STITCH TRIAL SAMPLES FOR MY FACE DESIGN

My cardboard design of a face or mask shows three areas that need to be translated into fabric using manipulation and hand stitchery methods or a combination of them.

These areas in paper have different textures and are respectively light (Area 1) medium (Area 3) and dark (Area 2) in colour, moving from a creamy white to a warm dark grey.

Area 1 – Light colour

Area 1 includes the front and the bigger part of the face. They are going to be worked in the same way but shall be placed on different levels.

Sample 1 – Manipulated technique: wadded quilting on habotai silk with the addition of a few patches of hand stitched fabrics (tulle net, jersey, cheesecloth) and wool yarn




Sample 2 – Hand stitching: manipulation by needle-formed pleating plus embroidery



Sample 3 – Needle-formed pleating, snipped tucks, hand embroidery




Area 2 – Dark colour

Area 2 although smaller is important for creating a contrast. The eye and the lower half of the face are going to be dark and visually “heavy”.

Sample 1 – Manipulated technique: short tucks in all directions on a collaged background fabric, machine embroidery added



Sample 2 – Hand embroidery: Buttonhole stitch




Sample 3 – Zig zag gathering over a linen thread, wrapping over ridges with variegated thread and darning stitch all over




Area 3 – Medium colour

This area makes up the background or frame of the face. It is going to be split into three slightly offset parts and perhaps these shall be placed on different levels.

Sample 1 – Hand embroidery: Cretan stitch



Sample 2 – Manipulated method: chequered irregular tucks and hand stitching



Sample 3 – Machine wadding on muslim




After a lot of comparing and matching and considering and agonizing I have selected which samples are going to make up my face. All and every sample have their good and bad reasons for being chosen or not chosen.

I now think samples shall be used as follows:

Area 1 -  Sample 3 – This is a wide and prominent area and I want a highly textured method with a wide array of possible variations. I feel this combination technique is very flexible and I am not going to be bored!

Area 2 – Sample 2 – I love the other samples too but I feel that as a contrast to area 1 I need a much flatter, darker and more finely workable surface such as that of sample 2

Area 3 – Sample 3 – Also this choice was difficult. I must say I am attracted to atmospheric sample 1, but it seems to me rather too similar to that chosen for area 2 even if the techniques used are different. I also feel that an important background might draw attention away from the face. So I think I am going to choose sample 3 over sample 1 since it is more muted and subtle. Unless of course I change my mind in the making …. or a I find a way of combining features from both samples.

In this last photo I have placed my chosen samples on the mock-up for a first idea of how they might look. Before getting on I am going to make some experiments with the supporting structure.

Liebster Blog Award!!

What a wonderful gift and surprise! I just received the Liebster Blog award from Judy Cooper. A huge thank you, Judy!



Liebster is a German word for dearest or beloved and this award is given to blogs with less than 200 followers that the awarder thinks deserve attention.

These are the rules that come with this nice award:

1. Thank the blogger who gave you the award and and link back to them
2. Copy and paste the award on your blog
3. Give the award to five other blogs with less than 200 followers and let them know by letting a comment on their blog
4. Hope that the people you have sent the award will forward it to other five fellow bloggers and keep it going!

And here comes the really difficult part. There are many more than 5 blogs that I do like a lot and keep going back to. Some of them have many followers and attention, others less so. This is why I made my pick among five of those which I feel deserve more!
   
Carrie's Blog
Many Many Stitches
Set the Fibres Burning
Thread Traveller
Echoes

Module Five – Chapter TWELVE – REVISED PROPOSAL FOR MY FACE

I have been revising my face design after receiving this particularly helpful comment from Sian:

“Design features – You have simplified the shapes within the original design ideas so that they have become simple areas to fill with texture. The mock-up design presented alongside Sheet Two is a more symmetrical design than the one in your initial line drawing and the more developed line drawing to the left of the mock-up. I feel this would give it a more individual character than the symmetrical design.”

I thought it over and decided to go back to my original line drawing and try to make good use of its asymmetry as suggested by Sian.

Stage 1: initial line drawing
 















Stage 2 – Development of initial drawing into a face design


This was my previous development into a face or mask. I thought it better to maintain all lines of the initial drawing and so I opted for inscribing a face within its contours instead of around them.

 I also decided to follow the nose ridge more faithfully and add a mouth hint along the same line. Now I have one eye only and this eye is connected to the front ridge and not “floating” below it. The face emerges from a background or frame instead of standing alone.
 


Sian’s feedback also included a very stimulating and useful exercise to originate design permutations of original shapes.

I used my flat textured papers to try different effects on the same design, varying relationships between face and background and light and shade areas.




My choice for further development falls on number 5 since I like the idea of contrast between face and background instead of “losing” the face in it and I prefer to have the smaller half of the face in shadow.





























Stage 3 – New paper mock up

For my second attempt I opted for relief papers. I used three different textures to translate the seven original areas of design.  The face areas are placed on three levels, the shade area is recessed and flat, the light area is slightly raised and the front area with the eye is further raised on it. The background has been split and moved a bit to let the face breathe. In the mock up both halves of the background are flat, but maybe the left half might be slightly raised. I am going to decide this later on.

