Sunday 31 January 2010

Starting Shibori Slow Cloth

Ian and I are heading up to Llangollen tomorrow for 'Quiltfest' for his birthday ( in return , I get to go to a military museum for mine - only fair I suppose). I've been tacking together the beginnings of a 'slow cloth' to stitch on the train , a piece of indigo dyed silk, the idea being to follow the KISS principle outlined by Dijanne.
Somehow, with painting on quilts, I've been lured away from hand stitching by wanting to complete a top quickly by machine in order to get the painting stage ( or by using old quilts that are already densely stitched) but I love hand stitching, particularly with the old silk buttonhole threads I inherited. I think it's also to do with working more now on larger pieces - the 'blue- green algae' piece above based on diatoms is less than a metre in size as is the sand ripples of 'Erg Chebbi' (detail below)

I've still got my 'travel project' silk stole to complete but I liked the idea of getting back to indigo
One of the joys of working on 'Serifos Storm' above (apart from bringing back memories of sketching in Greece) was finding shapes and patterns in the fabric to emphasise with stitch.
I can already see fish shapes and sea creatures emerging from this shibori but I'm still debating what colour to stitch in. Having tacked with orange thread I'm drawn to the idea of stitching in reds and oranges ( also wouldn't have the blue hands I experienced sewing with indigo thread) .
What do you think? Red Sea?

4 comments:

jude said...

there is certainly a big trend back into indigo. i remember a few years back it was rare to see it in textile art. this looks wonderful.

JP said...

I just love all of these - hope you had a good day yesterday - what did you buy?!!!!!!!!!!!

Aussie Jo said...

Fantastic, I think the red or red/orange would look sensational

Tiggy Rawling said...

It all looks just fabulous. Hand stitching to go. and indigo as well. A winning combination.