I have finally, after many years completed a piece I’ve had in mind to make. It is inspired by the final verse of a favourite hymn, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. The words are
Speak through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm,
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire,
Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O, still small voice of calm
O, still small voice of calm.
This is referring to when God spoke to Elijah. I love the thought that in the midst of turmoil and chaos God is speaking to us, if we listen.
As I say, this has been many years in the making. I did this collage as a starting point and periodically have experimented with an assortment of techniques. I knew I wanted to make a basket as I wanted to create the feeling of a vortex, with the calm at the centre, spiralling out into chaos.
Here are my samples, where I tried out various ideas. I toyed with having a star at the middle as a reference to a star of David, but I couldn’t see how I would be able to progress from a regular weave into a freer looser weave.
The newspaper sample shows the weave I liked, and the sheers gave me that airy feel I wanted.
The base structure has been made by covering pipe cleaners with fabric and zigzagging over them with my machine. They were then stitched down to a circle of heavyweight vilene covered in white satin. The circle on top to cover the join is lightly padded and was stitched in place by hand.
I did an initial bit of twining with silver crochet cotton before beginning my weaving.
To make my weavers I laid out a large piece of heavyweight soluble fabric, about 150 cm by 60cm wide, which I then covered with snippets of fabric, mostly sheers. These were then covered with larger pieces of sheer to hold them in place.
Once it was all covered I pinned and pinned. I needed 3 separate lots of pins! Then it was off to the machine to stitch it all down. I started with straight lines about 2cm apart, sewing across in invisible thread. Once that was done I could remove all the pins. Then I covered the whole lot in masses of free machining in shades of white through to black. Wherever I saw a gap I added more scraps on top. I included some metallic threads to reflect a bit of light.
Top tip – use a special needle for metallic threads when sewing with metallics. It removes a lot of stress and discourages the thread from breaking.
As you can imagine, this all took many days. Once I was confident everything would hold together (and I wouldn’t end up with a load of scraps) I cut the piece into 3cm wide strips, which I then put into water to dissolve the soluble fabric. The result was pleasingly fuzzy.
The final weaving of the basket seemed really quick after all the preparation. When it came to it I realised the strips were too wide, so I sliced them down the middle. As a result I still have over half of my strips left, which I may use to make a bigger piece. It was always my intention to make a large piece, and I was partly treating this as a practice to see if it would work. Since I’ve put in all this effort I really ought to use my fabric strips up.
To finish I stitched the ends of the weavers to the stakes and stitched some more bits of sheer onto the ends to create a wilder feel.
Because I’ve used pipe cleaners I’ve been able to shape it easily. The final piece is approximately 25cm in diameter and 7cm high. I’m going to put a ring on the back so that it can be hung on the wall.
Diggely Doggely 