Constructing my Textile Painting Compositions
Structures #97 (In Progress) ©2008
Structures #97
The above image shows the current state of my latest textile painting. The past few days I’ve been focusing on paperwork and other necessary but maybe not so exciting household maintenance chores. It’s a nice reward to get in a bit of sewing on this piece through the day.
I use traditional quilt making techniques for sewing a pieced quilt top to construct the compositions for my textile paintings. There are no raw edge of fabric showing on the front side of my work as all seams are sewn and pressed to the back for a smooth finish.
Step By Step Construction Images
1. Remove the background and strips (that become lines) from the design wall and place on rotary cutting mat:
2. Determine cuts to be made for this step and place remaining strips aside for future cuts. Cut lines in background for inserting the fabric lines (the yellow handled thing is a rotary cutter - it’s like a pizza cutter for fabric and its how I do most of my cuts - occasionally I will use scissors also):
3. Stitch the fabric strips into the cut lines with a home sewing machine. I use a 1/4" seam allowance:
4. View of the back side before pressing
5. After pressing seams to one side (on the back), the front now has 2 thin lines sewn into the composition. I always press from the front side of the fabric and use a ton of steam:
6. Continue cutting and inserting lines until the section is constructed. This is the front side of this section completed:
7. The back side - you can see the fabric seams are pressed to one side. After layering with batting and doing the surface stitching this side will be inside the work and not see, yet the back side of my constructed compositions are always this neat as I think it adds to the quality of the finished artwork.
I construct each section using this method and then sew the sections together into a single completed composition. I hope to have Structures #97 completed by the end of the weekend. I think that will determine how long it takes me to set up my router and printer and scanner. So far I’m not having a lot of luck with my older peripherals working with Vista but I have a new version of photoshop CS3 on it’s way and am hoping that will solve my scanner problems. I’m likely going to give up with the printer as they are cheap.
Posted by Lisa in: Making Abstract Contemporary Textile Art
Tagged: making art, new laptop
Rhiannon said,
August 9, 2008 @ 11:47 pm
Hi Lisa,
So interesting to read about how you go about constructing your work - and it inspires me, when I have a little time, to get my trusty ( neglected) sewing machine out and complete a piece that I started at a workshop a few years ago - which I never completed, as photography took over more and more.
Am enjoying catching up with what you’ve been doing this year.
Best wishes,
Rhiannon
Jackie said,
August 10, 2008 @ 5:36 am
Thats really enlightening. Thank you. Be careful not to give away too many secrets!
Your quilte are beautiful.
Linda Bilsborrow said,
August 10, 2008 @ 5:37 am
Thanks for showing your technique, I had always assumed that your strips were added to the surface of the fabric.
It was interesting to see the neatnes of the reverse too. I agree that this is important, it seems to me that this is part of the integrity of a piece of work.
Karen said,
August 10, 2008 @ 9:26 am
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for sharing your construction technique. I’m not a quilter or a sewer but I was fascinated to read about your technique. It creates such a crisp, well made and finished piece of work, front and back. I, too, thought the lines were added to the tops of the larger pieces of fabric.
Your color palettes are very inspiring!
Lisa Call said,
August 10, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
Rhiannon - it’s so hard to do it all isn’t it? I think about other mediums but the textiles always win - good luck getting to your quilt!
Jackie - Thank you. I don’t think there were any secrets in this post - it’s pretty traditional quilt making techniques. It’s what someone does with it that makes art and we all have our own unique inner vision.
Karen and Linda - I think a lot of people think those thin lines are on the top - which was much of the motivation for this post - to show the techniques I use - which I think result in a really well crafted piece of art.
Tracy said,
August 11, 2008 @ 6:10 am
Cool little demo; enlightening. As someone who doesn’t work in textiles, I didn’t know the how’s and why’s. RThanks for sharing this!
Lisa Call said,
August 11, 2008 @ 8:26 am
Thanks Tracy - it’s fascinating to see how artists in other media construct their work. I’ve been thinking about doing some videos. I need to buy a digital video camera first.