In July of 2025, the Advanced Studies in Experimental Stitch (L3) course that I’ve been participating in since Sept of 2022 will come to an end. We’ll have an exhibition of the work that 5 students in the course have done on July 19th and 20th at Gail Harker’s studio in LaConner, WA USA. https://gailcreativestudies.com/. Stop on by if you’re in the area.
I’m looking forward to finishing the course and having some free time to get back to some other projects that have been gathering dust. I have a clothesline strung across the length of my studio where I pin projects that I don’t want to forget about (or things that I don’t want to lose track of) and I enjoy looking at them when I walk by.
Here is a closer look at unfinished projects on the floor that I trip over on my way to the laundry room.
Two projects on my clothesline that I really want to finish just need to be quilted.
One of them is a small scene of city buildings (16″ x 16″) that I made using a purchased stencil from Stencil Girl Products . https://www.stencilgirlproducts.com/
I colored the buildings using Inktense with Aloe Vera gel to keep the color from migrating into the next building.
The other small quilt (16″ x 16″) was also made using a purchased stencil from Stencil Girl. This one started my interest into stitch drawing. I made this one because I thought the city needed to have people with it.
I must have made these two pieces in the dead of winter. I’m not sure how I got so focused on grey! Not much color going on with my people. Perhaps before I quilt this one, I will add some color to the people’s clothing. This one was fun to make though. All the people are hand stitched using one strand of DMC floss. They look like they are really enjoying their winter.
A direction I want to go into next is doing machine stitched figures. I bought a book by Rosie James called Stitch Draw. I like the simplicity of her work and all her loose threads. My plan is to use old family photos and stitch draw them.
Hopefully later this year I can show you some progress on cleaning up my UFO pile. I look forward to revisiting it, but that will all have to wait until AFTER July.
Happy creating!
Tesi Vaara