Going With Your Gut...

...is, I think, the only thing to do.  In life, as in art, come to think of it.  I got half way through stitching this, the first of the green  monoprints I made recently, and thought... it would be so much easier to machine stitch.

And there are several more in this series... it would be quick, easy... but, my gut said, it wouldn't be right.  And my gut, as usual, is correct.  Dammit.  Why?

There are a number of reasons.  Monoprints are the most painterly of prints.  They're very direct, as is hand stitch, each mark a deliberate choice.  Machine stitch is by no means as direct : the machine is between me and the work.  The machine controls the stitch, even when free machine embroidering.  That's not what is needed here.  In addition, the direct contact with the piece is needed: it means I can see and contemplate, moment by moment, what I do next, where to put the needle, what size to make the stitch, which stitch to use.  Machine stitch doesn't afford the same luxury, the same choices.  Machine stitch also creates a far flatter, straighter line, no spaces, less easy to control...one unintended nudge or shake of your hand will knock it off course... you get my drift.  No pun intended.

Going with my gut is usually inconvenient, frequently challenging...but always right.  Now to get on with the work.  Possibly with a little muttering under my breath about how unfair it all is...

Changing Direction...

...is always a possibility, given the way I work, but sometimes it's inevitable.

I spoke here about being inspired by the work of Sean Scully.  This is the second of those pieces, which would have been three pieces of fabric set together, had I had three suitable pieces... however, these two seem to sit fairly well together, so here we are.  Nothing like the work of Mr Scully, but entirely like mine...nobody can ever accuse me of not being flexible in my approach.  The fabric itself was two pieces which were donated by a couple of kind friends, when I bemoaned my lack of scrap fabric (I'm still bemoaning my lack of hand dyes, but that's another story).  The pinky brown fabric on the right has been reversed, to tone down the patterning, while scraps of the fabric on the left have been used to create a vertical and a couple of horizontal lines, to develop the relationship between the two cloths.  Finally, there's a lutradur circle, with a shell inside it, at the top.  And it's ready to stitch. 

Which is my problem.   I spent a fruitless ten minutes looking for thread with which to hand stitch this piece.  I don't have the money to buy any, and I don't have any dye, either, so I can't make my own.  And I can't see myself hand stitching with machine thread, because it doesn't have the impact that perle and other thicker threads have.   I do have choices, though.

First off, I could just not stitch it at all.  And that's really tempting.  This piece feels like a painting, and were it a painting, it would be finished.  Fact is, though, that it isn't a painting, and it feels like it does need some stitch, albeit perhaps not as much as I might usually do.  So it looks like machine stitch is the only option.  Given the amount of machine threads I have, there's bound to be something suitable.  And if there isn't a variegated thread, I'll combine two plain threads.  I think I'll be stitching, not for pattern, but for texture, which will hopefully make those elements stand out a bit more, as well as connecting them.  For the meantime, though, I'm going to put it aside, and see how I feel after a couple of months.  Building time into design decisions is A Good Thing.  I don't think this will lead to a shift back to machine stitching in general, though, partly because it's too tiring, and partly because I've come to enjoy both the process and the result.

Back To Work...

...after a couple of difficult weeks.  Remember the watercolour book?   Well...because I had coloured the reverse of that with transfer dyes, I was able to create another, similar book...

This time, I've stitched the coloured side with normal weight thread, while the reverse has the heavier, Decora thread.  You can just pick up the stitching, I think...it's not particularly intense, by my standards.  I find the individual pages interesting; here they are as individuals, to let you see clearly how each of them stands alone as a landscape...landscapes within landscapes, if you like.

I suspect I'll add quite a bit more stitch, but this is all I could manage today.  I haven't taken pictures of the reverse, which, of course, is white with stitch.  I haven't yet decided what to do with it.  Paint is an option, of course, but so are applique and collage.  Plus, I could add significantly more stitch, obviating the need to add more colour (I think...).

I think the title of this might be 'Red Sky At Night', because the rhyme keeps running through my head...but we'll have to see.  Things might change as the piece progresses.  They usually do.

Back To The Books...

You might remember that I made some linocuts based on a piece I made that featured spears and shields...or trees and leaves, depending on how you thought about it... see it here .  I can't find a post about the book I made through printing the blocks on Lutradur... but it has been lying around the studio, waiting for me to generate energy... reader, I started... this is the 'cover'.

I have to say, this is much more my kind of stitch.  I'm colouring outside the lines again... it matches the fairly rough and ready nature of the prints.  Here's a closer look...

