Coming Along Nicely.

Borderline, that is.  Reader, I cut out those knots.

And added a lot of stitch.  I feel better about that whole area, now, and have identified something (well, somethings, actually) to go in that empty central space.  And then, I had to work out what to do with the rest of the space.  What colour, what thread?  Blue was the original thought, to suggest sky.  Then green, to suggest fields.  Finally, I picked a brown variegated thread, the colour of the earth, and started working round the lower left motif.

There's a lot of stitch going in, resulting in a certain amount of distortion up in the top right, unsurprisingly; I hope that can be blocked out of the piece.  There will be more stitch going into the rest of the piece, so I figure that it all might balance out (yeah, all over distortion...).  My  next set of decisions will be around what I do next with the stitch, whether I continue to follow the lines I've established, as much as I can, or whether I add blocks of stitch using different threads, perhaps adding some darker brown and some hints of green.  I have enough room to add one more line of stitching around the main block, and then I'll have to decide. 

I'm still not happy with All That White, though.  I've never liked working with white.  I don't wear it, either, other than the odd white shirt.  I'm contemplating adding paint after the stitch is complete, in a very light, random way.  Or possibly staining the background with tea, being careful to keep it away from the paper, which I don't want to colour.  I suppose this was predictable, and I really should have thought of it before, but it is what it is, and I'll work with it.  Because process is all there is.

The Right Thing?

Hand sewing, and thinking.  In that order, pretty much.  Finished a section of hand stitch on Borderline, the yellowish rectangle of hand made paper.

My original intention had been to smother that area in tiny seed stitches; as you can see, I've changed my mind, and limited the stitch to the edges, in a sort of uneven border.

So why the change of heart?  Well...because of the fragility of the paper, I had begun by stitching all the way round the edges.  In places where there were holes or tears, I stitched fairly intensively, to make sure the tears didn't get any worse as I worked.  When I had finished the first pass, I realised that that looked interesting, and that really, all I needed to do was to add a bit more stitch in the areas that had only really got a single line of stitch in the first pass, but otherwise, it was done.  Plus, I looked carefully at the areas in the centre: here's a close up.

The texture in this is remarkable.  I felt that intense stitch, instead of adding to that, would detract from it, by flattening it out.  So I stopped. 

And now, I have to decide what to do next.  I think I'm going to add more stitch to that circular area top right.  I'm trying to decide whether or not to remove the knots...yes, the knots that took me an inordinate amount of time to create .  I have two options.  Either remove them completely or add more, because they look off balance.  My money's on removal.  Yes, they took an eternity.  Yes, I'm proud of them.  No, they add nothing much, and may well detract from the whole thing...so several hours work is going to be cut out, because it feels like the right thing to do.  I'll be adding more lines, but this time, running stitch, rather than single long stitches.  And then I'll look again, to see if that was the right thing to do.

And, in the end, that's all every single decision boils down to : is it the right thing to do for this piece?  No matter how long you spent on it, no matter how much you like it, if it doesn't work, it has to come out.  Either that, or you have to take that favourite area, and rebuild the piece around it. That never crossed my mind in this instance, but it's something I've done with paintings, quite regularly.  Either way, it's extra work, and it may take you a long way from your original intention...but it's worth it.

And now I'm off to cut out those knots...sigh.

Pacing Myself

You may  have noticed it's been quiet on the blog this week.  My sister had a party at the weekend, and I'm still paying for it in reduced energy, so very little sewing.  I thought you might like to see how the Borderlines piece is progressing (I talked about it here), so...

Regular stitching, irregular sizes, round and round, I hope it suggests a field.  And then some much more intense stitch in the lighter area of paper.

I hope it supports the texture of the paper, which sadly, you can't really see clearly from the image.  It's really quite fragile, though it has a rough look. 

The real challenge, though, is the background.  All that white.  I really don't like white, don't use it much at all.  My original intention was to use a dark blue/pinky purple hand dyed thread as the background, in a similar fashion to the yellow stitches in the image above, but now I'm not so sure.  Maybe a variety of different colours, grouped in different ways; rectangles, or circles.  Rectangles are more likely...to reflect the idea of a patchwork of fields.  If that isn't enough, I dare say I could use a wash of either a herbal tea or a watercolour paint... but I think I'll wait to see how the stitching turns out. 

Ideas tend to shift and change, to develop, as the work goes along.  I like that.  Art is a living thing, in its way, a relationship between the maker and the thing he or she is exploring.  It ought to change as more is learned, more uncovered.  It's all part of the process.

Stitch Sabotage?

So... I thought I'd start the stitch on this piece, Borderline...well, okay, continue the stitch. Except... I couldn't remember which threads I'd used.... but I did work it out, eventually.

And here they are...

So far, so slow.  And it got worse.  Much worse.  

I had a clear idea what to do with that upper right hand circle...this, to be precise...

And this is where it all went to hell in the proverbial handcart.  Texture in the centre, I thought.  French knots, I thought.  Wish I'd left it well alone...  Turns out, I used to be able to do French knots...and the first one turned out fine... but it was all downhill from there.  I looked up my favourite stitch book, and followed the instructions and got another one out of six attempts.  Then it was YouTube....no joy.  Yes, I could see the woman demonstrating, doing beautiful stitches.  I did exactly what she did, and got damn all.  By this time, I was incandescent.  Had the piece not had so much potential, I would have thrown it out the window and been done with it.  However.... 

So I thought somebody might as well have a laugh out of it, and posted on FB.  Yes, they laughed (and I'm very happy for them, I'd have laughed as well, had it not been two hours of my life I won't be getting back again...).  And then someone said, Colonial knots.  Three different someones, in fact.  Reader, those kind women have changed my life.  I will never again mess about with the French version.  Here are the instructions I was sent to; do yourself a favour, go and have a look.  

So... I now have a collection of knots...looks better in real life, to be honest, but hey.  I wish I had put more space between the individual stitches, but it took so long to get the end result, I'm rather loath to unpick it.  And when there was space between them, I'm not convinced it looked any better.  Sigh.

But that's not all.  I did a bit of work in another section...and then put the work down, so I could have a rest.  Apparently that was an invitation to Merlin...

And this was bad enough...but this annoyed me...

Dammit, that paper is fragile. I remembered too late that it's easier to handle paper if it has a light interfacing attached (though not necessarily easier to hand sew, admittedly, which is why I didn't do it).   And then, to add insult to injury, he started playing with the thread.  Reader, I chased him.  I've come to terms with cats sitting on my work, but that was a paw too far.  

He got his own back, though.  I must have left the thread on the sofa that night, as in the morning the ball was on the other side of the room...he (or Mollie, perhaps) had clearly had a great deal of fun winding it round the scratching post.  Cats?  Can't live with 'em etc.  

More on this piece as it develops.