Needle by My Side - Guest Post by Financial analyst Renuka Mahajan

 

Since childhood, I’ve watched my mother knit, do crochet, make rugs with a hook and do needlework. She always encouraged us three sisters to follow suit and we all succumbed.

Till today I love to do my needlework - I find it therapeutic and my evenings are spent mindlessly watching TV and mindfully stitching. Where I get a large sense of fulfilment is when I create these cushions or picture frames for a loved one. The time spent, laboriously painful at times, seems worth every moment when I see that face light up in gratitude and admiration.

 

Coming from a business background I was never in desperate need materially, however I felt a huge void spiritually so I joined a group in Mumbai called Vedanta Life Institute headed by Sri A Parthasarthy affectionately called 'Swamiji'. This changed my life for it made me realize that there is more to life than just birth, marriage and death.

 

I've stitched for a charitable cause organized by the Vedanta Life Institute, selling embroidered napkins and mats on a matted blank cloth, which I made by following a pattern from a cross stitch book. Challenging and fun. Stitching for others has its own sense of fulfilment. Even creating a financial plan for my clients, which is my vocation, does not give me as much satisfaction as making embroidery for someone I love. Then I discovered these tapestry kits by ‘Dimensions’ in the UK which had all the guidelines of how to follow the marked out pattern  and included the required needles and coloured threads. The cat series and other pictures were made using these kits.

 

When I'm stitching my mind is empty & yet brimming with thoughts, I'm relaxed and at the same time counting the stitches to make sure I don't make any mistakes. It's just me and my handiwork, uncomplicated, unquestioning, and undemanding. I'm at peace.

 

This is a dying art in this fast paced world but the luxury of slowing down and introspecting while you create this work of art is unparalleled to all the physical wealth that one collects. It's everlasting till the body permits and something to look forward to at the end of a chaotic day.

 

When I wear the woolly cap my mother had knitted for me I feel proud and consoled about the fact that my embroidered tapestry is cushioning her back or soothing her feet as a foot rest.
 

 I carry my needle work with me wherever I go; it's always by my side.

 

Lighting Up Yet Wanting to Rip Things Apart

The week before Diwali was intense. I volunteered to help with the condo lighting. It was an impromptu thing which I thought would be a breeze. But, I ended up spending five days yelling instructions from the ground to standing on shaky bamboo ladders, hanging onto tree limbs, rounding up the condo staff who were involved in all manner of daily errands to come help me put lights on branches, wrap strings of tiny bulbs around tree trunks and hang the made-in-China-lights at even lengths and create patterns that required discipline and a sense of aesthetics they were just not used to.  My assistants were the firemen, plumbers, electricians and house-keeping staff that could be spared, and each day I had to train a new set. All in all it was an experience to remember- both annoying and enjoyable but, not all moments were quite as delightful as when the lights went on in their full splendour.

 

In the evenings I would be exhausted after a day of work that was  physically quite demanding and it would be difficult to settle down and embroider. But at that point, things were mostly in place for very rhythmic work that was more therapeutic than thoughtful, so I was able to do an hour or so each evening.

 

The lights were not good quality which made the job at hand a rather frustrating one. Through the day we hung the lights with such care and perfection of length, height and design but when we switched them on as the sun dipped, they would light up as would our eyes in expectation, and then fuse. And in all that glowing splendour would be dark spots that were not supposed to be there. I just never quite got a sense of satisfaction when I looked at the whole picture, and this did not go down well with my innate desire for perfection.

 But, when I zoomed in on the details, it was satisfying to see the Champa [Frangipani] tree trunks embraced by tiny blue bulbs and the laddis [strings] of white and yellow lights, cradled by her leaves. Or, for that matter the long line of Ficus hedge surrounding the garden, garlanded from its height of over seven feet, along with a neat row of blue lights lining the railing that belted the Ficus in.

