Embroidered Collage

  As Wendy talked about different ways to tell a story in a quilt, I jotted down ideas.  As soon as I thought of this one I knew it was what I wanted to do.  When we brought our kitten home from the SPCA he spent the rest of the night running in circles around the family room, stopping only to be petted, and even then he'd vibrate.  We named him Whirlwind.

I sketched out my ideas, realizing that I would need to simplify the cat dramatically.  I wanted swooping lines for movement and a neutral background.  I couldn't think of how to develop the idea further, so I started to work on it.  Here was where I desperately wanted my paints and papers.  I would have loved to collage the background, only doing the furniture and cat in fabric.  But I didn't have them, so I started looking for the right fabrics for all the elements.  I ended up having to use the backside of a fabric I really liked in order to get the right light colored neutral.

I sewed the lightweight cotton to a canvas backing with a grid of white straight-stitch.  I knew I wanted to use the watercolor crayons on it next and didn't want the fabric to pucker too much.  I was successful.  After I fused on the furniture shapes and zig-zagged a bit around them I added a little color to make the piece more reminiscent of a room.

The ovals were next.  I put a cloth frame over the unstretched canvas and deliberately drew one oval within its limits.  I removed the frame and made sure the others ovals stretched beyond the first one's limits, overlapping in parts.  I used vivid colors, in contrast to the neutrals of the background.  Both these choices were made to emphasize movement.  The fabric scraps were cut in arcs from bright fabric and fused at various places for the same reason.  I secured them with free-motion machine embroidery.  I thought about adding hand-stitching as well, but decided the piece didn't need it.

I did use hand embroidery to construct and decorate the actual cat shape.  It was interesting trying to wrap fabric around a more complex Peltex shape.  I knew the cat had to be red for motion, which was also why I abstracted to eliminate the legs but was a bit disturbed by how much it looked like a fox!  So, I added some tabby markings with crayon and went to the vendor's mall to pick up two small green beads for eyes.  I constructed the tail from various fibers I had with me, deliberately leaving it long, and couched it down.  Then I was happier with the result.

I looked at the piece for awhile and decided I was done.  So, on Friday morning I stapled it to the canvas and displayed it.  This is my eighth Footstep.  In some ways it doesn't feel like mine, with the way the fabrics interact, but in other ways I can tell it is. 

The turtles are all done and wrapped over stretcher bars and ready to be given to their new owner.  This piece has a home waiting for it because it was a part of a grab bag challenge from my artist's group, The Fiber Alliance.  Unfortunately I won't be able to deliver it in person at the meeting this weekend, but I'm looking forward to finding out whose materials I received and worked with and what the artist who received the materials that I provided did with them.  Hopefully someone will post pictures!

Originally I had been going to form a separate line with the red hexagons, but found that they worked best when the complemented the presence of the embroidered turtle by putting the brightest of them right at the center.  I also had been going to put in another line with the other 5 green turtle beads that I had, but it just distracted from the piece, so I only put the one in for contrast and a bit of whimsy.

More than most of my other pieces this one looks different depending on how far away you stand.  Much more than a few feet away and all you see is the sweep of red.  When you get closer you can see the details and interpret the abstracted subject matter.  I like the effect, although I think the next time I work with sashiko, and I do intend there to be a next time, I want a greater value difference between the background and the stitching.  I want it to pop like the traditional patterns do.

I made a list of the previous posts in my Studio News entry about this piece, if you didn't catch them all as I was writing them.

I embellished the area around the reddish splotch with  a series of straight stitches.  Using the stacked triangles was inspired by looking at pictures of various types of turtle shells online.  I included a couple of colors used elsewhere in the piece, including the hexagons that still need to be added. 

I used my watercolor crayons to draw in a head and fins, then the liquid acrylic to wet the lines down and seal them.  The head and upper right limb will end up wrapped around the canvas and not be visible, but I wanted to put them in anyway.

The entire effect is actually rather subtle on the full work.  It doesn't jump out at you from across the room.  But I like the additional level of complexity in this focal area. 

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 refuse to name it Bubbles, but that is how I have been thinking about this idea since I first had it back in July when I stitched the pulled thread focal point.  I had been hoping to get to it earlier, but lost the stitched piece for awhile.  I was thrilled to find it again and began working on the background.  This post should really have been in three parts, but since I forgot to take in-progress pictures you're getting all the information at once.

I had originally anticipated the background would involve more materials.  I pulled some papers and fabric and started thinking aobut compositions, but ended up paring it down to just using the fabric.  I adhered a square of the fabric to the corner of ungessoed canvas, then painted over the canvas and portions of the fabric in deep, dark oceanic blues and greens.  That part went very well and I was happy.

Then I decided to print over sections of the background with the bubble design from the foam printing plates I had prepared for the hand-decorated papers.  This failed miserably.  The bubbles didn't really show up.  The surface wasn't flat enough for the depth of the indentations in the foam.  I did get a few faint impressions but mostly ended up just marring my surface with lighter colors.  I felt like I had just ruined what I did the previous night. 

Then, I went to clean up and discovered that the paint had gone through the un-gessoed but painted canvas and I had painted my floor!  Happily it is a wood laminate and it was still soon enough that I got everything cleaned up before the acrylic cured up completely.  Overall, though, it was not a good evening.

I still wanted bubbles.  I decided to use my watercolor crayons, but, instead of brushing acrylic medium all over them as I had done in the past, this time I would use a more controlled approach.  I drew in circles in one deep turquoise and then shaded the bubbles in a handful of different colors.  I took a small paintbrush and a puddle of liquid medium and used that instead of water to activate the colors.  It worked wonderfully.  I was able to keep the shading and the circles both that night, and the next, when I coated the whole piece with acrylic medium to seal it.  Using the liquid medium had sealed the watercolor crayon marks enough that they hardly smeared when exposed to liquid again.  My idea worked.  The background looked fantastic.  It's not what I originally imagined, but I absolutely love it.

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.