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.

An Awkward Marriage.....

 

 I started using copper wire in my textile pieces around 2004. It was then an adjunct to frame the fabrics, lending strength to cloth I had taken apart thread by thread and rendered virtually thread

-bare.

I moved away from this practice. I found it laborious even then to work with the wire. But, after a gap of many years, around March this year, I decided to pick it up again - using the same copper wire to embroider with. It was awkward to say the least. Earlier, it was intended as a support for the fragile nature of fabric I had created, this time I tried to integrate it into the fabric structure itself.
 

Although it is relatively malleable as far as most wire is concerned, this copper wire is still tough to work with - to get it to do what I want. It goes all over the place, reminding me of how difficult it can be dealing with people who are WIRED differently.
 

When I stopped trying to control the gleaming russet wire, its wilful meanderings brought elements into play that thread could never do and started me thinking.....

I have persisted with many ghastly results but slowly we are finding a way to make things work. Or so I think...  ..!

Compared to needle and thread which is delicate and so amenable, the copper wire makes these grand but clumsy sweeps. I don't use a needle. It works as needle and thread in one, but its point is not as sharp as a needle, so it isn't easy to penetrate the layers of fabric that I like to work with.

I won’t blame anyone for thinking its sacrilege to add this rather crass, awkwardly meandering thread alongside the delicate Kantha and chain stitch. I am in two minds about it myself.

 

 It takes a lot of work to marry their disparate elements but there's also something about the wire, which sort of eggs me on to keep working with it, despite the awkwardness.

I let the wire thread its gauche way through the fabric and then I spend hours covering its naked audacity with floss, using a half hitch knot[i], which is similar to a buttonhole stitch, except that the latter catches a loop of the thread on the surface of the fabric, while the half-hitch knot is traditionally used without a needle to secure some object with rope to a hitching post. Anyway the process of covering this wire with three strands of untwisted embroidery floss takes forever and the thread gets so twisted that I cannot continue. So I have to turn the piece upside down, let it hang a bit, to let the twisted thread unwind, then get it back up again and start the process all over again.

I liken this, to what I feel myself, when life is challenging and it seems that I have to stand upside down, to be able sort it all out.

 

When I stand upside-down the whole world is perfect.

It’s when I have my feet on the ground

that everything looks upside down.

 

I have to admit that working with the wire has been getting to me of late - not quite enjoying it as much as when I started out.
 

The gawky gestures of the copper wire are alien to the delicacy of stitch, yet also evocative of some part of me that is restless, impatient and insecure, wanting to live larger than life, even if it’s just occasionally so, before I am brought down to earth with a thud.

And it happened one Sunday evening six weeks ago, on 30^th June to be precise, when I collapsed after a swim, shivering with a sudden rise in temperature to 103 degrees. I panicked, more at the fact that in the middle of a summer evening’s temperature of 38 degrees Celsius, I lay under a light Jaipuri quilt, without a fan on, my teeth chattering, while everyone around me, in the same room, had sweat pouring down their cheeks. To add to my consternation, even my yoga teacher had left a message, earlier in the day, to say that I should take it easy with the regimen.

Things had been hectic and I was exhausted, but I thought: it can't me more than that. Anyway, I went through the blood tests nonetheless thinking, that at worst, I must have picked up some viral bug. Eventually I was diagnosed with typhoid which is why the pages of this e-journal haven’t been written in for a while.

 

But, all the health shenanigans aside, the pressing question is:  should I persist with this marriage of wire and thread, or is thread alone enough?

 

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[i] The half-hitch is an ancient knot which is a simple overhand knot where the working end of a line is brought over and under the standing part.  It cannot stand on its own and is usually tied around a pole or some structure, even rope. It has however been incorporated into beading and other embroidery methods.

The Violence of A Needle

The other day, my friend Manisha, posted this comment as her status on facebook:

[20th June 2013]

 

“Nigella chocked, Rihanna battered, Madonna hit on the head with baseball bat, Halle Berry hit so hard that she looses hearing, Whitney Houston with cut-lip & bruised cheek, Mariah Carey too !!! [Delhi Times 19/6]

........dear men of the World.what is it that propels you to such aggression...is it just patriarchy????...from glitzy Hollywood to our own shores.........for a while I shall avoid asking ''what right do you have to do so?"

 

[I have reprinted it exactly as she wrote it, spelling mistakes included]

 

It was late in the evening when I read it and soon after, I picked up my  embroidery. I kept thinking about what she had said. I could not dismiss it. I too have been in relationships that have been abusive and violated my sense of self in physical and emotional ways and I could understand where she was coming from. It allowed me to feel my rage too. Does it happen to all women? Is it about self-respect or lack of it? And what does one do when one has been through such experiences? The newspapers report some crime or other each day. Rape, murder, terror and even the recent flooding in Uttarakhand is no less violent, is it?

