Free the Stitches

Cynthia's Shower - more pictures

2011-09-19T10:55:00.000-04:00

Here are a few more pictures from Cynthia's Shower!

Cynthia's Shower

2011-09-15T17:14:00.000-04:00

Our September meeting was all about babies, and one little girl in particular-- Cynthia and Ryan's little one, due on the 11th of next month (which is also Freestyle day-- do you think Cynthia and Sandra might just miss this one?).

Grandmother-in-waiting Sandra was able to order, pick up, and deliver the cake to Jill's house and keep the secret from Cynthia. We still can't figure out how Cynthia didn't know what was happening! And notice the little friends standing guard over the cake!

After lunch, we moved to Jill's living room to enjoy presents. Here are Jill, Sheila and Peggy:

Beth and Karen:

Carol and Margi:

Tone (in a very thoughtful mood):

And Sandra.

The gifts were so lovely-- and so handmade!

And Jill's basket, which must be seen in the round to be appreciated:

I managed to completely foul up the photo transfer, so I think I have missed some of the gifts. If you have photos to add, and especially of the cake (mine was taken from the back, so was upside-down, duuuh), please post them for all of us to see.

Thanks--
Nancy

Playing With Wool

2011-08-16T11:33:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time I made a felted cord (the musician in me resists typing "chord") and embroidered it, then made two felted and embroidered endings for it, adding some loopy knitting tapes to cap things off:

This cord was felted with roving, and a long piece of crewel wool was the center of it-- just in case the cord wanted to thin out and become many pieces. I love the result, and combine it with a scarf and another felted neckpiece I found in Asheville (center of All Things Civilized) to wear with a blue wool jacket from Fall thru early spring.

Since that time, I have often thought about the process and how to vary it, how I might create another neckpiece that would be more interesting without slipping over the line into gaudiness, and this past week I began to work in earnest on the project.

First, I crocheted a cord of a lovely pale green and lavender heather wool, but ran out of the 3-ply yarn and found nothing with which to continue it, so at 30 inches, I set it aside and rumaged through the yarn to find a continuation. No such luck. Anything else I could find was not the right size, and was certainly much too soft.

Then I remembered a cone of ink bottle green Harrisville wool yarn meant for weaving. Knitting and crochet threads have been fluffed and fulled after spinning, which is what makes them so appealing in a yarn store. Yarns spun for weaving are left tight and unwashed so they are used first to weave piece then to full (wash or wet and agitate the yarn) the woven piece. The fulling process is like a mini felting process, and it closes up the small spaces between the yarn in the cloth.

I started a second cord with the weaving yarn. This Harrisville wool was a two ply, thin yarn, somewhere between a size 5 and 8 perle cotton, so the crochet was fraught with moments of searching for the correct swear word to express that particular situation. After about ten or twelve inches, I realized that I could use that irregularity to my advantage, and I began to deliberately vary the thickness of the cord. 81 inches later, I was satisfied that I had enough cord to work with.

In this picture you see the cord and some of the irregularities I mentioned.

I decided to see what would happen if I began adding wool roving and wool stitching to the cord before it was felted. Wow!!! This was almost sinfully delightful, stuffing parts of the cord, wrapping other sections, needle felting the roving into the crocheted body, threading an especially large tapestry needle and stitching odd, random threads over the roving and around the crochet . . . I should make dozens of these cords for my mental health!!! Any frustrations I may have felt over the real or imaginary conflicts in my life were resolved with the work on the cord:

Gaudy? I couldn't have cared if this cord ended up as a drapery tie-back in a bordello, and I could have gone on for weeks this way except for the realization that as much fun as this was, the real fun would begin after the cord was felted and ready for embellishment. I put the two pieces of cord in a mixing bowl and poured boiling water over them and stirred for a few moments. The smell of wet animals filled the kitchen . . . I wrinkled my nose and stirred some more. Some of the blue dye released (probably from the roving), but when I drained the hot water off and changed to ice water, the color set. A second bath of boiling water was clear, and after some more stirring the wool was ready for the washing machine.

