Caring for my husband while he was waiting for and recovering from a hip replacement operation has taken more out of me than I realised and I found it impossible to do any Distant Stitch work. Even when Moray was almost fully recovered and much more independent and I at last had the time to do some creative work, I was so tired and dispirited that I had no energy or enthusiasm and all creativity seemed to have deserted me.
Everything changed when I discovered a website and Facebook group called "Kick in the Creatives" a closed group of very friendly, supportive creative people, with the aim of building a creative habit through monthly challenges. I have managed to do a drawing or painting for each day in August, something I thought I wouldn't be able to do. Better still, I have all my excitement and enthusiasm back.
So I thought it was time I picked up the reins again of my Distant Stitch embroidery work. One of September's challenges in Kick in the Creatives is to post on one's blog every day in September and I thought it might be just the stimulus I needed. I have been working on some samples from time to time, but haven't been photographing them or posting them, so here goes.
In this Chapter, we are looking first at quilting. Simple, traditional quilting involves three layers: a backing fabric and a top fabric sandwiching some sort of padding. Most common nowadays is a polyester wadding purchased by the metre. I happened to have some alpaca wadding left over from a quilt I made for my great-nephew and so I have used it for my first samples.
I looked again at the photos from Chapter 1 to give me some ideas for shapes to stitch. I chose a photograph I took on a walk of some exposed tree roots.
 |
| 5.5.1 Tree root inspiration |
I tried two samples below, one outlining the shapes with running stitch and the second using backstitch. I found that the back stitch gave a much clearer outline.
 |
| 5.5.2 Two samples of traditional wadded quilting |
One suggestion to add variation to this was to use stitching. I tried it in two ways: to stitch in the positive shapes and to stitch in the background or negative shapes. I used chain stitch in the first sample (on the left in the photograph below) following the lines of the tree roots. In the second sample (on the right below) I used one of my favourite stitches, French knots at random within the background.
 |
| 5.5.3 Stitch variations on wadded quilting |
I found that I liked the effect of the French knots so much that I diverted from the samples for my own amusement and started to make a cushion using the technique.
I photocopied sections of the original photograph in 9 squares, arranged 3 by 3 and used them as a pattern. I kept to white on white as I thought it emphasised the textures which were my main interest.
 |
| 5.5.4 Cushion pattern |
 |
| 5.5.5 Cushion partly worked |
 |
| 5.5.6 Cushion detail |
This I'll work on alongside my Distant Stitch work as it is something I can do while watching TV.
If I am to post every day, I'll keep back a few samples to post tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment