Saturday 10 April 2010

Breakthrough Process- Part 3 (Fabric &Thread)

One of my aspirations with the 'Breakthrough' theme besides the imagery of the breakwaters was to 'repurpose' old textiles . Having put a coat of gesso on a section of old Durham quilt (sacrilege!) I auditioned my stash of kasuri (ikat) pieces acquired in Japan. Their texture summoned up for me a lot of the qualities of the worn , textured wood of the breakwaters.
From a scale drawing of my Photoshop sketches, in fear and trepidation, I cut slits in the quilt and inserted roughly assembled structures of kasuri- I wanted to maintain that 3D rustic quality. From the left overs, I made the sample piece required.


Then the fun part (tho' I'm not sure my machine thought so - a lot of dust was generated by the gesso) , stitching wave and ripple patterns in variegated thread and using white perle cotton in the bobbin and stitching from the back (now that was a challenge!)

Having complete stitching the sample, I realised that I needed a further test piece for practising painting on so I hastily constructed a 'toile' , drawing in the breakwater shapes with marker pen.

Next step painting - the subject of my next post!

4 comments:

Chris said...

Margaret, I am finding your bog absolutely inspirig - thankyou for your generosity in all that you share, best wishes, Chris

The WestCountryBuddha said...

I don't think my machine could cope with stitching through gesso. Someone ought to design one that could!

JP said...

WOW!!!!!!!!!!

Judy Alexander said...

Great work! Love all the stitching.