Jaime Lyerly Art : Thread Sketches - Process and Elaboration

Monday, April 26, 2010

Thread Sketches - Process and Elaboration

In my post, Thread Sketches - Exploration of Universal Symbols through Machine Embroidery, I gave you a peek at some of my newest non-encaustic / fiber related work.

Now, I want to show you a little of the process and the elaboration that has occurred with these pieces. First, the process.

I was inspired by drawing/carvings on leaves done by Ana Mendieta whom I wrote a research paper on recently.

To give you a taste of this work, here are some of the leaves scanned from the book Ana Mendieta: Earth Body by Olga M. Viso.

Leaves by Ana Mendieta, from Ana Mendieta: Earth Body by Olga Viso

I started my exploration with machine embroidery on fresh magnolia leaves.

Fresh Magnolia Leaves

Here is me working on the leaves (with my freshly dyed purple hair and purple finger tips).

Here are the finished projects two days after they were completed. They have already began to lose their coloring around the stitches.

Machine Embroidery

I then started hand embroidering and pricking designs on the leaves at home. These took much longer than the machine embroidery, but were easier to control.

I could embroider through thicker and bigger leaves with this technique.

Hand Embroidery

This leaf was scanned in about a week after it was done. The white slowly covered the entire area that had been pricked or manipulated.

The back side of the leaves look different than the front.

I continued this exploration of hand embroidery about a week later, shaping them into forms with the thread.

I used a variety of techniques on these leaves.

We began needle felting in my fiber class, which is using wool roving and a barbed needle to puncture the roving through felt.

Here is a short video on needle felting by artist and author Rice Freeman-Zachery called Needle Felting 101

To learn more about needle felting, you can check out Outback Fibers which is where we get the roving.

After a few tests on felt, I knew that this technique would work on my magnolia leaves.

Needle Felted

Here is how this Thread Sketch changed over a week.

I liked how the felt looked like it was growing out of the leaves, so I enhanced that by punching the felt on the "wrong" side.

So what did we learn?

You can embroider or needle felt through anything that you can get the needle in
Natural materials change over time in interesting ways
Anyone can do embroidery or needle felting!
Experimentation is GOOOOD!

That last one is the reason I write this blog - to support other artists by showing them my experiments in hopes that they will be inspired to create.

Your Turn:
Experimented with any new media or techniques recently? Ever tried embroidery or needle felting on something other than cloth? I would love to hear about it! Leave your comments here and share it with us.

Happy experimenting! ~ Jaime Lyerly

Monday, April 26, 2010

Thread Sketches - Process and Elaboration

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