Book of Etudes, 1

Ahhhh, do not despair--stitching still takes up most of my time. I stitched my way through April and May; in fact, I did much more stitching than sketching. I'm "writing" a "Book of Etudes" ("Studies"--memories of violin practice books from 40 years ago), a sort of textile sketchbook. 

I needed easily portable stitching to go to Paris and this project has been tugging at me for awhile. Yeah, I know, I know, I have a rule in place that says I have to finish things, not start new projects...but this was the call of the wild--high adventure.

The rules were simple: only hand work with an emphasis on abstracted, fairly simple needle-turn appliqué motifs and embroidery. I have wanted to explore the mixture of appliqué and stitching for a long time. 

So I cut 5 black, or black and white, fabrics 8" x 12", put two temporary safety pins down the middle to hold them all together in a book, thus having pages of 8" x 6". And I left raw edges...which I may or may not regret. I chose some fabrics and threads that sang to me and carried the whole mess around with me in a small plastic sack in my purse.


I first stitched in place small rectangular pieces of fabric onto the background, then added larger pieces to appliqué.











The back side is equally interesting, a sort of shadow page that echoes the appliqué motif and stitching on the other side.

The pages can be read in any direction.




Did I say simple shapes? Admittedly, I have a tendency towards complexity.


Each page in the book requires more work and ruminating--so many possibilities. And despite the constricting circumstances of April and May, I was able to fly high thanks to my Book of Etudes.