Recently the regional South and Central America and Caribbean group of SAQA revved up and is now communicating as never before on social media, particularly Facebook We were all asked to post a pic of one of our art quilts that featured some of the way we work. I chose to put up About Red, which I think particularly encapsulates my interest in lines and shapes with marks as stitch, plus of course, colour.

All the handstitching the I’ve been re-focused on since signing on for the Stitch Club workshops is starting to influence me, as I knew it would. I have even brought out for an airing my 40+ y.o. UFO, a hexagon patchwork quilt, adding some cream shapes to the border each day. It’s fine hand stitching of course, but nice to do while listening to the news which you don’t need to keep your eyes glued onto. This afternoon I’ll be listening to a one hour webinar in the Textile Talks series and it will be nice to be stitching during that, too. This week I dabbled with the following sample – I want a key element in what I have in mind to be hand stitch, and the glorious straight stitch is my favourite for its versatility.

This sample is telling me

• Colour oversewn with gold on cream looks restful, gently rich. I have many miles of gold and quite a large amount of silver thread 🙂
• Colour on cream oversewn with flourescent could be dramatic.
• Colour on black oversewn with either metallic or flourescent could be dramatic.
• I want to follow this further but need to decide if I prefer the frayed look that developed as I worked on this, or to go for a fusion adhesive backing before cutting the segments of colour.
• I love the fine gold lines but without the fabric behind the stitches they look blah on cream, but similar on black could look good.
• This type of fine metallic thread is not really strong, so to use the gold to actually quilt such a work would be best in poly thread of cream on cream, black on black, etc.
• I often work in the squares or grids that I love which are a remnant of the traditional patchwork influence in my work. Of course this basted black grid would be removed if this were a piece going on to completion.