Equinox Cloth and Mark Making

I've been stitching away on the Equinox Cloth. It's been calming and meditative. I'm using a variation of the running stitch where there are small stitches on the front of the cloth and larger ones on the back. I'm trying to make parallel rows of these small stitches to see the effect that they make.

I like the gentle puckering of the cloth. I've noticed that the lines of puckering run perpendicular to the lines of stitching. I'm also enjoying the "feel" of the layers of stitched cloth...very solid in my hands.

The back side with the larger stitches is also beautiful in its own way. I used a hand-dyed backing cloth that complements the colors of the tea dyed fabrics on the front side.

Today, I pulled out Helen Parrott's book, Mark Making: Fresh Inspiration for Quilt and Fiber Artists.

I love how Helen Parrott works with simple stitches, such as the running stitch, to build a vocabulary of marks. She is strongly influenced by the marks she sees out in nature and in finding ways to interpret that in stitch. Below are some images from her book.

Some of the students in my Healing Cloth workshop suggested that I consider teaching a class just on embroidery. Many, many years ago, I did teach a series on basic hand stitches and how to manipulate them for different effects. I'm noticing that there is a growing interest in hand stitching again so it might be time to consider offering such a class...perhaps on mark-making and stitch structure. Hmm...ideas are starting to whirl around in my head...