Embroidered Collage

I still need a better name before I post this to my Studio News blog as an official completion but I didn't want to wait until I came up with one to show the finished piece.  I stayed very minimal with bringing together the pieces and adding stitching.  I really wanted the detail and texture of the pulled thread piece to stand out the most. 

I stitched a piece of the unpainted fabric down, then stitched down the pulled thread portion.  I embroidered a few circles and added a spray of white beads, then stretched the fabric onto the bars.  At the Fiber Alliance meeting it was suggested that maybe a few more beads and a little more emphasis might be good, so I put in a little more beading in ocean colors and strengthened the impression of the embroidered circles with whipping and detached buttonhole.  

I know I could have gone into much greater depth with layering, perhaps used some net fabric in layers to obscure and reveal bubbles or pulled a texture surface off of the pulled thread piece by building up stitches on the canvas, perhaps embroidering on scrim first and combining the two.  Someday I hope to do those things in another project.  But I feel this simpler effect is appropriate for this work.  It pleases me as it is.

I put the last stitches in this piece over the weekend and decided to call it City Garden Silence.  I really am not enjoying the naming of abstracts but the squares, the color, the vague plant like shapes came together to suggest a name for this one.

I kept the stitching to a minimum, a swatch of green xs, a criss-crossed collection of white squares, and then a smaller swath of green xs, just enough to make the counted thread sampler integrate into the collage portion.  I'm very happy with the results.  Much much happier than the last time  I thought I was done. 

I'll be entering this piece and First Shades of Autumn in the MCGOPA Mixed Media Juried show later this afternoon.  That's the same show that last year was my first ever juried show with Dragonscales.

I'm calling this piece Summer Sunshine for now and this is a link to a little larger image.  I had a horrible time trying to think of any sort of name and am not sure it will be keeping this one, but I had to pick something so I could enter it into the Fiber National exhibit along with Kambaba Jasper and I really didn't want to call it Footstep #4 or some such.  I bought a new staple gun yesterday morning, then mounted the canvas, photographed it, prepped the image, made the cd, filled out the application, and went to the post office to get the entry in before the postmark deadline.  Phew.

In order to push the composition to completion I added the large cross-stitches, keeping to the modified grid that the little squres lay on.  I chose the fibers to stretch the value range out, going darker on the green section and lighter on the yellow section.  Since all the little squares had beads, I put a bead at the center of each cross-stitch as an echo.  The beads were actually strung on during the stitching, not added later.  I'm not currently able to verbalize WHY this addition makes the piece complete for me.  Knowing that is not necessary to enjoy it, but it would be nice to know for future reference. 

If you missed the previous entries, this piece has been evolving from random little squares, to which I added stitching, created a background for them, tried out potential arrangements, then attached the squares.

I added additional rows of cretan stitches, as intended, altering the texture of the background.  I like the subtle effect.  I was playing around with the materials and decided to add the interesting natural gold paper.  The strip at the top just called to me, for some reason, and the third tree shape and small squares were added to provide balance.  I also enjoyed being able to add a touch of bright color by using a bright orangey-red thread to stitch the paper down.

What would I do differently?  I don't like the way the fabric to paint transition bisects the painting.  It's just so obvious.  I think I would find some way to make that transition more gradual, even just by curving the cut line of the fabric.  I think I made a mis-step with the focal point.  It's supposed to be the tree cluster, but there's this paler region right smack dab in the center that just keeps drawing my eye.  It's annoying me.  I didn't really think to look for that when I was developing the piece.  It's not from a compositional error, but an artifact of uneven paint distribution in just the wrong place.

What did I do well?  I captured the composition and textural changes I was going for, partially by planning and partially by improvisation.  The overall piece pleases me.  It was a good step forward.

"First Shades of Autumn" is now complete.  You can also see a larger image.  I started out with sketches and materials, painted a layer, added the major composition elements and then added the stitched details.  There are giclee prints available.  The original will be submitted to a juried show this weekend.

I am definitely happy with how this piece turned out.  I didn't add any more stitching since my last entry, but I was able to take advantage of yesterday's sunlight and get a clear image, without glare, that properly represents the colors I see when I actually look at the piece. 

I have been using the wrong name for the jasper though, it's kambaba, not kalambah.  And I had envisioned the focal point as being somewhat more to the left than it ended up.  I think I need to make some sort of a mat or mask to make it clearer where my 12"x12" section is on the larger canvas.  I'll try that next time.

To see the entire process of creation you can follow the following links.

• Part 1 - Sketching
• Part 2 - Painting
• Part 3 - Squiggling
• Part 4- Beading
• Part 5 - Overall Stitching
• Part 6 - Detail Stitching

The instant my stretcher bars arrived from Dick Blick I started looking for the right time to complete Kite-Flying at Zandvoort and get it stretched so I could see it completed.  I love it.  The process fulfilled my expectations and I'm looking forward to my next piece.

After I created the person flying the kite I started adding the fabric portions to the left, extending the stitching that holds them down into the painted area.  That was a bit more awkward than I expected.  The canvas was too stiff to roll up in my hand and too floppy to really give me support for working with one hand underneath the canvas.  I bought some inexpensive 16" stretcher bars so that the next piece I will be able to temporarily mount before I stitch on it. 

I had originally been going to add the magazine images underneath the fabric, but didn't think that would look good glued to the textured painting.  Instead I adhered them to cardstock and sewed the entire strip to the piece, carefully off-setting it so there would be that touch of sky underneath the kite. 

I attached the kite by simply stitching over the edges, then did the strings.  I laid a strand of red perle cotton where I needed the line to be, then followed that by doing backstitch, to keep the line as straight as possible as it would be with a kite-flying in a good wind.    I whipped the backstitch to make the line a little more even in appearance.  It's actually a very dark green, since I thought black would dominate too much.

Stretching the canvas over the bars went a little better than last time, but my corners will definitely not stand up to professional scrutiny, although they look just fine for hanging up the piece and enjoying it.  I was not able to get out all the waviness that using the heavy gel on the ocean had caused, but it still looks very nicely done.  I did have some frustration with my new staple gun.  Loading the staples in was a bit counter-intuitive.  But I figured it out and went on to make some horrible clacking noises.

I have uploaded the image at Artwanted so that reproductions will be available.

Find the previous in-progress entries at:

• Part 4: The Kite-Flyer
• Part 3: The Kite
• Part 2: The Painting
• Part 1: The Beginning