The sources of inspiration in my designs I’ve written about before , but today I’m looking at the influences of various techniques that I now frequently use, sometimes returning to them after a long absence. Mum and my paternal grandmother always had some sewing and hand embroidery projects in process, and we grew up amongst practical examples in everyday use. The needlepoint canvases were set into firescreen panels and used upholstering dining chairs; we wore smocked dresses for best in the summer; and in our home there were pulled- and counted-thread table linens, doileys and hand embroidered guest towels. Lots of crochet and knitting was done, too, but ‘stitch’ was the most enduring influence on me.

My early interest in textile and fibreart began with the British weekly publication Golden Hands that I assiduously collected over about 18 months – I think there were 90 in total. I did several kinds of projects inspired by some things in those articles, and though the different types of embroidery really fascinated me, it wasn’t until I found myself in Darwin in the Wet season of 1976-77 and for a sanity saver in the Wet, joined an embroidery class at the Casuarina community college that embroidery really took hold in my life.

Today’s post was ‘brought on’ by coming across this photo taken ten years ago on our visit to Panama:

My regular readers know that in the last few years I’ve done at least one work featuring glass beading techniques, but that first glass+textile piece, was not in fact the first. I beaded a small wall quilt, Tidal Shallows 1 in 1995

While I added those hundreds of tiny glass beads to it, I was thinking of my late mother. I had often watched as during 1953 she beaded 3″ x 2″ diamond shapes using gold glass beads and sequins positioned around the scooped neck of a very fine knit black wool evening top she bought to wear with a black taffeta evening skirt (which swished beautifully) This top was almost certainly imported and English, so no doubt already expensive, but the hours spent applying the sequins to outline the diamonds and the glass bead filling, elevated that top to a whole new level of haute couture; and with her French Roll evening hairdo, she always looked very glamorous in that outfit. Thanks to her infuence I’ve always loved a bit of glitter, and I’ve actually found the process of adding lots of little beads to something is very soothing, so try it yourself sometime…. One important thing about embellishing with beads is that you either need to add a lot of them, or don’t add any at all, because in my opinion there’s nothing so amateruish looking as skimpy beading.

Related to glass seed beads, another favourite texture tool is french knots, but that influence came later from somewhere in my embroidery guild days of the late 70s to early 90s. I don’t recall them featuring in any of the embroidered works around me in my childhood. As shown here, french knots can be used densely placed or scattered as a filler, and they’re often used as outlines in embroidered works.

As shown below in this embroidered farm house, they can be made with stems, too, so they’re versatile.

Painted dots perform the same visual functions as knots and beads, and several times I’ve painted dot outlines in a couple of landscape inspired quilts that have no actual link to the imagery which is identified with Australian Aboriginal art today. Yet this technique is a relatively recent introduction to the Aboriginal culture (Papunya in 1971) Its use enables Aborignal artists to disguise secret details of traditional stories, enabling stories to be told but only fully ‘read’ by those who have the cultural background to understand that information. Dot paintings are tremendously popular today, and it is very clever when you think of it, that genuine Aboriginal stories can be told without offending the spirits, while at the same time delighting non-Aboriginal viewers. Some cultural groups (eg the Tiwi Islanders and some other far Northern Territory groups) do not paint that way, but many Aboriginal artists do, and they use them in lines, outlines and fillings. Perhaps the most iconic Aboriginal artist who used dots to outline shapes was the late Rover Thomas

This second post on the topic of themed exhibitions was prompted by my acceptance into the SAQA Oceania Region’s themed quilt exhibition, “Opposites”. I’ve been a Juried Artist Member in SAQA for a long time, and every couple of months we JAMs have a zoom gathering, or YAK, to discuss issues and news in the professional part of the art quilting world, and these sessions include a wealth of proven ability and experience between us. We recently discussed themed exhibitions.

Although I live in South America, I wanted to support this exhibition in my native region, despite frankly struggling with the theme. I don’t normally enter themed shows unless I already have a finished piece that fits the entry requirements, or that I planned to make with that theme, anyway.  It took me several months until I came up with a design that comfortably fit within my portfolio. This time, the experience made me think more about the matter of themed exhibitions, and these are related to the popular kind of small groups that exhibit together every year or two showing works they’ve created in response to prompts/themes taken on assignment by the members, commonly every 2 months, and members commit to completing a show-ready art quilt in that time.

While I lived in Denver CO, I was active in a small group of like-minded quilt makers, ‘Quilt Explorations’, who explored the medium beyond traditional quilt making, We met monthly to show what we’d done with each topic or prompt that members suggested. While it wasn’t mandatory to produce an actual quilt every time, most of us did and even if we hadn’t finished one we all did the necessary design and research/planning for one, anyway. Each year we exhibited somewhere local like the library or council chambers. It was a very stimulating time in that group, which I had to leave when we returned to Australia, but I’m sure that fairly soon I’d have moved on from that group, anyway, as my own themes and ideas gradually took more attention. That time was influential though, and some of the themes from that time continue to appear in my art to this day, albeit in modified technical form. This 1990 one for example, prompted by the ribbed headlamp glass in the B/W photo of a gorgeous vintage car, led to a huge part of my portfolio exploring the effects of lines on shapes. In the early 90s fine strip inserts became a signature of my designs, increasing in curvature as my piecing skills refined. Wandering lines still apppear in my surface designs, but since Green Dimension, 2023, they’ve been appliqued rather than inserted.

