Stone Angel

I have been stitching on the above for a week or two now and, until today, could only see a giant sloth with wings.  She is another angel keeping watch over the souls who restfully lay (I hope) on Myrtle Hill in Rome, Georgia.  You can see her sisters painted in oil in a previous post.   (I am not sure you ever saw the final paintings….)  I remember learning about sloths as a kid and found them rather fascinating.  Imagine lumbering along at a snail’s pace.  The older I get, the more I feel I do!  Our Renaissance images of angels look different than the ones described in the Old Testament, I wonder if God ever thought about making them look like sloths.

To the creator of the beautiful marble image this work has inspired – Your angel is lovely and in no way looks like a sloth in person.  I hope you would be pleased at my rendition of her.

Sunday Afternoon on the Orient Express

I am an addict.  To mysteries anyway.  Some of my happiest moments are when there is a new mystery on Masterpiece Mystery Theater (or whatever they call it since they combined the two) on PBS.  The Masterpiece part is okay but the mysteries are great!  They have recently aired some new Hercule Poirot movies.  The older ones are less dark then the recent ones but the cinematography is beautiful in both.

A couple of weeks ago Murder On The Orient Express was aired.  I found an image toward the end of the show that I really wanted to recreate.  Knowing full well that no claim can be made on my part to this composition or color or idea, I really did it to see if I could and I am showing it to you because it is the first image in a long time I wanted to show anyone!!!  I wanted to recreate the haunting-ness of the image and I think I have managed.  Makes me think of Seraut’s Sunday Afternoon on the… with the high contrast and silhouetted figures.   Of course, the similarity ends there… or do you think thread stitches count as (1/8th inch long) point(s)illism?

Off to create a totally original piece.  Although I am not sure that is really possible.  Seems all ideas are spawned from something else.

Family Pairs

I have been stitching.  This is my father, Don Evatt and Pop, his father, John Evatt.  Daddy joined the navy when he was right out of high school at the end of WWII.  He became a telegraph operator on a South Pacific air craft carrier.  He could do the Morse code like no other.  Not that I would know, but…   Luckily, it was at the end of the war and he came home fine.  He had two close-in-age brothers, Rob was in the air force,  Paul joined the army.  Can you even imagine what that was like for their parents?

We have several little photos of Daddy and his parents and siblings.  Apparently the camera’s viewfinder could only hold 2 at a time because there are only 2 people in any of the photos.  I love these old photos.  I try to read as much as possible about them at that time of their lives (since I wasn’t even yet a glimmer in Daddy’s eye yet).

This is done on my sewing machine  in cotton thread on tear away stabilizer.   I “drew” (with my needle)  the image in red thread to begin with and it peeks thru.   I am pleased with the fragment look of the piece.   And… these are the first people I have done that I am proud of.  Small images of faces in sunlight are difficult to deal with.  Any detail in them seems cartoonish.  I tried to remember how I would handle it if I were painting and did the same thing.  Basically, use warm colors and forget detail.

Thread painting is similar to pastels.  You’ve only a finite number of colors to choose from so you have to let your eye do the blending.   As I was using up spool after spool of thread, I wondered how expensive this technique is compared to the cost of painting or weaving or quilting.  I know I don’t have to replenish my paints or fabric stash as quickly as I do thread.

lessons learned

Below, you will see a failed attempt.  But all is not lost because I learned some things from the experience.

I can be manipulative.  With fabric that is.  I quilted a cutting from Ken’s shirt (thanks, Hon) and, after washing it so that it puckered, painted on it with fabric paints and even tried some dye mixes.  I have a lot more to learn about this, but the idea is exciting to me.

I can look at something and decide it doesn’t work, in this case the purple did not work with the blue background.  I added a lot of blue thread to the mix and it helped.  I like the fact that art isn’t all just a natural ability.  You can analyze and determine what a piece needs and fix it.  Erasers are allowed.

I can hand embroider easier thru layers of quilted fabric than I can thru stabilizer on the back of machine embroidery.  So, I should get rid of the stabilizer and thicken my fabrics.  I like doing handwork.  It’s a whole lot easier to hear the tv with hand work than with machine work.

I like the horizon effect.  I am going to incorporate that more.

So, the piece doesn’t work.  Big deal when I have learned so much.BTW , I was calling this piece “Outstanding in Her Field”.  I am trying to think of titles, not always so easy.

My Little Chickadee

Worked on a little thread stitching over the weekend.  Here is a little chickadee poised on a red pencil.

The above is a detail scan.  I thought you might like to see it up close and as personal as the computer allows.  Each stitch is about 1/8″ long.  I would venture to guess in this little 4.5″ x 5″ piece, there are over 50,000 stitches.  That means about 12,500 inches of thread (top and bobbin included) or about 1042 feet of thread.  If there are 5280 feet in a mile, this unraveled would be almost 2/10ths of a mile.  Wow.  (I say that with great sarcasm.  I was just curious is why I bothered with the calculations.)

