Kathryn and I did it! We worked our way through an entire month of Side Stiches. Kathryn Clarke, a San Francisco based fiber artist, made small textile studies and I cut and sewed and painted over yesterday’s newspapers every morning. The idea was to start each day with half an hour of creative play – and I wanted to do so in a medium different from my normal ones. Here are a few thumbnails of my newspaper images.
For the entire collection of images (except for the ones that I really hated and have weeded out, because in half an hour you don’t always get to make great stuff) go to the Side Stitch page.
The nice thing about doing something just for fun daily is that you take risks more easily – it is only for fun after all. Using cheap materials also helped – I hate ruining good watercolor paper, but newspapers are going to be thrown out anyhow.
The idea of stitching came about because I have always sewn and because Kathryn sews all the time. So we had a logical connection there. It took me some time to figure out the best technique – machine embroidery does require different things than just sewing straight on. I also resolved to adding paint to my stitchings quite quickly, since newspaper images alone were too bleak to my taste.
Kathryn made a great collage of some of her work:
and you should check out her blog if you want to see more! She wants to go on doing new one month projects and if you have a great idea to work on with her, why not send her an email!
I will continue doing side stitches but only on quiet days, when I have time on my hands. Over the next few weeks I am going to be busy with new projects so we’ll see. New side stitches will go up on the same page as usual.
Thanks for all of your encouraging comments!
And yes, I will be posting about artists I met at Origin over the next few days. Promiss!
Great effort Kitty. It looks like it was a lot of fun and you produced some really interesting pieces. I'm just about to undertake another Pikaland course this month but I'd like to do something like this down the track.
Go for it, Chantal!
THanks for suggesting the collaboration, Kitty! I had so much fun! And I love what came out of yours, some really great pieces! I hope you'll join me for more collaborations.
I will Kathryn!