Category: Experimentation

French Knot Embroidery in Paper

My experiments in making french knots on paper the other week led to working on a larger and more elaborate piece that I finished in the studio on Monday. I took many photos of my progress as I worked. The consistency of my French knots has seen a huge improvement from those first tentative test pieces.

French knots on paper

French knots on paper

I used pale grey embroidery thread on 90lb 11″ x 14″ Strathmore mixed media paper. I drew lines and concentric circles on the back to guide me and made up the design as I went along.

French knots on paper

I pre-punched the holes with the needle before adding the stitches, as you can see in the photo below.

French knots on paper

French knots on paper

The finished piece is lovely and seems to come across as a mandala, which was not intentional. This is one of a few experimental embroidery pieces I will frame and show during the Eastside Culture Crawl in November.

Work In Progress: Embroidery on Paper Tests

I recently made the transition from stitching on cloth to paper, which was bound to happen sooner or later because I am a paper artist after all. I started with a small scrap piece of paper and made a circle of French knots in red thread. I added the paper cut design after the embroidery to see how those would work together.

If I combine stitching and paper cutting again I’ll have to do the cutting first because the textured knots make it so the paper can’t lie flat, and that makes things awkward. I made it work because the paper was small and it was a test.

French knots on paper

With my second test piece I worked with heavier card stock and did a more intricate design that I made up as I went along. I drew lines and circles on the back to guide me, and punched the holes with the needle before I did the stitching.

French knots on paper

With my third test piece I pulled out a line drawing from last year and decided to add French knots to create texture, and see how the two mediums work together. Despite the busy nature of the drawing the French knots look terrific on the piece (more so than what comes across in this photo).

French knots on paper

The three pieces have been great practice in getting a feel for handling paper carefully while trying to stitch, and I’ve gotten so much better at creating nice even French knots. I could make them all day. It the same way I feel about the other mediums and techniques I love.

Expanding the Stitching Repertoire

Sashiko stitching has been a gateway technique fuelling my long-held desire to learn how to embroider. I decided I wanted to expand from the straight stitch used in sashiko, and learn how to add texture with thread. I borrowed a book from the library just before the Labour Day weekend, and started working on a sampler of stitches.

Embroidery practice

Embroidery practice

I really love the cable chain, and the bullion knot the best out of the ones I’ve used in the sampler. I’m dying to start embroidering on a favourite worn red coat to give it new life, but I’m making myself practice further on the sampler to get more consistent with the stitches.

Embroidery practice

The book I’m using is called, Embroidery by Lucinda Ganderton, which has a step by step breakdown of over two hundred stitches. I like this book because it focuses on basic techniques rather than cutesy projects, like so many of the other books seemed to.

Work In Progress: Sonobe Office Art

Work in progress sonobe

I’ve been working on a massive paper project off and on since July to create new artwork for the Steamclock Software office in Gastown, where I work part-time as the office manager. When I started I completely underestimated how long it would take me to make it, even knowing I needed to fold around four hundred and fifty-ish pieces of origami paper. Folding was only the first part, piecing together and coming up with a colour composition was the second part, and gluing everything together was part three.

Work in progress sonobe

Work in progress sonobe

I’m waiting for an opportunity to do part four, which is spraying it with a protective coating, before I can move on to the final stages of mounting, framing, and hanging it on the office wall. I started out working on this project at home, and quickly moved it to the office where there is way more table space to accommodate something of this size (about 40 inches square).

Work in progress sonobe

Work in progress sonobe

Work in progress sonobe

The type of origami is called sonobe, and it’s a modular origami I briefly played around with at The Leeway studio last year. I never thought I’d eventually end up making something of this size as a commission. I much prefer creating my original work to making origami paper art, and I don’t want anyone getting ideas from this to ask me to do more origami-related work. I’ll leave it to the experts, such as Joseph Wu.

Making Polymer Clay Beads

I was recently inspired by people I follow on Instagram to try making polymer clay beads. I worked with the clay many years ago at a workshop taught by Laurie Mika at ArtFest, but the end project was to make a portable shadowbox shrine. I’d never considered making beads before, and now I want to make them all the time.

Polymer clay beads

Theses are two of the necklaces I have made to date after three sessions of bead making. I hosted an evening with friends earlier this week, and the necklace below was put together from beads I made that night. I love playing with the colours, patterns, and shapes to make these jumbled strands of beads. I am so pleased to wear my own work around my neck.

