Wednesday, October 27, 2004

What's in a Stitch?

A few days ago in talking about the "rough" stitching of the griots coat I talked about the mark making qualities of the stitch. June Underwood suggested I should take some now and later photos , which I have done. The first image is done with quite coarse knitting thread that I bought in a Dutch market and hand dyed. I like the effect of the coarseness of the thread and the uneveness of the dyeing also lends to the sense of texture. The second photo is a detail of a piece inspired by kantha embroidery. Kantha embroidery is practised by women in the bay of Bengal area and is largely used to patch together saris and dense stitching in order to strenghten the fabric thus created. They tend to use only running stitch and I love the narrative touch of the stitching by the women.I want to work on ways to make my stitching more expressive, more like communications from my inner self instead of the neat rows that I seem to be now producing.

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