August 2010

As I was thinking about how to display work here, I decided to show a few pieces in a large format, and list links to other areas of the site so you can explore…  Thanks for visiting, and enjoy!  Questions contact me victoria@freedomofstitch.com

First is the Mandrake. 10X16inches, cotton floss on stamped muslin.  I love him. As I’m working  a series of poisons, it seemed the obvious first piece.  I LOVE figure drawing, and when I began drawing in the mid 90’s after years of no art, I began with figures – So I have tons of sketch books to use as resources. I drew him onto the fabric with watercolor crayon & Derwent inktense pencils, and then drew in the leaves with sharpie.  I chose my threads and decided to 3D his foliage almost as soon as the first sketches were done. I’d been experimenting with woven picots and it just all fell into place. voila!   The ruffly stitches at his neck are brazilian cast on which I also love for 3D texture.

Mandrake is available as a pattern in BuyFearlessStitch and will soon have a companion — the WOmandrake! She’s got the fruits and flowers like the plant, and is under construction. She’s much bigger (3ft X 4ft!) and very mixed media.  Mandrake also has his own gallery *link* where other artists have interped the pattern in their own medium — very cool (& YOU can do one if you like… )

Mandrake is also the first example of something I call Metamorphostitch *LINK*.  I love the idea of exquisite corpse creations, and have always collected human, animal, machinery, and object pictures with plans to blend them into hybrid creatures  like those of myth and legend.

Incidentally, the mandrake work led to some figure stitching based on my secret passion: ink and wash techniques of life drawing:

This is a technique I’ll be developing into a class for Spring 2010, but can be followed up on in my studio examples  *link*

Next comes my first avatar: the fearless stitcher! (3X4inches, on cotton)

She is close to my heart as she’s…me!  I’d actually laid down some threads for flowers in thread salad (see link below) and thought “hey, that looks like my hair”.  And the stitcher just evolved from that.

Arch View (8.5X11inches, floss and ribbon on watercolored muslin) grew out of an idea I had for an art journal class (I had students come in with a “view”, window or door, through which they would like to pass into an inspirational world).  As my own view, I dreamt up a watery oasis just beyond a veranda:

Even now, as I look at it, I’d like to step through!

I loved the project as it was a great chance to try out ribbon and fiber.

After that, I turned my attention toward birds — can’t explain why, I have no particular liking of them, other than they are super cool to stitch!

I began with a simple nest (10X6inches):

Incidentally, bird nest was developed with a technique I call Thread Salad which is explained over in Hardest Working Stitch  *link* If you need a way to visualize what a certain form or color might look like on your fabric, go look at how I do it.  In ‘Meadow’ (15X20inches floss on muslin – right half below) I was struggling with form as it was the first mixed media embroidery I ever did and I didn’t yet have the stitch techniques I needed, so I used thread salad as an Impressionistic visual shorthand.

In combination with the watercolor, I could develop the entire composition and though I didn’t know it at the time, it would be absolutely key to my developing my largest piece yet: the Roots at Dusk (3X4feet)

At 110,000 stitches over a 14month period, it was quite a project! The Diary of its creation lives here  *link*

I worked the Tree of Life as a self-challenge piece -  13X16 inches, cotton & metallic floss on muslin – I wanted to see if I could design and complete a traditional motif (& a MEAN lady had just denied me entrance to her “embroidery group” because I didn’t DO traditional embroidery — so I was inspired to do something UBERtraditional – HA!)  Job done. I’ll make the pattern available in Spring 2010.

Since I so loved creating the bird’s nest, and the Tree of Life really satisfied me, it seemed logical that my needle should next turn to birds (which I affectionately call my buzzards)!  Glamour Buzzard was a mutation of the Tree of Life bird above:

6X8inches, floss on cotton.

Same front design, but I wanted something with a bigger tail that you could really show off your fancy stitches with (this one uses blue and green brazilian cast on stitch). And I did his chest and head foliage in metallics – which I hate to work with, but seemed essential to his awesomeness!  He also features one of my favorite stitches: the oyster. It’s the red knot that makes his cheek — sometimes the love of a single stitch can result in a whole new design, and that’s the case here.  I got to use all of my favorites in a beautiful composition.  Incidentally, this is available as a pattern in the shop *link* .   He is the first original design I made avail as a pattern. Still love looking at him…

Also available in the shop is the Butterfly She Design Sheet — it’s a full color 8.5X11 inch page (watercolor and floss on muslin). The process of creating her is rather convoluted, as she began as a watercolor landscape (process blogged here *link*) but became a girly design instead. Sometimes, that’s just how the stitches fall!

Bird girl was a natural continuation of the processes I developed in the Mandrake and Butterfly She including underpainting, blending people and animals in Metamorphostitch, and adding fiber elements:

10X12inches, floss & fiber on mixed media collage and gel transfer.

I  gel-transferred the face and collaged the body. The process, and a second take on the image is blogged here *link* in studio paint & stitch experiments.

I’m still revising this section as of September 2009, so as I finish scanning images and adding the text, I’ll post –  Thanks for visiting!