 

I had worked around things in a way that after circling the burned piece of muslin, which was almost like creating an energy vortex or even a healing vortex, if you like, I found myself stitching on small boxes of matte that I had cut up.  I had already placed some matte to embroider on the organza and it was while doing this that I felt the need to do some more. The ordered process of doing cross-stitch was appealing and the boxes have all been set in place for me to embroider, but the hand is restless and wants to tear through the nice round lines of Kantha that formed the healing vortex, to shake things up again.

Each day,I had to muster a great deal of patience to keep going especially since there had been no real planning behind the lighting design as it was just a spur of the moment thing, so there was a shortage of everything from lights to wires to the electrician’s tape and even manpower. But I used everything in my power to get it done and it was satisfying to hear all the compliments and especially to see the delight in the children’s’ eyes when the lights came up as they played in the park.

Those weeks leading up to Diwali week had been very steady. My daily routine was easily adhered to and therefore I found myself working from creating the vortex with Kantha to forming an ad hoc grid of sorts, using cross stitch matte. It seemed that order was coming into place. Those thoughts that had been processed through the fire, had been further cleansed with the vortex and were now entering a grid, and things were falling into place. Or so I thought....

 

This year at Diwali there were the usual parties and also more family do’s than usual. Siblings and cousins and nephews with fiancés were visiting from all over the world. I was out four evenings in a row, in addition to the lighting affair and buying of gifts and mithai for everyone, which is way too much externalizing of energy for me. I like my time alone, but with Diwali, and all that it brought this year, this was not an option. I mean, the last thing I want to be doing is sitting alone stitching, when there is so much going on around me.

 

 I keep looking at the fabric, feeling uncertain about what to do with it now. This transition from an utterly busy week with so much energy being given outwards; desperately wanting to return to that space of calm collectedness but just not getting there, is very frustrating. There is so much contemplation, so much to process and put into perspective that the transitory phase seems like a lot of time is lost in contemplation!

 

At this point, about two days after all the festivities are over and there is some semblance of order returning to life, there’s a kind of screech in my head that I cannot quite contain and it seems to be coming out of my ears. [I can certainly hear it in the tension and tenor of my voice when I have to deal with people who are just not performing up to the mark] To top it all Mahipal has also gone on leave which means that I am short-staffed at home and also without a driver. And the maid is new and so raw, that much as I am grateful to have some help, I am tearing my hair out at the moment [to put it mildly].

 

I have this intense desire to put the fabric back on the hoop, stretch it taut and then cut through the spaces between the parallel circular threaded lines of Kantha. Those translucent spaces – the very idea of space when my head is so crowded is irksome.  I want to take a pair of scissors and rip right through them, then take apart the warp and weft – shred them. It would feel like I am not alone in this frenzy and I think that somewhere that is an important place to be in, where I don’t feel alone in being disconnected from my sublime self.

 

But yesterday I held myself in check. I followed the pattern already set in place and said that before I did something drastic that I would regret, I should allow things to settle. And there is nothing quite like the rhythmic motion of doing cross-stitch to restore order to one’s mind.

 

 

The 'Disturbing' Doll

Guest Post by American Fibre Artist Elaine McBride

Gopika, I’m delighted to contribute to your Stitch Journal - to the cause of stitch.  I appreciate the forum and also the inputs from your blog followers as to your own process. Reading your blog inspires me to focus and consider my own process.

Through my own carelessness of breaking my left wrist (I'm left handed) at the end of June I was forced to take a leave of absence from my latest project. I'm now sufficiently healed to stitch again and I'll provide you some images of this piece from the outset to its current state of "hmmmm...now I need to focus on the black background...."

I have attached images of two pieces. The first one is called "Guardians" and is currently on exhibit at "Small Expressions 2013" sponsored by the Weavers Guild of America. The rest of the images concern the current piece and show the initial object (doll), drawing transferred to fabric and the stitching thus far. My daughter's boyfriend said it was sort of "disturbing" so I think that's good! Not that I'm trying to be provocative but I have in the past had someone tell me my work was "cute" so I thought I should re-examine my imagery, intent and the execution of my work as well.

