I have had one of those moments when I realise why recording processes in detail is important! One of my 30cm yarns is perfect for development into a meter length and it just took ages to realise how made it in the first place!
The materials I used were an unravelled piece of machine constructed metallic fabric. The thread is incredibly fluffy when unravelled and I had stitched it on the machine to make an interesting repeat of tight and then fluffy areas along the length – totally forgot about the machine stitching part and wondered why it was not unravelling in the same way!!
I was interested in the shadows on the sleeve seam of my Akha jacket , where the fabric pulled against the stitches. Represented here on the right hand side of the drawing.
My first attempt was to stitch and stretch a strip of jersey to give an even repeat (slightly bigger than 1cm but hey, who’s measuring?) this gave a good shape but was too solid. The fluffy unravelled thread is better but it was when I realised that I could stitch onto the thread that it really worked as a yarn that really hits the brief.
From my drawings of the heavily embroidered back panel of the Akha jacketĀ and investigations into spinning newspaper ( I had used some as a drawing ground) I have developed this yarn. I used some PVA coloured with translucent Seta colour to create the coloured windows that represent the tiny applique shapes in the original embroidered panel.
This was from the drawing using a wing feather brush, It captures the marks really well. Simple but effective. I need to remember not to overcomplicate all the time, sometimes outcomes are better kept simple .
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