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My work always involves machine embroidery. It is often based on a theme, usually inspired by a mix of natural form and man-made structures. Before starting, the end product is not known. It emerges through drawing and painting, sifting through the imagery, selecting and re-drawing, changing scale, mixing colours, putting shape with shape and pattern with pattern. This process begins on paper and progresses naturally into fabric and thread. My first range of hats and accessories developed as course work for the Diploma for Designer Craftsmen at West Nottinghamshire College. I came to this course in order to focus on the development of my embroidery work. The design development aspects were a joy. Degree training in embroidery at Loughborough had not included such approaches and any that evolved later have come out of working as a teacher. Concentrating on one project rather than leaping from idea to idea, I began to analyse what lay behind a good idea. Extending it and adding to it, my own work emerged.
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Working from life or from photographs taken in order to understand the imagery, information is extracted and manipulated. Selection is highly personal and intuitive. While aiming for uniqueness, it is important to ensure that functional articles are usable. Drawing on my knowledge of art, dressmaking, pattern cutting, embroidery and all the other bits and pieces learned along the way, I always find something new to investigate that will add to the knowledge bank.
A palette from the art work is selected and the colours mixed in different ways and quantities. New colours are created by these mixes as they would be by mixing paint but, in machine embroidery, a texture is also being created. Continual mixing tends towards a drab colour scheme so the colours are also used individually to maintain clarity. The aim is for the form, surface and decoration to develop from the art and design work. I have experimented with stitching into conventional millinery materials, stiffening with glues, using unconventional materials such as plastic and also allowing the build-up of stitch to create its own stiffness in order to build embroidery in three dimensions.
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The experiments in embroidery lead directly from the work on paper. The imagery grows out of the original source and may even leave it behind, developing into something more abstract. An important feature in the finished design may have started off as an insignificant detail in the original material, such as the way a corner folds, or the shape of a shadow. In this way, my hats and accessories contain the essence of the source without direct representation. These first hats were based on an imagery taken from the Yorkshire coast, particularly the scraps of net and rope caught in an old rusting jetty. These were painted with acrylics and stitched onto buckram, pelmet Vilene and pond netting (from the garden centre) to create the ground surfaces of the hats. Cotton yarn and wire were covered with zig-zag machine stitching, while beads were made out of plastic modelling material and stitched onto compressed cotton balls. Combining these in a variety of ways, the patterns, textures and shapes developed in the art work were constructed in three-dimensional textile. These samples were then developed further into the hats themselves, details within the hats, or additional items such as brooches and hat pins.
Since completing the college course, I have produced work based on Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet in Sheffield and Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. The outcome of these projects has been more hats and also associated articles such as bags, scarves and jewellery. I enjoy the whole physical and mental process of drawing, designing and making, delighting in fast, wild scribbling on the sewing machine, mixing colours and building textures. However, I also like neat structures and a tidy finish to my work. Fashion accessories allow working in an experimental way while also conforming to their function.
Sue Lancaster is a freelance embroiderer and lecturer making fashion articles for exhibition and commission. She is a Licentiate Member of the Society of Designer Craftsmen, a member of the Dodeka Designers and of the Sheffield Art through Textile Group
This article is from The World of Embroidery, Volume 49 No.3, © Sue Lancaster 1998.
highlights from May 1998 issue