Hmmm: Stitched work

We started the class with John by making ourselves a little book (all paper supplied) with some word exercises in it for each day. We each embellished the front a little so we'd know who's was who's and which way was up. Here's mine:

John wanted us to get a feel for the cloth and thread, and how they work together to change each other. Our task for the first day was to stitch into one thickness of cloth with one strand of thread, then two thicknesses with two strands, up to four layers.
This, my first, is one of my favourite pieces from the week. I think it's a lot to do with the fabric (it's been discharge dyed), the folds, the puffiness of the cloth within the circle. Looking at this, John said I "have a nice sensitivity."

Some other people had done their exercise all on one piece of base cloth. I thought that looked like a good idea, so at the end of the day I started over and created this. It's hard to just look at textiles. You probably need to touch this to get the full effect. I always want to touch textiles (see point 5).

This next piece was an exercise in couching. The word was chosen at random from the dictionary we had to take along (mine was French, hence 'suivre'). You can find the meaning in my stitching. I'm not all that keen on this (could be to do with it's size too - it's 36 cm across), but I do like the frill and the button holes on the cloth from a collar.

This was to be my 'thank you'. It came together really quickly, and was half stitched in the dark of the auditorium (the blue lines). I just had to keep the birdie.

The last three images are portions of the 'major project' we had to do: using an old pillowcase as a 'canvas'. It was really hard after working quite small to know what to do with a whole pillowcase of blank cloth. I'm happy with the individual elements of what I created, but I don't think they work that well all together. It started with the words from a song...