So far in 2019 all you’ve seen from me are photos of dogs and walks in the woods. "But Anne," some of you have asked, "what’s going on in your studio? What are you making?" I have indeed been busy in my studio, a nice change from 2018 when I seemed to pour all of my brain and inspiration into the Fibre Art Network newsletter. I’m determined that 2019 will be different.
What I want to show you today, however, isn’t even a studio project, but the products of an online course I signed up for way back in October. I’m always on the lookout for ways to make art in the winter that don’t involve my studio, because it’s at times quite a hassle to think ahead far enough to get a fire going in the studio wood stove and set the heating pad to warming up my sewing machine, then wait a couple of hours until machine and studio are warm enough for working. Also, because my lighting setup in the studio isn’t great, I don’t work out there after dark, which in winter means I’m done by 5 pm or so. I wanted something to cover these times when it doesn’t make sense for me to be in the studio. (It’s this kind of thinking that has led to an art desk in the house absolutely crammed with art supplies, most of which I’ve barely touched.)
I can’t remember where I saw this course advertised, perhaps in a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) newsletter, but when I looked at the details I thought, “yes, I want to do this.” And so I signed up for “Exploring Texture and Pattern with Sue Stone.” Sue is a British artist best known for amazing portraits in stitch, particularly a series of self-portraits she created from photographs of herself, one per year from early childhood to the present day. Want to have a look at her work? Have a look here. I love the look of hand stitching on others’ textile art, whether quilts or other things, and I wanted a bit of guidance and some structure for experimentation.
And that’s what this course gave me in spades. I have to say that Sue Stone and her sons Joe and Sam have done a great job setting up this class. The skills are simple and so the emphasis is more on design and experimentation than on technique, which suits me down to the ground. The course consists of four modules, each of which has four or so lessons, and each lesson involves making a sample, or multiple samples, stitching using a grid system that’s slightly different for each lesson. One of the things I love about this course is that students are encouraged not to invest in expensive threads or fabrics but to use whatever happens to be lying around. Another plus is that each lesson is delivered online as a video but then revisited in a pdf which can be downloaded and stored forever for future reference. Also, each lesson includes a separate pdf of student work for inspiration. Yet another plus is that if one is willing to join Facebook, the Stones have set up a private group for students of the course so that we can see and comment on one another’s work.
I know, Facebook. I swore faithfully, for years and years, that I would never have an FB account. But “never” is a long time, and this is the one time since I first became aware of FB that I had any desire to sign up. In fact, even after I started this course I dithered literally for months before I finally caved and joined the group. I love this part of the course and I have to admit that it’s gone a long way toward keeping my interest high and keeping me working so that I would have samples to post to the rest of the group. Until now, and that’s why I’m writing about this stitch-y journey here.
Let me show you what I’ve produced thus far.
The first module is about running stitch, and I spent a lot of time making multiple samples for every lesson in this module, fascinated by the differences that arise from using different stitch lengths and spaces between stitches, different threads, different colour combinations, different values relative to the value of the fabric base. A person could spend a whole year just on this one stitch alone and not exhaust the possibilities. Here are my samples from the first lesson, an introduction to running stitch.
I know, running stitch. Yawn. How interesting could it be? But look at this first sample and how different the four areas of the grid appear because I’ve changed threads and stitch intervals.
Top left is a variegated 40 wt sewing machine thread, top right is crochet cotton, bottom left is tapestry yarn, and bottom right is Coats Craft & Button thread.
Top left Mettler 40 wt waxed quilting thread, top right perlé cotton Finca #5, bottom left cotton Japanese sashiko yarn, bottom right fine crochet cotton.
Top left tapestry yarn, top right wool yarn, bottom left 30 wt sewing thread, bottom right mercerized cotton yarn.
That was the first lesson, which was just about running stitch. While it’s not necessary to produce more than one sample per lesson, I was so astonished at the variety of effects I got as I went along that I produced three. I could see some applications for some samples in textile art, such as using those close lime green lines in the bottom left of the first sample to represent water, for instance, or how the white yarn on the beige linen on one hand and the thick grey dots on the other created pure texture, one subtle, the other not. Each area of the grid is just two inches square. When I first started I thought that two inches of anything wouldn't enough to tell much about the effect, and I thought I should size up the grid to a quadrant of 3” squares. I’m glad I didn’t, though, because the two inches square seemed to give just enough of a sense of the stitch to be useful and also not be so large that I ran out of enthusiasm before I finished.
