TAST Week Nine Couching

This was a great opportunity to make something I've had in mind for years. I used variegated chenille yarn (did you know chenille is French for caterpillar? very graphic when you study the yarn!) along with unplied embroidery flosses, using all six strands; the couching thread is a metallic thread which I plied out so I worked with a single ply. This bit into the heavier threads enough to keep them in place.

I worked this in a three part piece with a kind of Josquin (early music composer) feeling, on heavy handmade paper I'd created ages ago, too. this time the top section was on finer paper, easier to penetrate with a needle, to give a light feeling to the top panel. But the other two panels, much heavier, needed a hammer and nail to create the holes before I could work them. I never realized embroidery could involve hammering and a lot of noise. Since I love hitting, this was in fact a bonus experience.

The designs follow down (or across, haven't decided whether this is a vertical or horizontal piece yet) and the empty space between them makes the eye complete the pattern. This is very early music-like, where emptiness is important.

Anyway, here's the finished stitching. Complete work seen here vertically (I'd be interested in feedback on whether horizontal or vertical is better, by the way)



Here's the top, or left panel seen horizontally



Panel two, the middle, either way, horizontally



Panel Three bottom or right, depending! seen her vertically





The actual backing and presentation, which won't show at the front at all, is yet to be done. But I couldn't wait to show you anyway.

Silly Knitting!

To see the latest Silly Knitting, this time a whippet, added to the Dollivers' menagerie, go here

Earlier blogposts in Field and Fen give you more info about the origin of the dog, crediting the book it came from.

More fiber adventures: knitting in crochet thread and wire, with handmade paper

Two new works finally have seen completion. Both involve knitting, one with cream colored crochet thread, in a series of stitches including my favorite feather and fan, with a handmade paper face, to form a classical column, where yarnovers simulate architectural detail



The paper face is very fine abaca, thin to the point of dissolution, works with the ancient motif of the knitted pillar. Size about 30" long by 8" wide.

The other work is knitted in colored wire, a fish, inset into a net of wires and threads in a wrapped form. Here seen close up,



and here seen further away



so you can detect the threads trailing down from the fish.

Anyone wanting to know how to do the molding of the face forms, let me know and I'll be glad to explain. Likewise if you'd like tips on knitting with wire, say so, and I'll put in a few pointers on that, too. Each for each is what we teach!

New Knitted Wallhanging

Almost complete, needs a dowel at the top to replace the knitting needle I worked it on, and heavy handmade bead here and there on the braided parts. This was knitted in heavy twine, the braided parts knotted over then carded at the ends to fray them out. The face is artist made paper, molded.The context for this piece is a series of knitted, crocheted and woven wallhangings to be part of a summer exhibit.

Tumbling block, a new look

This is a piece of fabric I created years ago, in fact it was exhibited more than once in a different incarnation,and now I've overstitched in gold thread -- sorry, difficult to see here, but a selection of the tumbling block outlines are picked out in a single long stitch -- and it's stretched and mounted 20 inches high, 16 inches wide, one my favorite dimensions in many media.

This fabric was undyed natural colored muslin, which I left out in the rain wrapped around a piece of cast iron, to acquire interesting rust and mold markings, then dyed with silk dye, washed out to get a very subtle tone, and stamped with tumbling block designs, using an archival stamp pad ink, the designs carved in rubber stamp making material. the stamp is carved to resemble wood grain, but that's not a big part of the effect, just gives it a textured sort of feeling. So its latest adventure is as an embroidered piece, where the stitches just partner with the general feeling of the tumbling block design, to give a illusion of many levels. At least that's the idea!

This low contrast work harks back to my early art, where I worked white on white in paper, or black on black, and it was very difficult to get a studio able to make good slides of my work, a terrible challenge to a photographer. So glad the bad old days of slides are no more, and that my digi enables me to do it myself, at least well enough to be visible, anyway!

Finished, stretched, color experiment piece

I finished the stitching, then went in and painted, and finally stretched the batik piece and here it is, done. This is a closeup of it, better to see the stitches with.