(As an aside, if you look closely, you can see cat hair on the work in progress. Morris has taken up residence in my studio so the cat hair is part and parcel of my work until I use scotch tape as the final step...).

Re-reading your email you inquired as to what embroidery does for my soul. I'm not sure that I can quantify its importance but I can say that the months this summer of healing my fractured radius and understanding that I might not be able to draw or stitch at the level pre accident was depressing. I could not imagine my life without my hoop and a "project."  I pondered that I might have to resort to reading the stockpile of books as an alternative! Fortunately I'm almost as good as new. My wrist is still a little swollen and I have night-time carpel tunnel issues but with physical therapy I have come a long way.

Since I have been regularly stitching since my grad school days circa 1978, it defines part of who I am. I sort of take it for granted that I will always be stitching, have a callous on my finger and will be cranking out a piece here and there. My output is small but I think I enjoy the slow evolution of the image from first concept to drawing to stitch and floss colour choice.

I hope this isn't overly wordy or OMG pretentious!! This is me on a Sunday morning in my jammies and my first cup of coffee! I'm excited to share my thoughts and to see where your own work takes you.

PS: Tonight driving home from work there was a gorgeous sunset with my colours of blue, brilliant orange, yellow and grey. I was hoping to get to an exit to take a picture but, darn it, by the time I get through the traffic mess, it was gone - so fleeting. I always try to capture those colours where possible to draw upon for inspiration. This time of year - when the air is dry, clear and crisp - makes for the most beautiful sunsets one can imagine. Well, my capturing it was not meant to be....

Elaine McBride is a Fibre Artist [Master of Fine Arts in textiles from The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History (Eastern Illinois University) and a Master of Arts in Textile Design (Northern Illinois University)] She lives in Bridgewater Massachusetts, U.S.A with her husband Tom and two cats.

Drawn to the intimacy and portability of embroidery [I can curl up and stitch almost anywhere including my studio, the car (as a passenger of course!) or the couch], she seeks to interpret through embroidery – expressing those little nagging pieces of information that have nowhere else to go. Adding that the meditative aspect of stitching provides respite from daily stress.

The Emerging State of Restlessness

A couple of Thursdays ago, I decided to do some more burning and took some videos. The silk fabric smouldered its way into gaping holes while the cotton muslin raged a fire. It was the bright orange and yellow flames, sullying and consuming the pristine muslin, which I found empathy with. Strangely, this amused me. Later in the evening as I was embroidering, I listened to Beethoven’s violin concerto. It’s one of my all-time favourite pieces of music and hearing it for the nth time - feeling the rousing music, empathizing with its anguished melody, feeling it in my own body, I was reminded of the empathy I’d had with that raging fire in the morning.

 

I watched the video again and again. Looking at the embers dance across the edges of the fabric, I felt mesmerized, as if in awe of its rage. A mixture of black and red marks kept moving along the threads, creating an odd shape that now looks almost like that of an undiscovered country or the newly demarcated borders of an emerging one. But, it was the roaring fire that I felt excited by. Regrettably, it flared up for just a short time before fear got the better of me and I jumped upon it with glass paper weights, which I use to control the lines consumed by fire. Thak thak I went with the glass ball on the board and the fire was snuffed out.
 

Yes, I have started another train of thought. Restive as I am, I have no idea where it is going.  I feel  anxiety welling up. I want to reach that point of peacefulness and do some painstaking, repetitive and meditative embroidery. I know I cannot push it. Sometimes one has to accept the negative emotions before they can be transcended and rushing it only creates stress.  But I am not appeased. I hate this feeling of wretchedness that has enveloped me. I cannot remember ever being so restless and irritated with myself.

 

But at this point, there is just so much going on that I do not know where to put my mind. I focus on bills to be paid, feel relieved in paying them when another two are presented and my throat constricts because it means tightening the belt a bit more. Then there was the fracas with my cook.  Sometimes I wish I had been born with a less sensitive nature, less alert mind, slower memory and less discipline, so that I could be easier on those around me. We have not been talking to each for over a month. I thought I would broach the subject today, but she was not amenable to what I had to say and I cannot deal with insubordination so its status quo again. The domestic shenanigans are endless and these days I no longer think it a boon to work from home.
 

