Stitch Up.

I felt like doing a bit of stitch, so decided to do a bit more with the second of the two monoprint books I talked about here.  I started by trimming it carefully (and that took all the energy for a while...).

And because of that, I decided to hand stitch.  I have no proof that it takes more energy to machine sew...but it does when the machine isn't set up... sigh.  And in truth, I wanted to see how the hand stitch would work.  I think it does...but it does come with its own issues.

We are taught from the very first stitch, that the back should look as good as the front.  That's fairly easy to do when working with a quilt sandwich, just by burying the knot in the batting.  This, though, is flat, so it's an exposed knot or a double back stitch.  Reader, I went for the double back stitch.  So far so good, huh?   I stitched all the way round the shape (have a look)...only to (stupidly) catch said double back stitch with my needle, and pull half of it out.  No, I really wasn't up for unpicking, so thought, okay, I'll catch the end with the stitch I'm making... and then the paper tore...sigh...and I ended up, yes, you guessed it, with a knot, albeit a small knot, which you wouldn't notice unless you knew were it was.  No, I'm not telling you...and yes, I continued with small knots... they're not particularly noticeable either... fortunately.

The temptation is to work the page as a whole, and that, I felt was necessary for the main motif, that curve, which runs over the fold of the paper.  On reflection, though, I decided that, other than stitching any single motif that occurred in that manner, I needed to respond to each individual half as a separate piece of work. 

The stitch is important, not just because of its effect on the 'front' page, but because of its effect on the reverse.  The reverse has only the bleed from the front, which clearly is not as strong, so the stitch is important in delineating what's going on in the image.  Here's an image showing you how that worked out...I think it's at least as interesting as the reverse, if not more so, in some ways.

I wanted to add some stitches above the main motif, and added crosses to the yellow area which I seem to be reading as the sky.  Another of the rules we're taught right at the beginning, is that all stitches have to be even and similar.  Fortunately, however, this is art, and I can use the skills I learned then, to subvert the tradition. 

And that's as far as I've got.  Time for a rest. 

Playing With Paint

If you remember, I made a couple of monoprints on paper, recently; I talked about it here.  What I don't seem to have shown you, though, is a couple of prints on small sheets of paper, ready to make a book.  Or if I did, I can't find the post....sigh.  Here they are

Basically, a print, and a ghost.  I wanted to make a few more this size, and to print on the back of these, as a base for stitch.  I thought it would be interesting to see what happened if I had random prints on front and back, and stitched in response to one side.  It could be chaos...it could not...  So today, I made a few more pages...

There's no particular rhyme nor reason to any of these.  They're based on curves, and use the same colours of paint, and that's really all they have in common, other than that all of them are printed on both pages.  I'll be machine sewing, and that will need to wait until I get my machine back from its service.  The problem with using a really well recommended local engineer is that everyone else uses him too, so I've had to wait three weeks for him to do the work, such was the length of the queue.

Here's a few in close up.

The last image is a cheat, to use up the last of the paint; it's a piece of lutradur, too small to go in a book.  It may end up in the bin...but you never know... Looking at them, perhaps hand stitch is the way to go... depends on how difficult the paint is to sew. 

Unexpected Changes, or Feline Intervention

I thought it was time I finished the stitch on Borderlines, so that was what I did this morning, until the birthday boy swept me off for breakfast (yummy pancakes and fresh fruit).

I'm quite pleased at the way this is turning out; only one fair sized section to go, and the stitch will be complete.  The nature of the piece has changed, somewhat. however, as I discovered when I picked it up to start stitching.  Part of the paper block on the left hand side of the quilt is no longer as it was when I started.  Here it is now...

Yup...it's frayed, distressed, nay, disintegrating in parts.  What can have done this?  Well, that's where the feline intervention comes in.  I have the habit of putting whatever I'm stitching behind me, on the back of the sofa.  Turns out Merlin has been sleeping on it.  I said early on that the paper was quite fragile, and here's the proof.  Some of it has just disappeared, although by and large, it's hanging on in there, thankfully.  Also thankfully, I like the result.  Just as well, really, as it would take an inordinate amount of work to replace it.  And fortunately, the books are too small to treat like this, so we won't be having a repeat performance, though if anyone wants an alternative method for distressing hand made paper, here it is, help yourself.  Just keep your fingers crossed that your cat doesn't attempt to shred it (Mollie probably would have).

Unexpected Results.

You saw Merlin making himself at home on top of this book, yesterday...it has progressed a bit since then, perhaps not as much as I would like, but nonetheless.

I realised while stitching, that this is another Purple Rain book.  There's enough of that pink paper to make a series.  This is hand made paper, and it felt stiff enough to allow it to stand up as an accordion, but not so stiff as to make it unpleasant to hand stitch.  So far, so good; all true.  What I didn't appreciate, though, was the effect of the stitch itself on the nature of the paper, or, more accurately, I suspect, the amount of handling the paper is getting in order to put that stitch in place.  The paper is going all floppy (to use that well known technical term).  When you put this amount of stitch into a quilt, it stiffens it; into a single layer of fabric, and it distorts it.  This is both distorting the paper and softening it.  It's actually reminiscent of working with Evolon, which also softens if you handle it a lot. 

I got a bit perturbed.  Here's the book, standing on its edge, to let you see how it is progressing.

I've positioned it very carefully, otherwise it looked rather like a drunk propped up against a low wall.  And I fretted about it, just a bit.  But then I remembered that this is a book; books don't routinely get propped up like this for display.   They're usually seen flat, opened and read, one page at a time.  So I stopped fretting and decided I liked the book as a book, rather than as a sculpture.  It'll be fine.

You can't see it in the image, but there's still a bit of a cat shaped indentation in that front page... I suspect it will be meeting an iron, or possibly a lot of heavy hard backed books, once I've finished the stitch.  The thread, incidentally, is hand dyed variegated silk thread with an uneven texture.  The purple strips are Khadi paper, which I'd bought to make a book with...didn't quite have this in mind, but it works.

Feline Assistance?

Only if you use the term loosely.  I only have two cats now, down from four.  Mollie and Merlin love textiles, and 'help' whenever they can.  The level of assistance varies .

Mollie is a quilt girl.  Here she is, trying out 'Borderlines' for size.

Oh, I like this one, Mum...

Mmm...comfy...   She later dozed off on it entirely.  Not quite what you expect for an art quilt, but...

Merlin, on the other hand, is more cosmopolitan in his tastes.  Here he is sitting on a lot of different things, simultaneously; my sofa does get a bit busy, as I spend a lot of time sitting on it.  I think he called it purrrrformance art; I called it all sorts of things, none of which were polite. 

My lino cutting stuff, is on that board, Merlin... be careful... and don't knock that box of notepaper over, or the pen... really, though, what he wanted to lie on was the small book I'd cut from hand made paper, again from Heather's parcel.  It had been folded for some time, so rather than try to iron out the creases, I used them to create another accordion book.  Which He's sitting on.  And here's the result.

That was flat, before he sat on it.  It now has a perfect impression of his bum.  Pass the iron, somebody... 

More about the work in progress tomorrow.  

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.