Taking a needle for a walk in a batik jungle

You know how one of those art professor assignments is to take a color you're not fond of and work with it in a way that you can come to like? I took this piece of batik to work freeform over it, using purple and a goldy-orange, which are good on the color wheel, but neither of them is a fave of mine, purple bringing up a bitter taste in my mouth.






I decided to try the assignment and found interestingly that the purple suggested interesting swoops and moves. So you never know. I'll see if I end up thinking this piece is okay as I go along. It's going to be stretched 20x16 approximately, in size.

Knitting in cotton and wire

Alongside all these embroidery capers, I've been working steadily along on other fiber arts works. Here's Fishnet, knitted in various stitches, with applied fish knitted and wrapped in wire, stretched on a frame. Size is about 30 x 16, forgot to measure exactly and now I'm on a different floor. Anyway, this is an entry in my summer exhibit, seems seasonable, come to think of it!

Whole work



and a detail



so you can see the fish better and the knitted stitches, too

There are passages of Feather and Fan, various forms of yarnover wraps and drops, lace using k2togs, and various other little adventures in here. The thread is heavy cotton, terrible on your hands, because it doesn't "give" as you work, but okay to make this piece. The fish are various gauges of wire ranging from 28 up to fatter.

All this is done, as usual, alla prima: no planning and and rough sketches ahead of time, just go with what the yarn wants to do. The fish were already a wall item,but I realized they really belonged as part of this work, so I swam them over into it.

TAST Week Seven Running Chain aka Detached Chain, aka Lazy Daisy!

I had already used this stitch in several ways on my dyed silk piece, which you see here with all three panels now attached, because the shape of running chain lends itself to activating space, to "seeding" areas with interest without attracting too much attention to itself, and to combining with other stitches, such as feather and herringbone and running, to make interesting new shapes and forms.

So here's the completed piece, height 49 inches, width 23,



and here are a couple of details showing the combination idea



and the activating space idea, where it interacts with fly stitch



As always I lean toward the spare rather than the busy, in embroidery, just my own taste. I like the fabric to speak for itself, too, and not be drowned out in a pandemonium of stitches! but I do enjoy the work of people who love to fully populate their fabric with stitches.
I remember learning this stitch, as Sharon B. points out, as a little kid, often the first stitch you learn in crewel work, at maybe six or so. We did learn all kinds of skills like this very young in Europe. I love the hand movements that go with this one.

And, to go back to the origin of this challenge, go here

TAST Week Six, Chevron Stitch

I was in the midst of creating a Rule of Three artwork when this challenge came in, and it fitted in just fine! you'll see chevron in the top panel of composition, Anxiety



then Collapse in the middle one



then Resolution in the third, woven one



The top two panels are stitched in embroidery floss, unplied, and the bottom one, the weaving, has a warp of embroidery floss and weft in various colors of fine wire. The base is handmade abaca paper I made in my studio some time ago, and which comes in very handy in this kind of mixed media work. Very difficult to stitch through, though, think about shoving a needle through lino or something! But permanently stable, since it's made from original abaca fiber, Ph pure. The three will be hung separately, vertically, each backed with foamcore to stabilize them on the wall, but it won't show, because I want to preserve the ragged edges.

If you're not familiar with the art concept of Rule of Three, it's just that three is a balanced and interesting grouping -- as in the triangle, which is both visually and physically stable, and which you will see all the time in classical painting, the way the composition is created, I mean. Odd numbers in general work better in art than even numbers, and in real life, it's always nicer to receive an odd number of flowers, because they're easier to arrange in a vase. Not that the purveyors of a dozen red roses will take any notice of that, of course..

Anyway, this work, if you're interested in deconstruction, is about, reading top to bottom, insecurity, middle panel dissolution, bottom panel resolution. Each panel is approximately 8 x 11 inches. And you can interpret further at will, your fun!

Nice honor, thank you Sharon B!

Sharon, the leader of the TAST challenge and blogger at PinTangle, selects a few entries each week to highlight, from the many offerings in the challenge. And this week I was one of the lucky guys she highlighted! very thrilling, thank you.

If you want to check in, go here and scroll down a bit. Yay!

