Until now, I hadn’t experimented with abstract art in my stitching challenge. So this week marks my first abstract art in stitch challenge. I’ve had this sketch for over a month but initially, I’d planned to execute it entirely in fabric collage and to create a much larger work. But as I thought about which of my sketches to stitch this week, I wondered about this one. What if I could somehow use stitch to execute this?

Even as I started putting together the collage pieces, I kept asking myself how I could feature more of stitch in this work. Although many options went through my mind, I didn’t have any answers right up to the time when I sat at the sewing machine to sew. I didn’t know how I was going to sew it – all I knew was, I was going to sew. And I did. Here’s the value drawing in colored pencils.

Here’s the piece I brought to the sewing machine. I didn’t add fabric collage pieces to the right-hand side because I suddenly noticed that I was executing exclusively in collage, so I just stopped and headed to the sewing machine.  I was hoping to have it all figured out before going to sew but I didn’t.

Quite frankly, I was satisfied with the way it looks right here.  Some part of me didn’t want to go explore using stitch.  I wanted to stick with my usual execution in fabric. Moreover, it took a couple of hours to get the collage pieced, why would I want to mess it up?  But I made myself go to the sewing machine to find out if there was something new I could learn. I started with what was familiar – stitching the fabric collage pieces. I decided to simply echo each shape with stitch. Later, I drew some circle shapes on the right-hand side to remind me that I needed to do something with that space. Here’s the video showing me trying to figure out what to do. Here’s where I stopped for this week.

Detail view of the Left Hand Side of Abstract Art in Stitch:

Detail View of the Right Hand Side of Abstract Art in Stitch:

Next week, I’ll be exploring the right-hand side some more.  I hope you’ll join me to see how I might execute this piece of abstract art in stitch. Warmest Regards,     Watch and read about the entire Stitch The Sketch series.