Words in pins and thread

Debbie Smyth  is a textile artist who is famous for her "drawings" with pins and thread, and recently I attended a workshop with her and learned the very basic techniques.

I made a hanging piece inscribed with "Here comes the sun" from the fantastic Beatles song. It is a small piece so the pins had to be placed very close together which made it a bit of a fiddly job! I did not cut the threads which gives it a floaty look.

Since I didn't have a piece of wood as a base to jam the pins in, I fabricated my own from 2 plastic lids and some waste material from an iron board cover.

What I like about this piece is that the sentence gets completed as it spins. At first you only see the pins because they stand so close together and then the words are suddenly revealed 😊

Making my own base from waste material:

And so he went

Strictly speaking this piece is a collaboration with my 5 year old son (now 27). My husband and I were clearing the attic and found this paper lantern our son made, all torn and discoloured. I still recognised the love he put into it and remembered how proud he was, coming home from school with his lantern.

I decided to use the thin paper part that was not torn in a piece on his leaving home.

I glued the paper on a piece of fabric and added stitching, drawing in pencil, a poem (unreadable, which is as intended), and muted or highlighted some parts of the coloured pieces. I also added the suitcase, falling as it were out of the picure.

It has become a meaningful and emotional work to me, in which his childhood and the present time, his art and mine, his energy and my feelings all come together. A bittersweet, but mostly sweet and actually very happy piece, hanging in our living room.

The nature of the material makes it hard to take good pictures, nevertheless, here are some details:

My widened blouse

There was this blouse in my closet too narrow to be comfortable, but I liked the fabric, the pattern, colours and length, so I decided to try to widen it using the good parts of a worn shirt of my husband, which had a nice colour. I  thought the two fabrics would match well.
First I loosened the side hems of the blouse. Then I cut two pieces of fabric off the shirt : right and left with the side hem and a piece of the sleeve. These pieces of fabric I sewed between the opened sides.
Now the blouse is much more comfortable and I got a lovely combination of fabrics.

A sun flower

Just a sun, or a flower, or a sunflower. No story behind it this time, just trying to make something nice. I used fabric scraps, all in the same colour tone, sewn in the centre. The petals are made from felt and fabric on which I made prints of leaves. 

Prints of (real) leaves: