Shibori too

Some very old bits and bobs, over dyed with a shibori layer. This one reminds me of the Aurora - night flowers perhaps

a tiny scrap with a little shibori applied to the "leaves", previously mono printed

another second layer on my Eco shibori - this with royal rather than turquoise to see what happens; the latest in the the Homage dyeing experiments. I've been stitching that as well but no pics to show at the moment

A bit of silk viscose dyed a couple of weekends ago

And these, given an initial layer yesterday, washed, rinsed, dried, ironed ready for today's layer. These are very small bits of fabric, test pieces to look at how the fabric reveals the dye. Satin viscose and silk velvet - I stitched both pieces with similar patterns.

the velvet was really thirsty for all that colour

Each cut in half. Now to add a next layer of dye. First stitching to re-shibori, echoing what has gone before. Again, I'm also testing to see how much dye each fabric will take.

above shows the backs. I try to echo or at least stitch in harmony with the layer below in the next layer of stitches. All pulled up tight.

Now sitting in a very small pot of mixed turquoise, black and a smidge of golden yellow

Again, I'll report later

So here's what's happening

in between the comings and goings of life, here is one of my current wanderings with dye and cloth - this on a slightly slubby silk previously dyed by spraying lightly with blues. All on a very small scale, this is Health and Safety respectful kitchen dyeing!

In keeping with the colour theme pop some little scatterings of dye into a small pot along with some soda and salt

Take previously dyed fabric and soak in a rich solution of soda and salt

Shake up the dye, salt and soda powder

sprinkle over the soda soaked, still wet fabric

and wait

I'll update you tomorrow

Framing - preparation

so I've stitched these little bits of cloth together to make a bigger bit of cloth. Now to frame it. I don't have a big enough piece of the remaining fabric to make one long border, so will piece in strips to make a three inch frame. A suggestion of some dark blue to add into that mix prompted an impromptu ice cream tub shibori session. I've kept some of this fabric as it is, but have taken a couple of bits to darken down. An opportunity to add another layer - remember this started as white fabric with some onion skin eco printing done in 2011

First stich the cloth, trying to regularise the pattern underneath, whilst keeping some of the subtleties of what's gone before, reserving little bits of light or colour with stitch to draw up tight and save from the dye.


Tie up good and tight and fluffle (yes, that's a technical term) out the wrinkles to make them lie evenly and flow away from the pulled up stitching.

Then in to the ice cream tub with a good dose of salt, more turquoise, a splash of black and a grain or two of scarlet.












Half an hour and on with the soda.


Now we just have to wait for morning.

A little homage cloth

This is a little something I'm working on at the moment. Some Conny and Harry's sheeting, eco printed with onion skin and maple leaf some considerable time ago, left to be thought about.

Last weekend I took them out, extracted the leaf prints and dyed the rest a gentle turquoise, some shibori'ed, some just dipped.


I dyed them in little batches, each of thirty minutes, then took out of the dye and plunged in a soda rich solution in another bucket.

Now cut into pieces of regular size and proportion, I've been hand stiching them together using the Jude method of (in my case) finger pressed paperless piecing. She has made a significant proportion of her early online classes available free. It was these that got me started, though I have changed her basic nine patch construction for something a bit more free form.

Influences paid homage to with this?

Jude              India                 Susan                   Judy                    Lotta

all women whose blogs I follow regularly and whose ideas I ponder on and absorb.

I am struck, as one can only be from personal experience, by the portability and ease with which this human powered assemblage of pieces can bring small scraps of fabric together into a larger whole. You can finger press seam allowances, stitch anywhere, become absorbed in the rhythm of the stitching, recognise a deep link with stitchers everywhere and at all times, that swish of thread through fabric, the shape and pattern found in stitching, the way the whole thing, because it's taking place slowly, allows for modification along the way.

Not quite complete yet, and pre proper pressing here. I have changed layout, orientation, combination of these bits of fabric as they have joined with one another and, because I'm working with regular blocks of 1,2,3 and 6 inches, I can chose to combine elements in various ways, which all build to a maximum 6 inch block. These are now being assembled into a larger whole, which will then get a border to frame. A twelve patch.

