Every craft guild I’ve encountered has a similar raison d’etre – to preserve the history and skills of that craft, and for the more skilled members to pass them on to everyone who wants to learn them. S o, in my liftetime I have joined embroidery and quilting guilds in many states of Australia, and while we lived in USA 1987-94 was a member of the EGA and two quilting guilds, and in many ways SAQA is a guild, too.

Last week I enjoyed a very interesting presentation to members of SAQA, Studio Art Quilt Associates, by Brad Cape, the Executive Director of the Embroiderers’ Guild of America, EGA. I missed his opening remarks, but the talk was recorded and so I’ll watch again when it becomes available, and no doubt Martha’s introduction and the first part of Brad’s talk gave the origin and history of the guild and of course its mission, to quote from EGA’s website “…inspiring passion for needle arts through education and the celebration of its heritage.”

From the audience’s questions to Brad, I felt most of us watching were embroiderers and others who are aware of the growing importance of embroidery in art quilts, and whether by hand or machine, stitchery forms a significant element of surface design in both 2D and some of the 3D works now being made by some SAQAs. It’s a growing trend over the last 15 years that I’ve been really pleased to see and be part of.

In Darwin, capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, in 1977 I enrolled in a community college course titled “Creative Embroiderery”, as something to get me out of the house every week to help maintain mental health during the Wet Season up there. Unfortunately I had to leave mid year as Mike’s job required us to relocate, but by then I was seriously hooked on hand embroidery, and fortunately everywhere we moved after that I found embroiderers and some lovely community groups. Many were in quite remote places, but there were always a few taking correspondence courses from a guild down in the Big Smoke (capital city) and some embroiderers were able to attend a summer school every year or two… Information was circulated by state craft councils, and of course we learned from each other, books or visiting workshop teachers, which included Cynthia Sparks, Rusty Walkley and Constance Howard. What I learned at an incredible 9 day summer school in 1978 has continued to influence my textile/fibreart, and that generally includes either quilting and/or some form of decorative embroidery.

In 1987 the family moved to Denver CO (Mike’s job again) where, in addition to continuing with the embroidery I was so wrapped up in, I had time to learn the basics of patchwork and quilting too. These two crafts quickly merged and sometimes decorative embroidery was machined motifs that fit the theme of the work as I became involved in making 2D wall hangings or ‘art quilts’.

I’ve been making this kind of textile art since, and in the last few years delved into 3D soft sculptures, too, always decorated with some form of hand stitch and/or beading –

Recently I posted what I see are the time-saving benefits of making samples, but they are also memory savers, just like taking brief notes or making a list.

I’ve been stitching over and around ‘donut shapes’ for some years, and they feature in a large section of my “Abstract Landscape Textures”, for example.

The most recent works in my Out of Order series feature much more damaged, disorderly grids, and recently I came up with constructing rougher looking raised 3D elements, – think ‘donuts’ – as compared with those elements in earlier Out of Order works.

Far more interesting than just overstitching flat rings are overstitching with the stemmed french knots I used in these next two works. I tore thin strips of fabric and formed them into raised rings which I first held with a pin while did a round of sewing up from beneath with a few carefully placed tiny invisible stitches in toning thread. Then I removed the pin which made for much easier overstitching. The whole process is made easier by the use of the 6″ springloaded machine embroidery hoop I’ve found to be indispensible for over 50 years;

Those stemmed french knots seem to burst out of the centre of the raised rings with some lively motion, as if erupting or leaping outwards. Stemmed french knots are one of my all time fav stiches – but stemmed fly and chain stitches would also work sometime. The fabric and thread on the red one are synthetic – so hold their profile. The ones below are natural fibre, so would flatten rolled/folded for a long time.

Where did this idea come from? Certainly I’ve been influenced/inspired by things I’ve seen browsing on line – such as the very textural embroidery of Jennifer Jones or Penny Behrens’ frequent use of stitched down vaguely circular rings as a texture, but I don’t know where torn strip construction idea came from; anyway they’re an exciting thing I’m keen to take further in the stitched reactions to the state of the world today, which is the key concept of the Out of Order series.

I love stitch constructions on detached warps – aka needleweaving and needlelace, and in 2007 blogged about these two pieces, Behind the Scenes 1 & 2,  which I made in 1987.

