New Work: Sew, quilt, And weave #4

Sew, Quilt, and Weave 4
8" x 8 " matted to 12" x 12"
Hand printed and painted paper, cotton yarn, machine stitching

​I finished this piece up yesterday. It was kind of a "sideline" piece since I was working on something else already. But I had seen on FB an Amish style coins quilt that my friend had done and I was really taken with the layout. Over the years I have gravitated towards Amish style quilts with their bold colors, graphic elements, and simple layouts. They are complex looking without being complicated, if that makes sense. I felt that the concept of that quilt layout I saw would translate well to a collage.

To get started, I had some "strip pieced" scraps on my work table and I used those to begin the piece. Funny too about that strip pieced bit of papers. It's amazing that collage and working with paper can be very similar to making a quilt. I can apply some concepts from quilt making, such as using a 1/4" seam and strip piecing, to put pieces of paper together. My finished pieces, too, are very much like making a "quilt sandwich" only with paper instead of fabric and batting. I really like that I can take things that I already know and use them in new ways to move my current work forward. 

However, not every inspiration, such as this Amish style quilt, is such a direct transfer. The one thing that I have shied away from in these quilt inspired pieces is any kind of a border. To me, adding a traditional looking border just looks too "quilty". I don't want these pieces to literally be paper quilts. I want the pieces to reference rather than replicate. But, I wanted something to somewhat frame the collage because I knew I was going to add the yarn. I remembered an artist that I used to love following (Laurie Fendrich) and she had lots of paintings which had a kind of "echo border". Very thin lines of color were used in repetition to frame the main figures. I felt that a thin line of color would be a great way to finish the collage and make room for that yarn idea. I think it works well in this case.

Now, the yarn element. I have developed a sort of yarn fetish. It started with binding my collage books. Almost exclusively, the handmade books that I have seen are bound with a waxed or unwaxed linen floss. When I started with my first project I tried to use the floss. I hated it! Ack! I am vert tactile and the floss felt wrong to me. Yarn seemed a good substitute since I am also not super keen on embroidery floss. I took a deep dive into the world of yarn, learning some basic terms and trying to match materials so that yarn, needle and paper could all work together. I am happy to say that I now own some yarn! And some needles. And more yarn. Beautiful, rich colors too. What a wonderful medium. Anyway, I knew I wanted to use yarn in this piece and I envisioned a kind of blanket stitch only without the base. I want to say upfront that it is very scary to punch holes in the finished work. The collage is affixed to the watercolor paper and then affixed to the matboard. I then start punching holes to make the stitches. (I use a piece of graph paper as my hole punching guide.) I am sure that if I make a mistake I could do something to fix it but I also know that the solution might be to start over, which would be upsetting. It's not surgery but still.

I feel that the finished piece looks contained and restrained. I chose a contrasting black and white yarn instead of a color. I think I could experiment with this because I am sure a color would work. I also think some kind of weaving stitch would be good. I just don't want to overwhelm the collage itself with the stitching. I want the stitching to be integrated and to not stand out as a separate element. It can be the focal point but not a separate thing. There are a lot of prints and colors too in the piece but I feel like the machine stitching and yarn stitching brings everything into focus and gives it a kind of control. I like art that seems organized in some way that I can understand. Anything really that has organization to it is a draw for me. I just gravitate to a kind of order in things.

So, onward. I have some small collages in process. They are meant for a little 6" x 6" handmade book. I made the book out of a record album cover. I like the idea of re using materials. We had the record albums on hand (they are from quite another lifetime I would say). I actually made two of the books and they were really meant to help me practice stitching single pages into a book form. I hope to be able to photograph them at some point and add them to the site.
 
​Thanks for reading. Drop a line if possible. [email protected]
Thanks,
Libby