Monotype madness

For a peek in at tonight's monotype making workshop I conducted for the local artists' association, go here

Collaborative Fiber Art

In a box of fabric scraps I was given recently, was this piece of, I think, Japanese, hand printed fabric,which was just what I was looking for as a basis for some freeform stitching. If I knew the artist who designed the piece, I'd credit her, but all I can do here is to acknowledge her, which I do very warmly. This piece will be stretched like a painting and hung that way, as a fiber art wall piece.

It's a soft grey with a cool black overprint, probably rayon, hand stitched in five shades of blue, which are not easy to see here, sorry. I've given two overviews,





and two details





The whole piece will hang as a 28 (height) by 22 (width) wallhanging.

TAST Week Five Herringbone

This stitch is a happy one to work with, and I show you how it's incorporated into one of my ongoing embroideries. I'm not making a stitch sampler, unlike quite a few TAST participants, and I'm not using an evenweave or counted stitch type of base, but rather working freehand, with no prearranged lines and no weave to work with. For me this is more fun,but I admire enormously the accomplishment of a lot of the other participant work I've been seeing, too. For me,the unexpectedness of freestyle is what attracts.

Speaking of which, if you want to see a few quick studies I ripped out this week in monotypes, go here

Unofficial Embroidery goes on...

The gauze piece is coming along. I've used up all my silver metal thread now, and I'm going to see how color works into this as I go, before rushing out to get more silver thread. I'm getting the rhythm of embroidery now, so that the curves are more the way I hope for them to be, always a plus. It's so different from other forms of artwork, faster in some ways, much slower and more deliberate in others, and always governed by how long my hands will hold out.






Here are a couple of detail views of part of the work to date. It will eventually bet stretched like a painting and hung that way so the creases you see will be gone. I'm working it on a frame, but the fabric tends to take on the impression of the frame, so I have to take it off as soon as I stop working.

Undisputed Embroidery

Meaning this is just one of the big pieces I'm working on freestyle, no predecided design in mind, let the thread lead the way, no challenge stitches involved. Yet. After Tuesday maybe there'll be a new intro. Meanwhile, this is a piece of polyester gauze, metallic thread, under way.

This piece is about three feet each way, but will be on stretchers smaller than that once I see where it's going. It will be a hanging wallpiece, stretched like a painting.

Here's a detail on the frame:




And off showing more of the design:



The process for this one is to let the random dyeing suggest the shapes and meaning of the stitches, so a sunflower starts to appear here and a tulip there, and ferns over there and so on. The landscape will reveal itself as I go.

TAST Week Four Cretan Stitch, I think

I included this in one of the current silk pieces in process, but had a difficult time seeing the difference between this and other previous stitches in the series. Perhaps this was my execution,but what I did, though I like the look of it, seems not different enough from say feather stitch, or even running fly, to merit its own title. But this is just me!

I show two views of this piece here



You'll notice I took some liberties with it here and there, too, since I am not a fan of rigidly adhering to stitch patterns. For my taste, I like to see more of a flow to the thread, a bit of a life of its own!

The origin of the TAST challenge

To go back to the Pin Tangle blog, where the challenge originated, go here

TAST Week Three Feather Stitch

This variation on fly stitch went well with the general feeling of the brown silk panels, so I applied it to the second one now in progress, as you see. Pix are shot from two different angles, to try to bring out the general effect.





Feather is one of those annoying stitches that make you take away the number you first thought of, if you follow me, since it asks you to reverse your thinking alternately with your preferred hand movement. Interesting, once you get the hang of it -- again! it's one of those stitches, also that you can easily forget if you haven't made it lately.

Here I've applied it irregularly, in the sort of windblown effect you get in nature, at least that's the idea. You can see the interesting contrast with the more rigid lines of the buttonhole stitch from a previous TAST week. And lazy daisy gets in there, too, so if that shows up in a future week's challenge, I can point to this and say, aha, you saw it first here!