Proof, if proof were ever needed, that I couldn't do a straight line if you paid me for it.  Partly that's to do with the lutradur (like I need an excuse...).... I'm used to working with at least two layers of cloth, one of which is normally wadding, or maybe velvet; this is a single layer of lutradur, and the foot is levitating above the cloth.  Every twitch of the hand shows in the stitch because it's so light, it moves in a disproportionate manner.  My hands are clearly very twitchy.  Overall, though, I don't think it detracts; it's unusual to look so closely at one particular section, like this, divorced from the whole.  And had it been a big deal to have straight stitch, I would have used a walking foot, rather than a darning foot, and all would have been...errr...regular...and probably boring. 

Note the distortion, too, again to do with the weight of the cloth.  I think it'll iron out to a great extent, and I think it gives the piece some character...it seems to age it, a bit, the way that old paper distorts and crinkles slightly as it gets older.

I ran out of steam half way through the second leaf, but it'll get done, slowly, but steadily.  I meant to take images of the back, but forgot; part of the reason for the intensity of the stitch is that the reverse side is significantly paler than the front, unsurprisingly.  I'm using a darker thread on the reverse, and it seems to be working reasonably well.  More to follow as I work through the pages.

Done And Dusted...

...at least, where the stitch is concerned...have a look...

The top 'side' is actually a lot more yellow than that, but because Lutradur XL is semi transparent,  and the piece is back lit, the pink from the other side is showing through...and vice versa.  I did contemplate noodling a line across the whole piece, with the occasional leaf on it, but decided against it.  I like the feeling of space in this work.  I am, though, contemplating adding some text...'dreaming the crimson daisy', which is the title of the book. 

Have another look at an individual daisy.

The stitch is fairly even, but it's by no means perfect.  It's the stitch equivalent of colouring outwith the lines; I wanted a relaxed, modern feel, and I also wanted to even out the relative sizes of the petals, hence the stitch.  I usually vary stitch length too, for visual interest, but decided that it would be a distraction rather than an enhancement.  What I'm trying to say here, I suppose, is that I wouldn't win any awards for stitch with this piece, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful.  It works, and that's what's important.  So many of us worry about work not being perfect...well, guess what?  Perfect, by and large, is boring.  And it's really not necessary to enjoy either making or appreciating a piece of art.  Mother Nature doesn't make each petal of an individual flower the same; she doesn't like boring, either.  That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Getting Sidetracked...

...is a fairly common occurrence for me, and it usually leads to something creative.  Unfortunately,  it also brings problems.  The days are gone when I can just poddle about in my workroom, doing a bit of this, and a bit of that...or at least, not if I intend to do something specific.  And I did have that intention.  I wanted to do more machine stitch, and thought I would work on this book, which has been hanging around for ages, waiting for me to feel well enough to do it.

First, I needed suitable threads...and finding those took quite a bit of the available energy.  I realised, as I did it, that unpacking and shelving in order of finding things, was not the most effective way of doing it.  I need to have the threads near the machine, so I don't have to cross the room to get them.  Yes, it's only four or five steps there and back, so ten in all.  But add in the amount of time it took to stand and work out what I wanted, and select them, and you're into a major energy drain.  So I'm going to have to get someone, probably Robin (sorry, Robin) to move stuff around for me.  But I digress (at least digressing in my mind doesn't take quite as much energy, huh?).

While photographing, I noticed the little ME quilt on the cutting board...okay, I thought, two minutes... and that's what it took.

I'm pleased with it, though I have to say, it looks better in real life.  But back to the book.  Bobbin wound, machine threaded, I worked on a single flower.

Reader, that was enough.  No more energy.  But it's a decent enough beginning.  Here's the back...and this is why I like machine stitch on books.  The back is the same as the front, other than being a different thread (cotton on the front, rayon on the back, both variegated); no need to worry about what the stitch is going to look like, as you do with hand stitch...and for this particular book, it's important, because it was designed with that in mind.

I'm pleased with how it's looking so far.  I wanted to give the idea of a sketch, rather than a full blown representation of a flower, and I think this is working really well.  I may only be able to do a couple of flowers a day; tracing the image with stitch requires a lot of concentration, and that's tiring, too.  But it's worth it.  

Today's Blog...

...is brought to you from the sofa.  Robin's out, and we're expecting a couple of parcels.  Doubtless they'll arrive once he's back again. but if not, by the time I get downstairs, there's a real risk that the delivery man will have disappeared again.  So here I am.  It's more difficult to rest on the sofa; too much stuff that ought to be done, or wants to be made.  I'm resisting.  That said, I'm also contemplating this piece, which you'll remember from Saturday's blog on printing.  It said it wanted to be a book: I agreed.