Working on a little architecture over the upcoming week.

Struggling on

You know, if there is as much struggling going on with other artists out there, as there is with me in here…

Here are two experiments.  The first is my attempt at whimsy.   I think the whimsy showed better in my thumbnail sketch than in the final piece.

The piece below is more in keeping with what I saw that inspired me  to create with thread.  It is done on  tear away stabilizer and I really like the movement created by that.  I could get “moth holes” or the appearance of age, a fragment of something potentially much larger, causing you to wonder.  The problem with it is that it is a magnolia flower.  No matter the medium, I think magnolias are the most difficult flower to capture.  Those transparent petals with just a hint of color…

After proofing this post, I realize that pushing on is the right thing to do.  Explore all that I can, while I can.    Long ago, my children would attempt to do something and after the first failure,  give up.  My response ” you expect to be perfect the first time?”  hit deaf ears.  I am thinking, perhaps I too, have this same issue…the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

The Rome Art Coterie’s opening reception  is tonight.   I have a pastel in it, go here to see which one.  Better yet,  just go to the show.  It is thru April at the River City Bank on 2nd Avenue in Rome, Georgia.

lots and lots of thread later…

Time passes too quickly these days.  All of a sudden winter has become summer (springs are sometimes too short here) and the trees, which were devoid of all leaves last week at this time, are fully leafed (is that a word?).

I have been working on a small art quilt that I am going to enter into a contest to win a new Bernina sewing machine.  I will be shocked to win (and extremely happy) but am doing it for the challenge.  You need to represent the image given and this one happens to be a swan on her nest in colors I don’t find very appealing.  The point is to use as much visible machine stitching as possible.  If  this don’  count, I dunna wha’ does!

Lessons learned on this piece:

• Don’t expect white thread to fully cover dark fabric.

• Don’t free hand cut the fabric and expect it to appear straight.  I didn’t want the inner rectangle to read as a straight edge parallel to the top edge, but it is too close to being square that it makes it look off (as in a mistake)

The feathers are stitched on water soluble stablizer and then stitched onto the quilt for a little 3 dimensional effect.  I liked this and want to try it some more.

As I critique this myself, I see where improvements can be made.  Back to the sewing machine.

On top of a little work work (vs. play work), Easter, family, cooking and cleaning (to be honest, not much of that going on) this is how my week has passed.  Way too quickly.

Here is the link to the contest, just in case you want to enter.

yet one more…

This free hand machine embroidery is of an urn that stands in memorial on Myrtle Hill in the cemetery in Rome.   My husband and I made a quick visit there this past week while on an errand in Rome.  Early in this blog, I painted some angels from this same cemetery.  I did not take note of the owner of this memorial, but  on this trip I did find my great grandparents’ graves, T.J. Eubanks, Sn. and Edna Stinson Eubanks.  Their stones are small and flat, making them part of the minority on this monument filled hill.I have been having fun doing these paintings with thread.  I am still dissatisfied and am not sure where to go (if anywhere) with them.  This one is about 10″ high and 5″ wide and took several hours to do over the last few days.  I am curious to know how much thread is in it  but  I didn’t take note.

I have another image or two I want to try this way, then I may give it up.  Who knows?

what doesn’t work

As you know, I have been playing around with free hand machine embroidery and it was inevitable that at some point, I would try to create a face with it.  Here it is.

While I am very pleased that I was able to control the fabric enough to get a relative likeness, I am not pleased at all with the results.  The thread is way too shiny (most of it is rayon).  Applying color is similar to pastels, you have a certain selection and you must make do with it.

But…  I could see a huge tapestry-like wall hanging, embroidered faces with bodies and narrative a la William Morris and friends.  Not that I will ever take on a project that size.  Can you even imagine the amount of time that would take?

Here is another shot in progress.   I liked it better at this stage.

Speaking of time…

I know most artist get a little put out when asked how much time did something take to do.  I find that I am just plain interested in the time exerted along with the materials used in creating something.  It is part of the final work of art.  If time were irrelevant, then it seems the link between creation and creator is irrelevant.

Anyway, that’s my opinion and I apologize if I have ever offended you by that question.  So, want to know how long it took me to do this?  🙂

a field of flowers in honor of spring

Seems like most people who embroider realistically or stylized, have done a field of flowers.  They seem to go hand and hand.  This is my obligatory, albeit truncated field of flowers from a photo taken at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.  It is all machine embroidered and took me several hours to complete.  I look at it and wonder what kind of handwork might enhance it.  Hmmmm…  I just don’t know.

Here is a technical question for you.  I did this on linen dressmaker’s fabric with a fairly tight weave (I love this fabric!).  I scanned it into photoshop and it has a moire effect.  How do I get rid of the moire effect?  At over 50% (at 200 dpi)  it goes away on my screen but that image size is too large to place on the internet.  I made the image above larger to help eliminate it.  I am computer ignorant and self taught at photoshop so please don’t laugh too loudly when you give me the simplest of solutions….