When I first started this series, it was an experiment to see if I could quickly color an embroidery hoop with flame to provide a little more contrast for displaying a blackwork embroidery piece. I also had grand ideas about ornamentation of embroidery hoops themselves, adding woodburned vines or small leaves and flowers onto the wood as I’d seen a few fibre artists displaying pieces with painted or stained hoops. My first disappointment was that unless the hoop was coated in polyurethane before mounting the fabric, the soot from the burn would stain my piece and it was impossible to get out. My second was that as a grass and not a wood, bamboo contracted and drastically changed shape when I applied the flame. The warped hoop didn’t fit into the inner ring the same way and couldn’t pull the fabric as tightly as I needed it to.
I remember staring at the wall a little while and then noticing a stack of thin wooden rounds I had purchased years before, for practicing pyrography. They were six inch rounds and very light but burned beautifully. Because they were thin, they weren’t suitable for display and were too large for coasters so once I had developed my skill beyond scrap wood they had sat unused. I realized then that my warped six inch outer hoop rings might fit on them as they didn’t need the tight fit that fabric would.
I had a lot of ideas about embroidery and pyrography as opposing mediums, at their basic tactile level there’s obviously a lot of contrast. You have one historically associated with female labor, and one largely considered a more masculine medium in terms of artist demographics and popular subject matter. Both are ancient and largely accessible.
I thought exploring this tension would be inherently kind of interesting. Mimicking blackwork embroidery with the freedom of line movement, using hatching instead of traditional pyrography shading, might evoke a kind of traditional woodcut look. I started by making copies of vintage illustrations before attempting my own work.
When I began using my own work, I tried to use designs that bridged the gap between what I wanted to achieve with embroidery and what was only possible with my available time investment at that scale with illustrative linework. I think the results are visually kind of interesting.
