S from Shibori

Inspiration: Upcycle, making something new from a piece that exists. In this series six art-quilts are made from one old damask tablecloth.

Upcycle is the name of my series of six, that I am going to make in this years challenge. The idea of my series is, that in the end, you hang all finished pieces, three beside of each other and three under those, so together they will create a new art-quilt. It took a lot of thinking to come to a proper idea, that I can handle….  First I had to come to a subject that covers the whole series, but each piece has to match with the letter that is given. When I found this old damask tablecloth in a thrift store, my idea of upcycling was born. And at that moment I decided, that each of the six letters we got, should be translated in a technique or material, used in art-quilts. I started by dyeing the whole cloth with iron and tea, in shibori folding technique. Then the corner that I needed for the letter S was dyed in red wine, again in a shibori technique, covering also a bit of the surrounding cloth, that will be the neighbours.

At this point I cut out the piece and fold it again in shibori technique, dipping it in a brown dye and a black ink. I took a piece of cheesecloth and manipulated it with the sewing machine and wrote the word Shibori on teabag paper. Put these three layers on top of each other followed the text with the sewing machine, using a mixed color sewing thread. To get more color, some pieces of red silk were mixed with the cheesecloth. And a piece of lightly transparent pink silk is added at the bottom. A lot of free motion quilting around the S shows the chaos from which an idea originates. Repeating the word shibori gives more meaning to the process. After finishing the machine sewing, hand stitching follows. Blanket stitch is repeatedly used, to give accent to the shibori background. Running stitches make it complete.

During the process of my series, this Shibori piece will change a bit, to make it compare with its neighbours. And in every following piece, there will be some little changes also.

Materials: Damask tablecloth – iron, tea and wine for dyeing – cheesecloth – silk – cotton sewing thread – linen, bamboo and cotton threads – 20/80 batting – cotton backside

Techniques: Dyeing – shibori – hand and machine stitching

Detail views: