Drawing stitching

The new term at Mags’ “Pleasurable Painting” has encouraged us to explore our own ideas and try different mediums. There have been ideas and suggestions if we have wanted or needed them. But so far (three sessions) I have had things I wanted to try, a couple of the suggestions and things Mags has brought along have been very much in my comfort zone: flowers, natural objects (shells and hazelnuts), so it’s been tempting just to do those.

The first weeek I started with some spirals and a limited palette, some mark-making thinking of stitching and texture, some wet in wet, wet on dry, splashes and flicking, adding water, scratching in wet paint; basically just having fun and getting back into painting.

I then had a try with some metallic water-colour paints over some very watery green, that I’d scratched in to try to capture the idea of dragonfly wings. It’s very subtle and the photo doesn’t really show it, but it does catch the light.

The following session I used them again with a little more success. The plants and flowers were around to use, but I just used the folds of a few leaves as a starting point.

Then I started thinking of wafting seaweed, still scratching in so the paint goes into the scratches giving a darker line. The pencil lines need to be rubbed out and some metallic paint added. It’s another work (play) in progress.

It was really tempting to do shells the next week, but I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone. It’s a bit of a cheat, because they are real shells, but certainly not something I’d drawn before, with my own stitching from Scrappy Nine Patch and Continuing with the Scrappy Nine Patch

I started drawing the twisted rayon stitches …….

……. and just kept adding to it in the same way the stiching developed ……

….. gradually adding more detail …..

….. and emphasing diferent areas. Another work in progress, some more detail to add but I want it to fade out towards the edges.

It’s also another piece of stitching to continue with.

Continuing with the scrappy nine patch

Even though I just wanted to continue with this piece after Alex’s workshop, I really needed to finish off other things first (some of which I have managed to do). I took it along to “the move it on session” last week at S.E.A.T.A. (Scunthorpe Embroidery and Textile Association), and have continued with it this week between other projects.

I started by anchoring down some of the bullion knots on the limpet shell, with some matching sylko. That stopped them wriggling around so much! But once they were not moving all over the place, I realised I need lots more, so back to the Bella Donna viscose thread.

You can see how it quickly unravels, but the sheen gives just the effect I want.

The limpet shells are perfect to obscure things partially, which pulls you in to have a closer look. The two limpet shells were just the right size for one of the recycled jewellery spirals that Margaret gave me last month.

And another shell, over the printed fabric, looks as if you are seeing what’s inside if it didn’t have the top missing.

The little bead fishes got caught in the net.

A scrap of Angelina from some long forgotten project gave a little sparkle on the fleecy piece of fabric, before the shell was attached with some long stitches in perlé thread.

I’ve started to couch down the ends of the Prima Donna viscose thread from the “Pomatoceros” (a tube feeding annelid worm).

Most of the pieces are anchored down now, but time to assess what else to add.

Some long legged chain stitches represent the ropes on the fishing net.

A variegated thread is used to anchor down the shell that already had three holes in, and the fabric cascading through it.

Then a twisted cord in Madiera Metallic added another layer of sparkle. The dyed / painted piece of fabric has been ruffled up, and stitched down to look like patterns in sand.

A few beads are added in the folds of the tea dyed calico.

A satin stitch shell was added in perlé, and a few strands wrapped in gold coloured silk to give the effect of patterning on the shell. Some of the very unravelled Bella Donna from the “Pomatoceros” was plunged to the back and then brought up from the inside of the shell, and a few strands of perlé were unravelled to give some movement.

This is where it has got to so far. The difficulty is knowing when to stop. It’s lovely to work on and by far the most free thing I’ve worked on for a while: it’s good to respond to what’s there without having a preconceived idea of where it’s going.