Sewing as art - or just plain practical

I don't know what happened to my family.  All of a sudden everyone busted seams in their pants.      Trevor is in culinary arts program and wears a black and white houndstooth trouser.    Bent over the oven, and split a seam.    Grandma to the rescue.   Candis split out her workout tights.  Grandma to the rescue.     Nathan split out his favorite black pants he wears to work.     Grandma to the rescue.     Matt - well he doesnt split seams so much as pops buttons.   Mom to the rescue.

But sometimes I sew for art too.      Here are the post cards I stitched before adding the colors.     

And lastly, one after inks sprayed and spattered on them. I had sprayed the watercolor paper with water first, so the colors bled and moved and blended.     And ;the dyes soaked into the paper rather quickly so there was no way to lift them.    It is what it is.     I rather liked how the ink leached it's way down the stitch line to make a shadow under the hairline and slong the chin. btw I used black sharpie pen for eyes with sharpie white paint pen for dot.     

Stitchery witchery do - making faces

My friend Rosemary gave me a spare sewing machine that has a little plate so I can do more kinds of stitching. It has other variations I'll explore later, but for now being able to free style stitch is fun. I"m not good at it, but am sure I'll improve with practice. I can't quite wrap my head around the concept of moving the fabric instead of turning it. Pushing it back and forth, round and about, etc. I've always had to stitch straight ahead, so my piece had to be constantly turned to feed through. This opens a whole new world to me. Another thing I"m finding tricky is keeping and easy pace. The more stops and starts, or staying in one spot - the more the back is fouled up. One of the pieces here was done when the tread from the spool came out of it's guide, so the stitching is really awful. I could not see it until I turned it over, so it was a complete surprise.

I also did one free style tree without any pencil lines to follow. Even more fun.

I'm quite obsessed with faces. I've been sketching, painting, and doing collages of faces. Why the preoccupation? I"m not sure. I am at the age where some of my friends are getting face lifts. I've had oral surgery that changed the shape of my face just a bit and I also lost a lot of weight, so between the wrinkles and the weight loss, I don't look the same.

In the art world, Modigliani's portraits have always been my favorites. There is just something about his style that I love. Also Bruni, a Russian. They were from about the same time period - turn of century to about 1920. They are imperfect faces. They are awesome. I have adapted some of them into my own work.

Stitching faces is a fun way to sketch or draw a face with thread. Running a continuous line is like contour drawing. It is just more challenging manipulating the machine than a pencil. These are done with a sketch or photo of a face on a piece of heavy paper on one side and a piece of fabric on the other side. I stitch through the paper side, following the lines or at least using them as a base. When I remove it from the machine I'm always surprised. Some that look perfectly stitched on the top side, look all tangly on the bottom. Some that look the worst ot he top, look great on the bottom. Perhaps with better control I can maintain some consistency. Time will tell.

Stitching up a storm

Here are more stitched faces. Some are on colored and patterned paper. Not as easy to see the stitching, but still interesting. Some with captions cut out of a magazine. I think captions add a lot. I like words. Oops! I looked back and found I had already scanned and posted most of these. This time I'll put them in the binder where I'm keeping them, and I won't be fooled again. LOL I've got too much stuff here.

Stitched Faces

It's a rainy day, so I pulled out some face cards to stitch on. These are views of the backs. The stitching is done from the other side. These are done on my old sewing machine without a drop feed, so it is a slow procedure to stitch them, with lots of starts and stops. At least these I did not do with one continuous row of stitches. It makes them a bit cleaner looking, but in a way maybe not quite as interesting...??? I'm not sure yet. The dyes on the paper were done previously with distress inks.

Stitched faces

I've ordered a new sewing machine that will have a drop feed which will allow me to do freestyle stitching. I've been fighting my way with the old machine for a long time and finally decided I wanted something more modern, with more features. So, today I did some more of the stitched faces I tried out last year. This is still with the old machine. For some reason I always made myself use a running stitch. No stopping and cutting the thread and starting somewhere else. Just one continuous line. Like a sketching exercise. But, finally after some bad stitches, I wondered why I had put that restriction on myself. Today I told myself to lighten up and just work with whatever number of lines I wanted. That was when I was about done for the day anyway, so I'm not sure what the next ones will be like. I think they will be a lot neater. for one thing, I can turn them over and stitch on the other (right) side. Anyway, here's the practice pieces I did this morning. It was so nice and warm today, I spent the afternoon gardening and bathing the dogs.

More stitched people

I thought I'd show you the fronts of the ones I just did. and then the side with just the stitches showing. On one of them the machine gave up and tangled everything terribly. I had to take it apart and clean it since I often sew over glued papers, it gums things up inside. I'm hoping it will be more cooperative now.

stitched people

I used photos of people, laid them onto cardstock and stitched through from the front. These are the backs which are much more interesting. I don't have the right equipment to do this kind of work but I liked trying with what I have.