Showing posts with label abstract art. Show all posts

Thursday, August 03, 2023

Stitching and watercolour on Free Motion Mavericks

I don't seem to be ready to get back to my machine, either to sew or to do some free motion quilting (FMQ). I guess I just need to some quiet time. My thread and needles are never far away (although I keep having to look for my scissors!). The weather had been cooler so it's been nice to stitch outside.

Trying for an abstract watercolour

There is a new workshop in the Textile Artist Stitch Club - this time creating an abstract watercolour piece and then stitching through it. Our teacher, Sam Owen Hull, does very cool work with watercolour and stitching (see Related links).

My first two watercolour embroidered pieces

We were supposed to start with photos that we can then create abstract paintings with. I did take some amazing photos in the garden but the abstraction was easier said than done. I tried to take close-up images of partial flowers or of interesting foliage and then cropped them further with my "Resize Me" app.

I love this one but haven't painted it...yet?

This was my first try at abstraction in watercolour. It was a mess but might be interesting once it's stitched....but I can't find it 😔

Unfurling beauty

I started painting this one is watercolour but it was too gray. I ended up turning the rock into the next image.

Rocks and vegetation

The Echinacea is my next one to make. Not very abstract but closer?

Echinacea close-up

Started of as a rock and turned into a flower😁

The image below was my first attempt. I really love the stitching that I did, but it's not abstract!

Two interesting Echinacea

This is the finished image.

First finished piece - stitching on watercolour

The next piece that I did has abstract shapes. I was playing with different types of watercolour paints.

Small 4" x 4" abstract watercolour and stitching

Echinacea flowers - real, watercolour and thread

What I learned

This is one of my first attempts at watercolour. I had no idea what I was doing and I'm not sure that I want to invest a lot of time learning. Seems to me that I have more than enough learning happening 😊
Having said that, I really do like the stitching on paper. I've been wanting to do that for a long time and I'm glad that I'm doing more of it.
I had been told that you have to pre-punch your holes to stitch through paper...and I found out why! If you punch the paper from the back, it leaves a little mound of paper (the stuff that you displaced by making the hole) on the front. This shows a lot if you're using a stiffer paper or cardboard.
I did learn however that you don't have to punch all of the holes before you stitch. You can put your needle through the paper at any time, as long as it's from the front of the piece. This is good to know because I stitch very intuitively and planning the whole piece before stitching is a problem.
I also learned that the thickness and colour of the thread matters. For my first piece I had used thinner thread. It was ok but didn't show up very much. Eventually I decided to stitch over some of the original parts with a heavier linen thread (both pink and dark green). That worked really well and showed up much better. The holes were already punched, so it was relatively easy to do.
For the seed head of the flower, I used two strands of Bengal silk thread from Maiwa - these are the two cones in the picture below. I really like the effect that it gave.

Adding a thicker linen thread over the original thread

Because the watercolour paper is stiffer than fabric, you can also create longer stitches. As long as your tension is good, they will stay that way. I did a lot of experimenting with stitches on the small abstract piece.
The stitching is possibly more mindful when it's on paper because you have to figure out how you make the stitch, so that you can make the appropriate holes. When it's on fabric, I don't think much about my stitches, I just do them!
Stitching on paper is also forgiving. As long as you don't mess up the holes, you can cut the thread and start over, or stitch on top of your original thread with heavier thread.

Free Motion Mavericks

Thanks to everyone who linked up!

Gail finished her Trivet last week. It's for Joy’s One gift a Month! If you go to Quilting Gail's post, you can access a link to the tutorial.

Trivet - a Friday Finish for Quilting Gail

It's now your turn.

Sunday, November 01, 2020

Translucent meanderings

I can't say enough about how much I've enjoyed playing with fabrics with TextileArtist.org's Stitch Challenge 2020. As you saw from my last post, I have even used free motion quilting (FMQ) in some of these projects.

Using sheers on my abstract template

This is the first piece that I did based on Sabine Kaner's workshop. She showed us how to make an abstract template by crumpling a piece of paper and then drawing along the ridges of the lines. You can read more about it in my last post which is in Related links below. For this first piece, I used a regular sheet of printing paper, which resulted in lots of lines!

My first impression was of a map of a country or a continent, but I kept it abstract as I put things together. Sabine Kaner's art is abstract but she doesn't use sheer fabrics. It's almost all recycled fabrics with lots of heavier textiles like wool, with lots of texture. I love the look of her work but I had just finished Vinny Stapley's workshop where she works mostly with sheers. I just didn't want to stop working with sheers, so I interpreted Sabine's workshop in translucent fabrics. It made for a very different project.

Working again with sheer fabrics

Here is my crumpled paper pattern placed over the light box. There were some really small sections that would have been impossible for me to applique with different fabrics, so I placed sheer fabrics over a couple of areas, but embroidered them to reflect the small sections within them.

Abstract paper template

This is what the piece looks like when it isn't in front of a window. The colours are much more vibrant.

Translucent Meanderings

As I looked closely, there is something really cool that happens to the stitching when the piece is in front of a window as opposed to against the wall. You can see both here.

Stitches seen against the wall

Stitches seen through the light

As I was writing this post, I had the piece in front of me, leaning on the window. I observed those cool stitches at the very top of the piece and was wondering how I got that effect. They look almost like a chain stitch - but upon closer inspection, I saw that they were a blanket stitch - that I could see both the front and back of!!!! How cool is that?😊

You can also see this kind of effect in the pink piece on the top right of the piece. Against the wall, they are just ordinary seed stitches, but against the window, they are meandering all over the place. Even the running stitches appear as one solid line against the light.

Sheer remnants - what lovely colours :-)

The sheer fabrics that make up the piece are from all over the place. The backing is from a sheer pair of curtains that I purchased at Ikea (I have great plans for them!). I used some very fine silk from a scarf that I picked up in China, a black lace camisole that was my mother's, on fabric that I attempted to sew into a skirt for my daughter and another from a rather useless see-through bathing suit cover! Last month I dyed some silk organza and a little bit made it into this piece. The flower at the top of the piece is from a piece of commercial lace. I also used all kinds of thread and embroidery floss in the piece, including some couched yarn.

As you may imagine, I am now on the lookout for all kinds of sheer fabrics and I plan on dyeing more silk organza. I believe that these last two projects with sheer fabrics are the beginning of some great fun and adventure!😊

What I learned

I find that hand-stitching sheer fabrics is a lot easier than machine-stitching them.
It looks like I'm going to be collecting more than just quilting cottons! There are so many kinds of sheer fabrics - from old curtains to some lovely sheers and tulles of all colours.
I also love dyeing silk organza. The colours are so rich. So far I have some amazing fuchsia, violet and dark purple. It's going to be a lot of fun playing with the different dyes!