That Thursday morning [19^th September] my attention was also caught by a newspaper story of the young boy who died under mysterious circumstances while at a party in South Delhi. The new version of the mishap has been going through my mind all day, albeit in between paying bills, handling domestic issues and more. I kept wondering who to believe. One day he’s been hit on the head with a blow that ostensibly killed him. And then a journalist, from a high profile news magazine, later says that he was witness to the whole thing: that the boy was never hit upon the head and that the police took way too long taking him to the hospital so they should be questioned about this curious delay, implying that something amiss took place within this unaccounted time span. Boy, it now seems that the police goofed up, yet again!

 

Everyday someone is mysteriously killed or dies in a mishap; is raped or there are riots and the media is  hysterical about everything. They ridiculously play up most innocuous of events. And one day I noted that party officers leaving for Rajnath’s house for the final decision on Modi’s nomination, as the BJP candidate for Prime Minister in the next elections, was cited as ‘Breaking News’. Unbelievable!

 

There is so much that is going on all the time. How does anyone keep up? When things are awry, where does one even begin to take a stand? How many petitions one has signed but to what avail? And studying that raging fire, I could feel again, all these thoughts burning inside of me, seeing them reflected in the flames. It was cleansing, I was appeased a bit, but is there no better solution? Are we all going to set ablaze something to cleanse the anger we  feel?

I do not like to  rave and rant about the abysmal state of the nation and find such drawing-room conversations counterproductive. When I ask those who talk of little else what they are doing about it, I am met with an awkward  silence. But, this is short-lived, like pausing for breath, after which the practised tirade against the government continues. My philosophy is: what can I do in my capacity as an individual, within my sphere of influence, to help change the attitude/situation? As an artist, teacher, citizen, woman and all the other hats that one does wear in life, there are countless ways of doing things to make that difference. I believe that real change actually happens through these seemingly insignificant roles and our daily interactions, rather than the protest marches that have become so popular.

 

There is such chaos everywhere. While  doing my embroidery, I watched my thoughts as they tumbled out, in that relative quietude. There’s so much disharmony and pain everywhere, it is really hard to find a moment when one feels at peace with oneself. It’s hard to find clarity in this chaos. And to top it all the local Mandir blares its daily Puja, in the most dissonant voice, three times a day, needlessly adding to the cacophony. Everyone else here, is afraid to raise a voice against them so I fight my lone battle against this.

 

Yes there is a fire raging within - it’s unstoppable.  And yes, another country seems to be emerging.  Articulating its state of restlessness through delicately burnt contours of indented, curvaceous bays and oddly protruding isthmuses.  Asserting its existence against the ephemeral back-drop of a translucent, white organza: Its manifesto yet to be declared. That is, if it’s here to stay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painting With Fire

Earlier when I worked with stains, I was observing stains made by tea leaf residue in my cup. I took lots of photos and then got some digitally printed onto fabric. I would then trace these marks with a kantha or running stitch and sometimes finish the edges with a border, using cross stitch. There was something very peaceful about looking at stains this way. I had not created them. They did not speak of the stains in my own mind but, were leading me to look at those marks through which I judged myself, the way many of us do. This process allowed me to examine the marks in an objective way, lending confidence to look at the real stuff that filled my mind.  

 

The advertisement for a popular detergent which says “daag acche hai” [i] caught my attention with the idea that in doing something good for others, if the garb gets soiled, the stains could not seen merely as dirt to be washed off. We do unwittingly bring home dirt in an attempt at playing the Good Samaritan, but if we stand back we can see  the ‘good’ in the experience. For me this objectivity is gained by going over and over the same thoughts and sometimes, I need to express fully what I feel, before I can stand back and see things without the rancour of an emotional state.