The second lesson was about mixing yarns in the needle, meaning threading two different yarns through the eye of a single needle.
Top left button and craft thread (red) and a fine crochet cotton (ivory), top right Mettler 40 wt quilting thread (red) and Güterman polyester sewing thread (teal), bottom left crochet cotton (red) and rough lace weight wool yarn (charcoal), bottom right crochet cotton (red) and thinner crochet cotton (ivory).
Top left 30 wt sewing thread (lime green and forest green), darning wool in yellow and lavender, bottom left darning wool (yellow) and perlé cotton (green), bottom right yellow darning wool (yellow) and variegated bouclé knitting yarn (blue).
Top left very fine silk thread (brown) and 30 wt sewing thread (yellow), top right tapestry yarn in tobacco and light blue, bottom left split yarns of tapestry yarn and mercerized crochet cotton, both in tobacco, bottom right fuzzy mixed fibre knitting yarn (brown/blue/lavender) and split mercerized crochet cotton.
Things were a little wilder with this second set of samples because I widened my definition of “thread” to include yarns that it would never have occurred to me to use for hand sewing. And this is where the Facebook group comes in. I made a rule for myself (I’m really good at making rules for myself) that I wouldn’t look at other students’ work for a particular lesson until after I’d made my own samples. I wanted to see what I could come up with on my own, rather than riding on others’ inspiration. After I’d finished the first lesson, I took a look at the FB group’s samples for that lesson and was astonished at how other people had interpreted the directions. Wildness! Crazy yarns! People who didn’t stay inside the lines! People doing more than one kind of stitching within a single sample area! Sheer anarchy!
On I went to lesson three, which changed the grid from a quadrant of 2” squares to a grid of 3x3 2” squares separated by a quarter inch of blank space. Unlike the first two lessons, which were about stitching only parallel lines (back and forth, horizontally), lesson three added the element of changes in direction in the stitching.
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Left column is button and craft thread (red), centre column is one strand of button and craft thread (red) and a strand of Mettler quilting thread (navy), right column is a double strand of Mettler quilting thread. I can see an elementary mistake with my grasp of quarter circle geometry in this one, but who cares, right? I like the overall effect.
Both colours here are darning wool, which by this point I was becoming very fond of working with because of the rich colour and the solidity and boldness of the stitched mark on the fabric.
Darning wool again.
I have to say I love all three of these samples. The lesson dictated that the design should be symmetrical and use three different threads/yarns in three columns, and I mostly stuck to that mandate (though the second sample uses only two colours). But I put my own spin on the idea of “symmetrical” by shifting the line of symmetry 45 degrees to the left in the last two samples. Imagine them tilted 45 degrees to the right so they’re both a diamond shape, and you’ll see what I mean.
The last sample I did for this lesson sticks closely to the three columns/three different threads idea, though again all of these are darning yarns. This one is the least successful of the bunch in my view, but it was still worth doing, just to try out the idea.
By this point, I was really hitting my groove. I was stitching away, making and photographing samples and getting them posted to the FB page pretty regularly.
But I wasn’t happy with how much of a line-toeing, scaredy-cat rule follower I was being, especially when I saw the free-spirited, no-holds-barred approach others were taking to these exercises. The FB group was full of photographs of people using the most unlikely things as thread and some pretty interesting fabric for the base as well. I’d been very pleased with myself for having in my stash scraps of exactly the light, neutral linen that Sue Stone recommends, the result of many happy encounters with the scrap bin at Maiwa Supply) (don’t try to find this bin at the Granville Island store anymore; it’s been moved to Maiwa East). But other people were using antique linens, wool felt, hand-dyed cotton and silk, all sorts of interesting things for their fabrics. And silk and string and mohair and I don’t know what all for stitching, include some yarns so hairy and textured and loopy that the stitches themselves disappeared. People were fearless! I happened to mention, after my posting my lesson 3 samples to the FB group, that I wished I had more courage to step over the lines.
And I got a response from Sandra Barrett in Fernie, who suggested we metaphorically hold hands and plunge into breaking some rules. I agreed, and with lesson 4, which was about layering stitches over each other, I started.