Here I should explain that I cannot felt wool by hand any more because my palms are no longer flat, thank you Mr. Arthritis. These days, I depend upon the washer for any felting that may happen around here.

Charles was glad to donate his yard-work clothes to the cause— denim is the best thing I have found to use with wool in the washer. Denim is high-density, tightly-woven, and unless you are dealing with designer jeans, they have a pretty hard surface. This is the perfect substitute for hands in agitating wool.

Into the wash. I checked once to make sure things were not tangled, and the cord was shrinking nicely. Maybe too nicely.

Out of the washing machine, the 81" cord now measured 76 inches! And the pitiful pale green 30" cord came in at a whopping 32 inches! The only explanation I could think of was that the pale greencord was beautifully uniform, but almost twice as fat as the second, longer cord. In the shrinking process, the cord became thinner, but grew two inches longer, the way children enter puberty as chubby little buttons and come out tall and willowy . . . ???

Into the dryer. Listening to the drum bang the clothes around, I wondered if the original 81inches of crocheted cord was going to be long enough to work with after all this processing!

The final measurements: the 81" cord that shrank to 76" now measures 68" long. And little shrimp cord of 30" that grew to 32" is now 31" short. I will set little shrimp aside and think of something for it to become, but not now. The stitching and embellishing of the long cord begins this afternoon!

Tea Party

2011-07-15T10:13:00.000-04:00

At our July Freestyle meeting, we had a fabulous tea party at Margi's house! Here our host, Margi, serves up some little sandwiches while Karen and Carol wait patiently to try some of the yummy treats.

Jill's beautiful collection of cups and saucers looks wonderful on the table, don't you think?

Stay tuned for pictures of our tea party inspired ATC swap in a couple months!

During show-n-tell, we found out that Peggy actually won the silent auction basket our group put together for this year's Share-A-Stitch in Birmingham, AL! The theme of the event was "Stitching in the Magic City", and several members of the Freestyle group had taken home a stuffed bunny to decorate/dress, and we arranged them all together in this top hat. It was fun to see these little bunnies again!

Here is another special friend that Peggy won at the silent auction as well. Don't you just love his face? :)

River of Red Rocks

2011-06-05T15:15:00.007-04:00

This piece is inspired by rivers or fingers of red boulders on mountains near Taos NM. The mountain is covered by fine stones or shards in a pale orange or light terra cotta color. Cascading down the mountain are rivers of hugh red boulders, some almost cubic in formation. The larger red boulders are the size of a compact car.

The piece was created using a water soluble sandwich. Fibers and bits of cloth were trapped between two water soluble fabrics. The sandwich was embellished with free motion machine stitching. The red boulder river was further embellished with hand stitching. Some of the fibers for the hand stitching were hand spun from roving by the artist. The fabric was rinsed to remove the water soluble fabric.

Couched Herringbone Sampler

2011-06-02T12:52:00.004-04:00

I really enjoy working on the stitch samlers. Being assigned a stitch to work with makes it easier to play. This time I worked with the herringbone stitch. Very fun to couch the thick yarns and ribbons. I stitch without a frame, because I like to hold the cloth in my hands. I would love to cover this hand-dyed linen with stitches, for me that is pretty ambitious.

Soluble Fabric: Steps 1, 2, & 3

2011-04-30T21:42:00.001-04:00

Well, I haven't finished mine yet, but I thought it might be interesting to show the step-by-step process as mine progresses.

First, I sketched out a little landscape with some rolling hills and sky.

Then, with that behind my sticky soluble material, I layered bits of throwsters waste, wool roving, thread & yarn scraps, fabric snippings...anything of interesting texture and color.

Next I covered that with the clear soluble sheet and took it to the sewing machine to do a little stitching.

Stay tuned for Step 4 when I get a chance to do some hand embroidery over everything to lock the layers together even more!

Soluble Fabric: My Landscape

2011-04-27T15:14:00.001-04:00

Finally!!! I thought I would never find the time to finish this, but today the weather was threatening and the first sprinkles sent us in out of the back yard early on, so today became a day to finish projects. I had four house projects on my list, and finishing this was the third. One more to go . . .