It looks quite different in 3D, than it did lain flat...

The orientation change makes a huge difference, while the folds encourage us to read both the whole thing and the individual page.  I did contemplate hand stitch, but I really do think that machine stitch is preferable (really do have to ring the engineer this week, I NEED my machine back). 

And talking of needs, the piece needs a poem.  Of course it does, I hear you holler.  The poem will be written on the other side of the book, this time, before the stitch is added.  I think the effect of the stitch will be interesting; it should break up the text, even the individual letters, making the poem act like a piece of visual art.  Which is, I suppose, the whole idea. 

The poem is about interpreting visual marks.  I've got a thing about that...I talk about it here, to some extent.  I stitch, print and paint in this way, making marks, and to me, that reflects the natural world, where the elements create marks in and on, for example, stone, which our minds then attempt to interpret.  'Natural Graffiti', a quilt I donated to a cancer charity, reflects that them (see it here), but I've been stitching rune-like and other abstract and semi abstract forms into quilts since I started making, over thirty years ago (cough).

No, it's not written yet; I'm going to lie on the sofa for the rest of the morning, and see what we can come up with, my unconscious and me.  Seems infinitely reasonable.

A Leap Of Faith.

Sometimes only stitch will do.  So much of my work is about responding to things, seeing something interesting, if only to me, and working with it, to see what can be made of it.  Way back, in the days when I was still dyeing to sell, I used a dye catcher in what I thought might be a final rinse, but proved to be otherwise.  The resultant dye catcher was interesting, so I kept it.  Then I paired it with some lutradur and forgot about it.  For some reason, it survived The Cull (probably because I still find it interesting).  So I decided to stitch into it, thinking that it might make an interesting book, if I could get it to fold well (the jury's still out on that one). 

The first image shows the cloth as it came out of the washing machine; if you look closely, you can see it has a sort of dappled construction, presumably to strengthen it to keep it intact through a wash cycle.  It also has a strange, almost greasy feel to it, not unlike a dryer sheet, but it is far more robust than that, and is slightly scented.  The second image is the reverse with the lutradur added; it immediately adds colour and visual interest. I decided to stitch in circles, respecting and supporting the blob-like way that the colour had transferred onto the cloth, and attempting to link the dark areas together. 

I then started to meander round the lighter, background areas with a matching thread (both threads used here are variegated, surprise surprise). 

You can just catch glimpses of the pale stitch in the first image; it's clearer in the detail shot that follows.  I still have a fair way to go with the pale, background stitching, but I've not been well enough to do it...perhaps today. 

Were I doing this as a flat piece of embroidery, I don't think it would be interesting enough, even with all the stitch in place.  I suspect it would be a rather ornate background for something else, perhaps an applique.  However, I want to turn this into something three dimensional.  When I do, the surface will change completely (duh...); lots of small units, juxtaposed one on the other.  I have no real way of knowing if that will be successful.  Maybe, maybe not. And I suspect I will add words, somewhere, somehow, probably printed on paper, cut out and stuck, a poem, probably, written for this book. 

Sometimes...actually, more often than not... making work in this way is a leap of faith.  I have to believe in my own ability to take something relatively unprepossessing, and turn it into something special, through the application of ideas and technique.  I have to believe that I will choose the right ideas, the right techniques for this particular piece.  And that I won't stop until the piece is resolved (well, okay, there will be rest breaks...it may take some time).  I may doubt myself (may?  probably will) as to the quality of the finished piece, but I rarely ever doubt myself during the process.  Process is just a series of choices, and I can make those choices, even in this situation, where the piece is a one off by dint of the way it came about, meaning that I can't just make another one.  And even if the book doesn't turn out the way I think it will, that will be okay, because I will have learned something, and can probably turn it into something else, instead, which will be more successful.  And at the end of the day, it's only fabric. An individual piece of fabric is much less important than process, and another interesting bit will be along in a minute.  It won't be the same (thankfully), but it will have potential...and that's really all I need.

Less is More...

...or how this...

became this...

It's a long story.

