Bowls

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I'm continuing with hand-stitching, using it to make new work that focuses on the shape of a bowl. I've used this shape before, working from about a dozen stamps in variations of a bowl shape that I used to make a screen used for cloth napkins. I've also used these stamps to make cards:

I decided to use the stamps as a base for stitching, rather than to do a drawing and then stitch it. Here are eight bowls stamped on tan linen. I used varying amounts of pressure, and I also varied how I applied the ink to the stamp--sometimes with a brush, sometimes with a sponge. (I used Versatex water-based screen-printing ink.)

And here are the same eight bowls, with three of them stitched (2nd row middle bowl, 3rd row first and third bowls).

Here are the three isolated; each is about 3x4". The third has just a small amount of red thread added to the stamped image (click on the image to see the detail). For thread I used some hand-dyed 20/2 perle cotton that I had on hand from other projects.

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I really like these, and will definitely do more. I like the way in which the somewhat unpredictable marks made by the stamping gives me guidance for the sewing--a mixture of spontaneity and intentionality that is appealing to me. I'm not sure what I will do with them. They would certainly work very well as the front of a card, but I'd like to also think about ways to put a number of bowls into a composition together.  I will be looking at Susan Moss's stitched drawings to further my thinking on this; her drawings are an inspiration to me for the possibilities of using thread as a drawn line.

And another tack: I also did multiple overlapping stamps on the linen, using uniform pressure. I did this with the intention of isolating various areas by cropping, to get possible compositions. Here's the stamped piece as is, followed by a few possible crops.

I would keep these as is, no stitching.

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