 

With these thoughts circling my mind, I kept sewing. Needle in, pull the thread, needle out, going round and around, tracing the stains with a running stitch. And then I realized that using the needle could also be considered an act of violence. The fabric is mute, it does not protest and just like I made the stains, it seemed that I was subjecting the fabric through the act of stitching, of piercing it again and again with the point of this sharp instrument, to another kind of violence. I looked at this long, slender tool, held between my thumb and forefinger, its pointed tip poised to strike again, waiting to lunge forth into the fabric, at my command.

 

I stared at it long and hard. It was after all a perpetrator of violence – a criminal like all the men who raped and abused and those who killed, and mother nature herself was not beyond it too. As they say when someone is cruel – what kind of person are you, what are you made of? I have no idea what the needle is made of. I asked it the same question: what are you made of? I looked on the packaging for some clues, but there was no mention of materials used.

 

Needles have been around for a long time and sewing in the subcontinent dates back to the Indus Valley civilization - needles have been excavated at Mohenjodaro. I quickly did some research and learned that the first needles were apparently made of bone or wood while the modern ones are made using high carbon steel wire which is nickel or 18 carat gold plated to minimize corrosion resistance. The highest quality embroidery needles are apparently plated with two-thirds platinum and one-third titanium alloy. They are tough and pierce through fabric without bending or losing shape - without any kind of compassion it seems.

 

I had never thought of sewing as a violent activity but as I continued with my embroidery, I learned something.

 

The layers of fabric in my hands had been subjected to considerable violence. I had burned it. I had shred it and had then stitched these layers with needle and thread, piercing through the warp and weft, tearing the very fabric asunder. But the miracle of stitch is that the needle may wound, the needle may pierce and tear, but the thread it carries, keeps it all together – embellishing the fabric it wounds.

 

If one considers how beautiful embroidery can be and how much this art is used to embellish our clothes and homes, then the needle doesn’t just wound or violate, it provides for another dimension to be added to the fabric. If one could extend this to the human fabric, could one begin to look at acts of violation as opportunities that add something of value to the fabric of being?

 

Something to think about.....?

 

 

 

Running Alongside Kantha.....

Yesterday was incredibly muggy. I felt very sluggish. I am usually disciplined about my exercise in the evenings, but the pool was shut and my legs just refused to walk.

 

 Tuesday is also teaching day for me. Much as I enjoy it, I also feel drained. Getting to understand someone and how to draw out their creativity can be taxing and I look forward to my own thread ramblings at the end of the day. But I was fidgety yesterday. I did not feel like doing anything. I had this craving for chocolate so decided to get a Snickers bar and worry about the calories another day. Well, I did sort of consider it a possible bribe to persuade myself to walk around afterwards, but it did not happen.

 

Finally, around 8.30pm, when I saw that I was not inclined to do anything else, I did get down to doing some embroidery and before I knew it, the time was 1.00 am.  All I had done in over four hours was rows and rows of Kantha - one stitch running after the other. It’s on days like this that the magic of embroidery reveals itself anew. 

 

Stitching never seems like work and I can keep doing it for hours together. I wonder if any of you feel the same way too. Often, I feel guilty if I spend the whole day doing this instead of writing and attending to other mundane stuff like accounts and household chores. I usually do my needlework at night when all the rest has been taken care of and I can just sew. 

I find Kantha with its almost mechanical steps - of needle in, picking up the cloth at three to four points together, keeping the thread length, as equal as possible and then, a gentle tug that creates a healing whisper as the thread passes through the ruptured fabric, is very calming. You need to concentrate, but after a while its almost automatic, like breathing, you almost don’t realise you are doing it until the thread finishes or somehow a knot appears.

 

I went round and round the fabric with neat rows of running stitch. By now I have added some more fabric stained with tea leaves onto the white muslin, alongside the burned-and-cooked-one-inch-bit I started out with. On Saturday, I took out some nylon net, silk organza and cotton organdie and using Red label tea, dyed these fabrics. To my surprise, the cotton fabric barely stained, but the organza dyed a delicious umber and the nylon net took on an interesting ochre shade that veered towards a hint of burnt sienna. I did not iron out the creases in the organza as I thought this would add texture to the muslin. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do as this piece has been a bit of a challenge. The process has been more intuitive than planned.

Working with photographed images, as I did earlier, was much easier because the marks were already there and there was a kind of narrative that I could develop through them. Here, I started out with a blank canvas. There was so much to say, but needle and thread demands patience. I have to tell my story slowly, at the pace of the needle. And today, what intrigued me was doing Kantha over creased organza and yellowed net and the unusual texture the running stitch took on. It’s hard to describe in words so do look at the photos. I found the thread almost luminous when it stitched over the net.

