Stitch Club: beaded rust

Series: Stitch Club no.14

Workshop: Stitched and embellished surfaces
Host: Beatrice Mayfield website – Instagram
Aim: Create a small fabric collage, inspired by marks or patterns from your everyday surroundings, using a mix of beading and embellishment techniques.

I think that this is my favourite out of all the things that I made last year, though the wire and wax leaf (another Stitch Club project) is also a contender. The difference with this one is that I started out with an idea of how it would look, I didn’t make it up as I went along, and it actually turned out the way I envisaged it!

As soon as I read the brief for this project I knew which of my photographs I was going to use for inspiration. The brief gave me the opportunity to focus on rust, urban decay and the inconsequential, overlooked details in the environment — all things that interest me.

There’s a footbridge across a nearby railway line that I cross whenever I go to the local hospital. Like many such structures, its paintwork has seen better days. There are patches that have been randomly painted over in a different colour, there are rusting bits, and then there are patches of rust that have been randomly painted over.

Like this one that I photographed. Loads of interesting texture and that lovely orange rust contrasting with the neutrals of the paint. Rather than diving straight in, I actually spent some time planning how I would convert this into a textile work, picking out shapes and contemplating materials.

This would be a true mixed media piece incorporating fabrics, inks, gesso, thread and beads, brought together with painting, stamping and stitch.

I chose a linen base as that has more texture than the quilting cotton I usually use. I frayed the edges of the denim square before dry-brushing white gesso across it. For the next layer, I took a piece of white cotton, a small “splat” stamp, and a few different brown and grey inks, and created a suitably distressed look. The rust patch was cut from a piece of patterned cotton fabric that I had treated with Terial Magic to prevent it fraying. The rust drips are made from small pieces of sari ribbon scrap.

Once those pieces were stitched in place “all” that was left to do was to stitch the sequins and beads around the edge of the rust patch. I didn’t bother keeping count as I sewed them on, but curiosity just led me to do a rough count and there are more than two hundred individual sequins and beads on there… it took a while.

This was the one part of this project that I did make up as I went along. I started out by going through my stash and picking out things that looked like they’d be the right size and in the right colour palette. Then I chose a point on the edge of the rust patch and started to work my way around. My main aim was to avoid creating any sort of obvious pattern, to keep the appearance looking organic and natural.

I am very happy with how it turned out. I think it works both as a not-too-literal interpretation of the reference photo and, hopefully, as a standalone abstract piece without knowledge of the reference photo (though obviously it is impossible for me to judge that). And I had fun creating all the textures along the way.