05 March 2013

Handstitch, week 3

In the final class of this short sequence, we were set several tasks, which nicely filled the day -
interspersed with a slide show taken from closeups of what we were working on last week, which Amarjeet manipulated (mirrored, repeated) in Photoshop to show some possible ways of developing designs. My stem-stitch tonal exercise reminds me of a stag beetle, joining the insect-like vandyke stitch ... is this perhaps something I should develop...
 ...developing cretan stitch into a honeycomb for bees, perhaps? -
First task: pattern darning. Finding a slubby yarn for the weft influenced my choice of colours for the warp -
 Next task: layering a stitch with primary colours, to create "optical" secondary colours -
 Layering stitch like this doesn't come naturally to me ... I shall try it some more ... but I preferred the back -
 Another task involved the bondaweb we'd painted, and some people were adding foil, but I struggled with making a warm and a cool sample, on the same background ... got a bit lost, really ...

Again, preferring the back...
 It's always good to be out of your comfort zone for a little while (isn't it) - and where better than a class with a congenial atmosphere, where you know that other people are going through the same thing. What have I gained - after all, when it comes to learning stitches, I can usually figure out from a book, and I have several books showing embroidery stitches, right back to Mary Thomas's, and including Constance Howard's...

I finally sussed out coral stitch, and found some potential for bullion knots. I'm starting to consider the effect of the background, even though I'm more interested in the effect of the stitches themselves, whether it's on the front or on the back of the fabric.
That's the back of the stem stitchery - I like the way the knots and ends contribute, and also the negative space. Here are some more sections of the flipside -
Refreshingly crude marks, you might say? They are pointing the way towards ... something ... "something almost being said" ...

1 comment:

beatrice De said...

Ouah ! very intersting exercice. Beautifull expérience.

Margareth, if you like insects, olease go to see the Viviane Fontaine exibition on my blog. It is 30 years she is making paper recherches. It is 30 years I am fan.

An other lady I have met in Ste Marie aux Mines, Alsace, France, in a patchworks symposium. She is making knitting miniatures insectes. You almost need a spectecle to see the details. The n° of these knitting needles does'nt existe in normal wool shop. Incredable.

http://www.semvandilk.nl/
Her name :Sackia van Dijk. I have bought a *fascicule* of her work, to present to the M. Wyss, who discaved the way how to * déceler * the hour of a died person, with the flies. In this time, I was preparing a window about * La criminalité *. Very intersting. The police hold me a broken safe, menottes ( real ) and flies...It was very funny to mount this window. I had to picture traces of shooses on the gound, in the sand in Norvège. Buy jamky jewellery etc...

Bisous from Lausanne.