Monday 9 April 2012

The last spreads in my Limited Edition Sketchbook Project

Because I had to stitch pages together in pairs to make them more substantial in order to make it possible to stitch my fabric pieces on top I have a lot less pages to work in than the sketchbook had to offer originally. In fact I ended up with 9 spreads in total. The whole sketchbook can be viewed above on which the hand-dyed nightie that formed my starting point can be clearly seen. You can read more about i in my previous posts here and here. There is no sketchbook project for which you can sign up at the moment but if you keep your eye on the Brooklyn Art Libary site I'm sure there will be a new one before too much longer!
Spread 7 features the same stitch used in different ways and in different sizes. It's called detached buttonhole stitch in most of the stitch books I own. I've using a machine stitched line as base but the buttonhole stitching is done entirely by hand. On the left it's surrounded by a frame of machine stitching.

Sometimes I discover things that are amazing even to myself. And on the left-hand side of this spread is one such example. I was rooting through my old stitching samples that I had done during my City and Guilds Embroidery Course back in the early nineties when I was just at the start of my textile art career. And lo and behold, I found a sample of a piece of transparent fabric onto which I had stitched little squares of other transparent fabrics which I then frayed at the edges. Ring a bell??!! Oh yes, these must be the forerunners of my love affair with inchies which at that time were unheard of either here or anywhere else. How does this happen? Did they live on in my subconscience and pop up again (without any interference from my rational mind) some twenty years later? I could only follow along with them and the right-hand page is dedicated to more modern inchies, layered on turban cotton and on that same hand-dyed nightie background I've used on all the pages in this sketchbook.

This is the very last page in my sketchbook. It shows more small pieces of dyed velvet with detached buttonhole stitch on top, all done by hand but using a machine sewn line as base to build the stitch onto. On the bottom the stiching has been done on a transparent fabric.

3 comments:

Linda Kunsman said...

It is so flowing and beautiful Frieda!

creativelenna said...

i love this so much! Thank you for sharing your sketchbook in such detail, Frieda. Oh, I only know because I recently checked -the sign ups for the 'sketchbook project 2013' begins on April 18!!!

Linda said...

What a wonderful journal and the nightie went a long ways. Beautifully put together and fun to see all the pages.

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