Thundery showers all day gave me time to have a go at the two samples from last time that I wanted to improve.
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| 5.10.3 - first try |
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| 5.19.3A I added a few layers of fly stitch varying the scale and the thread used: fluffy yarn, a knitted yarn, strips of chiffon and strips cut from a polythene bag.  |
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| 5.10.7A Some more layers of stitch using white, grey and lilac printed chiffon, irridescent metallic chiffon and strips from a plastic bag. |
I am enjoying this chapter and feel that I've learned a lot (mostly from my mistakes!!). I had gone off on the wrong track, trying to translate the pattern into stitch rather than the texture. It gave me a feeling of freedom to break loose and think only of texture, although I am drawn to pattern and found it quite hard too.
A Zoom tutorial with Sian was just what I needed to get me inspired and on the right track.
I've got a bit muddled up with my labelling system and keep having to look back at previous posts and so I have drawn together all work on this chapter and kept the labelling consistent. This is making it easier to see (hopefully) some progression in my work.
Sample 1
What interested me here was the leaf shapes that went off at random from a series of broken lines. I used a zigzag stitch for the broken lines and stitched a diamond stitch for the shapes.
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| 5.10.1A For my second attempt I stitched a large stitch using strips of chiffon to fill each diamond shape. I also threaded fine thread loosely through the lines of stitching, pulling out loops in places and letting the ends dangle. |
Sample 2
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| 5.10.2 What interested me most here was the mixture of short lines and dots. However I got so carried away with the pattern made by the lines and dots, that I quite lost sight of the textures the rubbing had achieved. |
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| 5.10.2A After some feedback from Sian, in which she had suggested that I try to portray the "noise" around each rubbing, I tried to do this by working tiny stitches at random from the back of the work using fine thread. I was disappointed as I felt it still did not work. |
5.10.2B
At Sian's suggestion, I added some stitches using strips of chiffon. I used the needle to fray out some of the edges of the chiffon and wound a few very fine threads around and under the stitches.
Sample 3
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| 5.10.3 Here again I see that I have made the same mistake of getting hooked up on pattern rather than texture and haven't really thought of how to portray it. I haven't yet tried to improve this sample as I mislaid it for a while and have only just found it again. I'll have another try at this later. Sample 4 |
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| 5.10.4 This was my original attempt to translate the rubbing on the left. I hadn't had time to finish this sample, but wanted to post something since I hadn't done so for some time. What interested me most was the lines interrupted by a blob. The image was fuzzy because of the chalk on the wavy surface and I tried to portray this by using a fluffy yarn. I couched it down leaving a loop where I wanted a blob to be. In the next line I couched some string, knotting it for each blob. In the third line, I tried to show the broken quality of the line by doing small stitches at right angles to the line, piling them up for each blob |
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| 5.10.4A At my second attempt I added some more lines of stitch. For the fourth line of stitches I used a thick fluffy knitting yarn again, wrapping it with string and letting it loose at intervals for the blobs. For the next two lines, I used various knotted yarns. |
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| 5.10.4B Sian and I both felt I hadn't quite succeeded in showing the "noise" which was such an interesting part of the original rubbing and so she suggested adding some more stitching and wrapping some threads already in place. I had fun with this one, particularly in the bottom line, where I tried various methods of making an interruption to the line. I feel I might enjoy starting this sample again and experimenting with "interruptions". It could lead to a large body of work. Sample 5  The usual story - translated the pattern but not the texture.  5.10.5A I cheated a bit with this as not all the noise is stitch. I used Bondaweb to bond fluffy bits picked from fuzzy yarn and thread snips onto the background and couched fluffy yarn over the lines of stitches. |
Sample 6
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| 5.10.6 Here the fuzzy yarn portrayed the fuzzy texture around each blobby line, but there were large spaces between that didn't show the "noise" at all. |
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| 5.10.6A Sian's suggestion to add some herringbone stitch certainly added plenty of noise! |
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| 5.10.7 I thought rather than trying to rescue a sample I'd done before, I'd try to start one from scratch, this time thinking about texture foremost. I liked the translucence of the horizontal lines contrasted with the harder edge zigzag vertical ones and a few amorphous blobs here and there. I used long stitches with slightly frayed out chiffon to try to capture the soft translucence and a kinky thinner thread for the zigzags, all in straight stitches. The amorphous blobs are little bundles of fluffy yarn secured by straight stitches radiating from the centre of each blob. I still don't think I've quite captured the textures. Perhaps if I can find an even more transparent sheer fabric to add to it it might improve it. |
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| Samples joined with aquilegia seed heads |
