How pleasing that Spirogyra 3, In The Weeds has been accepted into the biennial, Quilt Visions26, which opens at the Visions Museum of Textile Art, VMOTA, on October 13th next.

In my recent solo exhibition, it was possibly the one that most people commented on, and is a particular favourite of mine, too, although they are all favourites while I’m making them!

Someone recently asked me “may I ask how you stitched the skinny pieces onto the surface? Are those running stitches that you did by hand?” Being a fibre artist myself, my first glance at something either tells me how it was made or has me wondering. This detail shot shows both machine and hand stitching, and I can’t remember exactly the order in which I did each step – sorry – but you’re welcome to play with the idea and have fun!”

Backs are intriguing to a stitcher like myself. My early learning in embroidery always included guidance on the importance of neatly finishing off as I came to the end of each thread and started a new one. It’s ingrained, automatic, my normal level of craftsmanship. After all, for household linens like tablecloths and mats, serviettes and the like, they need to hold up to plenty of repeated washing and use, and securely finishing off ensures some level of durability. But I also associate this hidden-but-still-important-detail ethic with the training we had in the Brownies and Girl Guides – that we had to polish the backs of the brass badges on our uniforms even though they would not be seen by others. The Brownies and Girl Guides movements paralled the Scouting movement for boys founded by Robert Baden-Powell, Our uniforms were subject to weekly inspection, and our patrol lost points if we failed inspection on some detail. OMG, it was so military, but good training in leading fairly orderly lives, I guess – attention to detail and finishing off a task properly, all that.

In my other blog, https://www.pickledgizzards.com, I recently posted about how the 1970’s Golden Hands Magazine had a huge influence on the keen stitcher I later became. I remember seeing some brighly coloured, richly embroidered head and shoulder portrait profiles by an artist who I think came from somewhere in the sunny Mediterranean, possibly Italy or Greece. They were unusual and therefore very interesting because, the reverse sides of these were framed and exhibited in an art gallery. In the magazine article the fronts and framed backs of each wer presented side by side for us to compare them. Despite the knots, hanging ends and travelling threads etc of the backs, we still saw the expression or personality of each subject- serene, happy, angry etc, and as if through some kind of filter. I did put AI onto trying to find the artist or the Golden Hands article, but though I learned a lot about the needle painting style of embroidery popular in that era, the pieces were not by a recognises textile artist, and that the way the GH magazine itself was documented it was not easily searchable by today’s methods. I’d really need to be able to physically go through the middle issues of Golden Hands, but if I do still own mine, they’re in storage in Australia; and it’s also possible I gave them away before one of our moves sometime; so that quest is over for the moment at least.

At times I have taken pics of some of my own backs too, because of their interesting patterns. Here’s Green Mosaic a 12″sq. work for the 2022 SAQA Benefit Auction – not too different from the front.

The next images are of “Out of Order 3” showing (1) the reverse of the surface design stitching before layering and quilting, and (2) the image resulting from my interaction with ChatGPT that I wrote about In an earlier post on this blog

“Out of Order 3” is currently showing with the SAQA Global Exhibition “AI: Artitistic Interpretations”, at the Louisiana State University Art Museum. It will tour to various venus until the end of 2029.

Yesterday I took a pic of the reverse side of what I’m currently working on, Out of Order 7, but though it seems interesting in my hands as I’m working it, the photo it isn’t really, and I won’t bother AI over it.

Last August (2025) I posted about how grids represent order and stability, and that today the various systems of order under which each of us lives in today’s world is being destabilised in some way by challenges and change brought about by politicians or other faction leaders’ political ambitions. Until last month, the Russian attack on Ukraine was the most dramatic recent example; but although I haven’t searched to find data on this, I do know there are horrible examples on every continent today. The most recent dramatic conflict currently enveloping the Middle East and threatening us all in some way is the motivation to continue my “Out of Order” series to depict more severely damaged grids.

Here’s a progress shot of Out of Order #7.

As it’s for a juried call, I won’t be showing any more of it here until it either makes it, shows somewhere else, or I decide to not show it until my next solo exhibition. Anyway, suffice to say I have moved to the point of soon needing to decide how to quilt it.

The sources of inspiration in my designs I’ve written about before , but today I’m looking at the influences of various techniques that I now frequently use, sometimes returning to them after a long absence. Mum and my paternal grandmother always had some sewing and hand embroidery projects in process, and we grew up amongst practical examples in everyday use. The needlepoint canvases were set into firescreen panels and used upholstering dining chairs; we wore smocked dresses for best in the summer; and in our home there were pulled- and counted-thread table linens, doileys and hand embroidered guest towels. Lots of crochet and knitting was done, too, but ‘stitch’ was the most enduring influence on me.

My early interest in textile and fibreart began with the British weekly publication Golden Hands that I assiduously collected over about 18 months – I think there were 90 in total. I did several kinds of projects inspired by some things in those articles, and though the different types of embroidery really fascinated me, it wasn’t until I found myself in Darwin in the Wet season of 1976-77 and for a sanity saver in the Wet, joined an embroidery class at the Casuarina community college that embroidery really took hold in my life.

