Newsflash – It’s Paper Week!

Newspapers, and nearly all sorts of other papers, are made from fiber. So it is fair game for the Daily Fiber manipulations. The invention of paper can be described as one of the great technologic leaps forward for humankind. As far as I can tell, it was invented multiple times independently around the world. The ancient Egyptians made a sort of paper out of the sedge plant Cyperus papyrus. The type of wood-pulp paper we use today was invented by the Chinese around 2nd century BCE.

Thanks to fellow WordPress writer Jill Kuhn https://artjillkuhn.wordpress.com/ for encouraging me to explore stitching on paper. In no particular order, here are the objects out of paper I propose to make this week.

1. Paper weaving of portraits
2. Paper beads
3. Rice paper Bento Box collage
4. Collage with sheet music and old maps
5. Quilling with paper
6. Origami art installation

As a warm-up, I machine-stitched on some Sumi ink drawings that I did many years ago, when I had an interest in painting Chinese characters. The first is a bamboo image done on newsprint. I stitched the central veins on the leaves.

It worked okay. The paper is quite brittle, and the beginnings and endings of the stitch lines tend to pull out of the paper. I’m considering reinforcing them with clear tape on the back of the paper. The next image is painted on rice paper. While this paper is quite thin, it seems a little more resilient than the newsprint paper.

I have high hopes that the rest of the week will bring interesting results using paper.