Exhibition - All Stitched Up

All Stitched Up is an exhibition by Paper Makers and Artists of Queensland, being held at the Gympie Regional Gallery from 22 February to 23 March 2024.

The Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am - 4pm.

Three of my pieces were selected for this exhibition and I am thrilled to have them shown in such a fabulous venue, with so many other wonderful paper artists.

The first piece is called Postcards Home and I have blogged about it previously here.

"Contemplating home in two places; sending messages from here to there and back again…"

 

Handmade paper from recycled and natural fibres, botanical dyed threads (agapanthus, rosemary, comfrey, from one place; stinging nettle, thistle, scabiosus from the other), hand stitching, Perspex.

The second piece is called Homecomings I-VII

"Journeying, travelling, moving between two places. Finding home."

 

Graphite rubbings from two places on Japanese Kozo and Hosho papers, machine stitching, embossing, Arches Velin paper 

These are simply three of the seven - all seven can be seen on a recent Thursday Thoughts post here!

The final piece is called Home is...?

"Home is stitched together from memories, places, and people."

 

Graphite rubbings from two places on Japanese Kozo and Hosho papers, machine stitching, hand stitching, Khadi paper 320gsm, Perspex

We hope to visit in the next wee while and see them on show.

Postcards Home

 I stitched away merrily with this book - stitching the pages as planned, and then letting the rest of the book work itself out. When I make I seem to be a strange mix of planning and prepping; and then reacting and responding.

With this book, there was a fairly even mix of both; and along the way I did less recording than I usually do.

I had stitched three pages; and so I went on to stitch the next three.

Sadly, the first thread I selected was too heavy and too thick. Despite my best efforts it was going to tear the fragile paper and would not sit happily on the surface. So it was replaced.

As mentioned, I didn't record all that well - and here is the first of the pages stitched; and stitched onto its perspex backing, and attached to another. Quite late in the game really. I had originally planned to stitch the page in between two pieces of perspex like a sort of sandwich; but after I had done this for a couple, I realised I much preferred the texture of the paper being available, rather than contained. So I unstitched the perspex..

Comfrey

Rosemary

Agapanthus

Then it was on to thinking about the covers. I took this little stitched line for a walk with running stitch and thought it worked OK on the soft paper.

And then pierced the title on the page, realising I would need to do a back stitch in order for the lettering to be more fully read.

Called Postcards Home, the book uses three threads I naturally solar-dyed in Maleny; and three threads I dyed at the cottage in Scotland, bringing them together in a way...

I trimmed all the threads except for those that hold the perspex pages together. 

The covers are two sheets of Perspex with a sheet of paper held within them.

The sequence is: Agapanthus, Rosemary, Comfrey - Stinging Nettle, Thistle, Devil's Bit Scabiosus.

The next steps

 Having worked out my piercing and my stitching I have now done three pages. The plan is for three more, and then some covers.

I am still not sure of the final format of this wee book, but hopefully all will reveal itself as I take the next steps. The covers remain a bit of a mystery as well.

My next page was stitched from Thistle thread, once again from Scotland.

My new technique for piercing the holes along the vertical made for slightly better alignment.

The Thistle thread.

Next up was Stinging Nettle thread.

 

And here they are as a trio, soft and muted.

Getting ready for new work

As ever, I remain a somewhat fascinated observer of process- how things come about, how ideas spark one thing and then another - which can lead to a different approach; but nearly always things need to be tested and trialled along the way.

After my middle of the night moment back here, I have been testing what might be possible with the bits and pieces I found and wanted to use.

Barry helped me and drilled holes into the perspex bits I found.

Then we tested if you could drill through he plastic protective sheet and we could so that is good - the perspex can be protected right until the end.

My templates may not have been perfect, but if I move things around a bit, I am pretty sure the holes will line up.

So then to see if the stitched paper could be held within a perspex 'page'.

A few more holes were drilled to allow for X X to hold the paper in.

So then it was down to piercing the stitching holes on paper. But first up I had to draw up a template. The rectangle is 5cm x 1cm and there are 8 lines of stitching in that 1cm. Tiny!

I realised that if I were to pierce the template and then do lots and lots of piercing on a bunch of paper, that the holes might well and truly widen as I repeatedly pierced. 

Then I had to check which of my awls had the finest tip; and was the narrowest along the shaft for  the longest length. That way if I was over zealous in my piercing I wouldn't create a massive hole. The lines are so close together, a large hole would probably join in to the hole above or below and make messy rip.

Not all awls are created equal.

My chosen tool and my first page pierced.

Let the stitching begin.

A lovely soft green.

From my botanically dyed thread - this one is from Scotland.

And I learnt from that rather wobbly first attempt that rather than pierce along the horizontal lines, I was better off piercing the vertical lines against a ruler. Always learning!

More Validation

Well some things are actually getting completed in studio time - and others are getting nudged along nicely.

Today I pretty much completed my Validation boxed pieces.

Last week I worked out how to sew that pesky Polyester thread by sitting under a table, and this week I trimmed the thread and fastened it in place.

I started by removing the matte sticky tape I had used to hold the fabric in place as I stitched through that very open-weave fabric.

Getting the larger lengths off was pretty OK using small scissors and gently tugging, but I got rather tentative when I was around the stitching position, and left these little squares of tape there.

Here's the pile of tape appearing on my desk mat as I pulled it off all three.

And so I began to delicately, with surgeon-like precision, remove these tiny scraps of tape without pulling the thread out or accidentally cutting it off! It is pretty flexible and ends up in all the unexpected places.

Scissors and scalpels were both used, and I worked through a magnifying lamp as well. 

To be sure, to be sure, I then used a drop of Fray Stoppa (a product I have to stop things fraying when I sew, but which I have never used until now).  I figured I might as well try it here and applied a drop around the stitch to try and hold it in place. Toothpicks were the main applicator.

I left that to dry and harden, and then removed the white protective backing, to see if it really did work to have the piece just suspended in space like I had hoped.

I think it works.  I now have to clean the Perspex and think about pricing, but the main puzzles have been solved and I like where the work has landed.