Iconic Celebration

Heat treated organza on fabric fragments with machine and hand embroidery

This my entry for the "Art in the Park" competition at IBM Hursley as part of the IBM Centennial Celebrations. This was open to past and present employees and families. I won first prize! I present it here to show those who don't have access to the first floor of the house where it is currently displayed (or for those who, like me really don't have the time to trek that far).

I took the idea of fireworks as a form of celebration and brought it together with a selection of the icons of progress which IBM has been using to celebrate some of the many things the company has achieved over the last 100 years.

Birthday Peacock

The burnt doodling of the other day was followed by a more planned piece of stitching for a birthday card for a very important gentleman with a very important birthday. I returned to themes of some of my more recent work (if you call 2009 recent), previous studies and combined free machine embroidery with the application of a soldering iron. As with my other work in this style I restricted my choice of stitches to stem stitch and straight stitch.  There was a slight cheat in that satin stitch made an appearance due to straight stitch also being known as single satin stitch, which when stitched together makes satin stitch (who'd of thought?).  Of course, the straight stitch became small enough in the top part of the piece to be considered seed stitching.

I only used 3 different threads for this piece as well, a Madeira 40 metallic for the machine embroidery, a Madeira 12 metallic either doubled or single and a hand dyed 2 ply silk for the hand sewing.  The fabrics used either came from some old sewing projects of mine (pre leaving home ones), a couple of shoe projects and an interesting table melting experience (how I miss those days).

Back to basics

I have finally made a return to hand stitching - I find myself needing the occupation for my hands. This is meant to be stress free - so I have gone back over old textile samples with a view to adding a little more stitch. I found this soldered sample from a few years back, a little leftover metallic thread and got to doodling: fly stitch, french knots, bullion knot, seeding, running, open chain, ladder stitch whatever took my fancy. I was originally thinking of chopping the finished piece up further and make note cards from it, it may become a book cover. But, no stress, the process is more important than the result in this case.