Canadian smocking and quarry inspiration

January has appeared and I’ve decided to utilise blogger as a means to properly record my experiments, investigations and development of work.

It’s nice to get some feedback from Instagram stories but I’ve discovered by posting work by this means, I’m closing the ‘dopamine hit’ loop and often then work comes to a grinding halt. This way, I can still post, and it becomes a record of my work stage and I'm not distracted by how many people notice it and appreciate it.

So, I’ll start by showing my samples of Canadian smocking which I had the urge to try back in the autumn, it turned out to be incredibly satisfying and I was very excited to try more.

Immediately I found myself thinking about creating larger and/or smaller scale pieces. Dying, dipping in paint or ink. Using unusual materials like leather, plastic and velour - the material I find most difficult to handle! (pausing to consider sensory issues and what I could do with this)

But more than anything I wanted to make wall hangings. It then occurred to me that pulling the fabric close into tight layers, like you would in scottish smocking techniques, would have similarities to layers of rock, and so went out to my favourite spot locally for inspiration.

This is an old disused quarry near Scrabster that sits on the edge of a high cliff. It’s been a source of inspiration for many years. Very dramatic and eerily quiet.

I understand you’ll not see the connection from the two subjects with no in between visuals at this point, as I haven’t photographed any collecting of various fabric types that I intend to d., perhaps all coloured black, pulled together with smocking stitches to emulate the passage of time, and layers of rock strata. This is something to put on the plan of 'work to do'.

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Lindsey Gallacher

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