Learning and moving on

In one of her October posts, entitled The nature of woven cloth, Jude wrote:

"The basic understanding of your materials is crucial in developing the character and individual style of your craft and the satisfaction that comes with that...."

For folks like myself, just beginning to translate into cloth, this is a fine piece of wisdom. Because, not everything works! And that kind of understanding only comes through experience, trial and error, [and in my case, some pretty steep learning curves!]

This morning I finished the embroidered pillow that I've been working on for the past few weeks. Hurrah!

It's far from perfect! But I did my best, learnt alot, and will be moving on shortly. Before I do that though, I'll share a couple of simple little things that I learnt - or was reminded of - along the way with this piece [although not illustrated by the greatest images!]


















The importance of trying to make even-lengthed stitches, particulary when filling in geometric patterns.


















Blanket stitch twists the thread as you stitch. The finer the thread, [in this case I used a regular black cotton thread to hand piece the central panel to the border] the more it twists. This makes for a lot of knotting when you try to pull the thread through to the back!

White embroidery transfer paper does NOT vanish when made damp, after a while!


















Kantha stitching, on some cloths, acts like elastic smocking. Instead of just adding a pleasing surface texture to the cloth, it gathers the cloth and pulls it out of shape. I started to do a running kantha over the borders of this piece, but ended up unpicking all of it because it just warped the cloth too much, even though it was stitched even and loosely.


















This is the finished center panel before being pressed. I was reminded that I least like the part of construction! Hence, the appeal of moving into scarf design!























And here is the finished item [momentarily stuffed with some kapok to give me some idea of how it will look when it finally gets a pillow inside it]. Wish I had some fancy piece of furniture to model it on, instead of the cream-colored plastic patio chairs that we have at the farm these days [the nicer wooden chairs are in the house in town].

Kellie, forgive me! ;)

I'm hoping that the next time this piece gets featured here, it will be sitting pretty on the sofa that it was intended for. That should be the week after next, as I have an upcoming business trip to Florida. YIPEE! A brief escape and a few hours of in-flight time to work on whatever I plan to do next!

Hope everyone's having a great weekend :)

Leafing into Spring: Part III

Further to this...

The first panel for the front of my next bag is done. Right now I'm stitching it onto the second panel, a biscuit colored natural canvas fabric, (which was part of a package that my design partner Megan sent me at the end of last year. A package which began this blog as a matter of fact!), that will provide a border and break up the cream on cream in a gentle way, because the actual shell of the bag is a vanilla-colored velveteen. There's So, it's back to pale neutral toned cloth again! The next one will be brighter. I promise.















Leafy!



















Finished applique panel, 21 x 23.5 cm. Hand embroidered.

Makes me think of something, but I don't want to mention what, because I want to hear what it makes you think of first!

Long Night Moon #2

I am pretty slow at this. But, little by little, it is coming along. And the point is, I'm enjoying it! I hope to have some more updates on this piece before Christmas day.



















I don't know why, but I often end up sitting indoors. Even though we live in a tropical paradise. Now I am making a conscious effort to take my work out into the garden. There, I can rest my eyes in the distance.



















A starry sky...



















I love this flower!

Even better than the real thing

I'm really enjoying working with synthetic suede. I bought a small scrap from a fabric store in Boquete, Panama, when we were there a few months ago. Its skin-tone, and super soft, and although it's synthetic, it looks and feels like the real thing, but is maybe a little easier to manipulate.















I had an idea about layers.















Hand stitched layers.
















I found that I could strip threads out to create a more dynamic surface texture...















... and added that idea to the idea of layers.















I added some simple beadwork and some colored stitching.



















And here's the finished piece, "Kaluto", which has been added to the other Indie-pendants on the Bainbridge&Houseberg photostream at Flickr

I'm excited by the fact that these are completely handstitched, using small fabric and fiber scraps. Projects that, a) I can make anywhere (including in the hospital, if necessary!), b) are unique and very eco-friendly, and, c) finishable in the short term. The latter being imperative, as my interests always have had a habit of flitting from one thing to the next... like a butterfly passing from flower to flower. And I think that's maybe a good thing? Feed... and move on!