Tag: prehistoric art

Still making time

I gave myself a break over Easter. I’ve come back to the cloth that (as yet) has no name: the first in a small series about cup and ring marks, ancient circles and spirals, lines and basic marks.

Nameless cloth in progress

These lines and circles seem to communicate without words. Maybe they come from a time before language; certainly before literacy. There is a kind of magic about them, a deep and unfathomable wisdom in their shapes.

Couched spirals with running stitch and straight stitch

I’m enjoying the earthy colour palette here, and the repeating motifs.

Marks and lines

I’ve been invited to give a talk to a local stitching group and I’m just gathering together some inspiration. I’ll take this unfinished cloth too, mostly to see if anyone can help name it.

Sketchbooks, daily stitching, and mixed media all up for discussion

A beginning

Daily paint doodles have produced these little pictograms, influenced by prehistoric art and the images found on rocks and in caves everywhere in the ancient world:

Daily paint sketches, watercolour on cotton paper with pen added

Prehistoric art is something I’ve always found really interesting. Not so much the figurative drawings of the various beasts fleeing from human hunters, but more the abstract mark-making and simple patterns. They seem to crop up everywhere from the same kind of time. Shapes like circles, spirals, wavy lines, squares, short lines – basic marks. These are the marks I make most often in my sketchbooks too, and a lot of the shapes will translate very effectively from pen to needle and thread.

Sketches for long cloths

I’ve prepared a few long cloths, about 10” x 40-ish”, for adding timeless marks with thread. Just to see where it goes. I’m using linen or cotton as the backing fabric, and brushed cotton in place of batting. The top layers are strips of hand-dyed silk, cotton, and linen.

Long cloth ready to begin

I’m beginning with circular blanket stitch on hand-dyed textured silk fabric and looking forward to following the thread.

Circular blanket stitch on textured silk
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