After years of creating quilt art, particularly my thread-painted landscapes, I realized that I love thread even more than I love fabric. This lead me to develop a series of sculptures, made only of free-motion stitched threads. It is a multistep process, involving much planning in order to go from a flat surface of threads to a three-dimensional object.
Since I am figuring it out as I go along, not everything works out! Here are some of my better sculptures.
The first shapes I made were tree leaves, experimenting with various species, threads, and amount of cupping.
The first challenge was a "vase", to see if I could make a closed shape, and one that would stand on its own. And, as long as I was going to all that bother, why not make a seascape on it.
Then I wanted to make a spherical shape. So, why not make it a globe - and one with the north pole melting, and a puddle at the bottom.
Continuing on a watery theme, another enclosed shape is a goldfish bowl - but this one has three blue whales suspended inside, also made of thread.
Feeling pretty confident now, I made two versions of a tree. The second has a larger trunk with barklike texture.
And fulfilling a goal I set at the start of my investigations: a teapot! This is called "Green Leaf Tea".
"Aspen Bowl" features open leaf-shaped areas with the veins made of metallic thread.
"Thirteen" is another shape based on a globe, with interwoven misuhiki cording.
"Conundrum" is an experiment based on the bottle shape and foils.