In that post, I acknowledged the influence of the book, Needlelace and Needleweaving by Jilly Nordfors, that I’d bought back in the late 70s, and seeing it again on my bookself this week, I realise it’s probably always been a source book for popular fibreart techniques. People with little knowledge of historic textiles think how clever and beautiful these works are, which of course they are, but these techniques used to be featured in the decorative trims and borders of domestic textiles used every day in the homes of my grandmother’s era, and older. I’m sure there would be people using these techniques in the traditional ways they’ve always been used, as decorative trims or motifs in household linens and clothing. Embroidery guilds and organisations such as the Royal School of Needlework preserve information about historic works and the knowledge of how to make them, and there’s always a steady stream of stitchers for their workshops and guild activities.

Today we all go through the world with phone cameras in our pockets, and I sometimes take a photos, or even buy such vintage things in markets, because a thing of beauty is a joy for ever, and I do occasionally use them, because, I must confess, I now have an ironing lady – but in my 75+ years, I’ve ironed plenty of embroidered table cloths and fine linen serviettes myelf, because I love using them for visitors. Even more interesting though, is that today we can see these same techniques in works online on such sites as Pinterest and Instagram, and in galleries showing installation works by contemporary fibreartists. Some examples are https://www.instagram.com/p/DcI85N1Ih6Q/ by Celia Pym; https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOuPV-QjVto/ by Cole Bun; here are lots of lovely examples of weaving in tree branches ; and some interesting contemporary 3D needlelace by several artists including Leisa Rich.

Judging by what I see on Pinterest and Instagram, I sense increasing interest in such techniques, partly because to younger generations they appear to be unusual or even novel. Young people today see them in everyday use far less often than we did when young. I can’t think of many youngsters who’d be willing to spend the necessary time away from their screens to learn the skills to embroider and crochet the fine table linens and trims for household linens in the traditional designs that have been handed down over hundreds of years. I grew up without TV in the house until I was about 14, by which time I had learned basic needlework skills and developed a lifelong interest in stitch. Our kids had TV around them all their lives and they weren’t even teenagers when computers came along, so neither of my middle aged children ever made the time available to learn those skills from me, and my grandsons have no idea.

But that’s no one’s fault – it’s just a sign of how much and how fast things have changed in modern western societies. For those who do want traditional looking things, while there are plenty of vintage things around to collect, there are also plenty of beautiful mass produced items available, at different levels of quality and pricing to suit all budgets. They’re even more appealing if they’re made from easy-care or no-iron wash’n’wear fabrics 🙂 And the same goes for silverware, too, because no matter how beautiful it looks, the young don’t want to actually live with it, because it all needs to be polished regularly with elbow grease to look good….

Yesterday I began a new work featuring glass beads, which will be small enough to fit the conditions of the 4th International Salon of Glass and Textile, The call for entries is currently open, and I hope to be selected for this upciming salon, too. The exhibition will be in Santiago de Chile next year.

It feels good to have settled on an idea and started. In the last week, I’ve spent perhaps 4 hours threading approx 15cm lengths of silver glass beads to hand stitch down onto the machine stitched grid lines, and eventually remove those gridlines. One of my mantras is “learning by doing”, so \i set out having no idea really how it would all look.

Getting the grid down went well, though I really underestimated how long it would take to actually couch the strings down to make that grid. It was quite fiddly, particularly to get the crossovers sitting flat – a bit of trial and error at most of the interstections requiring adding or removing one bead, very fiddly. Well anyway in time, that whole grid process took at least 5 hours. Beading enthusiast and expert, StitchClub friend Barbara Rucket agreed, with me that finicky is the approppriate word here.

It is only a very small piece, max 25cm, so whatever I place on those spaces will need to be small, and I’m thinking possibly in the same style of thing as in some of my earlier Out of Order works:

So next I needed to audition things to place in those grid spaces. This began with rummaging through my scrap bags and several boxes and drawers, looking for the ‘right’ fabrics to manipulate into appropriate units to go on this cream. I found the exact cream fabric and though I ripped a narrow strip off and formed some circles, but this didn’t seem exciting. I gathered another bit of the ripped strip and formed it into a frayed mound dotted with beads, but nah – not exciting enough either – the beads weren’t prominent enough. Finally I threaded some beads and wove them in and out, over, under and through each other.

At that point I left it all to sleep on, but this morning it still looked good, so I’ll take the other auditions off when I resume work later today, and do more threading for each space – some spaces getting generous motifs, others much less. It will be interesting because at last the glass beads are the feature and the cream textile is only the setting, the background, and that feels right.

I am very happy to announce that my auction quilt, “Just Go With The Flow” will soon be in the hands of its new owner, Jette Quiera, of Eugene, Oregon, and I’d like to thank her for her purchase in support of Studio Art Quilt Associates.