 

Yes, I know. I have cut and torn the fabric quite brutally after the delicious layers of thread running neatly around. It happens, I need to vent my frustration and in a sense it is also the frustration of stitch – its painstaking process is pitted against the speed of a digital age.  Running against the tide of time would frustrate anyone and to keep going at snail’s pace because that is the best you can do is not just a challenge, it’s the only way to keep alive a tradition – its skill and art. 

Imagine, if no-one stitched with the hand anymore, if there were no needles left on the planet. Imagine then, a planet of people that did not know how to sew with their hands. Imagine our Earth without all the beautiful embroideries that mankind has made and seen.

 

I can’t.

 

Needles have to sew.... to ensure stitch lives on.

 

 

 

15 June 2013, Saturday

Yesterday, I picked up my embroidery after a few weeks of just not being able to engage with it.

 

A fresh slate it was.

I had started afresh with the idea of taking the stains one step at a time. In other words a little at a time because the earlier piece, the one I had started in March had become too daunting to work upon – there just seemed to be so much of those dark and foreboding marks, that I felt intimidated.

So last evening, I took a small fragment of the fabric I had stained with tea – one piece just sort of disintegrated and came apart in my hands and gave me the idea – inspired me to re-think this way.

I envisaged taking this one inch by one inch piece of dark brown fabric and placing it on white muslin and just doing the barest minimum of stitch around it. I had wanted to let the mark speak for itself. It had seemed such a simple idea, at the time, but the enormous contrast in scale and colour and of juxtaposing something so weathered and beaten against a pristine surface was even more daunting.

 

I started off just tacking the loose ends onto the fabric. I wanted to keep that sense of disintegration and then these threads led the running stitch all over the fabric, but the process is slow and the large expanse of white to be covered, with a kantha stitch that cannot give me as dark a surface as the staining had done, was troubling but it was a pleasure to be doing kantha again.

 

 

I love the little ridges that appear and sometimes I even deliberately pucker the fabric, pulling at the thread to create a little bit of tension. I have also layered the fabric. There are two layers of loosely woven cotton [markeen] below the white muslin, which creates a soft quilted sort of look.

I ambled along, going around in concentric circles for a while. They seemed to evoke my confusion and it was also a means to find some order through the process.  I worked for a couple of hours and  then called it a night.

Introduction

When I first embarked upon this journey, examining the marks in my tea-cup and ruminating through thread, I worked with digitally printed images on fabric. In this way, I used the photographed images to trace the marks with thread. After about three years of doing it this way, I thought that I would create the marks on fabric using tea-leaves to make actual stains, rather than working with stains in the tea-cup that I had photographed. 

 

I made and drank tea and saved the tea leaves and tea bags and would dump them ad hoc onto white muslin fabric and pour hot water over them, leaving them for a couple of hours to stain. If that was not enough I would put the fabric with the tea leaves and some water inside a hot oven to bake them as it were, often ‘cooking’ them until the fabric started to char.

 

I was careless. I really did not care how I made the marks. Actually, I had never done this before, so I tried this and that and bumbled along. I loved the marks that emerged. I felt a certain empathy with them. They were evocative of what I had endured through life, what I often felt like: Burned, torn, stained and so fragile that all I seemed capable of doing was trying to make sense of what my life was and why it had turned out this way.

 

The fabric is stained but not. colourful.The fabric is burned but not yet turned to ashes, there is still some life in her. At first I was quite excited working on the fabric as it was, but then realized that it really was too much to handle all that darkness in one go. No matter what I did to the fabric it seemed to depress me, as if one could never transcend it.

 

But I persisted; I added beads and metallic thread and then worked with copper wire, using it as thread - covering it partially with a hundreds of half hitch stitches. Actually I made it up as I went along. I used a needle and thread, doing my own version which was more like a button-hole stitch. My intention was to add colour to an otherwise drab landscape.

 

Maggie, a textile friend from Australia was visiting and when she took a look, felt there was too much going on. However, at that point [end of March 2013] I was enjoying playing with the various materials, so I thought why not go over the top and for a while it was fun, but then I found  myself staring at the work for days without wanting to pick it up and realized that it really had become too much to handle.

 

There was very little charm left in speaking to her, engaging with her. She seemed so spent through the grueling process I have subjected her to, that she gave me nothing back when I tried to engage with her. The marks had no story they wanted me to tell. Or maybe there is just so much that it’s too intense for me to comprehend? It’s as if she can’t care to explain the marks: marks which I created with my carelessness. All she does is to lie pliant in my hands, in total surrender.

I gave up working on the piece, but she was constantly in my mind – at the back of everything else that I did. Often, I would just look at her and wonder how I would ever find a way to tackle the marks again.

 

About a month or so passed by and another couple of artist friends dropped by my studio. It was through my discussions with Kathryn, a painter, from the US and Manisha, a potter, who works in Delhi, that all those thoughts found some re-direction - a way forward and that is where this journal starts.