Surface Stitchery/Embroidery #2

Continuing on with a discussion of how line in embroidery can serve to embellish textiles, Cindy Griselda has hand stitched multiple lines in running stitch that parallel, cross and conflict with the fabric pieces in her wall quilt.

Joanne Bast has used multiple parallel hand couched running stitches in the wales of corduroy to entirely form the design of trees in "Porch, Pines and Potted Plant" on a piece of plain fabric.

Straight rows of parallel stitching done on the sewing machine provide additional interest in a Cindy Grisdela pillow.

In the fabric pictures "Lavender in Provence" and "Maryland from Above", Betty Ford has machined repeating areas of straight stitching following the hand dyed fabric shapes to enhance her landscapes.
Fran Spader's wall quilt has several areas of repeating lines, some straight and some in circles following the shapes of the fabric inlays.

Floris Flam's fabric collage also uses machined straight stitching. But here, the rows cross fabric blocks tying them together into a larger visual piece.

Stitching need not be in straight or even curved rows. The eyeglass cases by Elida de Sousa Moore below show machine stitching in an organic all over manner. Sewing machines also have built in pattern stitches that may be used as lines of embroidery as in the barrette by Joanne Bast.

Surface Stitchery/Embroidery #1

Hello, This is Joanne Bast, back as blogger for the month of April. I see that the vast variety of fiber techniques to be found in the Fiberart Gallery at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA discussed so for have spanned the gamut from weaving and spinning to quilting to silk painting to beadwork to fabric collage. I would like to continue on with an explanation of surface stitchery otherwise known as embroidery. My old college dictionary defines to embroider as to ornament, to embellish, to add fanciful details to. Stitchery has long been used to beautify items from the common every day functional to the strictly ornamental.

Embroidery is usually considered as work done with a threaded needle. In the embellishment of items, one way that embroidery can be used is to add or emphasize line. Embroidery may be done by hand or with the needle of a sewing machine.

Julie Booth hand stitches fabric pieces onto one of her totem figures with decorative thread in such a way that visible stitching outlines each piece.

Two of Julie's Totem Figures.

Lines can follow and enhance the patterns of the base fabric. Using a sewing machine, Eileen Doughty outlines the motifs that she has printed onto her fabric journal covers, purse and fabric boxes.

Floris Flam stitches rows of parallel lines to emphasize the landscape effect of her wall quilt "Blue Hills".

In Betty Ford's "Red and Yellow Grasses", stitched lines follow the growth of the fabric strips to give a linear and waving feeling.

Ruth Blau uses lines of machine embroidery in contrast to the edges of fabric patches to embellish her hand woven tote bag.

The elements of a felted necklace by Ann Liddle are stitched using different line configurations.

Dorothy Miller uses a wide machined zig zag satin stitch to give a stained glass effect to her pieced evening bag.

Hand and machine stitching need not be mutually exclusive. In the pink bag below, Dorothy uses machine satin stitch to outline the large fabric color blocks and a running hand stitch to emphasize the small circles.

Sewing machines also often have built in pattern stitches that can also be used to separate and outline areas of design.

Floris Flam has satin stitch outlined the edges of petals as well as used finer stitched lines to develop internal structure in her fabric bowls.

Couching is a method of embroidery where one thread (usually either too thick to pass through the fabric or too dear to waste any on the back side) is held in place by overstitching with a thinner thread. Merle Thompson has used couching to add linear interest to a satin purse.

There are many ways in which embroidery may be used to add linear decorations to fiber work. In future posts this month, I will continue to explore embroidery as a fiber embellishment technique. Monday April 11 is also our next jury day. By the end of business on Monday, the gallery will be filled with all new goodies. Stop in and enjoy. Joanne

Scale drawings, thumbnail sketches, or no plan at all

Quilters vary widely in how much planning they do before they start cutting fabrics for a quilt. Sometimes a quilter who doesn't like to do detailed plans will depart from her preferred way of working to do a commission or a quilt that has strict constraints.

