After-Gees-Bend

By Connie Pickering Stover
Completed: 2013
Finished size: 14″ x 14″

Canvas size: 18 stitches per inch
Materials: Hand painted threads; DMC and Anchor cotton pearl and floss
This piece was created entirely in the basket weave stitch.

About

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“After Gees Bend” was a project years in the making. I followed the women of Gees Bend and their breathtaking quilt designs for over 10 years. I just couldn’t get enough of their bold attack on design; making un-square squares, crooked angles, mismatched patters, and daring leaps of imagination that created quilts that are now museum quality works of art.

I love the amazing designs of the women of Gees Bend, Alabama,  and have always wanted to try my hand at designing a needlepoint to celebrate them.

The challenge for me was to blend hand painted threads in multiple strands to emulate well-worn denim and old printed fabrics. I de-stranded hand painted 6-ply cotton floss and combined individual strands back together to create 5 plys that came close to looking like well-word denim.

You might notice in the work in progress that I did not intend to create an inner arc. That came after I was very well into the project and decided that is would be better balanced and more interesting if I added a smaller arc to separate the design once more. That’s why it’s so much fun to create my pieces – much of the time I have no idea where it will lead me!