A TECHNIQUE DRIVEN Blog dedicated to mastery of surface design techniques. First we dye, overdye, paint, stitch, resist, tie, fold, silk screen, stamp, thermofax, batik, bejewel, stretch, shrink, sprinkle, Smooch, fuse, slice, dice, AND then we set it on fire using a variety of heat tools.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Back to the mark making process




The most powerful and personal form of mark-making is handwriting. I was thinking what it would be to create "my own personal hand stitching" similar to writing and realized that also my handwriting took years to develop. But drawing and writing marks and doing it repeatedly is surely the best way to reach my goal.
So I studied mark-making in art and checked my books on mark-making. The two of them I found most useful were: Helen Parrott: Mark-making in Textile Art and Jane Dunnewold, Claire Benn & Leslie Morgan: Finding Your Own Visual Language
Above all: I was drawing a lot. 
I find dots fascinating - inspired by aborigine paintings but i have to admit, doing dots as a stitch was just too tedious for me.
So I stayed with simple lines:





And just to jump into it, this is how the last one looked as a stitched quilt: Misty Hills.
Misty Hills

Misty Hills - detail
Misty Hills - detail
These are my first little stitched quilts. Here I will continue next time.

4 comments:

  1. I like the way you have likened handwriting with mark making. Never thought of it that way but I do notice I do stitch the same types of stitches when doing handwork.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good to see this! It's also my favorite book and I do it as often as I can. I like seeing it is stitches!

    ReplyDelete
  3. More books for my lists....

    Do you ever use a piece you have dyed as a jumping off spot for your stitching and mark making?

    I have a piece I love and envision doing just hand stitching on it. But not just follow the outline... would any of these books help put me towards the direction of interpreting the piece?

    Jo

    ReplyDelete

Although this blog is no longer active, we will get your comments so please feel free to share them.