I Dreamed I Could Fly

Elemental Layers:  Earth, Water, Fire, Air is up! Pictures aren’t yet posted on the blog for Contemporary Fiber Artists of Louisiana, but they should be up soon.  The show can be seen at the JD Lafleur Nature Center at the Louisiana State Arboretum in Ville Platte through the beginning of July.  My pictures from the installation were not the best.  Below is my entry:  I Dreamed I Could Fly.  –update–see pictures of show here

My inspiration began with Air and birds in flight.  As the thing progressed, I felt my usual urge to add a human figure.  So I did.  The front features sheer fabrics that give the figure a dreamlike quality.  The background, too, has a layer of sheer silk that adds depth and mystery to the night sky.  The owl has a base layer of painted lutrador with dyed cheesecloth and sari silk ribbon for the upper layers.

Mostly I used running stitch to attach the appliques.  But there is also a bit of chain, twisted chain, outline, and straight stitches; all chosen partly because of how they look on the back.  On the reverse, I allowed all the embroidery to show through, even the knots.  I call this side the shadow side. The owl didn’t show up well enough, with its purple running stitches, so I whipped them with a dark rose.  All embroidery is done in pearl cotton.

The shadow owl has white and dark gray buttons for eyes in contrast with the yellow and black on the front.

Butterfly Chain Stitch

This week’s Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge stitch is a composite stitch that I have never done before.  It is called butterfly chain stitch.    I’ve worked a few rows in a variety of novelty threads.  The first pass of stitching is groups of three straight stitches.  Then a second pass of stitching works a twisted chain stitch around the grouping of straight stitches without piercing the foundation fabric except at the beginning and end of the row.

Sad to say, I do not find it to be a very compelling stitch.  Or perhaps it is that I can’t see it relating to the work I usually do.  I do like the undulating lines of my sample, though.

Shadow Faces

With the deadline quickly approaching, I’ve been playing nimble fingers working on my piece for the Contemporary Fiber Artists of Louisiana’s upcoming fiber art show.  The feature of the show is to use transparent layers to depict one of the ancient force elements:  earth, water, fire, air.  I’ve used transparent layers before and have loved how they change what is underneath and add a layer of depth, mystery, and shadow.  So I thought this would be easy and fun.  It has not.  Perhaps it’s because I usually work fairly small and this piece has to be 72″ x 16″ that has me stumbling.  I had more false starts than I care to count this time.  Perhaps it’s because I struggled to use only what I already had in my stash.  When I finally realized that I just didn’t have any pieces of fabric large enough to do what I wanted to do and went and bought some hand-dyed silk organza, the project began to take shape.  I choose to depict Air and birds in flight.  Or at least that’s how it started.  I do have an owl, but not too surprising,  a human figure appeared.

The background is a cotton batik with a layer of hand-dyed silk organza over it.  The figure is raw edge applique of organza, chiffon, scrim, and cheesecloth.  All the pieces are attached with embroidery, mostly running stitch.  I choose stitches that would look good on the reverse since the art works will be free hanging in the center of the room.  The eyelash line is worked in twisted chain stitch.  I particularly like the way it looks on the reverse side.

I call this the Shadow Side.  I’ve trimmed all the knot thread tails since this picture was taken, but they still show.  They will be part of the texture.  With only one layer of opaque fabric, there is no place to hide them.

I’m nearly done by now and will post more pictures when it is finished.

Bullion Knot Stitch

After taking a break for the past few weeks, I’m back again participating in Take a Stitch Tuesday sponsored by Pintangle.  I’ve missed: french knot, wheat ear stitch, crossed buttonhole, and half chevron.  This week’s stitch is bullion knot.  Since I’ve used french knot and wheat ear stitch quite a bit in my work, I decided to play with the other three stitches.  Crossed buttonhole and half chevron are completely new to me and although I have stitched bullion knots before, it was very long ago and not too often.  Bullion knots are so textural, that I wonder why I haven’t used the stitch.  It may be because they are so tricky to get smooth and even.  Thinking about the texture they create, I decided they would do nicely for mushroom gills.

