Experimental Stitch - a Recent Course

I did a course this year at CityLit (again) called Experimental Stitch with Amarjeet Nandhra. Three consecutive Sundays.

Amarjeet is a fabulously patient tutor and has an excellent way of drawing out the best in you. Then pushing you a bit more.

In each class we covered a set of stitches and applied them in thematic ways to the samplers we were making. For instance looking at a particular stitch and taking it to extremes of scale: huge and tiny; light and dark; dense and dispersed. So imagine French Knots in thick raffia or in sewing thread, bunched together or far apart.

If you get a chance to do a class with Amarjeet, take it! She co-founded the Windsor School of Textile Art which runs lots of interesting courses.

Here were two of the samplers I made.

The postcard that acted as inspiration
(apologies that I can't attribute the photographer)

Fabric paint - taking advantage of a crease

Some stitch added - not all results to my liking - running, couched, stem stitches

Downtown - woven picot, bullion and other stitches in metallic thread on tweed - beads added after the course

Downtown - beads added along the faint blue line in the tweed

Downtown - beads sewn in between the raised stitches

Learnings

I feel I learnt to take inspiration from a source (the postcard) which was something new for me. Learning to translate inspiration from the world around you is an important skill. This may seem obvious to natural artists but it's something I had to learn. I always thought the finished product was something that flowed out of you whole. And that if that wasn't happening it meant I wasn't an artist and should just give up.

I also think I nudged a bit closer to understanding when to stop working on something. And into letting a sampler be a sampler.

One of the things I may try to do with the work produced here is cut it up and use it as part of another piece. That takes some nerve but it may be a way to kill your darlings. I would never have thought of that but for another course I took where we were asked to do just that. See my post A Class from the Past.

On another tack, I'm a bit of a course junkie. Anyone else out there who could recommend some textiles courses that push some boundaries?