Then, of course, more stitch

Sampler finished

at last I've finished the first bit of the Branch stitch project. It really has taken far too long, in fact I see it was started in January this year, which is a little ridiculous! However, I've learnt a huge amount and have really enjoyed it. It looks a little darker here than in reality, but with dark fabric you have to trick the camera by taking the half depress to get the tones from somewhere else, at the same distance of course. In this case I focused on the carpet, which is a light beige, then moved the camera to take in the stitching

What have I learnt? That you need to use the right needle for the weight of thread, otherwise it doesn't pull through the fabric well and gets more wear, so doesn't last as long; that the shinier rayon threads have a tendency to untwist much more, so they squiggle and wiggle about while you are stitching, which can be very counter productive; that starting and finishing tidily is really helpful; that blanket stitch is far more versatile than I could have imagined; and finally, that I'm very glad I didn't get French Knots!!

I love these little knotted buttonhole stitches in the bottom right quadrant, and will use them in the next, pictorial bit of stitching, to evoke some flowers in a field

and of course how could one forget buttonhole stitch as used in Stumpwork? OK, I nearly did, but amended plans for the central circle to include a little setting sun of corded buttonhole, which I'm really pleased with.

All in all, a really interesting and enjoyable project with plenty learnt, not least the getnly art of finishing!! Hope you like it.

A Lull

I'm in the real doldrums at the moment with my stitching and textiles in general. I've nearly finished the first of my stitch pieces for the Guild, but just can't settle to finishing it.

I've still got my ordered squares of linen I took to Birmingham to work on, but have done very little since except stitch them all down to the background. I have a Studio11 session tomorrow, and am feeling all squirbled because I have done no preparation and have no idea what I'm going to do at all, except take pleasure in the space to just be and perhaps ponder. I will at least put some threads together for the linen squares and take my Guild piece to finish!

In part I think it's probably down to some health issues. For several years I've had an intermittent nagging pain in my midriff. Having had some keyhole surgery go disastrously wrong a while ago now, I'd always put it down to aftereffects from this - you don't want to see the scars, I look quilted!! Then, in the week before we went off to the Lakes it got considerably worse for a number of days; so much so that we wondered if we'd go at all, but it settled down to bearable. Since we got back I've been for an ultrasound scan, always a fascinating process, such magical technology. It turns out, I have gallstones! A veritable constellation of them in fact, so my good doctor and I decided today that it's time to sort it out. Expect an announcement of surgery sometime in the future. Hopefully this keyhole will go right ....

Meanwhile I've been reading some treasures. A friend recommended both authors, first Kathleen Dean Moore

Then Kathleen Jamie.

 

Both write wonderfully about being in nature, in very differing ways and in very different places. I've been struck as much by the contrasts as I have by the pleasure of reading. The first, who is American, writes from a philosopher's point of view, and the landscapes she describes could only be those of her homeland. There is a particular quality in what she describes and perhaps also in the way she writes that belongs there; a sense of largeness, openness. I found myself wondering whether growing up in a huge continent with such immense scale somehow evokes a similar expansion of thought and aspiration.

Kathleen Jamie is a Scots poet, and my near contemporary. She has a poet's feeling for language and for the landscape and at times touches on her own past in such a way that I can almost feel myself in the same place and time, so familiar it is. She however, had the courage to follow her ideals; I was never so brave. I have nearly finished the second book, Sightlines; Findings came first, both borrowed from work, and will feel a sense of missing an almost friend when I take them back. Her writing is intimate, her focus often close and with a sense of the deeply personal about it, you feel you have been offered precious bits of her life to share.

I'd recommend them both

A little bit of stitch

I seem to be taking a dreadfully long time with this. It's the Branch Stich Book and I have been neglecting it badly, busy with other things and with trying to maintain enough energy to actually get anything done at all! However, I'm back in touch with it again now - do you find that? You seem to miss some connection with what you're trying to do so it goes on the back burner for a while, though this really should have taken priority! My stitch is blanket stitch, it's a really nice opportunity to work with variations of one stitch, also to try out different threads from ones store. 

I've also jut done the first year's account balancing act as treasurer of our local branch. It doesn't need ot be in 'til next month, but The Lakes approach so I want to make sure all is good before we go away. 

Everything balanced, hurrah hurrah ..... I'm very pleased with myself

Detail

Just thinking,

looking at the patterns and flows of colour, trying to work out what will enhance

 where to go, what to stitch and what to leave

Suspended from the floor lamp in my (horrendously untidy) study in lieu of a design wall 

Those swayings away from True, across and down; the not quite lined up. Do I straighten them out or do they add a slight movement within the grid structure, a bit of unrule

True ... Truth ...

