3D Forms

This stitch workshop was led by 'assemblage artist Clarissa Clarenden. She works in 3D and she made an interesting comment that many artists come to textiles because you can get textiles to mimic many other mediums. She encouraged us to make random stuffed shapes, stitch them together to make a small abstract wall plaque.

We started by cutting out roundish or rectangularish chunks of fabric and sewing a gathering stitch around the edge. As we started to gather up the stitches we pushed fibre fill or toy stuffing in to make small, irregular stuffed shapes. We were encouraged not to think about the shape of the fabric too much - just hack it out very roughly and stitch the shape and stuff it very intuitively. 

I decided to approach this by selecting a colour palette of turquoise, browns and yellows mostly drawing on scraps of furnishing fabrics, which I haven't found much of a use for up to now.

You can see that I ended up making quite a few long pointed shapes as well as some more rounded ones and tiny balls. A lot of my fabric frayed quite badly but I left that visible and made a feature of it. You can vary the shapes in a number of ways:

• Varying how tight you pull up the gathering thread - if you pull if very tightly you can can ripple or curl the shape
• Stitching through the shape to make dimples, folds or other deforming marks
• Adding stitching or other decoration on the surface, either before or after making the shape
• Wrapping the shape with thread, yarn or wider strips of fabric
• Enclosing objects, especially if you use sheer or lacy fabric

I experimented with adding some surface detail with metallic nail varnish to some of my shapes to emphasise some of the dimples. In addition, I rubbed on metallic wax colour on some areas of the shapes to pick up the surface texture and make the shape look more worn.

Another technique Clarissa showed us was knotting. She took a long length of fabric and knotted it extensively, with knots on top of knots to make new forms. I had a go at this with sari silk strips, fabric strips and knotting multiple threads together.

Finally I had to assemble all this together into something. This was harder to do than you would think as you had to stich it firmly through the various shapes from the back so that it would hold the shapes together as you had them in your hand. I eventually ended up with this conglomeration, which I called 'Reluctance' because I fought the process of making this all the way to the end! (Still looks like entrails to me!)