Thready

Here's what Color Thready II looks like as of this morning. I'm now using a greater range of colors than what I was limited to in Florida.

I've been asked about how I make threadies. First let me show you were I got the idea. I have the great book Celebrating the Stitch by Barbara Lee Smith. It's marvelous and has all kinds of textiles including quilts. (There are used copies available at low prices - go get one. This book is loaded with inspiration.)

Anyway, Dana Romalo Andrews is one of the artists featured in the book. She makes free form embroideries that are wondrous little creations just covered with woven stitches. Look at how dense this 11" x 9" piece is:

And this is the front and back side of another piece:

Aren't they incredible? I love them. She starts by couching down leftover bits of fiber onto a cloth. She works both the front and back sides until the whole piece is entirely covered. If you want to know more buy the book or borrow it from the library. [Libraries will get the book for you if they don't have it on their shelves - interlibrary loan is a great tool.]

My works aren't nearly that elaborate. I sometimes couch, but not recently. I usually start with a small bit of muslin and make running stitches with embroidery floss. It can be as basic as that. Sometimes I use yarns, rayons, and metallic threads. Sometimes I throw in some french knots. I've been known to get more elaborate with beads. Whatever I'm in the mood for.

On both the Color Threadies I've basted some colored bits of fabric onto the muslin before I started with the embroidery floss. That way I don't have to cover every single bit of the base fabric with a stitch - the batiks show through in beautiful color. But previously I was covering every bit of the base fabric. I stick to running stitch and then stab stitches in random spots that need covering - no weaving like Ms Andrews does.

Anyway, that's the basic idea behind a thready. Stitch, stitch, stitch. If you want to try this yourself I highly recommend that you use a lightweight fabric for your base - it gets very hard to stitch through towards the end. Don't fuse (again too hard to stitch through). Don't make knots (ditto). I just do a backstitchy kind of thing to anchor my beginning and at the end I run my needle through previous stitches on the underside.

Initially I just hung these creations on the wall as is, but after someone said they looked like the world's most expensive pot holders I realized I'd better make them look more like art.

The blue vases aren't pottery. They're carved out of alabaster - a rock. The shopkeeper in Egypt told me that this was a special kind of blue onyx, but it's not. The vases are all dyed - I know it for a fact since I was cleaning one of my final purchases with a damp cloth and ended up with a clump of blue dye. I didn't see much dyed alabaster when I initially arrived in Egypt but by the time I left it was available in all sorts of colors including lime green and orange.

A close up of the modern phrenology head for Kathie. I hope you can see some of the words on here: aliens, coffee, playground trauma, evil, good, email password...

I actually cleaned bathrooms today. Bleck, but at least it's out of the way. I'm still disorganized, but no longer worrying about it. It was gray and rainy this morning, but now the sun is out. I'm going to go work on my thready and find a dvd to watch.

p.s. I should have said that the Harry Potter HARDBACKS are my husband's. I'm cheap enough that I'd have continued to wait until the books came out in paperback, but there was no way my sweetie was going to wait to read the books. He didn't start reading them until the movie came out so I had to go back and replace the first couple of paperbacks with hardbacks so that he'd have a matching set. Did that make sense?