Squares, grids – important parts of how I see the world around me – for people around the world there is massive disruption at the moment to long-established patterns of rules based order. Patterns of disruption are all around for us to see at local, national and international levels. This small piece is an example of my current interest in disrupted grids as symbolic of the chaotic state of the world today. If you keep and eye and ear on the news from around the world, your own country and your neighbourhood, you know enough stories to understand what I’m talking about, and I don’t need to spell out my own strongly held political views on any particular situation in every direction we can look. These are the thoughts behind my interest in grids.
6in. x 8in. textile sample/snippet
This is a 6″x8″ size textile piece, so small I can’t ever think of such things as ‘quilts’ – but members of SAQA have made and are donating small pieces this size for the Spotlight auction which will be held, online and in person, at this year’s SAQA Studio Art Quilt Associates’ annual conference. Anyone can bid – I’ll put details up later – you don’t have to be physically present or be a member of SAQA to bid. A couple of months ago I did make a very different one and sent it up with a friend traveling to USA, but it seems to have been lost in the US mail; so if I can find someone going up to the US in the next couple of days it could still get there. I simply can’t justify putting this textile snippet into a Fedex envelope and paying about US$80 to be sure it gets there next week! But no matter, if can’t find someone to take it and mail it for me up there, I’m really well ahead for next year’s auction. Whatever happens, like most of my auction offerings it is a high quality sample, and while making it I learned a great deal.
The pewter metal finish polyester fabric of course doesn’t fray – so assembling this suggested doing the same thing with some of the many scraps of leather I have, including some frog skins that could be just the thing for a large work in this style. What looks like a french knot holding each little piece in place is actually knotted perle thread tied at the back – which raises questions for the back of a larger work, and I’ll need to thoroughly think through scaling all this up, including machine sewing with honey-gold #8 perle cotton with a top stitching needle, adjusting tension in the bobbincase and on the top thread, which should all work ok, but I’ll go there another day – tomorrow’s an overdue haircut and an afternoon with the mahjong girls 🙂
Barbara Rucket of Atlanta GA, and I are good friends in a small online group of stitchers who met up among the earliest members of the Textile.org’s – StitchClub begun in 2020. (Visit this link to learn about this subscription organisation that presents excellent online workshops and encouraging feedback from teachers and fellow members) Several of those teachers left indelible inspirations on my creative path. One example is Jessica Grady’s embellishments workshop which inspired experimentation that led to my art quilt“Caribbean Crush” and several more recent pieces.
“Caribbean Crush”, 2023, detail.
Recently Barbara shared her thoughts on where her work is going, and the importance of graphing or charting her original designs to work in her preferred stitching techniques of needlepoint and beading.
Oma Willis needlepoint design, worked by Barbara Rucket
Needlepoint work designed and worked by Barbara Rucket.
As an experienced stitcher of needlepoint and beading works, for many years Barbara has been a member of the Embroiderers Guild of America, EGA – (which I belonged to in Denver) taught classes and been active in the several other textile art guilds she belongs to. These images of two of her works bear similarity to how I think in repeated units of squares, or grids on a different scale, which I see as an enduring influence in my own art, from (a) hand drawn diagrams to illustrate university geomorphology papers in the predigital 60s, and (b) the brief time in the 80s I spent making traditional American geometric patchwork.
Right from the start, StitchClub members included experienced lovers of stitching as an art form, and others who hadn’t held a needle to embroider something for many years; and we all welcomed this new textile art online group as a huge help to our sanity during the difficult Covid-19 pandemic. After a while, StitchClub experimented with the idea of forming small groups they thought would expand and strengthen the StitchClub community – like a quilting bee or stitching circle. Those who expressed interest in this trial were selected from within close time zones; each group was labelled with a colour (we got PINK) and we were given Textile.org’s Zoom link to use at our chosen time. At the PINKS’ first Zoom call about 4 years ago, Barbara, Nancy, Ali, Bonnie, Jan, Val, Pam and Ann and I decided to meet every second tuesday, at mid afternoon Montevideo time; I’m the only one in the southern hemisphere, mid-way between Western Canada/USA and the UK.
StitchClub eventually let the trial groups project go, but we PINKS decided to continue with our group thanks to Nancy offering us her Zoom account. Last year with some mixed feelings I let my StitchClub membership go, but it’s important to me to remain in the PINKS group.