My original piece was blocks of color for sky, tree, and meadow. I laid a piece of sheer silk chiffon underneath the Aqua Bond sandwich and stitched a tiny bit on the machine (enough to hold the silk in place), but did the majority of stitching by hand-- 98.99%, actually. It was obsessively stitched, covered almost without letting the ground show through! When I had exhausted the stitch possibilities and felt that every tiny bit of fabric and thread/yarn/soy silk was thoroughly attached, I added beads to the meadow grass. So there are straight stitches for grass and sky, and french knots for the little meadow flowers and the tree. The tree trunk was a series of closely-spaced outline stitches in differing shades of grey.

The tree was quite a dilemma. The foliage began life as a lot of random straight stitches over the darker green scrim and yarn, then I made the straight stitches into seed stitches. It was still awful. Next I added more straight stitches to fill in the spaces between the fat seed seed stitches, but the more I stitched the more I saw it was simply a mess that could not be salvaged! So, as a last-ditch effort to pull something from all the time I'd spent on this project, I put french knots on top of everything. I also used rayon thread for the tree foliage, which is a bear to sew. I remember saying "Dear me!" several times as the thread tangled and twisted back on itself. But when it was finished, I really, really liked it.

In this photo the piece is lying in the bottom of my kitchen sink. I couldn't wait for it to dry to photograph it. When I rinsed it out, there was no discoloration in the water, so nothing faded. And not one little piece of scrim or gibblet of thread floated free, either. Whew! I poured the water from the first rinse, when the Aqua Bond was strongest, over the strawberry plants. Don't gag-- I read that algae and kelp are used as fertilizer in European countries!

It may not be completely Aqua-Bond free, and if it is a bit stiff when it dries, I'll just rinse it again until it has a soft hand.

Now, how much fun is that?

Is anyone else finished with their piece?

A Note On The Solubles . . .

2011-04-18T09:16:00.000-04:00

So sorry, I forgot to mention that before you soak it prior to rinsing, cut away as much of the film as possible. It makes rinsing it out easier and shorter if there is less gooey in the water . . . Sorry I didn't mention it Wednesday.

I finally got started on the stitching. Mine is so densely stitched that I don't think I needed the backing silk fabric. More stitches = a firmer, more substantial fabric.

Soluble Fabric Experiment

2011-04-14T15:49:00.000-04:00

O.K. Time to Show 'N Tell and let us all know what you did with your pieces! Send a photograph of your finished fiber piece to Cynthia or me, and we'll post it for you, if you're having trouble uploading pix.

No, I haven't done my stitching yet. We're having a dinner and birthday party for Bethy this evening, and I have forbidden me to cross the threshold of the studio so I can get everything done in time. Once there, I'm a captive . . .

Art Dolls - A Round Robin

2011-03-31T23:32:00.043-04:00

Last year a group of us took on the challenge of participating in a Round Robin with an Art Doll theme. We each created our own basic doll shape and then took turns once a month passing them around to be creatively dressed and uniquely embellished. :) Mine was a bit of an oddball in the mix because it was the only one that was more of a 2D piece...but I'm thrilled with how she turned out!

She is now proudly framed in a shadowbox...awaiting the perfect location to be hung in my new studio.

Does anyone else have a picture of their finished doll to show off?

Soluble Fabrics: Garden Frame

2011-03-31T18:51:00.000-04:00

The Butterfly, with all its connecting gridwork, just about drove me crazy! So, I started on the second piece, a small (less than 5") garden-themed frame, with less grandiose plans for grids.

I first drew the parameters of my piece on a piece of paper. Then I cut a 5" square of Aqua Bond, peeled the backing from it, and laid the film down (STICKY SIDE FACE UP!!!) on a small 5" cutting board. I taped the top of the Aqua Bond to the board, left the other three sides open. Then I slipped my pattern beneath the Aqua Bond and centered it. After taping more edges in place, I was ready to begin the layering process of building a fabric from small bits and pieces of fabric and yarn.