 

Going over the photographed marks again and again, finding the courage to look into the dark lanes, I moved away from the printed images to create my own stains, which I have been working on for a few months now. It’s not a comforting process. Sometimes I think, or rather I hope that I have reached a point where I can just sit and amble along the marks with the running stitch I so love, but then I look at the piece and it does not have that raw emotion I want to present.

When something gnaws at you, it has the power to consume you and that was what I wanted to speak of. So I brought ‘burning’ back into the process and started painting with fire.
 

I used the fabrics that I had stained with tea and other stuff in the kitchen. I created a collage of sorts, using some shibori that I had done too, along with some white net. This looked really fabulous and gave a kind of ethereal effect. I like to think of it as grace that descends when the fire of any emotion, not just anger but even love - when the passion has burnt itself out.

For a while I was quite happy with the burning process. I loved watching the embers dance along the edge of the fabric and then die out as the fabric shrivelled into a grey ash. But it was also quite a draining process. My eyes would smart and I would feel really tired in a very short while and could not quite understand why. Saba Hasan, a painter, who also has played with fire, says she thinks it is the process, but I think it has a lot to do with the toxic fumes that I breathed in which the lungs do not appreciate. At least not after I have spent the morning doing pranayama!

 

 

 

 

I burned what I wanted to and then took the fabric back to the stitching course. But, then again after a few days of forming those concentric circles with kantha, where I pucker the fabric and create a raised effect- something I usually delight in doing, I found there was no charm in doing this kantha work anymore. It was stifling the piece, so one Sunday I just took the fabrics I had painstakingly stitched together and embellished with kantha and cut it in up in places, ripped it apart in others, tearing at the threads with pointed instruments I keep just for this purpose, and then proceeded to torch it with the naked flame of a candle till it burnt though the multiple and complex layers.

It was an aggressive process and quite cathartic too. But it didn’t end there. I did feel able to return to sewing for a while and had a couple of days that were quite ethereal and graceful with the needle slipping in and out of the layers of stains, now charred in places and ripped in others; taking her thread, sewing, repairing and decorating with textures and colour- adding life to the fragile fragments. And then again discontent was stirred: I felt that none of this was really evocative enough. I thought I would bring some cross stitch into the piece. Something just seemed to be missing. I wanted to do something different,  but was not certain what this could or should be.

I cut up some matte to place behind the piece with its gaping burnt holes and was thinking how I would approach the uniform cross-stitch with this ungainly, raw, burnt texture and form, when I decided that I did not feel patient enough to do all that needle work. I just wanted some colour in there so what was wrong with some red fabric? I wanted a flamboyant red, to complement the burned, brown edges, which now seemed so forlorn and uninteresting, with its bloody hue.

 

 I only had some organza in my cupboard and that did not look quite right, so the next day I went to the local market and got some poplin and voile that had been commercially dyed. Now, about a week or so of having stitched the fabric and burned the edges of the red fabrics and put it all together, I have to admit that I want to go back a few stages and leave the fabric without this backing and let the gaping holes speak for themselves. This means that I have to undo all that stitching I have done. Do I need the bloody-red or is it overbearing?   I rather think it is, but these days the muse is fickle.....

 

 

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[i] Stains are good

[ii] Tie-dye

Into The Woods Alone- Guest post

Maggie Baxter, an Australian artist, curator and writer wrote this piece about an Australian artists’ recent exhibition in response to an earlier post on this journal – The Violence of a Needle: http://gopikanathstitchjournal.blogspot.in/2013/06/the-violence-of-needle.html?m=1

 

The family history of Greek/Czech Australian artist, Olga Cironis will resonate with many Indians whose families suffered the upheaval of dislocation during Partition.

 

Olgas’ grandmother worked on the side of the Greek Democratic Army during the Greek Civil War of 1946 – 49, sending food and ammunition to the sons, daughters, husbands and fathers fighting on the front. Pregnant, she was moved to a refugee camp in the then Yugoslavia[i], but later re-settled in Czecholslovakia [ii].  Her oldest child, Olga’s mother was lost to her for many years until the Red Cross reunited them.

