The Challenge

The top third is the first stage - simply seaming black and white strips of fabric together.

The middle section has been cut a few times and re-arranged, twice.

The bottom section has been cut, re-arranged and re-stitched until I could not cut through the layers any more.

It was interesting to see that although I had originally started with a wider strip of fabric on the third section, the resulting surface was comparatively tiny because of the amount of seams involved.

Never mind how disconbobulated it became, there were still beautiful patterns emerging on both the back and the front of the new surface.

Chapter 10 - Piecing - A Method of Cutting and Seaming

The exercise was caried out in paper first. This gave better insight into what I was trying to achieve and the problems I might face when working with fabric. I was able to experiment with ideas and find out what worked, and what didn't.

 For the fabric sample, two lengths of fabric, 15cm x 90 cm were joined, wrong sides together, and the seam was frayed and pressed open.

The second cuts were made vertically, alternate strips were flipped, then the panels were joined, right sides together, and the seams pressed open.

 The third cuts were diagonal, the panels rotated, then joined together, wrong sides together, and the seams pressed to one side.

 Vertical cuts were made through the previous stage, panels were re-arranged and joined right sides together with frayed fabric sewm into the seams.

 Horizontal cuts were made. Panels were re-arranged and staggered. The seams were then decorated with folded triangles.

Linda Miller

I was really excited to be doing a workshop with Linda Miller and the Wolverhampton ladies, but struggled with my promise to myself to keep everything within my Module 2 theme. After the African influence of the Mary Sleigh meeting, however, it occurred to me that I could do a zebra, with its lovely stripes, and keep to the theme of black, white and rusty coloured (bleached black!), whilst practicing my machine embroidery!

THE ZEBRAS by ROY CAMPBELL
From the dark woods that breathe of  fallen showers,
Harnessed with levels rays in golden reins,
The zebras draw the dawn across the plains
Wading knee-deep among the scarlet flowers.

We had a lovely day. Linda is a really nice tutor. Very friendly, encouraging and helpful. Everybody ended up with excellent results.

Mary Sleigh

Joined Wolverhampton Embroiderers Guild. Its an hour away, but firstly, I wanted to be a member of the Guild again, and secondly, their programme this year looks excellent. My challenge, however, is to use inspiration and influence from lectures and workshops and incorportate the ideas into whatever chapter I am working on in C&G! 

On Saturday I went to see a lecture by Mary Sleigh. She gave a talk about her inspiration from African and Indian cultures and textiles. She had many examples of beadwork, kantha, and raffia cloth.

The raffia cloth samples were strip woven. As raffia is taken from palm leaves, the length of the fibres is determined by the length of the leaf, therefore, the warp and weft will always be quite short, therefore a large raffia cloth will always be sewn together in sections. The patterns used are very similar to the strip patchwork patterns developed in this chapter.

Some strips were stitched as a resist (as in shibori) and then dyed with indigo. Others were black, tan or natural. Again, very similar to the colours used in this chapter.



dyed fabric using stitch resist (shibori)



seminole patchwork by Kate Pike

Images taken from Mary Sleigh's book, 'African Inspirations In Embroidery'