TextileArtist.org‘s ninth workshop was hosted by Cas Holmes, who ran one of the early Community Challenges I mentioned here. In this workshop, she asked us to create an abstract landscape using one of her favorite techniques (the same as in the previous challenge): momigami. It is a Japanese method of kneading paper; this makes it soft and pliable, and a perfect surface to stitch through in a mixed media piece.

It was intended that our landscapes be a better mix of paper and fabric, and more abstract than what I have here. I really like Cas’s pieces, and some from other Stitch Club members, but I just can’t think “impressionist” very well. I’m working on it!

So anyway, my piece used magazine pages from three different sheets. I really wanted to use some words but the type of magazines I had access to were not the kind that would offer words I’d like in an art piece – even the ads weren’t useful. Of course, I could have gone the full psycho-serial-killer style and cut out individual words, but once I settled on this little seascape, I was happy to go without.

I added a fabric sun, and a fabric boat. Then, I felt it needed a bit more movement, a bit more story, and so I added a fishing pole and line.

The stitches in the sea are random straight stitches (long seed stitches). The boat has some back stitching. The fishing pole and attached line are couched straight stitches, and the fishing line itself is one more long straight stitch.

Again, Boy loved the “garbage art” aspect, so I finished it off with some old black binding I had laying around to even out the torn edges (to avoid parts of the page that would be offputting for a sea scape; the whole thing was pretty crooked). This also gave it some overall visual weight and I rather like the skinny vertical feel.