Contemporary Embroidery & Deconstructed Screen Printing

The stitching pulled the long stripes up into shallow
long hills and gives it a physical,  as well as
visual texture.  (Untitled piece, as of yet.)

I love gingko leaves but the hazy black/gray
stripes were what ended up enthralling me.
The base fabric is a cotton knit which came
printed with multi-colored dots.  I cut off the
leaves and even chopped the bottom wavy
lines off and added them up above.

Detail of long embroidery
above.  The colored dots
really make this fabric
piece dynamic.

Many of my early DSP fabrics were very vague, pale or diffused because it was the first pull on the screen.  I've taken those "foggy" fabrics and used them as the background for some very interesting embroideries, I think.  My favorite stitch is the simple straight stitch, also called seed stitch, whip stitch, or the satin stitch pulled apart, because I love stripes and the chance to cover them with horizontal straight stitches.  I use any stripe or area that creates a channel.  Also using a long thread from one point to another and coming back up with a separate thread to couch down the long one has created some wonderful wavy lines.  The open fly stitch is also a favorite.  Using the straight stitch, especially, I have come to call mindless embroidery because I so often use it while I'm watching movies in the evening--- it helps me to concentrate.  The detail images will give a better idea of where they all came from.

Check out my guild's blog for more images of these types of embroideries I do (December 2014).  The Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild's December Holiday Potluck always features show 'n tell (and an ornament exchange) at Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild blog.

The upper portion of this fabric was cut off
and used for the embroidery below.  (I'm
thinking of using the bottom magenta/pink
section for photo transferred images in the open areas,
then stitching into the stripes, of course.)

Detail of piece below (untitled as yet).

Untitled as of yet.

Glue Gun Stencils!

Glue gun stencils have become my favorite thing to make, taking only minutes and giving a whizzy (new word?), quirky look.  This idea is thanks to Traci Bautista and her newest book, "Printmaking Unleashed" published in 2014 by North Light Books.  I must admit that I love her work and her books (previous fav is "Collage Unleashed").  Just as long as you make sure that all the lines are connected to another, they stay together and easily come off of parchment paper (Teflon sheet can be used also).  The biggest one, the stripes, is 18" long and 12" tall so even big ones work.  I didn't bother to flatten out most of them because the glue had already become firm (the glue is flat on the bottom but rounded on top), but if this is a problem, I'm sure I can wave a heat gun over the top to soften the glue and put a plexiglass sheet on top and press it down.  Now to the actually using them as stencils!