Textures

Coming from a long career in quilting I understood that the actual quilting was an integral part of the overall product, but was a minimalist when it came to the quilting of my quilts, enjoying the process of colour and fabric selection much more than the final quilting of the project. The choice of thread colour and overall pattern added dimension and interest to the quilt and the advent of free motion quilting and thread painting added much needed depth and texture to an otherwise flat plane.

Now that I have mostly abandoned the making and quilting of large quilts and choosing instead to focus on smaller fibre art and mixed media pieces texture has become a very important aspect of the work. Texture can be added by using varied and interesting items such as threads, dimensional items like painted and heat altered Tyvek™ and Lutradur™, spackle, modeling paste, layers of papers, found objects, raised embroidery stitches and beads.

These past few weeks I have been taking an early morning walk, mostly for the exercise, but as I was passing manicured gardens, broken brick walls and construction sites I began to notice all the interesting textures around me so have been taking my trusty little digital along to document them.

Textures can be nature made, nature made and altered by nature, nature made and altered by man, man made, man made and altered by nature and man made and altered by man. Here are just a few of them.

I hope to translate these textures into my fibre arts and mixed media pieces over the next months..