Squares of colour

I've been doing a little stitching, quietly in the evenings and at our first Studio 11 class last week. This started as something I took with me to Birmingham so I'd have some bits of cloth to play with in the evenings after looking at all those lovely quilts during the day. The squares began life as a tea towel, lovely loose weave linen, worn with years of smoothing cups and plates dry in my grandmother's hands. I used it in my first year with Christine as something to experiment with, to learn from, and to see the different way in which linen took up colour. I wasn't happy with the inital results - eventually the linen was torn in two and treated slightly differently on each half, way back here, but cut into squares, rearranged on some dark blue linen, stitched down with little stitches that match the background colour, I hope perhaps it has some potential. I think I've managed to keep the squares reasonably ... well square ... two layers of soft woven linen can surely wriggle about a bit in the hand when they're being stitched together. I rigged up the giraffe (OK it's a craft stand really, but you can see what I mean) to hold my embroidery frame and that made the stitching go a lot easier. I'd like to add some embroidered stitch, perhaps a little sparkle, something to enhance what's already there, but not intrude or detract. Simple. Careful. Sympathetic.

What happens now, of course, is I get the awful heebie jeebies, having got so far, and totally stall because I can't work out what to do next. To me, it says light falling to the forest floor, other might see different. What do you think?

Festival of Quilts

Well, this time last week I was just back from my first experience of this amazing celebration of all things quilt related. I had the pleasure of helping out in Christine's gallery on the Saturday morning - there is a lovely blog post here by Helen Conway which says much better than I can what a lovely and moving gallery it was. It was very engaging to spend the morning there greeting people who came to look, watching their reactions to the emotion and thought in the textiles, moving towards and away to get the detail and the overall view. In expressing her experience of watching her father succumb to dementia, it was obvious that these quilts and textile portraits were deeply moving to many viewers; they touch a chord with those of us who have watched one we love slowly disappear, piece by piece, as the mind fragments; I felt privileged to be there.

Christine Chester - Palimpset, detail

So what is my newcomer's impression of the event? Astonishing, exhausting, inspiring, overwhelming, um, all those superlatives. It shows one how wide the umbrella is that embraces the term quilt; themes were as broad as human ingenuity can imagine:

there were traditional quilts, 

Lynne Johnson - Billings Coverlet Reborn

Liz Jones - All Things Bright and Beautiful

art quilts

Chrry Vernon-Harcourt - Coastal Study 1

hand quilting, 

Vanessa Stanfield and Tricia Neale - A Medieval Bestiary, detail

machine quilting, 

Ximo Navarro - It is not a dream, this quilt is real, detail

pictorial quilts, 

Hilde van Schaardenburg - The Threatened Swan, detail

Sally Hutson - The Clothmakers Window, detail

landscapes, 

Kate Dowty - Marshwood Vale

Jean McLean - Silence. Judges Choice

quilts full of detail, 

Kirsti Hovland - The Milky Way - Stars Wandering

Kirsti Hovland - The Milky Way - Stars Wandering, detail

quilts with presence, 

Judy Doolan Kjellin - Sadness, detail

those about ideas

Natalia Manley - Beyond the Black Hole. Judges Choice

or poetry - in this case one of my favourites by Yeats

Jill Exell - Stairway to Heaven

or history, 

Marisa Marquez - Lost Inheritance

decorative embellishments, 

all sizes and shapes, 

Amanda House - Dragons Ho!

some to be viewed from both sides 

Sue Palmer - Bou Baretea, one side - detail

and the other

oh I could go on and on. I saw work there that was a million miles from anything I could, or would want to achieve, some that was akin to the tentative experiments I'm working with, some that I might perhaps aspire to one day. And I haven't even mentioned the marketplace!

It is marvellous to me to see how great the variety of human expression is when you come to a show like this, be it large or small. We see things and think, "gosh, I couldn't live with that", or "how on earth long did that take to achieve", others that leave us in awe of the skill or a technique, yet others that we could just gaze and gaze at. It is such a celebration of skill, artistry, invention, technique, thought, hand work, colour, texture; things which we are unique in being able to create and then use to express our endless inventiveness.

Here are a few more favourites

Gloria Loughman - Merrill Hall, Asilomar, California. Detail

Kate White - Dragonfly Studies, detail. Judges Choice Contemporary Quilts

Dianne Firth - Earth Bones

Annabel Groom - Costa Rican Moons

Christine Restall - Estuary

Mary McIntosh - Copper Plates

I loved it!