I chose pale greens and began to snip the pieces into piles beside the Aqua Bond. I laid them in place very carefully, making sure the circle in the middle (where a picture will be added when it is finished) was clear of stray pieces (the rectangle in the center was put there to give my camera a focusing point).

I covered this collection of fabric and thread giblets with the clear film. Notice that the area immediately outside the square, as well as the center circle are the exposed adhesive side of the Aqua Bond, so the clear film attached neatly to the base. After I pulled the pattern out, though, I began to think about Jan Beaney's advice to use a piece of scrim behind the project. I did not want scrim there, but I did find a piece of green voile, very soft and extremely easy to sew through. I added this underneath everything and took the bundle to the sewing machine and began to stitch vertical lines (wavy, not straight at all) to simulate the vertical growth of the greenery.

After the stitching was done, I cut away the green voile on the back of the piece-- oh, dear, I did not rotate this photo; turn sideways and you can see this properly

-- and began the hand stitching:

The stitching is not complete, yet, but this gives you an idea of the process. When the stitching is finished, I will soak the piece in a bowl of hot water, leave it overnight, and rinse it the next day (probably in the garden, where the water will benefit the flowers and the kelp-based film will not coat my plumbing).

I will strive to have this finished before my next trip to Knoxville, so I can share it with you!

Soluble Fabrics: Butterfly

2011-03-31T18:07:00.000-04:00

Today I worked with soluble fabrics. I had two designs in mind. The first, the butterfly, is what I think of as extreme grid-work.

From the paper design, I laid a piece of extremely heavy Sulky Solvy down and traced the butterfly. I used a pale flesh-color pen, which was not a good idea from the point of seeing all the curves well, but if the colors run when the piece is washed, the pale color may not affect the finished piece as strongly as a black marker would.

Here the butterfly has been stitched on the Sulky. I laid the stitched version over the original pattern. Notice that there are a lot of lines added to the original design. This is so that all those long curving lines will connect to something and not be floppy when the Sulky is rinsed out. The grid stitching on this took over an hour.

My apologies for the glare from the Sulky. It is a film that photographs like plastic.

My intent is to work this mainly by hand. I have not stitched in the circle motives of the wings yet, as I'm not sure how I want to do them, if they will be fabric additions or hand stitching.

There is also the possibility of stitching this on the machine-- I would stitch over the existing lines with colored threads, using a tiny zig-zag stitch. More to think about on this one. But at least I have the grid in place, which is the hard part. Whee!

Embroidery Table

2011-03-18T12:12:00.000-04:00

My embroidery table is waiting for me to stop all this nonsense in the garden and get back to the good stuff.

I started another book, got the pages cut from palest blue linen and pinned to batting, but the stop watch started running on the garden, and I haven't been able to get back to do some more stitchery. Those skeins of pale blue and green silk are still calling to me . . . .

I am posting this from the patio table. The feeder is alive with sparrows, the cardinals (too fat for the ledge of the feeder) are pecking around on the ground, and lizards are sunning themselves on the grey stones of the walls. I can't wait to get to the point (with the garden) that I can sit here with them and sew. Can you think of more inspiration than plein aire embroidery?

Felted Fairy Flower

2011-03-17T17:02:00.003-04:00

This was done a while back as a table favor for EGA Retreat in Abingdon, Va. I'm thinking of making several more and putting them in a little blue vase I found at a thrift store.

Stitch, Dissolve, Distort

2011-03-17T08:51:00.001-04:00

This marvelous book, published in 2006 by Batsford, is now out of print and fetching soul-wrenching prices by internet book sellers. What a shame, because it is such a great book and source of ideas for exploring ways of using our sewing machines to make art cloth. There is less emphasis on hand stitching than Beaney and Littlejohn give the subject, but Campbell and Grey go much further by investigating the possibilities of distorting and distressing the fabric by mounting some serious attacks on the woven fabric using everything in their arsenal, including free machining, painting stitches, embellishing, using rubber stamps, creating whipped-cord textures, using the serger, layering threads and fabrics, manipulating fabrics with masses of pintucks . . . and I have only gotten to page 35!