As we got to know each other by chatting about the SC workshops and textile art in general, we’ve always found so much to talk about. Of course some momentous world events have occurred during this time, and while they are touched on, our fortnightly talk still mostly stays ‘on topic’. What a joy it was to have regular facetime contact with fellow stitchers while normal in-person group activities in our communities were suspended. Since travel resumed, some of us have managed to meet in person. For the UK members this is less difficult, but on a visit to USA I was able to take a couple of days out of our family visits to go to Atlanta for a wonderful, but too brief time with Barbara and her husband.
PINKSstill meet on Zoom every second tuesday, which is this afternoon, actually! and it’s nearly time to go and make a cup of tea, check my hair and put some fresh lippy on …
Recently in one of my art quilt FB groups there was comment on when members regarded a work as being ‘finished’ and I was a little surprised how much variation was in the answers. Although many art quilt makers regard the end as completed binding or facing, my personal view is that it’s not ‘done’ until hanging sleeve is on the back and my initials are free machine embroidered on the front, but as I say there’s an array of other answers.
Going back to the step before that, the treatment of the edge of the work, a year ago I wrote: “One enduring legacy of traditional quilt making is that most art quilt makers carefully bind or face the straight or straightened edges of our quilts. These are the standard procedures for those utilitarian predecessors from which art quilts descend, and I myself have mostly bound or faced quilts, even ones with extremely irregular shaped outer edges, eg., Pahoehoe.
“Pahoehoe” 1995, 80cm x 70cm. (photographed against black background)
That facing was challenging and a bit finicky in parts, but was worth it – because it would have been an entirely different quilt if all four irregular edges shapes had been chopped in a straight line. I have seen other artists deal with this issue by placing the whole irregular shaped composition onto a rectangular backing and then treating that as the surface design to be quilted and ultimately faced or bound – ho hum.…I need to think more about this idea, but I was really pushed to thinking about it recently when I saw how one artist did some lovely improvisational piecing of units with repeated shapes and skillful use of colour. When it reached the point of finishing the edge, she got out her straight ruler, trimmed off all the interesting little irregular shapes, and placed a facing along each of the four straight edges. The result was ‘nice’, but much less interesting than it could have been.”
Raw edge of distressed recycled wool coat, to give the apearance of moth damage. Detail “Moth Buffet” 2023.
Detail of wool quilt featuring torn edge; work in progress, ie sleeve and signature still required.
Behind this old adage, ‘a stitch in time saves nine’, is a literal truth. On art quilt-related social media pages I fairly often see comments or pleas for help that have obviously resulted from a maker using a new (to them) technique or a material for the first time, and I suspect that this is one main reason people just give up on a project and move on to the next one. Taking some time to make samples first is a good investment in a project.
In the last few weeks I have made quite a few samples while planning a quilt to be made in wool to enter in Art Quilt Australia. I don’t normally work in wool, but the lovely piece I bought late last year is almost sufficiently delightful to work with to prompt me to totally ditch my stash of cotton fabrics so favoured by art quilters. I’ve been living in Uruguay for some years now, and the almost complete absence of cottons in the market place here has long prompted me to consider the textile art potential of almost every other fabric I encounter, with the guiding priniciple ‘work with what’s around you’. While looking for something else late last year, I stumbled across this fabulous metallic finish polyester, and on impulse bought some. I can’t imagine wearing it as it would be very body-clinging (and mine’s a bit lumpy to appear in public wearing it) and probably would be too sweat making for yoga pants or dance pants… and it’s not nearly robust enough for upholstery. But never mind, my impulsive purchase of this glittery fabric helped the store get rid of a bit of it.
While comparing rayon and wool threads, I was sure the impact would come from the wool being cut back to reveal the metallic – reverse applique.
Two weeks ago I wrote “From handling just this one sample, I now know that (1) I’m open to ditching the metallic and using another fabric to show behind the top wool layer (2) Whatever fabric shows through those holes, it really needs to be a complete layer between the front and the back as in reverse applique, the finest examples of which are the molas of the Kuna people of San Blas Is., off the coasts of Panama and Colombia.“
But I’ve since found that (1) I’m more committed than ever to the metallic fabric, and (2) further sample making showed that the same impact is more elegantly presented by direct applique, not reverse aplique. That’s also good news as less of the fabric will be used up/wasted by being hidden between layers 🙂
Another important phase of experimentation with ideas – the looped and straggling strands I really love…
Blobs of metallic on the surface with cutouts of the same fabric on top of each; hand stitch around each unit. Black machine satin stitch holds both layers in place, but won’t show with looped wool placed on top (LR).