The tobacco yarn is 6 strand knitting cotton and the other yarn is also a knitting yarn, a sock yarn, so probably a mix of wool and nylon (the ball band has disappeared), but it’s variegated (ivory, coppery tones through orange to brown, and mint) so it looks as if I used more different yarns than I did. You can faintly see the grid lines in pencil under the stitching. I started with the tobacco yarn and kept the blank spaces between squares empty with that yarn. Then I lost my head completely and went wild with the second yarn. The grid has vanished. I really like this sample; to me, it looks like a little bit of abstract art.
Encouraged, I kept on.
With this one, I honoured the spaces between the squares in the grid, as you can see. I used two yarns again (black is sashiko yarn from Japan and red is perlé cotton). And I stitched very simply, just parallel lines of running stitch in smooth arcs, five lines close together and then two further apart. I just love this one. So much drama and movement! To me it looks like streamers blowing on the wind as seen through a window.
I never did make a sample for this lesson the way we were supposed to, with each grid tidily filled with stitches in two yarns, going in different directions. One day maybe I’ll go back and to that.
And this was the end of the first module. Are you as amazed as I am at the variety of effects achievable with just this one simple stitch? I’m knocked out all over again looking at these photos. And you’d think, wouldn’t you, that after finishing this lesson I’d be super-charged and moving into the second module. I certainly started with lots of enthusiasm, but I soon hit a wall.
The first lesson in Module 2 is about backstitch, which looks very similar to running stitch but instead of leaving open space between the stitches, doubles over on itself to fill those gaps. As a result, the stitching is much more dimensional than running stitch, rising above the surface of the fabric to create much more texture. I read through the lesson, got my sample fabric marked into the grids suggested for this linen and then began, as instructed, to stitch over the grid lines to create very small open areas inside the grid which would be filled with simple shapes of my own choosing.
I know what shape I want to use, I’m eager to get there, but first, blast it, I have to stitch all those &*[email protected]#*))&%^ grid lines. And it’s taking me f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I didn’t mark the intermediate lines, just the outlines of each 2” grid; the others I’m gauging by eye. But oh my goodness, backstitch is a slow stitch, kind of a two-steps-forward, one-step-back scenario. It’s taken me two episodes of stitching to get even this far and I’m utterly sick of it. (yes, each of those little boxes at the bottom is half an inch square, which is why I’ve gone to a larger box in the upper half of the grid.)
Hence this blog post. I figured that if I showed you where I’m stuck, and explained why, I’d feel like such a wuss that I’d gather myself together and finish the grid and the shapes and MOVE ON TO THE NEXT LESSON. I don’t know how long I have to finish this course--maybe a year, maybe ten months--but I’ve already been six months at it and am nowhere near halfway through. Perhaps this lesson is one of those tasks meant to separate the sheep from the goats. Or perhaps it just seems that way to me. In any case, the cohort of folks I was posting with on the Facebook group has long since moved on to later lessons and I’m left here languishing in the weeds. I can, however, get out of the weeds and back into the swim of things with just a little application and a tweak to my attitude, or so I’m telling myself. When I finish the course, if I’m asked for feedback, I will explain that this was a very difficult point for me and a place where I got stuck for months.
I don’t want to end on a note of discouragement, however. Let me show you another great part of this course, the keeping of records. As a person who spend most of her twenties in grad school, the taking of notes has become second nature, so I was happy to be told to find a notebook and use it to record not only my designs and the threads and yarns I used but also my own sense of which samples were successful and why and where I might find a place to apply these stitch and thread and fabric combinations in my own textile art. Together with the actual samples, these notes are a treasure trove of possibilities.
And this was another great idea, making up a grid for a particular lesson and photocopying it so I could use a pencil to try out ideas for stitching before committing time and effort to needle and thread.
And finally, I thoroughly enjoy all the great resources that Joe and Sam send out in (usually) weekly newsletters. For the most part, these are links to articles on the TextileArtist.org site, which Joe and Sam run. If you’re at all interested in textile art, this is a place you could spend a lot of time and see some thoroughly amazing work. I highly recommend it.
Still with me? This was a long post, and not an easy one to write because of my own sense of failure at being stuck. I’d love to know whether any of you are interested in hand stitching and apply it to your own work. If you are, or even if you’re just curious, I highly recommend “Exploring Texture and Pattern."
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