They are stitched with #5 pearl cotton.  The result is a thick ridge which I like.

I decided on dimensional applique for the cap because of the weightiness of the gills.  A snippet of sari silk ribbon in an appropriate color was just what the mushroom needed.  The inside edge is gathered and left crinkly for more texture.  The sides of the stem are stitched in half chevron and the grass at the bottom is the crossed buttonhole.  Both stitches are more versatile than I had thought.  I can see how they can be very useful stitches.  They are great stitches to add to my repertoire.

Where does inspiration come from?

This is a question I often hear.  For every artist there is a different answer.  For me, the answer isn’t always the same for any piece of work that I make.  Take the paper dolls I just made.  The human figures were an extension of my previous work in cloth dolls.  They were a simple sketch away.  The animals were a little different.  I’ve done cats before and could have just adapted one of my earlier sketches, but I had something else to go with.  In my recent flurry of clothing making, a certain leftover bit of fabric had caught my eye.  It was a very simple shape.  To me it suggested “cat.”  I saved it knowing I would use that shape at some point.

I was sewing a pair of brown twill shorts.  If you’ve sewn before, you may recognize the shapes that were cut away to reveal the “cat” in the negative space.  There is the front to the left, the back to the right, and the pocket up on top forming the curve of the head and ears.  As soon as the cuts were made and the pieces moved off, that cat shape jumped out at me.  I instantly recognized possibilities and pinned my “cat” onto my design board for the future.

Part of nurturing creativity is being open to new ways of looking at the world and new ways of doing things.  There is inspiration all around us if only we open our eyes to the possible.

What unusual inspirations have you used lately?

Paper People/Paper Pets

A friend of mine who works in the Children’s division of the library has asked me to do a program making paper dolls at the end of the month.  Always ready to jump in with teaching children, I said yes.  I’ve done this before, but have given away all of the dolls that I made.  So I had to make more!

I started with collaging different papers onto poster board.  For the class we’ll use card stock, but I wanted to make more than one doll.  I also wanted to make more than dolls.  Susan asked for Paper People and Paper Pets.

Then comes tracing the templates onto the back and cutting out the pieces.

Then came the fun part of putting the pieces together and embellishing them.

This is a quick fun project to do with children.  I purposefully kept all the steps simple to make it a one hour program.  When there is time, I like to have the children draw their own people shapes.  For this program, we’ll have templates and stencils ready to trace.

Contemporary Rug Hooking

Exactly one week after the wedding, I took a rug hooking class with Gail Dufresne.  It was a wonderful class doing something different from what I have done before.  The class was sponsored by Contemporary Fiber Artists of Louisiana (CFAL).  I started out without any plan whatsoever.  My brain was too tired to plan, but  Gail made if easy for us.  She let us do our own thing.  Most of the people in the class knew what they were going to hook and had sketches all ready to go.  Not me.  I started with a blank canvas, literally.  The only marks I made were the edges.  That’s to keep them straight and along the grainline.  I decided to go free-form and to just begin hooking and see where it took me.  I started with the row of slate blue that runs diagonally down the center.  That row is a piece of wool remnant in my scrap bag.  It hooked OK but not as well as the other wools I used.  Mostly I experimented with other fibers.  So far, my “rug” has wool fabric, wool yarn, sari silk yarn, sari silk ribbon, silk roving, wool roving, and acrylic yarn.

It’s slow work.  It took me a while to get the rhythm and a smooth hooking motion.  Some held the hook with a pencil-type grip.  I preferred to hold it more like a crochet hook.  That made sense to me because the left hand underneath the canvas holds the strips or yarn in the same manner as for crochet.  The therapist in me thinks that this type of hook grasp will be easier on the joints.   Eventually, I will get faster.  Like hand embroidery, it’s a peaceful and relaxing occupation.

This is all I’ve managed to add to it in the past two weeks.  It will be a lengthy project.