Recurring motifs 1 -- branches

Contemplating 366 hand-stitched squares in my 2012 daily art project, I realize how certain familiar stitches, shapes and symbols came back again and again, especially on days when I couldn't figure out anything original to do.  That's when I reverted to my usual suspects.

Early on I started to make motifs with featherstitching.  For decades I have admired the elaborate featherstitching on crazy quilts but never quite mastered it, and this year I decided to do so.  At the start of the year I consulted my embroidery stitch manual to make sure I was doing it right, but it didn't take long to internalize the routine.

The featherstitching always reminded me of branches with little twigs coming off, and I often decorated them with detached-chain leaves or little french-knot flowers.

And there were lots more where those came from!

Photo suite 55 -- boats out of water

Teaching an old thread new tricks 2

I wrote the other day about using old embroidery floss (my advice: go ahead and use it!) but probably even more people wonder about using old sewing thread.  Yes, thread deteriorates with age, but I just flat-out hate to throw things away that are still usable.

I once attended a meeting of a ladies' sewing circle at a church.  They were collecting sewing things for a fundraiser, and proudly showed off a huge bag of donated thread that was so old that most of the spools were wood.  I pointed out that the thread was so rotten that it snapped when you looked at it, and told them not to sell it.  They were grateful for the advice.  (Then I gave them some money and took all the wooden spools home with me, which arguably was a conflict of interest....)

NO SEW

Thread on wooden spools goes on display in my collection; I won't use it for any kind of sewing.  But thread on plastic spools can be just fine for some purposes.

SEW!!!

I would not use 20-year-old thread to sew a garment, or for mending, because it's not strong enough to hold up to being pulled, tugged, stretched and washed.  I also wouldn't use it for quilting, because old thread is more likely to break as it goes through the machine, and that makes for messy work.

But I've used old thread a lot in places where it's not under stress and never had problems.  After all, Dual Duty, the thread that is most likely to preexist in your stash or in a bag of hand-me-downs, does have a polyester core.  You can even use 100% cotton thread, far more susceptible to rotting and breaking, for some projects.

On this quilt, I used new thread for the weight-bearing suspension threads, but used up lots of old thread for the heavy stitching on each little fabric sandwich.

I'm also willing to use older thread for piecing with small bits of fabric and lots of crossing seams.  If it breaks during construction, I can go back and restitch, without it showing. I don't wash my art quilts, so the thread won't be stressed, and I quilt them heavily (with new thread), so even if a seam pops later, nothing is going to escape.

I know that many people will be scandalized by my cavalier attitude.  Isn't one's Art So Important that it deserves the Very Best Materials?  Well, yes and no.  Where the quality of a material will affect the look or function of your piece, then yes.  Where a possible flaw would have serious consequences, then yes.  Otherwise no.  I've written in the past about snobbery, and how different people choose to be snobs about different things.  Obviously the age of my thread is not one of my chosen preciousnesses.

What has your experience been?

Teaching an old thread new tricks 1

A couple of days ago there was a discussion on one of my email lists about whether it's OK to use embroidery floss that might be 20 or 30 years old.  I got a chuckle out of that, because I own embroidery floss that might easily be 100 years old.  It came from  my grandmother's sewing basket and I know that she learned to embroider before the turn of the century -- and I don't mean this last one.

I'm sure that some stitchers are compulsively neat about their floss, keeping it wound on those little cardboard cards or pulling only as much as they need from the skeins.  And some have stitching habits that impose arbitrary discipline on the stash.  For instance, Judy Martin, whose work I am in awe of, has a daily art project in which she stitches up one skein of floss every day.  If you're always starting with a fresh skein, and you finish it all up right then and there, you can't possibly end up with a mess.

Then there's me.  No matter how neatly I try to work, I can rarely get the floss to pull smoothly out of the center of the skein, so I end up with globs and often have to remove the little paper bands.  And after I separate the floss into two three-strand portions, I often end up with the leftovers just sitting there, dying to get into trouble the minute my back is turned.

So my floss collection includes more than one clot of snarled miscellaneous.  In fairness to myself, I don't think this is entirely my own (ir)responsibility.  I know that some of those aggregations came from other people, including Grandma, so they're probably decades old.  I also recognize some of the floss as having come from kits that I got in the 1960s, or that I bought when we lived in Germany in the 70s.

With a collection like this, I have no hesitation about using anything that I see.  Not sure I would want to lower myself from a skyscraper on a rope made of 40-year-old floss, but how much stress is ever put on embroidery?  Occasionally a thread might break if I have managed to get it into a tangle and have to yank it free, but that's also true of new thread.  When that happens, you just cut out the part that broke and start over.

One of the email list people wrote to say that she had a 50-year-old dresser scarf embroidered with black, which has now faded to the point of virtual invisibility.  But that was after 50 years in the sun, not 50 years in a sewing bag.  Perhaps today's threads are more colorfast, but I'm willing to take my chances on yesterday's threads.  If nothing else, I suspect their history will give my work an air of mystery and authority.

Sign of the week

Fun with felt

A couple of weeks ago I needed a gift for a Christmas party and searched around for something ready to go -- and was happy to find a couple of useless little bowls that I made in a workshop years ago and had stashed away in a shoebox.  They were made out of an acrylic felt that melts under a heat gun.

I made them by finding heatproof objects to flip upside down so I could drape the felt into bowl shapes.  This one was shaped over the bottom of my metal car mug.  To hold the bowl shapes in place, I wrapped and tied them with some cord, then zapped them with the heat.

I recall being entranced by how the felt behaved under the heat.  A little bit of heat, and the layers of felt would melt and fuse together.  With more, lacy holes started to appear and the edges started to turn brown.  The bowls aren't exactly rigid, because some parts don't get zapped and stay just like regular felt, but the areas that melted and caramelized become quite stiff.  One of the bowls was tied with some holographic thread (aka plastic) and it melted too in some places, merging with the felt.

I wish I knew whether all acrylic felt behaves this way.  The stuff we used in the workshop was provided by the instructor, and I wasn't moved to try further experiments later on with other varieties.

This is an object lesson in attending workshops.  Often you learn something that gives you lots of fun for a day or two, but disappears from the radar screen as soon as you get home.

And that's fine.  Sometimes a workshop is just a little vacation; you don't always have to learn something that changes your life.  But it's always nice if you can make something good enough to keep -- or give away.