 

In Czechoslovakia, Olga remembers that the Greeks were well educated by the government, but nevertheless kept apart from mainstream society. But 1968, when the Russians invaded and made Czech communism even more extreme, the Greeks were formally asked to become Czech citizens or told to go back to Greece.

Olga’s parents decided on an alternative –migrate to Australia, where settling in a low socio-economic area, they once again found themselves on the fringe, albeit not officially so as in Czechoslovakia. Ostensibly in Australia they had freedom to go wherever and be whatever they wanted, but in reality their lack of language skills placed Olga’s parents in low paid jobs far below the professional level they had previously enjoyed, and socially isolated.

They were without ‘Voice’ – just another small family in a sea of ethnically diverse migrants, who once accepted into Australia, battle out a life for themselves however they can.

This rather long introduction will help to explain Olga’s confronting photographic portrait tableaux of herself, dressed like her mother but with her lips sewn together[iii]. As Paola Anselmi said in the catalogue essay to the exhibition “Cironis’ stitched lips speak volumes about the inability to express yourself and your past when no-one else understands the conditions that shape you”.[iv]

 

 The emotive prospect of causing such agonising self-harm is deeply political within contemporary Australia where, in a race to the lowest depth of our national psyche, politicians of both major political parties vilify asylum seekers who try to reach the country by boat. These hapless individuals have for the past decade been sent to detention centres on remote tropical islands with fewer facilities than our prisons. Some detainees have, in utter despair and frustration at years of not knowing their fate, sewn their lips together in protest.

In 2012, Cironis received a grant to return to the Czech Republic and Greece to retrace her family history and try to make sense of her fractured identity.

 She loves the traditional embroidery on old tablecloths and bed linen and during the trip she collected many pieces some of which were cut up and reassembled for the exhibition.  For Cironis embroidery is a manifestation of her ethnicity, it connects to her childhood where the women in her family were always making things. But by putting the needle through the fabric she acknowledges the violence and fierceness of women in war when they need to defend their children. Her own mother as a young teenager was forced to take on the role of ‘mother’ to younger children, while her mother (Olga’s grandmother) was removed to an unknown destination.

 

At first glance the oval samplers of stitched old blankets seem benign and innocuous. But nestled in amongst the embroidered lyrical drawings and universal symbols there is anger waiting to be noticed: a woman blindfolded; expletives aimed at the capitalist system.

 

 Olga Cironis is not a textile artist per se, but a sculptor and installation artist for whom cloth and stitch are central to her practice. Many of her installations are of objects bound in cloth– an old kitchen mixer, or a large tree branch. She says that stitching over an object is an act of gagging it. Sometimes she makes lost souls: despondent, featureless, animist figures with threads hanging down from their bodies like tears.

 

Yet in an optimistic reversal children hug and play with Cironis’ cloth animals, so much so that she was recently commissioned to make cast bronze replicas for a family courtyard in a new hospital in Western Australia. The stitch marks on the patches are essential tactile elements recalling once again the ferociously gentle act of sewing.

Maggie Baxter is an Australian artist, writer, curator, and public art coordinator, who has worked with textiles in India for over twenty years.

‘Into the Woods Alone’, and exhibition of works by Olga Cironis was held at the Turner Gallery, Perth, Western Australia from 2 – 31 August 2013.

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[i] After civil war and upjeaval, Yugoslavia broke up into six separate republics in the arly 1990’s.

[ii] . In 1993, Czechoslovakia dissolved peacefully into two separate states: The Czech Republic and Slovakia.

[iii] Don’t panic – it was drawn on by a professional make-up artist and not actually stitched.

[iv] . Anselmi, Paola. ‘Into the Woods Alone’. Turner Gallery 2 – 31 August 2013. Catalogue Essay.

Another Canvas, Another Approach......

