General Description & Inspiration for the Piece
My proposed piece is a folded wallet which can be used to store memorabilia from my daughter’s wedding last year, such as invitations, place cards, notes and photos. The wedding took place in Glasgow at House for an Art Lover, which is a mansion designed by Charles Rennie Macintosh. The art nouveau features in the house were a rich source of design inspirations. The wedding was also themed to fit in with the venue, so this was a perfect choice for developing designs. I had also decided, as a result of the work in earlier chapters, that I wanted to make the wallet from silk paper. The finer, more delicate nature of the silk paper also seemed to be a good fit with the theme.
Below are some photographs of leadlight windows, lights and wall decorations from the House.
On the whole the designs are simple but impactful, with repeating motifs and a limited colour palette. The themes which recurred, and which attracted me were the “Glasgow” roses, the leaves or trees, and also the criss-cross lines (reminiscent of grids – such as in the light) which linked in with some of the embroidery we have studied in the module. However, although the same general themes were used in many parts of the house, giving unity to the overall design, small variations often appeared in different places (e.g. not all roses were the same). I decided to apply some of these principles to my own design, limiting the colours to shades of pink, purple and green, repeating the rose shape in different sizes, and filling the stylised roses with several different stitch variations.
Samples
The proposed wallet is based on the A4 one made as a book sample in Chapter 10 (below).
However the size will be increased so that the starting point is an A3 sheet of silk paper. A 7cm fold will be made along one of the long sides so there is a pocket to hold the items of memorabilia. The wallet will be a soft green with pink blotches loosely placed where a series of roses will be worked. I tried out some rose variations before settling on the final design.
The overall appearance will be like this, incorporating the rose, leaf & grid themes. More explanation will be given a little later.
The top flap will have a rose worked with a withdrawn and pulled thread technique, similar to the two samples below. The left one was worked on a thicker fabric to try out the idea, with various colours and stitches. I then found some silk noil scrim which was a lot finer, a looser weave and seemed more suitable for embedding into the silk. I dyed this fabric a light pink and then worked the second sample (right), doing the outline in chain stitch instead of machine stitching. The outer petals were filled with yarn woven over groups of withdrawn threads and mock faggot filling was used for the inner petals.
I then tried out some embroidered rose variations on silk paper.I started with machine stitching, but was not happy with the results, so then went onto hand stitching.
With the hand stitched samples, testing roses in 3 sizes, I tried out a few types of outline stitches, deciding that stem stitch was the best. I also experimented with some filling stitches and different colours (mostly pink). The filling stitch variations included cretan stitch- worked as a single row or layered(left rose) with chain stitch in the centre, Bokhara couching, seed stitch and French knots (centre rose) and couched grids, cretan stitch and detached chain stitch (right rose). All of these gave reasonable results, so I will use a variety of fillings for the roses in the final piece to add interest.
The next sample shows leaves with the outline worked in stem stitch and filled with Bokhara couching. This will appear in certain places in the design and also be placed in the bottom left corner of the loose leaf photograph sheets (discussed below).
Design Mock Up
The front of the design incorporating the rose, leaf & grid themes was shown above. The main feature is lots of stylised Glasgow roses worked in various sizes, different shades of pink and varied stitches. I photocopied my stitched rose samples and cut out the roses, so I could experiment with the size and placement. This shows how the wallet will look when the top flap is raised.
The green grid will be machine stitched and is used to link the various sections of the folded design. The edges of the paper will also be outlined with a row of green random free machine stitching as used in the earlier book sample.
The back of the wallet will feature 3 roses plus the leaf and grid design.
The next photo shows the inside of the wallet when it is unfolded. The machine stitched lines will show through and extra rose and leaf motifs will be added to the inside pocket.
Instead of stitching some extra sheets of paper into the wallet, as I did with the book sample, I am going to try embedding some of my favourite photos into smaller sheets of silk paper which can be stored as loose leaves inside the wallet. If the embedding doesn’t work I will make a hole in the paper and stick the photo in (see example below). A small motif will be worked on the bottom left, as shown below, to link these pages with the wallet design.
Eyelets will be worked into the top right hand corner of each sheet and a handmade cord or ribbon inserted to loosely tie them all together like a small book which will be inserted into the pocket of the folder.
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