Today’s post was ‘brought on’ by coming across this photo taken ten years ago on our visit to Panama:

My regular readers know that in the last few years I’ve done at least one work featuring glass beading techniques, but that first glass+textile piece, was not in fact the first. I beaded a small wall quilt, Tidal Shallows 1 in 1995

While I added those hundreds of tiny glass beads to it, I was thinking of my late mother. I had often watched as during 1953 she beaded 3″ x 2″ diamond shapes using gold glass beads and sequins positioned around the scooped neck of a very fine knit black wool evening top she bought to wear with a black taffeta evening skirt (which swished beautifully) This top was almost certainly imported and English, so no doubt already expensive, but the hours spent applying the sequins to outline the diamonds and the glass bead filling, elevated that top to a whole new level of haute couture; and with her French Roll evening hairdo, she always looked very glamorous in that outfit. Thanks to her infuence I’ve always loved a bit of glitter, and I’ve actually found the process of adding lots of little beads to something is very soothing, so try it yourself sometime…. One important thing about embellishing with beads is that you either need to add a lot of them, or don’t add any at all, because in my opinion there’s nothing so amateruish looking as skimpy beading.

Related to glass seed beads, another favourite texture tool is french knots, but that influence came later from somewhere in my embroidery guild days of the late 70s to early 90s. I don’t recall them featuring in any of the embroidered works around me in my childhood. As shown here, french knots can be used densely placed or scattered as a filler, and they’re often used as outlines in embroidered works.

As shown below in this embroidered farm house, they can be made with stems, too, so they’re versatile.

Painted dots perform the same visual functions as knots and beads, and several times I’ve painted dot outlines in a couple of landscape inspired quilts that have no actual link to the imagery which is identified with Australian Aboriginal art today. Yet this technique is a relatively recent introduction to the Aboriginal culture (Papunya in 1971) Its use enables Aborignal artists to disguise secret details of traditional stories, enabling stories to be told but only fully ‘read’ by those who have the cultural background to understand that information. Dot paintings are tremendously popular today, and it is very clever when you think of it, that genuine Aboriginal stories can be told without offending the spirits, while at the same time delighting non-Aboriginal viewers. Some cultural groups (eg the Tiwi Islanders and some other far Northern Territory groups) do not paint that way, but many Aboriginal artists do, and they use them in lines, outlines and fillings. Perhaps the most iconic Aboriginal artist who used dots to outline shapes was the late Rover Thomas

This second post on the topic of themed exhibitions was prompted by my acceptance into the SAQA Oceania Region’s themed quilt exhibition, “Opposites”. I’ve been a Juried Artist Member in SAQA for a long time, and every couple of months we JAMs have a zoom gathering, or YAK, to discuss issues and news in the professional part of the art quilting world, and these sessions include a wealth of proven ability and experience between us. We recently discussed themed exhibitions.

Although I live in South America, I wanted to support this exhibition in my native region, despite frankly struggling with the theme. I don’t normally enter themed shows unless I already have a finished piece that fits the entry requirements, or that I planned to make with that theme, anyway.  It took me several months until I came up with a design that comfortably fit within my portfolio. This time, the experience made me think more about the matter of themed exhibitions, and these are related to the popular kind of small groups that exhibit together every year or two showing works they’ve created in response to prompts/themes taken on assignment by the members, commonly every 2 months, and members commit to completing a show-ready art quilt in that time.

While I lived in Denver CO, I was active in a small group of like-minded quilt makers, ‘Quilt Explorations’, who explored the medium beyond traditional quilt making, We met monthly to show what we’d done with each topic or prompt that members suggested. While it wasn’t mandatory to produce an actual quilt every time, most of us did and even if we hadn’t finished one we all did the necessary design and research/planning for one, anyway. Each year we exhibited somewhere local like the library or council chambers. It was a very stimulating time in that group, which I had to leave when we returned to Australia, but I’m sure that fairly soon I’d have moved on from that group, anyway, as my own themes and ideas gradually took more attention. That time was influential though, and some of the themes from that time continue to appear in my art to this day, albeit in modified technical form. This 1990 one for example, prompted by the ribbed headlamp glass in the B/W photo of a gorgeous vintage car, led to a huge part of my portfolio exploring the effects of lines on shapes. In the early 90s fine strip inserts became a signature of my designs, increasing in curvature as my piecing skills refined. Wandering lines still apppear in my surface designs, but since Green Dimension, 2023, they’ve been appliqued rather than inserted.

Rounded cutouts reappeared fairly often, like this 2018 diptych –

My point here is that being involved in themed study groups and exhibition groups can be very helpful to emerging artists in any medium; and some of these artists are possibly still developing their own voice, too. It naturally follows that themed exhibition calls for entry are keenly welcomed by many art quilt makers, including some well known, award-winning names.

I include links to previous posts and other websites to help my readers find more detailed information, helping me keep my posts reasonably coherent and concise 🙂