Resolving to come to a resolution...

Sian has made the very scary suggestion of cutting up my lovingly sewn pieces and sewing them back together in a different order. Well I gave it a whirl ... but only via scanned images cut up and placed in different layouts as shown here.

I tried to work out a layout of all 3 pieces on one piece of backing fabric, and used paint shop pro rather badly to imitate eroding the edges of the pieces by cutting and stitching. It turns it into a nice tryptich effect.

Progress on the resolved sample

I had been hitting a bit of a brick wall with my resolved sample and was not so sure where to go, so I looked back through the module and then headed for my sketchbook. I decided I wanted to go somewhere with the arms of the star being made up of disintegrating fragments, and hit on the idea of triangles/arrows in big groups, splintering out towards the ends of the arms. The red lines could be machine or hand stitching. I also wanted to look at using some reverse applique.

Then I decided I needed to prepare a few more pieces of material to work on, so I prepared some more bonded surfaces (not shown) and also some printed star fabric shown here (using stencils and acrylic paints).

Then I pinned random strips of fabric to a backing cloth and added the yellow printed fabric on top. So far so good. Then I machine stitched from theback and cut back the top layer ... only it seemed to leave much too much of huge hole in the middle...

However I still had the central piece complete, so I decided to try a rescue bid and reattached it in the middle, and then started to distress it. This is beginning to look better again.



I think I will add hand stitching in purple to the centre star to blend it in more with the first piece (see further on).

Then I worked on the idea of the arms of the star being composed of separate triangles. It took ages to place all of the traingles (pieces of ribbon) and then they were bonded along with some random bits. I've started adding some detached wheat ear stitch. I wanted a stitch that gave the feeling of an arrow, and something I could use in varying sizes. I'm feeling really pleased with the delicate ephemeral effect this is creating.

The final conundrum now is how - and maybe if - the current three pieces should be pieced together. On the left is one possibility. The left hand piece, as mentioned above, is going to have some central stitching similar to the central piece - probably looking more ragged and disintegrated though (maybe some threads hanging down). I have sprinkled a couple of offcuts from the reverse applique over the top of the central piece (not attached just lying there to test the effect). My thought is these would maybe help 'join' the pieces into more of a single item, as they are looking too separate at the moment. The final floaty piece could perhaps be a little higher, floating away from the others. I am thinking of adding some purple chiffon over part of the top of it to blend it more with the central piece.

A recent black and white doodle

This was a recent doodle for the sake of doodling. I had fun getting lost in the creation of this ... who knows where I might end up using it? It was very relaxing to unwind this spiral for no particular reason and I find the resulting rhythm of it rather pleasing.

Some favourite pieces from my fellow Distant Stitchers

Work by Paula, Daniella and Kaye (I think both of the lower pair are Kaye's - I'm sure I will be quickly corrected if not). There were so many excellent pieces that it seems mean to pick out only a few.

The arcane art of embroidery

Jane casts her spell and weaves a little magic.

Home from Urchfont

Here I am, back home from my very first Urchfont experience, at Sian Martin's Distant Stitch summer school, and my oh my what a sumptuous feast it was in every sense of the phrase.
I don't recall when I last met so many lovely people all in one go. And how often do you get a group of 20+ people and find not one disagreeable person amongst them?
The Urchfont food was absolutely amazing - again not one dud meal in the whole time, not even so much as a single boring biscuit.
And I learnt so much! True, we worked hard and long hours, but it was all very well worth it. Thank you to Maggie Grey and Sian Martin, and thanks too to all of my fellow Distant Stitchers, I learnt and took so much inspiration from all of you.
OK, way way too much gushing, let's call this a day before we all get a bit queasy and get it posted. And look at me - I'm a blogger now (didn't I promise I'd never do this?), and I've achieved my first assigned task from the 3 days.