But it is the opening paragraph of the introduction that sets the tone of the book and that drew me to it:

"So many new materials are available for embroiderers to use on fabric; in that excitement, it is easy to forget how important stitch can be. The new materials are changing the look of current work to such an extent that the stitch is overwhelmed by the material or technique that is being used."

The entire book focuses on the importance of the stitch to the techniques presented, and though some may be delightfully off the wall, it is certainly worth reading about these explorations, if only to get a sense of how much larger the contemporary stitch world can be. If you can find a copy of this at the library, check it out and enjoy the eye candy and the tantalizing text. Maybe a friend has a copy you might borrow.

Which brings me to my current rant: Why can't these valuable books stay in print a bit longer? At least long enough to cross the pond and be absorbed into the American fiber art stream. When I see an interesting title, I am almost afraid to pass it up and I zip out the plastic and make the purchase . . . Hmmm . . . or is that what the publishers really wanted me to do in the first place?

Mats for ATCs

2011-03-17T08:04:00.001-04:00

Click here for a site that has ATC mats for displaying collections of cards. I know there are probably other sites, as well. As the shipping is flat rate $7.95, I wonder if several of us might want to combine an order and save on the postage? This is the product picture on site:

If you've found another site, post the link. These single card mats are 8"x10", the same size as the nine-opening mats, and that seems like overkill to me. But the standard frame size of the mat is appealing.

Displaying the cards in matted form is a nice idea if they are all of one subject— Valentine's Day, Christmas, Fourth of July, the seasons . . . I would like to have mine out where I can see them, not keep them in their nearly-filled box!

Thoughts?

Collage Class in July

2011-03-01T07:38:00.000-05:00

Some of you remember the shop http://www.fiberonawhim.com/ that used to be in Sandy Springs, just above Atlanta. FOAW is teaching a class on collage in Knoxville at the Quilt Show in July. See more on their blog: http://www.fiberonawhim.blogspot.com/ (Thursday, January 31 post). If there is one brick-and-mortar shop I truly miss, it is this one. This was the first place I saw cocoons and silk throwster's waste— the things Quilting Arts Magazine first premiered but were so difficult to track down at the time.

Does anyone know of any other sources of Art Quilting/Mixed Media supplies?

Couching Stitches

2011-02-19T17:26:00.000-05:00

I can still remember, when I was in my early twenties, reading Jacqueline Enthoven's The Stitches of Creative Embroidery and discovering a couching stitch: a line of thread held down with straight stitches that suddenly gave me streamers of rain from satin-stitched clouds!

As my embroidery world gradually expanded, so did my perception of the couched thread. I now see it as a sort of drawing tool, a way of "drawing" interesting lines with needle and thread.

In an older embroidery, I couched ultra suede to create a wall paper (that would, in reality, drive me completely crazy!) behind a yellow chair (the Time Out Chair?):

And I'm working on a sampler of couching stitches for our Stitch Magic study, re-discovering and newly discovering the possibilities of this under-utilized stitch. Is it the thread that makes it interesting, a sort of algebraic equation: Interesting Thread = Interesting Stitch? Or is it the line itself?

Hmmm . . . .

Self-Potraits

2011-02-17T08:38:00.001-05:00

Some of you may know that I follow the blog "Sketchbook Challenge." When I opened the page today, I had a lovely surprise: Self-Portraits!

http://sketchbookchallenge.blogspot.com/

I remember our group doing self-portraits a while back. If my own results were not wonderful, Jane Davies' portraits make me smile and think it could be interesting to try once more. Actually, I think that if I take myself too seriously the portrait is bound to disappoint!

Stitch Fun

2011-02-16T20:12:00.000-05:00

I have been sorting through studio cabinets and drawers for days, finding thread that will be interesting to work with, some even challenging. I am filling tote bags with it— working on the second bag, now— to bring with me to Knoxville. We are going to have a thread-fest in a few weeks!

