Sew right!
Lorraine Roy and Christel Wille create with needle, thread and fabric
Making stitches on fabric is a lifetime passion for Lorraine Roy and Christel Wille, two local textile artists.
“I have never not worked with fabric,” says Roy.
Wille echoes that, saying she learned to sew as a child.
“I’ve always worked with needle and thread, because that’s what girls, women and grandmothers did.”
Roy works with patchwork and quilting.
“There is nothing about my materials and tools that is out of the ordinary and I like it that way. I am never without whatever I need,” she says.
“I have a huge stash of fabric and thread that I have been collecting for decades, so I don’t have to search for materials for each new piece. I mainly use printed cotton fabric, but the sky is the limit, really.
“As for tools, my 45-year-old Industrial Bernina sewing machine, with basic straight and zigzag capabilities, is my right arm.”
Roy’s subjects are mostly trees. In “Heart of Green #2,” she creates an arboreal cross section. Uneven circles of many patterned fabrics are layered and sewn onto a square fabric base. The circles of diminishing widths stand for a tree’s age rings and the passing of time. The centre comprises six machine-embroidered trees, the shapes of their bare branches and roots complementing one another.
Roy riffs on nature’s irregularities by leaving fabric edges frayed. And she anchors the fraying edges with straight and zigzag stitches, sometimes in the same row.
In Autumn Circle #7, an orange leaf occupies the centre of the composition. White bare trees grow from the outermost circle, a circle broken only by two gaps, or splits, signs of a tree with a long life.
“Most often I am researching and thinking about a particular theme, so the images arise from that process,” Roy says.
“Scientific research on botanical themes always lights up my imagination and generates ideas. I start thinking about how I can translate them into visual form.
“My favourite part of the process is drawing various versions in coloured pencil, and refining them until I feel I can make them work in fabric. The design can stay true to the original concept, or change dramatically.”
Wille’s artistic journey began with sewing, but she trained as a coppersmith. Then she embraced weaving, spinning, dyeing and silkscreen printing.
“After many years as a fibre artist, I gave up weaving and spinning — they’re very hard on the back — and turned to glass.
“Then, I got very interested in wood turning. But you can only turn for so many hours in a day, it’s physically demanding work, and I can’t bear to have idle hands, so my evenings are spent stitching. Everything comes full circle, eventually.”
Wille embroidered tiny stitches by hand on a fabric base for “Garden Music.” Coloured circles, looking like stylized blooms, are interrupted by a grid of black lines and sinuous black lines that recall a treble clef.
“The ground fabric and the subject dictates what stitches I will use, and what threads. I use silk, linen and cotton ground fabrics, and silk, cotton or wool space-dyed threads.”
Threads of many colours enliven “Storage.” Squares, rectangles, triangles and parallelograms create the illusion of three-dimensional boxlike shapes. Each shape offers different stitches and colours.
“I often create a rough sketch on paper and make marks on the fabric to follow, but things can change while you are working so I’m not always strict about following the sketch,” Wille says.
“I have also created many works that begin with a stencilled design — my own design — on fabric which I embroider around or over.”
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.