Sabi Westoby
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Poppies Sown in Thread - Part 2

11/4/2015

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I made a lot of samples when developing the work for this exhibition.  At first I thought I could get away without doing so but days of painstakingly unpicking heavy machine quilting convinced me otherwise....

For a couple of the samples I replicated the techniques on scrap fabrics, made quilt sandwiches and then auditioned stitches and threads.  For other samples I did something which might be considered extravagant - I took a photograph of a work in progress and printed it out on ready printable fabric.  This was a direct way of testing stitches and thread with the added benefit of creating a good collection  of samples, all of which are now in my sketchbook, a permanent reminder of the works.

Some of the samples are shown below; click on each image to see a larger picture.
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Poppies Sown in Thread - Part 1

10/4/2015

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My third solo show opens on 22 April at Artisan Gallery.  The work was inspired by a single poppy image and is a development of the research carried out for the World War 1 quilts.  Those four quilts will be displayed, so that the visitor can see the progression, but it is not a Great War show.

When planning a new body of work, I have to have a new sketchbook.  I chose an A3 book in landscape format from L. Cornelissen, one of my favourite art shops.  The clean blank pages can be a deterrent to mark making so I gave them colour washes, not always being neat and tidy, letting the paint drip, run and smudge.  The edges were also painted, dripping into the pages and sometimes sticking them together!  But that gave extra texture and marks - lovely.

I put everything in the sketchbook - ideas, quotations, pictures for inspiration, stitched samples, notes to myself for further development, stencils, discarded backing papers, scraps of fabric.  Some ideas became finished pieces, others were binned.

I restricted myself to using only materials that I had in my studio and, consequently, nothing new was bought to create the hangings.  And as the theme of the show was to be the life cycle of the poppy, I felt that recycling was more than appropriate.  So, an old duvet cover, washing rags, old hand dyed fabrics and a Freemason's robe rescued from a skip form the basis for a lot of the work.

Here are some of the pages from my sketchbook to give an idea of the development behind the work - the completed pieces will be posted when the show has ended.
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