I have moved on. I found it really irksome trying to cover the copper wire with thread. I was uncertain about using it in the first place and decided that I needed to give it a break.

 

Elaine made a very valid suggestion that a couching stitch[i] would be a good way to replace the wire and Livinder Singh, a friend of a friend [on Facebook] commented on Facebook that this particular type of copper wire that I was using was an enamelled wire which could break with the bends, which if it did, would oxidise and could destroy the fabric. I have used this wire before and knitted it which involved a considerable amount of such bends and perhaps more intense ones, and so far, in the last 6 years, I have not seen any signs of oxidising but I have been given considerable food for thought.

 

Couching requires a lot of control. The stitch itself is easy enough it is trying to keep the laid thread in place which wires me up. Using the copper wire did allow me scope to wander off on a tangent. It was difficult getting it to work with the softness of the material but......

Anyway, while I was debating this, trying to be disciplined about it, I expanded the repertoire of stains.
 

  It just sort of dawned upon me that stains are not confined to tea. I did however stay with the idea of stains, as in the accidental colour imparted to fabric through careless eating and stuff like that but, expanded this to include dyeing and doing some Shibori ( tie-dye) too.

 

I started with Jamun [purple fruit is the literal and only translation I have found. If anyone knows what the biological name is or any other please do tell] but even though I had loads of fun collecting the fallen fruit off the grass or pavement around the compound where I live, I couldn't get the fruit to dye any fabric that gorgeous purple-blue that it stains my tongue after eating the fruit. Maybe I needed a mordant? But I'm new to the whole natural dyeing process so maybe by next year I'll have figured it out. Yes, alas I shall have to wait a whole year for this seasonal fruit to appear again. Hopefully I will be prepared with my recipe for dyeing by next May/June to find a way to dye it, if indeed one exists and also if I am still working with the idea of stains in the same way.

Mahipal, who works in my household and assists me with various things including the dyeing of fabric, while washing the fruit with potassium permanganate [I use it for all soft fruits as a kind of disinfectant] he came up with the idea we may get a nice pink colour if we used this. He had been involved in the whole process of collecting the fruit [Jamuns] and the intense fermenting that I tried to do to get some results and was equally frustrated as I. I loved the idea and jumped at it, but the colour only stays pink in water.

I did get some unexpected colours though. They ranged from a deep umber to black on organza which I liked, and on muslin it created this dull green gold which was fascinating.

I loved the palette that was emerging. All different shades of black, greys and browns made me think of Rothko and his deeply contemplative sectionals. After all that rambling in the wire and thread piece now laid to rest, I did need to dwell upon the darkness it was bringing up in my mind.

Resisting effort doesn't augur well for continuation of anything so I wanted to explore these darker hues and felt the need for an organised form. Playing around with the various fabrics and the colours imbued I found myself veering towards this rectangular shape that you now see. 

It was exciting while I cut up the variously dyed bits and did this fabric collage, but once I had gotten over the initial excitement, it started looking too busy and tacky. However, I persisted, telling myself that once I had sewn them together - tacked them with thread rather than oil pins which held them together initially, that the appearance would be calmer.
 

And things did calm down. And while sewing, I felt calmer too. Each stitch, especially those multiple stitches that I needed to keep that finely shredded muslin’s threads in place, required patience. Holding each errant thread trying to escape the woven structure, aided in no part by my encouragement in taking them out one thread at a time in the first place, I too started to breathe easier and the more I worked upon this, the more I relaxed. And the more I calmed down, the more I wanted to quieten down the contrast - especially in the central squarish space.

And that is what I am working on right now. But, I am excited to share this new development.
 

PS: If anyone can give me tips on mordant for dyeing and that ilk, I'd really appreciate it.

 

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[i]Couching is a technique in which yarn or other materials are laid across the surface of the ground fabric and fastened in place with small stitches of the same or a different yarn. In its most basic form couching is among the easier embroidery stitches. Essentially, the couching stitch is just a little straight stitch taken over some other thread (or ribbon or wire) to hold it down.