Polymer clay beads

I am inspired by these small making projects I’ve been working on over the summer. The necklaces along with my stitching project means I have lovely things to wear made by my own hand. That is the best part!

Deconstructed Screen Printing

My friend Michelle Sirois Silver very generously hosted a small group of artists in her studio last week to do a quick workshop on deconstructed screen printing. It’s similar to regular screen printing but we made our screens by placing textured surfaces under the screen and then coating the screen until fully saturated with ink. The screens are left to dry and take on the texture of the surfaces underneath.

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My composition of textures before the ink is applied.

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The pot of ink before I applied it to the screen.

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The screen after all the ink is fully loaded into the screen.

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It took ages for the screen to dry, and in the meantime we worked on a freeform version of deconstructed screen printing, which I did not photograph. I used a rust coloured dye to create the screen and then printed it using a dark blue-grey onto fabric. Below is my final print with all the lovely textures.

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I am thinking about what do with these pieces of cloth I have printed. They may end up as patches on clothing or I could use the for a future sashiko stitching project.

Check out the work of Michelle Sirois Silver here.

Sashiko Stitching and Embellishing Clothes

Summer is the time I break out the maker side projects, and often they are textile-related. Last year I made t-shirt yarn and braided rugs, and this year I’m improving my hand stitching. On the weekend I started with repairing a hole in a pair of Boris’ shorts using a piece of fabric and a straight stitch. I love how it turned out. The sugar skull fabric is the same one I used to make him a laptop case for Christmas.

Making the patch was a good warm up for getting back into Sashiko stitching, and it led me to finally get started on a project I’ve had in mind for months. I kept putting off starting it because I felt intimidated, but now I am OBSESSED!

Starting a sashiko stitching project

I have this plain black skirt I bought more than fifteen years ago at a second-hand store in Halifax. I thought it would be interesting to embellish it with stitching. I am making up the design as I go along, working with various sized circles and red thread.

Starting a new sashiko stitching project

It’s going well so far, but I have a lot of work ahead of me because I want to embellish the entire bottom edge. I can hardly wait to finish and wear this! I have a feeling many more pieces of clothing are going to end up with decorative sashiko stitches.

Wearable Triangles

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I currently have three wearable paper art pieces on the go. As I got stalled on the first one, I start working on a second, and then a third. Eventually they’ll all come together as completed work. Pictured here are the bits and pieces of the third work in progress wearable for the neck.

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I had to laugh when I started working on this, because clearly I can never just make one of anything. It always has to be multiples. Why make one triangle when I can make a whole pile of them?! Same goes for flowers, and anything else that comes to mind of recent work. The middle photo are the off-cut pieces of the triangles, and they will not be part of the finished piece.

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I had a terrific studio visit on Friday with the two artists organizing the show these will be part of in September. It was fun to share these with others, and they gave me a few ideas on how to proceed.

Putting Sashiko Stitching To Work

At sewing bee yesterday evening I completed my first successful sashiko repair. I started it on Sunday evening and set it aside after getting frustrated. The hole is located on the inner thigh of my jeans, which made for an extremely awkward location to maneuver tiny stitches and a large needle. But I made it to the end, and now the jeans won’t end up with an even larger hole.

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Towards the end of the workshop the other weekend, our teacher told us she keeps her sashiko supplies separate from her other sewing materials. I was inspired to finally invest in one of the metal pencil boxes made by Danica Studio, and sold at Welk’s (home of many irresistable products) as a container to hold mine. Look how cute it is! I want to stitch something all the time now.

A Repetition of Triangles

My attention has been shifting between working on prototypes for wearable paper pieces for a fall show, and a small series of repetitive drawings. Those started as a diversion (read that as procrastination) from the tyvek piece, and then became a series of its own. Last week I worked on the fourth in the series (the rest of which you can see here and here) and finished it as well.

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I went with triangles this time, and worked it into a circle as I did with the others. The finished piece is metallic gel pen on 12″ x 12″ archival black paper.

I lined up the four pieces on my easel and took the above photo. I love all the texture and pattern in a row. A friend commented on Instagram that it reminded her of the phases of the moon. It was exactly what I was thinking.