sampling for resolved sample

Hand stitched sample using mainly herringbone with a few loose french knots. I dyed scrim in very soft pastel colours and stitched an overlarge square to a square of heavy twill with large soft tucks. Some of the tucks were stuffed with a rusty fancy yarn and the scrim slit to pull through a few strands. A piece of silver birch bark was enclosed.  Its not a greatly successful sample - the bark looks like an add-on rather than well-integrated, the scrim was a little too large and I didn't get the swirly look I had anticipated. I think the colouring was a little too soft also.

I put the windows over a couple of my papers to show how transparent they are. The top is white tulle twin needle tucked with a fluffy mohair yarn in green. Then tucked over the top with a finer variegated yarn.

The bottom is twin needle corded tucks with three different cottons on nylon organza.

The darker sample has a centre of birch bark I peeled off one of the stove logs. It is surrounded by a peachy-lilacy shot satin tucked on to pelmet vilene. A ribbon yarn I discharged-dyed was sewn in between the tucks.

The lighter sample was cream silk tucked with a large twin needle and heavy wool yarn. Ribbon yarn was hand-sewn in between the tucks and a centre of freely worked french knots. A litle copper lustre was added to the ridges and the large centre.  I think this would also be better if the silk was lightly coloured first. These are a bit too smooth for my hedgerow theme.  The words I'm wanting to represent include - twining, twiggy, tangled, secret places, knobbly, rough and small spaces.

The windows are corded twin needle tucks in various sizes. The bottom example is lovely, but it is not see through and I don't want to cut this one through because I have other thoughts for it.  I'll do another layered one and melt the organza in places to provide peep holes.

I've tried a few edges :-

1. A very light peachy satin ribbon which came as a tie round a fleece blanket. It was finely tucked first and then tucked to the edge of the pelmet vilene window.

2. Heavy wool yarn attached with a twin needle in rows with some fine free cross stitching on top.

3. Cotton scrim attached with loose french knots in rust, brown and pale turquoise with some beads. This would be better if the scrim had more colour variation - a dyed bit is even now drying!

4. A fine organza ribbon in a rusty brown attached with variegated thread with fine twin needle over tucking.  Herring bone with a pale variegated turquoise thread over the top and rocaille beads added at the edge. I like this one very much.

For texture sample 1 I machined lots of different whites on to a cotton background and then quilted over polyester wadding on to a twill base. This was  topped with a fine nylon organza in a light peachy colour and more machining in a darker shade added. I think it would be improved with hand stitching - close cretan in the valleys and spaced on the hills. It does have a lot of height.

Another sample for edges, borders and transparency with plastic canvas as the support this time.

The centre is tucked polyester sheer. This is held to a border of heavy plastic canvas with Rhodes stitch deliberately worked unevenly so it shows as texture rather than pattern. I got into a groove and made them all the same size as I had cut the canvas with the size of the stitch in mind  but I think it would be better with different-sized stitches and I also think better with them butting up to each other without a stitch space in between. 

In between the Rhodes stitches I have tried beads, long cross stitch in a soft chenille yarn, tent stitch in tapestry wool and tent stitch in a doubled variegated cotton.

Edges

-outside - interlaced rayon thread giving a plaited look to the edge, couched eyelash yarn, and couched knotted bulky wool yarn.  On the outside I am favouring one of the less even edges and the sheep's wool on the inside seems to fit the bill best.

- inside pearl cotton and a silk thread cross-stitched, tapestry wool tent stitched, variegated pearl cotton doubled and tent stitched, sheep's wool couched.

This is the back of the sample. I had thought of making two separate sides and then joining them together, but I like the less ordered look - hedges are scalped these days to look very spare and square after cutting, but inside the growth is still as wayward as ever. I have tried a little stitching over the top and like the staggered chain.

more Chapter 11

more relief textures to play with

a - twisted strips glued in formation

b - manipulated and layered tissue

c - different view of b

d - window experiments

Stage 2

Not having any clear picture of where I'm going, I haven't settled on a colour scheme yet - keeping my options open.

The sheets 1 - 4  are the flat relief papers I divided according to some of my drawings. 

Sheet 1 - papers torn to make a rolling landscape and a meandering one.

Sheet 2  - a watery icicle division cut rather than torn for clean edges and torn divisions as looking through the hedge branches.

Sheet 3 - selections of papers used with overlapping - a leafy one and Fibonacci squares piled from largest to smallest.

Sheet 4 - an abstract using quite exciting squares and an icicle manipulation on three levels. 

These are 3D constructions from my digital papers.

The blue one has a dark base layer with lighter sides and a window cutout in the top layer.  The height is from stacked card squares - could translate with stacked vilene squares with textured edges. It is influenced by the research photo of the hedge which has a frame of thorny twigs looking through to a hollow of meshed twigs.

The construction forming triangles has one rectangle  and one square which would be heavily textured and three squares with frames and transparent windows with some cording? tucking? which still allows views through to the textured areas.  Unfortunately. the tracing paper is not very see- through.  This is also influenced by the hedge picture which is very complex and this construction reflects that complexity.  I took a series of pictures of this bit of hedge, getting closer and closer each time to let it reveal its secrets slowly. The construction would need to be viewed from several angles also to give up its secrets.

I'm intrigued by both of these so  might sample for them both.

Some of the flat designs would make great fabric postcards.

my furry friends

I did a pumpkin seed relief texture sheet and left it out overnight to dry on the table.  When I collated the sheets for blogging I couldn't find it any where.

I just found it under the computer table - without a single pumpkin seed - the mouse had eaten every one as well as the flour and water paste backing.

Chapter 11 - stage 1 - decorated papers and subdividing images

I was going to work in white, but my bleaching of 2 different black papers produced yellows and browny pinks so I might go with a range of natural shades from very light to very dark.  I really like the bluey greens in the third sheet too - decisions, decisions.

I tried a range of printing and bleaching using cocktail sticks, cotton tips, feathers, sponge shapes, and an almost empty reel of tatting cotton with an interesting circular texture.  Some of the papers were first patterned with a white wax crayon. Some of the white papers were coloured with tea and some printing was done with tea. This was quite hard to get a clean image - too wet and it just ran, too dry and no marks. Some of the bleached papers were over-bleached with a second method. 

The relief papers are only for ideas as they will not be amenable to cutting up! Seeds are scattered all over as it is. The softer samples are made with flour and water paste and I used this t hold the rice and beans and seeds. I rubbed the samples with a graphite stick to see what textures would result.

Finally, I chose a selection of my digital manipulations as they had some gorgeous textures.

I t was hard to settle on a few photographs because there were so many delicious ones to choose from and I'd had such a good time in Adobe creating all sorts of different images.

I chose the icicle, hedge and leaf series to use for the designing exercise. Some divisions are suggested by the original photo, some by the digital manipulation and some abstract. Some were drawn with the idea of 3-D interpretations.

Chapter 10 stitch to translate

I did find the rubbings and the subsequent translating rather difficult.  The rubbings were hard to get decent unsmudged images and it took a while for me to see patterns in the ones I did get.  I tried not to look at the originals but just worked from the rubbing itself so I wasn't influenced by what I thought I should see based on the work before.

1. I made a rubbing on to the black cloth too and tried to leave a lot of it showing. My first idea was to use thorn stitch variations but it ended up being a very free cross stitch. I used very fine cotton threads and silk threads with some wrapping.

2. Some fine tulle gave the hazy look inside the little amoebas and I thought chain and detached chain would echo this. The amoebas are surrounded by a couched textured yarn held by a very fine cotton thread.

3. More couching of the main lines of the rubbing and free fly stitch layered for the background.