Butterfly and glue stitch

In my previous post I mentioned our newest project with Sussex Stitchers, a series of individual pieces which will be joined together to form our new banner. Having completed my Sovereign Lighthouse I have now moved on to a butterfly.

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice the imprint of an embroidery hoop around this design. It is intended to be a Chalk Hill Blue butterfly, found up on our lovely Downs, usually with the accompaniment of lark song trilling away high above in the blue blue sky. The frame imprint is evidence of Not Thinking Things Through and being in too much of a hurry. It is also evidence of unpicking (a pair of fine tweezers always helpful)! So what happened?

 

Well, we are also running a new series of our stitch support groups which we call Fly Stitchers. Steph and I gather with a small group of hopeful but not entirely confident stitchers over six sessions and, for a modest fee, encourage, teach, facilitate them in planning and working a small project from start to finish.  Our second session deals with preparing one's fabric, transferring the design and choosing stitches. As Steph, who has done a number of RSN courses, waxed lyrical at the other end of the table about the importance of mounting the fabric, especially if it is fine and you are going to use silk shading, I thought to myself, "hmmmm, you haven't done that have you?" I plan on working the wings in a sort of silk shading, though not with silk, but the fabric I am using is a very fine silk. After a brief inward wrestle with my lazy side, I was persuaded that the white wing edges I had already stitched must come out, and the fabric must be given support. I am using what Jude calls Glue Stitch for this. It is a way of mounting fabric on a backing almost invisibly, by taking a series of very tiny stitches on the surface in a thread which tones with your background, using longer stitches on the back. This brings the two pieces of fabric together as one, and can be left in place once the stitching is complete.

Above you can see the path of the stitching on the back of the fabric - a fine calico. Below you can see the front of the fabric and, if you look very closely, you will see below the bottom wings a series of tiny little stitches, which almost disappear. Go back to the top image and you will note that they really are pretty well invisible, they have been worked from top to bottom and only those on the very bottom show,  a tiny bit.

Thank you Jude for your stitching wisdom and inspiration. Now to reinstate those wing edges and the rest of the design can proceed .......

sussex'ing

We have a new Sussex Stitchers project which is very loosely based around Dijanne Cevaal's Travellers' Blankets, One of our members shared a post from Inspirations magazine about these back in September last year. It rang a chord with some of us so when we (i.e. The Committee) asked for ideas about a new project and were met with the usual doubtful silence, this was suggested as a starting point. Dijanne's works are about travelling and each scrap of cloth reflects whatever the theme is of that particular blanket. She is currently offering on an online class if you want to find out more - from the link above.

We are interpreting her idea in relation to living in Sussex and have had to adapt quite a bit to enable it to be worked as a joint project. Yours truly therefore volunteered to hand dye some calico a vibrant blue, to reflect the seaside that we live by. This was fun in itself, as I overdyed the fabric four times with differing combinations of blue (Royal, Turquoise and Indigo) to get an interesting lively background. Members are going to stitch an image, on a separate piece of fabric, that means something to them, drawn from the Sussex landscape, thus reflecting the travelling theme. They will have their own square of blue to applique their embroidered image to, and each image will be stitched round in the same manner as Dijanne's. All the squares will then be reassembled to make one banner at the top of which we will add a header proclaiming our group's name. This can be used to advertise our existence if we travel around exhibiting our work. It will also embody the togetherness and inspiration which comes from being part of a lively stitching group in Sussex.

So, having dyed the two meters of calico and cut them up (very scary) I have just completed my own little square of blue. The background to the embroidery comes from my very first course with Christine in Studio 11, the tie dye mini quilt, one of the moons and a little bit of clamped shibori. 

Silhouetted by a silvery moon, the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse shines her light out to warn passing ships about the dangerous sandbank below. 

My stitching around the image doesn't have the vibrant brightness of Dijanne's, but it does evoke that warning light and the deeps of the sea below. I chose the lighthouse for two reasons. Firstly, when darling daughter was a small person we lived in a flat on St Leonards seafront. Walks to and from Hastings were always full of interesting things to look at, but this landmark was the one I used to reassure myself that she hadn't inherited either my or her father's short sightedness. 

"Jen .... can you see that on the horizon?", "yes Mummy I can see it!". Sigh of relief from me. 

But now Royal Sovereign has served her purpose and is to be decommissioned, as she has reached the end of her usefulness. I like the idea that, even in a very small way, this Sussex landmark will live on once the actual lighthouse has disappeared from our horizon, a small memorial to her years of keeping ships and sailors safe from harm.