A few days ago I tried a little experiment with one of the cards I've recently made. I colour photocopied it, as well as photographed it and printed it on photo and plain papers, cotton and silk. Below is the original fabric piece on the left and the photo onto cotton with handstitch added, on the right. While both are fabric with stitch and very similiar at a glance, I prefer the silk and velvet original with actual fringe because of the feel and the initial piece seems more valid somehow because that particular combination of fabrics and stitch didn't exist before I made it and the second version couldn't have been made the way it was without the first.
Yet isn't that the way art builds on itself? One thing I've noticed in doing this series of cards is how variations crept in - whether pinked tree edges and colours of fabric or the addition of borders. And some of the time the differences emerging arose from something unexpected, as in the card below, where inexplicably some of the metallic cotton melted under the iron (even though I have other cards with the same material that did not melt) and I liked the look and added fabric behind it, leaving a border on the bottom edge.
On the next card that I made, it felt natural to include a border, although it's not pictured, here:
Yet even without using the same basic design and varying it as I have with these cards, whatever I make is part of an ongoing process and it's interesting to make connections and notice shifts.
And stitches on the ground.
These toilet paper castings really pick up texture and are so easy and fun - although they take a long time to dry. I've stitched through the one above to make a card with it.
And here I've made a stamp and am using it to explore symmetry in the pattern design course that I'm taking.
Pattern is a fascinating and complex subject!
Yet isn't that the way art builds on itself? One thing I've noticed in doing this series of cards is how variations crept in - whether pinked tree edges and colours of fabric or the addition of borders. And some of the time the differences emerging arose from something unexpected, as in the card below, where inexplicably some of the metallic cotton melted under the iron (even though I have other cards with the same material that did not melt) and I liked the look and added fabric behind it, leaving a border on the bottom edge.
On the next card that I made, it felt natural to include a border, although it's not pictured, here:
Yet even without using the same basic design and varying it as I have with these cards, whatever I make is part of an ongoing process and it's interesting to make connections and notice shifts.
I have made cards for friends and loved ones ever since I took up sewing, but these will be for sale and were made without a specific person in mind - so - a different approach. Here are some of them:
And I have a few more started and I have ideas for other items to make for sale, but the trees on my cards are the only ones decorated at our house so far, and it's soon time to change that, so I'll see how much more I get done before the exhibiton!
I often make combination fabric and paper cards for special occasions like the one above for my son's birthday today. I also returned to 'Follow Your Heart', completing hand stitching the binding, doing stitch in the ditch, and then I noticed the central heart was a bit wrinkled and flat, so I decided to partially remove it and stuff it trapunto style, before re-sewing it back down. It looks so much more 'heart-full' now. I also noticed a few more areas in the quilted hearts that needed redoing - which I did - and I expermented on a sample with tiny multi-coloured heart stitches that my Pfaff can do, as I was considering putting them all along the binding. Somehow that seemed too stylized, so I chose to just do a single small heart which I will try to position above my signature for the dot of the letter 'i'. It probably would have been wise to write my name first and then do the heart dot over the 'i'. I seem to be one of those sewers who must do everything the hard way first!