Because I still had some reservations about which threads to use, I continued experimenting :
Fine straight uncluttered stitches appealed most. Threads used -were LH #12perle, RH rayon .
And arrived at this final version, and happy with the result, am now well advanced with making this new work:
And the final version – with radiating stitches in rayon.
Conclusion – simpler is better, and the block of black zigzag is really quick and easy to remove, giving an interesting effect which I’ll exploit further another time.
Every year SAQA calls for applications from art quilters who wish to work with a mentor to guide their development in some aspect of their art quilt practice towards a self identified goal, and a new mentoring year is just underway. For several years now, I’ve volunteered to mentor someone, because it’s one of the several ways that I can contribute to the organisation, and as a mentee progresses towards their goals it gives me satisfaction, too.
I haven’t always found it completely rewarding, though: my first mentee just faded off into the distance around June, without announcing to me, or SAQA, that she was quitting for any reason – suddenly there was just silence, which left me feeling a bit of a failure. The following year my allocated mentee asked for another mentor! which was actually quite a relief, as she was difficult and I think had unrealistic expectations about her committment. The next one, who was really doing very well, suddenly got totally snowed under by an avalanche of adult children’s needs, and though she said ‘I’ll get back to you when things calm down.’, for all I know she is still struggling with all that, because I never heard from her again. Perhaps she had to realign her priorities permanently.
In the past couple of years I’ve had very rewarding mentorships, with women who were articulate and understood their strong motivations; and each consistently worked on their goals during each of our times together. My new mentee and I do not yet know each other beyond the facts on her application form and whatever she read on my volunteer form, the details of which I now don’t remember exactly. I’m sure it will be an interesting year as she sounds articulate, realistic and motivated.
Although I am a former teacher, it is not a teaching position, it’s more one of directing the mentee where to look for the information or technical learning they identify they want/need, of responding with critique when asked, and sharing experience about things like writing artist statements, or some things to do in their studio practice that could help in some way.
Volunteer members contribute by sharing experience, support and advice to fellow members who’ve identified one or several areas of their art practice which they wish to develop, and I’ve found the most frequently expressed goal is wanting to find their own unique ‘voice’. This is more than just developing a particular ‘style’ though. An artist speaks through her work, and developing her own voice involves thinking about personal things, motivations and inspirations, and on developing understanding about whatever it is that the artist holds strong views about, or is deeply interested in. It’s a path of discovery which, once you’re on it, always suggests new steps to take, keeping you moving forward…. and this is a large part of why I write my blog. As my artist’s diary, my posts here record my thinking and that’s part of the documentation of my body of work.
I recently suggested to someone struggling with all this that perhaps it would be a good idea to start a new Word.doc for each new work. I suggested she write in it without any intent to publish anywhere, but to use it to give a frame of reference, a skeleton for more thought about where her work is heading, adding into it any thoughts about why she wants design this work, the technique options, emerging title ideas, lists of relevant words, phrases and possible quotes; research links to facts, a picture or two or work in progress; a sentence on what’s on her mind as she works. From now on this will be one of my key recommendations to anyone who asks for help finding their voice.
My current new work is yet another with a grid layout. I’ve said before that grids really appeal to me, and although I attribute that to enduring influence from my brief immersion in the world of traditional geometric patchwork, and could declare QED, I am currently thinking more deeply about ‘grids’ as in my previous post.
Browsing in Pinterest just now, I came across some really interesting surface design grids in varous media and pinned several. This one instantly reminded me of the wonderful heavily stitched cross hatched lines on layers of fabric by Irish textile artist Patricia Kelly, whose website I visited. Although I wasn’t surprised at all her wonderful portfolio, what stood out to me was that while I’ve been closely following her work there and on Instagram I’ve become very influenced by certain technical characteristics and begun to embrace them in my own, like irregularity of all kinds including hanging threads and rough, unfinished, and torn edges. These are not the sole preserve of Kelly’s work, of course, but seeing it all displayed together made me aware of how close I could get to ‘style copying’ without realising it. However, on reflection, I realised that such characteristics appear in the works of so many of the textile artists whose work I currently admire most, including Anita Romano, Shelley Rhodes, Cas Holmes, Dorothy Caldwell, Roberta Wagner, Rieko Koga and more. Without claiming equal celebrity status with such well known names, it is clear we and many others are part of a strong current trend in contemporary hand stitched art in which all kinds of lines, shapes and textures, frequently unruly or suggesting incompetence, are used to produce our artistic statements, unlike the pursuit of the highst standards of technical excellence most prized in the world of traditional embroideries.