All areas are floating on sheets of acetate to keep them together and I would like to keep this transparent effect in my resolved sample but I am still open to other solutions. The mock up has been taped on a window to show its see-through structure as best I can, the profile view hopefully makes the three levels clear enough.




A very happy Easter to everybody!!!

Module Five – Chapter TWELVE – IDEAS FOR A RESOLVED SAMPLE: A FACE OR MASK

 
 
THOUGHT PROCESS BEHIND MY IDEA FOR A RESOLVED SAMPLE

Looking back at my line drawings and landscape designs from Chapter 11 together with their source images my attention has been caught by line drawing B) from image 9.

 
It has immediately made me think of a face or mask and my next association has been: a face is somehow a landscape with its hills and valleys – front, eyes, cheeks – and its changes and marks left from the passing of time which remind me of wrinkles and other signs of age. And I think it might be interesting to use some manipulating techniques learnt in this Module to translate these different reliefs and marks in fabric.


  
Stage 1 - Initial line drawing chosen as basic design idea



My chosen line drawing has only three areas and to get a first feeling of what I wanted to do I have made some rough sketches of faces and masks found in art books which I find have some connection with my design idea.




B line drawing is my foremost inspiration with its three bold areas but also the crayon marks on both designs on cardboard and textures shown on the related source image 9 may offer useful suggestions for surface treatments at a later stage.

 

 


Stage 2 – Development of design idea into a face or mask, with the addition of smaller areas for the eyes, positioning of the nose along the vertical ridge and separation between front and lower face along the horizontal ridge. No mouth is added.





And this is my paper mock up based on above design.




Stage 3 – Paper mock up (37 x 22 cms at the outmost edges). The eyes are left half opened, the nose ridge divides the lower face into two halves.

All these materials have been arranged on two sheets of my portfolio as shown here. The real paper mock up is kept separately, on the portfolio there is only a photo.

Sheet ONE



Sheet TWO

Module Five – Chapter ELEVEN – DESIGN FROM LANDSCAPE

For this Chapter students are asked a) to decorate a good number of papers first with flat textures and then with relief textures and  b) make line drawings of shapes found in source images from Chapter 1 and using flat textured papers to translate these drawings onto black cards to make a range of landscape designs to be used in next Chapter.
As in all this Module I chose to use only white or off white on black, after the feast of colours of the preceding Modules!

FLAT TEXTURES
The following collection of decorated papers was inspired from images of rusty surfaces from Chapter 1.
Papers have been separated into three groups according to the decorating techniques used on them.
Group 1
Papers from this group are mainly obtained from black ink and bleach, some of them with the addition of rubbing with a white crayon after the bleach was dry.
 



 Group 2 – Rubbings of white or black crayon on contrasting papers.
 
 Group 3 – China ink applied or scraped back with different tools, sponges, corks
 

RELIEF TEXTURES
Also this collection of textured papers was inspired from images of rusty surfaces from Chapter 1.
Each paper has been identified with a number.
1 – Pieces of string on acrylic gel
2 – Seeds on acrylic gel
3 – Foam medium applied with a palette knife
4 – Sugar on white glue
5 – Different samples of tissue papers
6 – A momigami paper plus white gouache
7 – Bits of scraping paper
8, 9, 10 – Gesso and oriental papers
11 – Momigami paper with frayed edges and white gouache
12, 13 – Masking tape and white acrylic
14 – Old newspaper, distressed, painted








LINE DRAWINGS AND DESIGN IDEAS

I made line drawings of a group of source images from Chapter ONE and I translated some of them into design ideas using flat textured papers.  

Sheet ONE


Sheet TWO


Sheet THREE


Sheet FOUR

Module Five – Chapter TEN – STITCH TO TRANSLATE

For Chapter TEN some rubbings from the previous Chapter are to be translated into stitch, using mainly only one stitch for each sample but in different forms, shapes and sizes. For all samples my background is the same black wool fabric, a remnant from a skirt I made a long time ago, and white or off-white threads as in all this Module.
I find that for most rubbings other stitches could have been used for translating marks and for me it was rather difficult to decide which one was best for the task at hand! 
   

• This is my first rubbing of choice, taken from the paper relief on the right. I see in it three main vertical lines around which I planned my stitching.
• I used only buttonhole stitch on this sample, going vertically and then crossways. Two whitish threads are used, a basic No. 50 machine thread and a mohair yarn. The shaded areas are made from very loose fleece held down by stitch. I added silvery bugle beads in some focus areas.

The rubbing on the left was taken from the tracing paper sample on the right moving it to different angles.

The fabric was first rubbed with a white crayon on the same paper sample to get a ghost image.

I used Cretan stitch both in rows and isolated. In some areas I stitched on the back side so as to get single “dashes” on the front mainly for couching fibres and tulle net bits.

 

The paper sample below was rather flat but had interesting triangular shapes which left  distinctive marks when rubbed and I thought that these hard shapes could be hinted at by asymmetric cross stitches.

 

The background fabric was first stamped with a triangular sponge using a white gouache and the resulting patches were partially covered in stitch and underlined by huge wrapped cross stitches.






This rubbing was rather a surprise! The white crayon was dragged on the side leaving muted smudges.
For this sample I chose a very simple darning stitch. The foundation is machine darning with the addition of hand darning, very loose in some areas, and heavily distressed lace bits.