ATV5:3

Project 3 Experimenting and taking risks

Ideas: I decided to experiment with layering of fabric, cutting and stitching into this, and also using Tyvex as this is a new to me material and hugely exciting to me. I wanted to explore more free motion stitching as I love the doodling nature of this and the texture it can create on fabric.

“One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.

(Barbara Hepworth) “

I stitched an envleope to a background piece of felt with freemotion stitching on the sewing machine. I then wet the work and scrubbed the paper with a scourer until it crumbled and came away in places. I like the negative space the rubbed away paper has thrown up.

i took all the paper offcuts I had created and laid them on to a sheet of A4 paper. I then overlaid this with a layer of Solvy and stitched spiderplant leaf shapes into this. Afterwards I wet the work and washed the Solvy away. The paper got very wet and disintergrated in places and the whole texture and shape changed completely. I liked this idea but didn’t feel it had enough going for it to take it further

I trapped yarn into folds of a sheet of Tyvex and stitched these down. The yarn is representative of the fluffy nodules on the Opuntia. I then heated the Tyvex with a hot air gun until it melted and distorted. I’m not sure I like what happened here. It’s maybe a start but I’m not feeling this is doing what I want it to do

I took a photo I found on Pinterest and cut around it. I drew some of the still life on to the work with my left hand as I love the free feeling of this method, before stitching it on the sewing machine on to a backing of newspaper, trapping yarn in the stitching. I then ripped some of the edges of the original print and then I painted Sempervivum leaves over the top of the work. I painted bleach on but this left no mark at all. I feel this could be explored further but it didn’t happen for this assignment

Plant drawing free motion stitched on Tyvex, then heated with hot air gun

These two Tyvex sheets were ironed in a stripe pattern as an experiment. the piece on the right was painted first

Fabric pleated (left) and pleated and randomly smocked (right)

I layered two pieces of fabric and a piece of felt, stitched leaf inspired shapes on the sewing machine and then cut the felt open in between the stitch lines, and the second layer of fabric away in places too. I painted the whole item with a paintbrush dipped in bleach after but it didn’t have much of an effect sadly. I wanted to strip away colour in the same way the fabric had been stripped (cut) away.

The fabric on the left has been pulled in by using shirring elastic in the bobbin of my sewing machine and the fabric on the right has been scrunched by pulling on individual threads picked up with a needle, sometimes until the threads broke and holes appeared