Layers developing

As well as the lovely Becky Hogg stitching, I have been doing some needle musing with the Mesopotamian layers sample, just to see what if?

It is hard to photograph, because the layers catch the light in differing ways. In reality the lightest area, that of deepest excavation, is not quite so contrasting. Stitching is sparse there, because treasure is as much about the shadow of a wall in the soil as it is about gold and artefacts

I have carried some water around the base of the ruin, to provide moisture for the crops in the fields

There is the merest hint of buried sparkle here, something worth digging for perhaps

There might be another hint within those ruins to the north; a regularity under the layers, a glimmer in the shadows? 

I have irrigated and planted the pleasure gardens at the base of the North wall - some more obvious treasure here

And then, of course, there is the inscription, carved on rock on the way out of town, where all the tracks and trails lead who knows where?

Sennacherib, King of the world

growth and green

I have been adding some green growth to my layers test piece. The river brings growth, and we harnessed that growth for our own purposes back in those Mesopotamian days to extraordinary effect. In the distance, space marked out for a fragment of royal inscription. I was amused, when picking up my test cuneiform stitching to judge the size of that space, to find myself turning it the right way up - which tells me the stitching has, at least, taught me a bit about how to view cuneiform :-)

Then there is this, one of many reels of, for the most part unusable thread, having aged to fragility, that I have inherited from mother, grandmother, aunt and probably great grandmother. This was probably produced in wartime, a delightfully informative website tells me.

isn't the green delicious

I'm using it in a piece we did with Cas Holmes, a delightful teacher and artist, whose work I have admired for many years. The workshop, run over two sessions, focused on how we could blend momigami, "very squashed" paper, and textile scraps, in a piece with both hand and machine stitch. It was so enjoyable, in particular because she was teaching us via Zoom sessions, which bring their own challenges. The first was in part about preparation of the papers we had selected, by crumpling and kneading them in our hands until they loss their stiffness and became more fabric like - this is the momigami element. She encouraged us to layer these with scraps of fabric, pinning them to a calico backing, then stitching them loosely down using expressive stitches that worked with the underlying strata. In the second session she showed us how she uses machine stitch over the initial stitch layer, painting into the fabric with thread, creating texture and highlights, turning the piece over to stitch from the back to add elements of less purposeful stitch. Throughout both sessions she also talked to us about the design process, using her own work to show us examples of how the layers come together. Here she is talking about her piece "In Great Grandmothers' Shadow".

So far, I have got to here, a sort of landscape, with sort of buildings, and a ground layer to divide the space. 

As you'll see I've not reached the machining stage yet, and the paper element of this is so fragile that I suspect it will disintegrate once I start. For Cas that is a good thing; something she uses in her work and I can see its potential. But for this bit of stitching, I'm not so sure - which probably means I really should, and learn from moving beyond my inhibitions. For now I have just done hand stitching, and am happy with the result, though I feel it needs a bit more. I enjoyed the tactile nature of the paper, the difference in sound both as the needle and thread pass through, and the sound and feel as you handle it, skin rubbing against different fibres. I may well explore more, another way of layering.

I hope your stitching week has been good?

Magick

There are old magicks in this landscape

Hidden things

Buried secrets

Secret flows

accumulation

Things are building up, layer by layer

The wider view

Playing with a scrap of organza, 

A river perhaps

sampling

Although no stitching was done while away, since coming home I have spent some time with my Mesopotamia layered piece, this time a proper sample. Christine's advice was to pin the layers together, rather than tacking, as with every stitch you make, the organza and the layer(s) below make a little adjustment with each other. Pins can be moved to accommodate this. It was very fine advice.

So here: the base of hand dyed fabric, with its layer of marks; a layer of poly organza coloured with walnut and India ink if I remember; a snippet of the paper laminated piece with more floor plan imagery and a layer of seed stitch suggesting another building.

The next layer of seeding, at larger scale, with a thread which matches the colours on the fabric, both responds to what is below, and secures the coloured organza

Here using Emily Jo Gibbs' technique of stitching around the edge of the layer below 

finding shadows of floor plans, hidden beneath, or impromptu patterns from the combined layers.

Here stitching moves away from the absolute randomness of seeding, responding to what lies beneath, just as archaeology does, searching for treasure 

Sampling really does allow for experiment and experiencing the way the layers interact, how stitching can bring to the surface what lies below. 