Several years ago, I mooched a cleaning rag from a friend of mine who is a painter in oils.  I liked the look of it, and thought that it wanted stitch; she thought I was barking, but humoured me after a bit of persuasion.  And it has lain about ever since, which, given it is oil paint, was probably Not A Bad Thing.  Raking through the box it was in (the one with the interesting hand dyed/printed/painted fabrics), I thought that its time had come... and promptly cut it in half.  I liked the balance of colours and shapes, the randomness of it, the way that it suggested sea to me, somehow, perhaps because my friend had been painting goldfish in ponds... and because Turner has painted seas in this kind of palette...  who knows?

I wanted to make this the first piece in the 'Linescapes' series I have been slowly working up to; so far, I have a lot of sketches and postcards, but no textile pieces.  I thought I would approach it the same way I have the drawings, by beginning with three curving lines.  I wanted them to be quite small, because the real interest in the piece, I thought, was the painted cloth, and I wanted them to be textured.  So, I thought I'd try taking some dark green velvet, and add some other colours to it, particularly orange, through stitching, which I knew would  add texture and interest.  When I looked at it, having added a bit of stitch, though, I knew it wasn't right.  See for yourself;

Too dark.

This looked better, though...had I had enough of it, I would have used it, and the piece would be completely different.  As it was, I hadn't, so started looking through my scrap stash.

And I found this... 

...at which, a small person in my head jumped up and down with excitement.  That person is rarely wrong, so I put some fusible on a section, cut the lines out, and added them to the piece.  And stitched it.  And added some painted polyester cloth (for once, not lutradur...), and burned it back.

Reader, I hated it.  I rotated it.  I hated it less.

So I figured that I needed to work out what was wrong with it.  I decided that there was Too Much Stitch.  And if I got rid of the stitch, or at least, some of it, I'd feel better about it, because what was important in the piece was the exploration of space...and I had filled up that space with stitch, which was a distraction from what was going on in the cloth.

Okay.  So I thought I would take out a significant amount of the stitching in the larger section to the right of the turquoise/orange strips.  And I did.  And it was interesting... I didn't remove all the stitch, leaving bits and pieces of stitched mark here and there.  Look closely at the piece and you can see the holes in the canvas where the stitches were.

Here's a close up.

And that, I thought, might well be that... but of course, we both know better, because we've seen the after picture... more tomorrow.

Collaboration...

is fun.  One of my Facebook friends, Mary Kaye Catone,  is a keen photographer, and regularly posts her images.  I just as regularly say, that could do with stitch.  This time, she said, go for it.  This is the original image;

I love the textures and colours in this, and my initial intention was to make some long stitches in parallel running down the way.  Because I wanted to work small, I printed it out on some commercially prepared cotton...well, actually, it turned out to be silk organza.  That proved to be an additional bonus, as you will see.  But the transparency both added and detracted; I found myself struggling to put something behind the image that worked well.  In the end, I tried a stitched piece, which worked like a charm.  It was a piece of lutradur to which I had added encaustic paints, and then stitched.  Here's the back of the finished piece, to give you an idea of what I started with;

And here is how it turned out... 

and yes, I used those long stitches I was talking about earlier, though there is a row of small stitches at either long side, to keep the thing together.  And that's that, right?

Well, actually, no.  The thing about using silk organza, is that a lot of ink gets transferred to the backing paper.  And it would be wasteful to ignore that, right?

This is Ghost Tree, made from the backing paper, collaged onto mountboard, with swirls of shimmery medium to suggest mist.  I'm quite pleased. If you get very close up and personal with the piece, you can see silver leaf shapes drawn onto the board, my original intention, but somehow, it wasn't enough.  

So there you go; two for the price of one...and counting.  I still have some scraps to use up, probably in another collage.  Collaboration is fun...why not try it?

One Of Those Days...

where nothing goes right. I started stitching an interesting photograph, but couldn't settle to it.  Then, I started something else..that didn't work, either.  Finally, I picked up an innocuous monoprint of a leaf on Lutradur XL...and this is what it ended up as.  Happy?  No.  

I wanted texture... the good news?  I got it.  But it's unbalanced.  The yellow is too yellow, and the stitching outside the central motif isn't strong enough to balance it.  What it really needs, is a fine yellow cord.  Now fortunately, my friend Clare makes great cord... so with a bit of luck, she'll have some bright yellow threads to make some with...  in the meantime, I'll just have to brood.

Sometimes, when I'm depressed, as I seem to be today (it's been a two bar of chocolate sort of a day...I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions...), work is Just The Thing to get me out of it.  Today, though, it hasn't been.  As a rule of thumb, if I get more and more frustrated with what I'm doing, instead of getting sucked into the Zone, then the best thing to do is to go for a walk, or, in this case, go have a cup of coffee with a friend...preferably one who makes cord!