August BJP Finished!

I started this one in July, before Aug. 1st when I would list my six words for the month. I needed a stitching project for a sew-day with friends, so why not begin a little early? Recently I got a new prescription for my glasses and they gave me the old lenses. I thought it might be fun to use one of them in the piece!

So first I picked one of the resist-dyed felts I made in Chad Alice Hagen's class that had a circle on it where I might be able to put the lens.


Then I started stitching on the felt. This particular piece was quite thin, less than half the thickness of commercial felt. I needed some stiffener to keep my stitches from puckering. I suppose I could have used acid-free, interleaving paper (as I usually do), but this time decided to try a light-weight, non-woven interfacing fabric (which worked quite satisfactorily). Although I didn't finish that day, I worked on some of the stitching shown below.


The stitches are done with cotton buttonhole twist. I used mostly back stitch (above), but around the circle I used chain stitch and then filled in the centers of the chain with size 15 beads (below). The rock is a chip of slate from some steps we had made on the trail to the studio.


After choosing my words on August 1st...

release
listen
talk
shift
risk
commit

I thought long and hard about how to add them to my piece. I wanted them to be under the lens, suggesting the need to really see the words, or even to magnify the importance of them in my current life... words to live by. I considered writing them on paper and then mounting the lens over the paper. That idea didn't seem quite right for the piece, as I wanted to preserve the mottled look of the felt in the circle area.

Finally I got the idea of writing the words on a somewhat transparent fabric, organza, then basting the fabric over the circle and embroidering the words with backstitch (through both the organza and felt). It worked pretty well! After finishing the words, I made a beaded bezel to hold the lens over the words, as per the instructions in my book, Heart to Hands Bead Embroidery. The last step was to cut the outside edges of the organza about a quarter of an inch away from the beaded bezel. I used my finger to scruffle and fray the edges of the organza. Here's how it looks...


I used colonial knots (similar to French knots) to mount the felt onto my painted paper and added a twisted embroidery floss border (as on all of my BJP pieces for this year). The finished size is 7 x 7 inches. Here's how it looks...

After finishing it, I got out all eight BJP pieces for the year, placed them in order on the table and took a good look at them. Conclusion? It pays great dividends to stick with a challenging technique or artistic concept! Step by step, piece by piece, improvement is seen.

This is the year I took on words... and collage too. I've been fascinated by other BJP members over the three years who so successfully use words in their work and who use paper collage techniques as inspiration for multi-media collage with fibers and beads. I was afraid my need for technical perfection and structure in my art would be a road block, which it was and to some extent still is. But definite improvement is there to be seen, each piece a small victory over the one before it. Yay!

Stay tuned, I'm finally back on the beadlust/BJP track again! My next post, in a couple of days, will feature a tutorial on finishing and after that a post showing my July BJP!