Daily Fiber

My Favorite Thing I’ve Made

Posted on April 25, 2020 by Laura Kate

Yesterday, fellow blogger Karen of Nothing But Knit, put out a challenge. “Write a post about the favorite thing you have made. “

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/32787/posts/2676816067

This post is my response.

Those of you who follow me may be a bit surprised at my choice. It looks nothing like the color-filled fiber objects I usually post on my site. This color is a subdued neutral and the style rather conservative. What makes me happy about this sweater is that I chose every aspect of the design. I worked out the pattern details on graph paper and knitted it up.

It turned out exactly as I imagined and fits like a glove.

**Schematic and specifications of my design**

I can’t say enough about the quality of the Patons DK Superwash yarn. It is soft, but not a merino. Therefore the sweater has not pilled. The yarn has a heathery tone and a beautiful hand when knit. I used a twisted stockinette for the main body which makes a tighter fabric and plays up the variations in tone.

**Back view showing pleat and waist shaping**

The hem, cuffs and collar feature a cable-style stitch called Repeated Circles from 750 Knitting Stitches – The Ultimate Knit Stitch Bible. The vintage buttons, which I found on Etsy, mirror the oval centers of the cable. Love it!

Another detail that worked out well is the skinny cable at the shoulder edges. The few stitches worked on the outside edge of the cable made a perfect road map for setting in the sleeves.

Well, that’s about all I have to say about this project. Every time I see it in my closet I long for cooler weather, so that I can wear it again.

hand embroidery, quilting

Finished Object: Sunset Abstract

Posted on April 24, 2020 by Laura Kate

It took only a few days to determine and apply the surface decoration on this piece. And I have stretched the truth a little in calling this one finished. I have sewn on a wide border that still needs machine quilting, and the whole thing needs to be mounted to an artist’s canvas. Since I can’t purchase that item until pandemic restrictions are lifted, I am content to call this object finished.

This is a detail I altered from the original image. In my photograph there was a road in the foreground. I changed it to a stream and depicted it with sunlight glinting off its waters. I achieved this with metallic yarn sewn on with couching.

Here is my trick to get my running stitch straight. By using painter’s tape to mark my fabric, I could hand stitch while watching TV. Also I don’t have to remove marks.

Close up of lower right section showing sun. Clouds and stream are reflecting the sunset. The triangles were stamped onto the fabric using metallic paint.

I feel pretty good about this fiber object. It communicates well the idea of sunset and its color range. I like the balance between the elements and the level of detail. And it allowed me to practice my piecing and embroidery skills.

painting

Celebrating Earth Day Turtle Style

Posted on April 22, 2020 by Laura Kate

Dear Friends,

Today I am offering two watercolor sketches of baby sea turtles. Everyone loves babies. And what better symbol of the earth’s prolific life than these little guys?

Their moms swim up to 1,500 miles to return to that one special beach. Thousands will converge on the spot where they were born some years before, each female toiling up the beach until she finds that sweet spot to lay her eggs. And lay she does – dozens are dropped into the nest, which she slowly buries and then toils back to the water, never to lay eyes on her own progeny.

The hatchlings dig out and sprint towards the light of the sea. Those that survive predators on the beach face a most uncertain future.

So let’s all cheer on the baby turtles, for their own success, and as a symbol of our own future selves on this precarious planet, third one from the sun.

quilting

Abstract Sunset Progress

Posted on April 21, 2020 by Laura Kate

By the end of Monday’s work, I had finished the piecing the fabric to my abstract. Rummaging through my spools of trim, I found some bronze colored satin cording. I couched it into the location of the sun, making this round object disrupt my perfectly angular image.

The next step is to decorate the surface. I always have to take a long pause at this stage. There are just too many options available to me – paint or embroider, hand or machine quilt, add more trims?

And how about all those embroidery stitches on my Bernina?

While I ponder my options, I will just enjoy the wonderful geometry and colors of my work in progress.

painting, quilting

Scrappy Sunset

Posted on April 19, 2020 by Laura Kate

I am having issues with realism. It’s not what you’re thinking. This isn’t about reality. I have a firm grip on my personal reality, and also on the wider reality of life in the dysfunctional 21st century. No, it’s about trying to portray realistic images in my artwork. My dissatisfaction began to grow as I learned to paint with watercolor. All the instruction I have received so far focuses on rendering what I see in the real world. Specifically, I’m taught, how to paint in a manner that emulates three dimensions of shapes in the real world. It’s not going well. And now my dissatisfaction with painting has spilled over into my work with fiber, leading to a muted feeling about all my work.

When I began to experiment with fiber, I was inspired by the work of Gustav Klimt. Klimt began his training in applied arts. This influence shows in his paintings,which are filled with decorative surfaces. It’s the opposite direction of realism. He takes the human form and renders it as a surface, with delicate textural coloration. The rest of his canvas is bursting with a riot of color and pattern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt

It is time for me to return to my first impulse about fiber art and make an abstract work. I’ve chosen a sunset as my subject. This photograph is one I took about a year ago during one of our trips to Wisconsin. My intention is to boil the sunset down to its essential lines and colors, sew strips to a backing fabric and then apply decorative stitches. I’ll use hand-painted scraps of cloth leftover from other projects.

I started out by making a rendering in crayon, placing an emphasis on the angular lines.

After working out the number of strips I will need, I scaled up the image to size, which will be 18 by 12. Next I assembled the fabrics.

I realized that I will need to paint a few more pieces to have enough grayish purple for all the clouds in the scene. So I found a few white and gray scraps that will be painted.

I also made a pattern in full size on butcher paper. I don’t have a photo of it for you, and it has already been cut up. As I made the pattern, I winnowed down the detail even further to get to the essential lines of the sunset. I am using muslin as a backing fabric. Work will proceed from the most complex strip (the sun) outward, first down and then up. After a few hours, I had the lower half assembled.