Rounded cutouts reappeared fairly often, like this 2018 diptych –

My point here is that being involved in themed study groups and exhibition groups can be very helpful to emerging artists in any medium; and some of these artists are possibly still developing their own voice, too. It naturally follows that themed exhibition calls for entry are keenly welcomed by many art quilt makers, including some well known, award-winning names.

I include links to previous posts and other websites to help my readers find more detailed information, helping me keep my posts reasonably coherent and concise 🙂

I am very pleased with this week’s good news, that my entry ‘New From Old’ was juried in to SAQA’s Oceania regional exhibition “Opposites”, yay!!

I remember that on our return from USA in early 1994, the ‘art quilt’ was still relatively new, though, and most Australian quilt shows did not yet have an art quilt section in their prospectuses; Ozquilt Network was being established and is now very important on the textile art scene in both Australia and New Zealand; and I was on the committee the West Australian Quilt Association formed to organise that state’s first art quilt exhibition, The Razor’s Edge, 1995, wich is now the well established and highly important binennial Stitched and Bound .

I’m sure that there will be very exciting pieces in the collection, judging by the names of Australian and New Zealand artists on the list whose work I do know, but there are a couple I’ll have to look up. As I’ve been out of Aus for such a long time, it’s a bit hard to keep up with that and everything else in the art quilting world as a whole; but thank goodness for the SAQA network, of which I am a juried artist member, JAM.

The collection of 50cm x 70cm works will apear at the Australian Quilt Convention in Melbourne, Australia, from April 9th -12th. It will later travel to some other venues, and I’ll post that information as I receive it.

One interesting image in today’s Pinterest updates was of collages, and following a link took me to a group of little works in small boxes arranged and fixed to the wall; I pinned it to my presentations board as I’m always interested in how other fibre artists present their works. Following that link took me to a whole page of such collections of small boxes of fibre and paper art in various sizes and arrangements.

Following links online can take one down lots of rabbit holes, and one I mentioned in yesterday’s post was the German artist Beate Hien who’d created a framed work I saw on Pinterest, and thinking it was stitching, went to her website where I found that pic on the prints page . As I looked around I found her lovely, interesting work is not stitch as I’d presumed, but paper in various forms and techniques. I was a bit disappointed there was no artist statement on her site.

I was not only browsing in Pinterest, though, because for a new Instagram post I was looking in my own photos for more beach sand pics that have inspired some of my works https://www.instagram.com/schwabealison/p/DU3h_IOicK1/ and then came across this photo of a quilt I rediscovered some time back:

Although I finished it completely at the time, I’m sure I must have known back 14 years ago that this was no major opus 🙂 I photographed it in 2023, just after I’d unfolded it but it’s back in the cupboard again. Now there’s a heap of critical comments I could make about it because its blindingly obvious I didn’t give enough thought to the finished texture results, as (1) the sand ridges should have been painted in a lighter colour than the background to stand out, and (2) they could have been given a bit of trapunto treatment before the piece was layered and stitched, which would have also enhanced the dimensional effect.

Looking back at older works periodically is always useful, I’ve found.

I have several things on my mind at the moment, all of them to do with the lines and shapes formed by Nature and Human Activity on the Earth’s surface.

First, my latest stitched Suffolk puff soft sculpture is almost completely assembled – it’s part of the Growth series in this website and I love how these puffs provide a really nice surface on which to stitch. Moving on further, it might make some sense to embroider first before cutting out the circles. I’ve filed each photo I’ve taken of this group of forms “Grey and gold puffs” and this one has added “Grey and gold puffs with basting blog” because it has been resized to fit on this page. That however will probably not be the title of the finished work, in which case I’ll need to rename the several pics for consistency.

Second, sheer fabrics I pinned an image on Pinterest the other day because that pic reminded me of the love affair I’ve always had with the design potential of sheer fabrics (I also follwed the link to the wonderful work of Beate Hien which I’ll explore in depth sometime soon) I used nylon organza in several of the Timetracks series, and one I made after our trip to Egypt titled“Gift of The Nile” scroll down because there are pics of others in that post, too.

Third, grids. My regular readers know that grids are my default design layout 🙂 That pinterest image reminded me of the potential of double needle stitching a line. About fifty years ago, when the Princess line with A-line skirt was in vogue, I made myself a lovely special occasion dress (the races? a wedding? I forget…) The bodice featured silver metallic lines of double needle stitching I did on the fabric before cutting out the pattern piece, and there a fine ridge formed between the two lines visible on the surface. How could I forget this – it is a perfect technique for my next Out of Order piece…. I want to produce much more distortion in the grids as the deteriotation of the state of the world seems to have accelerated markedly over the past year, and this will be the perfect technique to lay down the grid for #4, coming up soon.