A piece of Textile Art stitched with so much love
Please note that most of the products used in the making are available at Rachel’s Textiles
I am a messy stitcher, my workspace is rarely tidy, my table is scattered with threads, tiny scraps of all sorts of goodness knows what & I am happiest creating beautiful pieces from the chaos
It started when I was making a Valentine’s outfit for Pol (Polymorphous, as she keeps changing), my window mannequin, with beautiful bamboo stretch material
You can’t get a more badly behaved fabric, it just curled so much with every cut. I noticed that all the cut scraps were rolling into up into tightly twisted pieces & then the idea for a piece was formed
I collected loads of small pieces of offcuts, some already overlocked and began layering them within in a heart shape onto a sheet of soluble sticky Vilene (Solufix) + a couple of tiny hearts for card making
After covering the scraps with another sheet of the Solufix, I machine embroidered through the layers to hold all the pieces together with the most beautiful red threads: mostly Wonderfil Glamore sparkly red thread on the top with a large needle eye and a normal Gutermann sew all thread on the bobbin
Using warm water, I allowed the Solufix to dissolve away. It did take a while to dry as the bamboo is so absorbent but once ready it felt like it had been knitted, I loved the feel of it & it held together brilliantly
The red stitched heart?
What next?
Bits of chiffon, red wire, my trusted old knitting machine, barely used but desperately wanting to be loved, my great aunt’s jet beads (she was in her 80’s when I was little) – l really love those beads -a few other contemporary beads & lots of different red & black threads for hand stitching & I’m ready to go
Chiffon: quite a few strips gathered
Wire knitting: a few lengths of varying widths, lighter & darker red wire
More thin long bamboo scraps
I placed the various embellishments on bit by bit & threaded, chiffon or bamboo around a longish needle with a lot of twisting around the needle to attach in place. I used lots of different needles throughout, depending on what I was doing, mostly stitching using variations of French knots or Bullion stitch & a few crochet chains to tie everything down.
It was a very long but very joyful process
The edge of the heart looked a bit scrappy, so finally I twisted & kind of wove more long bamboo strips in & around to make it a little neater
Then off to ‘Grange Framing Ltd, St Saviour’ where, through her thoughtful placement and support,Elizabeth turned the framing into an extension of the artwork itself
If you’re here reading this -welcome. I’m so glad you’ve found your way to my first blog post. Hopefully there may be more in the future