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.
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.
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.
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.
After getting to this stage, I felt a palpable sense of relief.
Tomorrow I will finish painting the fabric and assemble the rest of the piece.
Sometimes Life sends you a gift. Late last week, my husband and I decided it was time to go camping. We needed the therapy of the great outdoors. He checked online and discovered that the fishing lakes in Kansas are still open to the public. After reviewing the weather forecast, we chose Tuesday, April 7 for our outing. The weather would be dry and the temperatures mild.
He is an avid fly fisherman and hadn’t dropped a fly in the water for ten months. I don’t care for fishing, preferring to sit at the lake’s edge and enjoy more passive activities. I brought a book, my sketching supplies and a pile of tangled yarn to straighten out.
We arrived around eleven a.m. at our favorite Kansas lake. At that time, there was almost no one else there. It was glorious – the sun glinting on the water, the fresh breeze blowing off the water and the trees just barely showing leaves. He was off like a shot in his float tube and I got out my sketch book.
Willow at Lake Montgomery April 2020Sycamore tree at water’s edgeBluebirds nesting in hollow branch
This is the first outdoor sketching I have done since getting interested in drawing last year. I found the experience very relaxing. The goal of the plein-air sketch is just to capture some basic information about what you see. It’s after you bring the sketches back to your studio that you can turn them into more detailed drawings. These bluebirds intrigued me. I had never seen a pair as such close range, and never seen them nesting in nature.
Here’s the yarn I untangled. It used to be a cabled glove in process. I decided to abandon the project completely and start over with the green wool.
After cooking and eating dinner, the sun was beginning to set. Eager to see it up close we strolled along the lakeshore toward the western part of the lake. Bill took still images and made a few videos of the gorgeous sky and its reflection in the water. Once the show was over, we turned and proceeded back along the shore, now looking east.
We were astonished at what happened next. The full moon, now rising just below tree tops, sliding up through the gathering mist of the lake, and soon in full view, was huge. With the fading of the sun, the sky turned from blue to indigo to deep purple. The moon changed from pink to orange to gold, and then paled out to white.
What a lucky surprise, we said to each other. We hadn’t been expecting a full moon, and certainly not one of such beauty. Returning to the campsite, he built up the fire and we sat quietly waiting for night to fall. By around nine o’clock, the light of the moon was so intense we could still discern colors. The moon shadows of not only our bodies but also of everything around us were crisply outlined on the ground.
We retired to bed. The moonlight’s glow penetrated the tent walls. It never did get dark that night. And it certainly never got quiet. It seems that the full moon in April is the time specified by Nature for every frog in the county to go a-courting. I have never heard such a raucous sound coming from the lake. It out-shouted the cattle lowing, the coyotes barking and the owls whooing. I called them laughing frogs, but really it sounded more like the din of a sports bar during the biggest game of the year.
Despite the noise, we slept. We woke just in time to see the sun rise over the still, glassy lake. Another moment that will be etched deeply into our collective memories.
Daily Fiber 