Meanwhile, how is the stitching coming? Has anyone run up against a wall? Check in and let us know how things are shaping up.

Good Stitching!
Nancy

Pink Wool Cupcakes

2011-02-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

mmmm...can't you taste the yummy frosting! :)

This first cupcake was created a while back. It was the white "cup" that inspired me actually. It started life as a sweater cuff that was cut off before being felted in the washer & dryer. It came out with a nice fuzzy texture on the cut edge and I played with it for a bit before it spoke to me and said to make it into a cupcake.

The second one was made as part of a 2011 birthday exchange. It is made in the same fashion...just with different bits of sweaters. The "cherries" on top are a couple of my lampwork beads that were just waiting for a purpose, and I think they tie things together nicely.

Savannah

2011-01-27T19:55:00.043-05:00

I forget, between visits, how seductive Savannah can be— and how much interesting shopping is there. My friend of a lifetime, Gail Walden-Ward, scoped out three great stores for me to visit on our short trip to the coast. They are all in the historic district, so interesting buildings as well as interesting merchandise: The French Knot (yummy threads so well-organized that there is no excuse for not finding what you really need), Fabrika (I wanted a yard of everything— prints of unusual quality, gorgeous colors, and some linen and bamboo, silk . . .), and Wilde Threads (small place with knit/crochet yarns as well as weaving threads, even some Jute for rug-making, and sari-strip yarn). Wow! I am going to spill everything out on the bed here in the hotel and play with the "stuff" before I turn in tonight. A girl's gotta have her toys.

This is a shot of the threads from French Knot.

I've already started dipping into them (especially that variegated skein hanging down center stage). In fact, the softness of the silks and wools and variegated rayon/metallics inspired me to start a piece. This is a close-up of the layered stitching I did on a tree theme. Most of the stitches are some form of a Chain, Bullion, or simple Straight Stitch. Here, you're looking at part of the trunk:

Click on the photo to enlarge it. Now, think of a tree and all the colors it has produced over its life-- soft spring shoots in pastels and that pale, new green that is only of the spring, the deepening summer greens; the beginning of the autumn, when the sap retreats, but the colors are at their most vivid; and the end of things, the winter. What a marvelous palette!

I have some other shots of Savannah trees that will show up in the future. Coastal areas have trees that lend themselves to great textural development; they are a delight to photograph and sketch.

Hello!

2011-01-20T14:33:00.001-05:00

Free The Stitches is a new community blog shared between a tight-knit (no pun intended!) group of stitching friends. Well, actually "stitching" is not all we do. Besides embroidery (and some of it is really a little beyond the Pale) we felt (wet, dry, and machine to make felted clothing and accessories), paint and dye fabric and thread. There is some funky spinning that goes on sporadically, along with knitting and crocheting (mostly scrumbling). There are two innovative quilters (award winning quilters, mind you, whose works get to travel more than most of us). Silk ribbon embroidery is even on the radar, along with beading (we have an incredible lampwork beadmaker in the group) and canvas "embroidery" that is definitely not what you find on church kneelers. One is a sometimes-weaver, and several are working in mixed media . . . also we're really fond of ATCs, both making and collecting them. We did a Round-Robin project of dolls last year, and some interesting personalities arose amongst the little stuffed ladies. More about that in other blogs, as we'll share some pictures of our dolls and comment on them for you.

Our work can best be described as "freestyle." We develop our own designs and execute these designs according to our own inner fiber art sensibility. And every one of these "inner fiber art sensibilities" springs from years of personal experimentation and following our own bliss (or muse, to the more poetic in our midst). The only rule our group has is that there are no rules. Now, how great is that? Along the way we'll introduce ourselves to you, and those of us who have personal blogs will have a link for you to check us out even further, if you'd like.

We organized this blog (thanks to Cynthia's expertise) as a way to share with one another our projects and how-tos, to answer questions, to post photos of our work— and we invite you to look over our collective shoulder and see what we're doing. We're shamelessly fond of kind commentary, so don't be shy!