone our exhibition this year due to covid 19

It has now been rescheduled for November 8th-12th 2021. 

A taster of all the exhibitions that have been rescheduled, is now open at The Poly, 24 Church Street, Falmouth, TR11 3EG until Friday 12th September 2020. So please do visit and support the Gallery if you are able.

Until next time, happy stitching!

Di

Stitching News August 2020/1

Good morning everyone. In this Stitching News, I start with further discussion on how I have been working through the preliminary work for my first assignment. For new readers, this is part of the Machine Embroidery Course that I started at the beginning of lock down. I am thoroughly enjoying it, and am constantly discovering all sorts of things about myself, as well as my very simple basic sewing machine. I often have “play” sessions and have a wonderful selection of painted, printed, textured papers I shall be able to dip into for years!!

I have also included an applique sample, and a stitched sample as well as my method of presentation for the work from Unit 3. I have other work in progress, nothing to do with the course and so like many of us, I always have something to hand! I have never been a “finish one project before starting another” kind of person, although I have every respect for those who like to work in that way.

My assignment! My second blog in June explained my initial thoughts about this project. If you would like to refer back to that click on the link. You will need to scroll down on the site.

https://stitchingnews.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/stitching-news-june-2020-2/

Since then I have had a few weeks with ideas just being mulled over in my mind while I was working through the rest of the unit. Fresh ideas developed gradually which was exciting and inspired me to start sampling for this work. So I started afresh by going back to my sketch book where I had made those initial drawings, and I have actually removed a page from that sketch book, where I had sketched some of the original pieces of art work. I have stitched a little folded fabric edge to the left of the page, so that I can attach it to another page when I put all my ideas/sampling and work together in my book on this project.

The photo above is the page that I tore out of my old sketch book. I have now painted the drawings. referring back to the original source has clarified the detail in the original artefacts which has been really useful. I had already prepared some pages for my “project book” and this addition will have to be folded as it is a little too long.

On the back of the page I had drawn some different birds that I found on a photograph of a remnant of fabric. The birds were just outlined in a dark thread, so I have painted a couple of these, and am going to incorporate one of them into my hanging. Furthering my research as well as painting in the detail has been really helpful and has helped me to formulate my ideas. The piece of work will consist of three narrow hangings; the centre one will be bold and colourful and will feature three Kingfishers, (naive in their own ways).

The other two hangings, one on either side of the kingfishers, will be entirely free-machine stitched onto a fabric which is has a subtle monochromatic palette and will not detract from the vibrant centre! I have used this fabric in different guises already during this course, and I think it will be really suitable for this purpose. They will be narrow; one 2″ wide and the other 3″ wide. The centre colourful “tree trunk” measures 1″ wide, so the 1,2,3, series of measurements will work very well together! The monochromatic colours will not overpower the central panel, and the subject matter very nicely complements that of the central feature panel.

This is the stitched sample where I have tried out a range of the fabrics, and media I intend to use. I like the kingfisher although I don’t like the use of the cream scrim on the face; that area needs to be a smooth fabric.

I have used a heavy linen on the tree trunk in places, which works very nicely and I shall incorporate more of that and a little less of the scrim! I think it is going to be fun to work on, and I am looking forward to it. I can see in the photo now that I need to slightly tone down the acid green scrim… a little tea should do the job!

Below are another couple of samples from the last Unit. The first one is bonded applique, where I had to admit to Anne that I had to bend the rules slightly in order for my subject matter to work. She pointed out that if this had been a certified C&G course, the verifier would not have been too happy, but she said, as it isn’t…. flexibilty was allowed!!

Several years ago Jenny, a very longstanding lovely friend who lives in Gloucestershire gave me a delightful calendar one Christmas. It depicted some of Charley Harper’s bird drawings, I have been a fan, ever since!

I decided to use some sketches I drew at the time for my sample. I cut out the shapes from my chosen fabrics, and bonded them in position. …adding no further detail at the time.

For several days I considered the little piece of work before making any more progress on it. I felt it needed more, but wasn’t sure what! Playing around I laid some organza shapes over it, and this transformed it for me.

