Saturday, May 25, 2013

Thread painting - the freedom of motion


I used to find thread painting tedious several years ago. But about 4 years back I started to make monoprints and dye-painted wholecloth-quilts and I’ve realized, that intensive machine quilting was that, what I wanted on the surface. I’m still not quite sure where the definition machine quilting ends and where thread-painting starts but that is no matter for me.
As said, the first intensely quilted piece was this monoprint: Earth Lines #2. I used free motion quilting and Madeira thread.
 
 Earth Lines #2
A few months later I started to use Aurifil and has been with it since. I love the textures, the colours and I use them in different weights. I’m rather unorthodox in these things and do use them mixed.

These two monoprints are intensively quilted, but they mightn’t “qualify” as thread-painting. Though for me the definition has more to do with spontaneously sewn lines on the surface, just like drawing with a pencil. Moving around, drawing thin lines has the quality of sketching - looking for "the right line" with your pencil. Not each line is supposed to have a perfect sit, I can improvise and this gives me a kind of freedom I cheerish. 
Midsummernight's Dream

Leaves of Grass 
The last one I’d like to show is a dye-painted wholecloth-quilt called Long Shadows and I did it as the others, rather spontaneous, just “drawing with the machine.”
The last three ones are made with Aurifil.

11 comments:

  1. These are wonderful examples of what I think of as thread painting or sketching, Beata! The lines and textures really enhance your monoprints beautifully! Thanks for sharing them with us...

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  2. This is awesome. really drawing with the machine. I Particularly like the first one.
    Sandy in the UK

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  3. Beata. Fabulous stuff but you failed to mention leaves of grass was used as the cover for a book or CD? Tell us about that!!

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  4. These are striking! I really like your version of thread sketching.

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  5. Beth, I didn't think it was too relevant, but yes a German Edition House used the image of "Leaves of Grass" as a cover for the german audio-book-edition of Walt Whitmann's poems. The funny thing was, that the quilt was created with these poems in my mind. It just closed the circle nicely.

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  6. I agree, it is not important how you call the technique, it's just great work. And you made it into your own 'sketching voice' instead of copying a picture, which is fabulous to see and very inspiring. Thanks for sharing!

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  7. Fabulous!
    My favourite is 'Leaves of Grass'

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  8. I really LOVE your work!! Thank you for sharing it.

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  9. these are wonderful just love them.

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  10. These are fabulous examples of threadwork! Totally inspiring!

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