My larger piece has more detail, though the seeding needs to extend further around the remains; I like the way they flicker in and out, depending on the colour in the hand dyed fabric below.

Once the sampling is done, I can think more clearly about how to develop this further. For now it is good to just consider

Further pondering

So I think I’m done stitching, keeping it simple. I rather like this deep green silk as a potential frame for the image

I know I am annoyed at the wrinkles in the underlying calico - shoddy preparation. I can’t iron them out any further because that encourages more bubbling in the organza across the sky, the first layer which I couldn’t avoid when Mistyfusing down.

One notion, once the green silk is attached to the embroidery, would be to mount the whole on a box canvas of appropriate size, wrapping the silk round to the back. The key question now is - wide frame or narrow?

Contemplating layers

Which is a theme appropriate to working with transparents, which can evoke ...

Layers of landscape - the view from my bedroom in coloured organza cut with a soldering iron and fused to a base layer of calico. Two layers of machine stitching done, just the foreground to work out now. It is intimidating me!

Layers of history in the landscape,

Layers of habitation, evoked by fragile remains; wondering which of  the recent experiments might be useful ...

Layers of stitch to add colour and texture, perhaps that of excavated soil

And maybe reveal those layers of habitation

A bit of a test run, to see how the transparents I have been working with might evoke the levels that are concealed, revealed, during an archaeological dig. Still thinking how to do this. I may need to cut the voile into less regular shapes to create a sense of the unfolding of layer upon layer.

My stitching and thinking today accompanied by Low

And the Oni Wytars Ensemble being Byzantine. There’s variety for you

More organza experiments

These are kind of working notes, learning how to use the iPad as a tool to record my thoughts, and get them into an order I can use in my City and Guilds without too much grief. so, here are notes to self with illustrations I hope!! Click for bigger pictures.

While I'm stitching, I'm also working out how to catch this tender fabric down without ruining the translucent quality of the textile. There's also the direction of the grain  to consider. Sometimes, with the black piece, I had to stitch down in both directions to prevent the organza pulling out. I used two strands of thread as that seemed to be about the right weight, and I wanted to concentrate on colour without the distractions of other textures. there's enough texture in the organza. There's also very little chance of hiding the start of the stitch with each thread, so I made a feature of it, crossing the stitches and finishing on the front with a French knot to secure the initial stitches.

I rather like the tails on the back.

05/12

Now I've moved to stitching on white backing fabric. I considered using a shiny rayon thread for texture, but decided that it was adding nothing, so changed to navy stranded cotton, two strands. The stranded cotton, with its easy texture and willingness to bend makes the stitching much quicker, and is, I think, fine in this context. The glisten of the organza likes the muted, not quite black of the stitches. As the stitching progressed it developed a changing rhythm depending on the lay of the fabric. As I layered more and more on the backing fabric the stitches had to evolve, becoming one long stitch, with a tying down thread across the centre at right angles - I think it's a proper stitch of some sort, must check. I had to do this as the varying layers and overlaps couldn't be tied down using my original ordered little stitches I started with. At the end I lengthened the pieces of organza and gave them a wavy pattern, to move right away from the neat texture of the first part. My daughter sees a tulip in this bit - I just see scrumptious colour, though this image is a bit more in the blue scale than the actual fabric

9/12/12
In stitching these rectangles at right angles , I tried to reflect the colours of the organza by mixing similar colours of thread on the needle. I started with the French knots at the corners, it seems delicate yet secure, especially as I make a very short stitch first, then work the French knot over that stitch. It stops the knot being pulled through to the back of the fabric and makes the organza more secure.


I hold the twisted thread tight against the fabric with my nail whilst pulling the thread through to the back, making sure the knot part stays tight around the needle and so, neat against the fabric



The French knots worked well, but for the last one I thought a little bright pink laid work cross, tied down in the centre with a single stitch was more appropriate (trust me, I'm not normally a pink person!), as there are 11 layers altogether! I also tried to keep my backside neat - if you'll pardon me!

I realise I've not shown you the finished organza on black

I tried for  landscapey effect, with haze on the horizon and birds swirling in the neon sky! It is, after all, only supposed to be a quick sample of fabric and stitching, but it's made me smile!

Oh, and the iPad bit? In the end I had to come back to the PC as I couldn't figure out how to position the images in the text via iPad. Must be a lack in my technical knowledge!!