This is where I then transgressed, because I decided that a machine stitch around the edges of the organza shapes would be far too harsh, and totally detract from the other features I had yet to add, so I hand stitched them in position, which for me, in this context worked! (I have a lovely tutor and obviously expressed my concern to her about the hand stitching).

I then could just add the machine stitched leg and beak details, on top of the organza, finishing with a French knot for the eyes! It is a very simple sample, but on this occasion I felt “less is more”.

The second sample shown below is of Whip Stitch, a totally new machine embroidery technique for me. I knew it would involve changing my sewing machine thread tensions so I had completely procrastinated leaving it to the very end of the unit! However, it has been one of my favourite samples of the unit! Isn’t that often the way; like a dreaded visit to the dentist, it is often the thought, rather than the practicality!

So, whip stitch happens when the bottom thread comes up to the surface of the fabric. So, to start with it is necessary to tighten the top stitch tension (sometimes call the needle thread tension) and/or reduce the bobbin tension. There are also some variations to the basic stitch which I explain further on. Before I did anything else I made a very careful note of how the tension screw on my bobbin looked; ( I drew a diagram) and I also wrote down my top tension reading, also sometimes called the “needle thread” tension reading.

It is important to note that after I had completed all my whip stitch explorations I immediately put my thread tensions back to where they were before I started, and stitched a sample to assess the quality of my stitching.

My fabric for the sample was a hand dyed soft grey colour on which I dabbed a cotton wool bud dipped in bleach. I later added a little water colour paint to the areas, to remove the starkness of the bleach. After experimenting on a scrap of the same fabric I freely stitched, creating these individual flower heads, and noted that I really liked the little “on the spot” knots. I sewed with two or three different combinations of colours at the top and in the bobbin, as you can tell.

When I had finished stitching, I still felt more was needed so I added tiny clusters of bright red painted dots. It just finished it!

The variations that can happen: when you are stitching circles and curves the bottom thread comes up even more to the top due to the tightened top tension and this creates one of the variations called “feather stitch”. Another variation is called “cording” and this happens when you make several tiny stitches, almost on top of each other (free machining) and the bottom thread comes up virtually covering the top stitch. I was pleased that my sample demonstrated the various possibilities. The cording variation is how I made my tiny red stitched “knots” for want of another word! As always, Anne gives detailed explanations of how to prepare the machine and encouraged experimentation and exploration of the techniques, illustrating this with two or three of her own samples.

My finished choice of presentation for Unit 3 was a decision made rather late in the day. Although I had decided at the beginning of this machine embroidery course, that I was going to make a selection of books in which to present the samples from each unit, I changed my mind when I reached the end of Unit 3! It had taken me hours to make the cover for the Unit 2 book, which was to contain the concertina book. Even though it “killed two birds with one stone” and I really love it, it was very time consuming. I am still working on the book for Unit 1, so I needed something effective but much quicker for the Unit 3 samples.

So, here it is! It is a “bucket bag”. It holds all my samples, for which I have cut bespoke backings of mount board. These are a little longer than the samples which hang loosely on them, as I have punched holes in the tops of the boards, and tied the samples in place with hand dyed threads.

I made the bag from wallpaper lining paper. I painted onto both sides of the paper with the left over dye from the fabric dyeing exercise in the unit.

For the handles I made twisted cords from narrow cotton ribbon, (bought as a yarn, again), and I threaded the cords through punched holes and knotted on the inside of the bag.

I reinforced the top of the bag so that any extra stress would not be detrimental. The whole construction is very sturdy, and it stands unsupported too!

There was a lot of work to complete in this unit, and in these blogs I have just presented a few of my samples. I was delighted to be able to send everything in, the 23rd of July. I did take longer than originally intended for this body of work, but as with all adults, sometimes “the best laid plans……”

I have received Unit 4 now and have read it through. Once again there is a great deal to explore and experiment with. We have now completed all the design elements and exercises, and the introduction to Unit 4 says that stitching with allied techniques is the main feature of the second half of the course; i.e. Units 4,5 and 6. Unit 4 certainly looks exciting and full of interest! Our first assignment should be completed, along with the rest of Unit 4. Before I get started on it, I will do some more work on Turvy III

Until next time

Happy Stitching

Di