Pad Stitch Manipulations
This work explores the three-dimensional qualities of pad stitch. This is a stitch traditionally used to shape bespoke tailored suits and is usually completely hidden inside a garment. The tailor works pad stitch by hand, most commonly on the inner stiffening fabric layer of suit collars and lapels, with tiny stitches just catching to the under-collar suit fabric. The differential pull of the stitches between the two layers encourages the fabric to curve and the tailor gently manipulates the fabrics with their fingers to create the contours of a smoothly rolled collar or produce an exact fit.
In this work the pad stitch threads are exposed and highlighted, extending beyond the fabric layers to reach through the drilled sides of the box, pulling the stitches into an increased tension and exaggerating the differential curves created by this manipulation. The overall curving path of the fabrics in this work was inspired by the gently undulating pages of an open old ledger book in the Sunny Bank Mills Archive, and produces a symmetrical work of concave and convex curves so that both sides of the stitch can be viewed simultaneously.