Our Gallery president, Eileen Doughty, has done a number of public art projects. These usually require lots of planning and coordination with the commissioning agency. For example, Eileen did a commission for the neonatal wing of a large hospital. They requested that the artwork have the four seasons, trees, lots of colors, and fit in a 5 x 14 foot niche. The glass to cover the niche was limited to a four foot width, and so the join lines had to be considered when developing the design. The room decor has 12 hues, around the color wheel. (And there was an extremely tight deadline.) Here is how the finished artwork looks in its location at the hospital:


Eileen discusses her design process for this quilt here.

I (Floris Flam) was commissioned to make a quilt for a residence. It was to hang over the breakfast table and needed to bridge the colors of the kitchen and those of the nearby sitting room. My client and I decided the appropriate size of the quilt and discussed colors that would be used, including the blues of the sitting room and the beiges of the kitchen cabinets. I visited with a collection of blue and beige hand-dyed fabrics and we picked those that were closest to those in her rooms.She didn't give me any other design constraints, so I decided to use as my starting point a collage of magazine illustrations I made some time before as a quick design exercise. Here is my paper collage:

And here is the finished quilt:


You can see that it bears only the most general resemblance to the collage, but having the collage helped me get started, often the hardest part of making any work of art.

Most often, I work without a sketch. I start by selecting colors and fabrics from my stash and begin cutting pieces and pinning them up on my design wall, a felt-covered pinable board. Here is a photo of Autumn View as I was designing it:


I've cut strips and rectangles of fabric and pinned them on my design board (I was at a quilt retreat and was working on a portable board with my pile of fabric on the table in front of it). I added and removed strips of various colors and changed their sizes as I worked, trying as each piece was added to see what seemed to be the necessary next step. When I was pleased with the design, I started sewing everything together. Here is the final quilt:


I've enjoyed this month as your blog editor and am passing the baton to Ruth Blau for the month of February. I'll talk to you again in May.

Quilting the quilt

Traditionally, a quilt is defined as having three layers held together by stitching. While some contemporary quilts veer from this tradition, perhaps using only two layers or using something other than thread to hold them together (for example, staples were required for one challenge on the Quiltart e-list), most art quilts follow this format. After the quilter assembles her quilt top, whether by applique, piecing, or fusing, she adds batting and a backing fabric and uses thread to hold the layers together. Most of the quilters in our gallery use a domestic sewing machine to quilt their work, though we do currently have a hand-quilted textile by Cindy Grisdela in the gallery. Here is a detail shot of her quilt, Hint of Lime. You can see her quilting stitches.


The quilting stitches may form a general all-over pattern that is intended to hold the quilt together without distracting from the patterns formed by the fabrics. One commonly used approach is stippling or meandering. Here is an example from a quilt by Ann Graham, Waiting for Spring, where there is an all-over scribble of stitching, much as one might doodle with a pencil:


Cindy often uses more regular stitching patterns on her quilts. Her stitching can be so regular that viewers sometimes mistakenly think that the pattern is controlled by the sewing machine rather than by the experienced hands of the quilter. She says that she quilts freehand, without any marking, using her needle to draw the designs she wants to create with thread. Here is a detail of Red Totem that shows both the patterns of her stitches and the resulting texture:


I (Floris Flam) use several of these approaches in my quilts. Sometimes, like Cindy, I use freehand geometric patterns. Sometimes I combine straight lines of stitching with freehand patterns to create a play of textures and perhaps a sense of depth. I try to have my stitches follow the patterns in the fabric if the fabric lends itself to this approach, as it did when quilting the multicolored snow-dyed fabric I used in Autumn View:


You can see that approaches to quilting can be as varied as approaches to quilt design. We are lucky to have a broad range of quilting styles represented in our gallery. Please stop by and see our current show's array of quilts.