TAST Week Two Buttonhole Stitch

This is part of the continuing embroidery stitch challenge posed by Pin Tangle, this week being buttonhole stitch, or blanket stitch. In fact I disagree with her definition, which equates buttonhole exactly with blanket, gosh you'd never think embroidery of all things would be controversial, but blanket stitch travels one way, no twist at the top, to avoid uncomfortable edging on a blanket, while buttonhole travels the other way, with a twist at the top for reinforcement at the edge of the buttonhole. There are a number of variations on this, and probably a number of opinions, too, but this is what I learned in convent high school from our master embroiderer, teacher and amazing needlewoman Miss Harris, who probably had a first name, too,but we were never in those days, admitted into such intimate knowledge!

The original challenge is to learn, or enlarge on, a stitch each week for its own sake. But I was already under way with several large embroideries, so I've decide to incorporate Pin Tangle's challenge into my own, and use her stitch suggestions as part of the design I'm already embroiled in!

I show you part of the work off the hoop, for a bigger view



and on the hoop



showing it more taut and visible. Much more will be done to this area before I call it finished. But, as a believer in collaborative art, I'm grateful to Pin Tangle for the TAST challenge!

Design Ideas in Nature

Feel free to use these! as design ideas, I mean, don't swipe the pix themselves. I saw these on this afternoon's walk in the local wilderness area. Mild day, but there was ice lingering, too.








The geese flying overhead are just a reminder of how the whiteness looks dark against the bright sky, and bright against the dark clouds, the sun picking out the light in their feathers.







And tree roots, wonderful idea for drawing, painting, stitching, printmaking...

TAST

I joined a huge group of embroiderers in doing a challenge posed by Pintangle, great Australian embroiderer, the challenge known as Take a Stitch Tuesday, aka TAST. Each week she poses a new stitch either to learn if you are not an experienced embroiderer, or to work from and adapt and generally play about with if you know the stitch. This is the first week of the challenge, presenting fly stitch, which already appeared in the current works I'm on, so I figured okay to show the pieces and let viewers spot the fly stitch appearances!

These were fabrics I hand dyed before working into them with thread, painting with a needle, and there's a lot more to happen before they're officially done, but this is just a peek at the progress so far. With any luck they will be part of the exhibit of fiber arts I'm putting on in June. The silk piece is one of three to hang vertically from a rod



and a detail



and the cotton fabric piece will be mounted on stretchers like a painting, for exhibit. Here's a general image




and a detail of the beginning work

The Silk Road, maybe

I'm in the throes of a three panel silk piece. I dyed three sections of white silk, using coffee dye, showed you this a while back,and allowed it to move as it wanted to, taking advantage of the laws of fluid dynamics, and now I'm at the next stage.

What I'm doing is using embroidery and metallic brush pens to work into the designs that formed themselves, with a different color grouping for each panel. They should work together okay, since the harmony of the three parts will hold up, and the backgrounds though varied, are the same dye working on it.

Here's panel three, or maybe one, or maybe two, they're not joined up yet. Complete panel then two details enlarged. I plan on joining the three panels in some interesting way when I decide how (!) and meanwhile, I'm grappling with the technicalities of actually doing this work.





Here's the deal: the matter at hand is how to introduce embroidery, which I'm dying to do, without sinking into prettiness and trivia. One way is that I'm using metal brush pens to echo the embroidery stitches, and to fool the eye into wondering which is which. I'll do couching, too, which is laying a thread on top of the fabric and catching it at intervals with a stitch, but so you see it as a continuous line. I'm aiming for richness and texture and color, but not oh how cute, if you follow me.

The other limitation for my hands, which are much better these days, but don't like to push a needle for very long through resistant fabric, is that my time at each session of embroidering is short. But I can paint for a while.

So this is where I am. This is a piece that has to move slowly, very unlike my usual headlong take no prisoners approach, but I think it needs that, so that I can make decisions rather than reactions.

Comments and suggestions are welcome! This is the kind of thing I can't really carry in to the artists' group for critique for several reasons, one being the portability of a fragile piece and how to show it, the other being that I suspect the fiber aspect of it might not be in the experience of the other artists. I could be wrong, there, as Monk says...

Learning to Play Again!

Last night was a meeting of the local artists' group, and after a session of analyzing and enjoying each other's work, some of us settled to draw a telescope set up as a model, and some of us drew the other participants!

These are a few charcoal head studies of fellow artists.