New Work

The latest in the black fabric or 'star' series (I guess I could call them that as the star shapes inhabit 3 works so far). I cut the stars out of matte board and stitch through and on top of them, the idea being like gluing an object onto a canvas and painting over it for textural effect, in this case black on black (which is continually difficult to photograph).

In a previous post I talked about hand making multi-colored floss which I use a lot of here.

I also seem to have gotten temporarily possessed with pointillism.

I am expanding the use of collage and I think it will increase.

The human type figure took on a life of its own. It looks like an alien to me (unintentional). The face made from monofilament thread hovering above the figure looks to me like it is being 'beamed' from the alien straight into my brain (also unintentional). I nick-named this piece "The Alien Within".

The Unfinished

I started doing embroidery as a result of using stitches to compliment my collages. But the thread took over so fiercely that I abandoned a few of them in favor of full-on fabric embroidery. I kept some of them close though, small ones that I had mounted onto card stock, in the same bag as my metallic and invisible thread, spare poly bags and other odds and ends. I thought I would go back to them and eventually stitch them to completion. At first I was doing this, but soon my hoop work dominated my mind and they became pretty much forgotten. I'm always fumbling through this bag to retrieve one thing or another, brushing past the collages like they were forgotten people.


Recently I fished them all out and placed them in front of me. I remember distinctly stitching gold onto one while I was watching the Summer Olympics. That was two years ago. And they are still in my bag? What for? Maybe it's time to finally finish them. After I finish the current hoop I'm on of course. Maybe.........

First 'true' embroidery

I liked using the thread, so I decided to create an actual full image with the stitches. Then I realized - duh - people call that embroidery. I took a small piece of fabric and drew out a crude image I got from online, it was a mask of a demon monkey face. The finished embroidery doesn't look much like the image but I was happy with the result. I added some snakey-things around the head and stitched it to some collage material.

Beginnings

I was making some small collages and I decided that I liked part of one and part of another. I always liked the look of stitches and so I decided a good solution would be to stitch the different parts that I liked together. Eventually the stitches became more than just a way to join things, they became marks of themselves, like paint strokes or ink lines. Shapes came soon.

First post

Hello. I am creating this Blog to share my hand embroidery which I started doing in the Fall of 2007. I have always been a visual artist doing mostly paintings and collage. I started adding stitches to some of the collages and then the thread took over from there.

Currently I have an Etsy shop of my embroidery pieces:

flyinghaystacks.etsy.com.