A stitching update

 I’m sorry for my absence, our life together has been overtaken with difficulty just now; living has taken on a new priority, and my dearest heart is quite unwell, so we are going along quietly together. In the in between times I am still stitching where I can. 

My most recent project was to create a hanging for his bedroom from some delicious African fabrics I bought years ago with him in mind. He recently asked for someting to replace a lovely old family portrait of his great grandfather as a little boy in Regency frock. Little Arthur has returned to a house he previously lived in, much to the delight of the house owner. The result was this; some giraffes, which are an old private symbol between us, African fabrics, because he grew up in Africa, and three little four patches, composed from fabrics I used in his three great grandchildren’s quilts, so they are with him in spirit. It is another little “story quilt” with fabric links which means something to us. 

Having completed that, I needed something new to work on, or perhaps something in progress to mover further on. You will remember this series from here, here and here.

I am hoping to begin the next phase with this piece of cloth, more gleanings from that first quilt, and not quite as pale as it appears here.

I have cobbled it together with Jude’s Glue Stitch, a regular web of tiny stitches and long intervals which creates a single piece of cloth from several little bits, all held down on a base cloth, here calico. It leaves a little grid of tiny stitches on the front, but they get subsumed by embroidery, and it is a much nicer cloth to stitch on than if you bonded them down with adhesive webbing, however fine.

I think the three pieces will sit rather well together when finished

I am taking  another Stitchtopia trip in a week’s time, just eight days, and my dear heart’s daughter will take care of him while I am away. We will be knitting in the Faroe Islands, and I will be meeting up with a few previous fellow travellers, so much to look forward to, but I will also be spending time in airports, so wanted something to take along to stitch. I’m hoping this will work. 

Absent but busy

 It really has been rather a long time since I posted, but I am still here, just been rather busy.

A dear aunt of mine, the last of my paternal aunts, died in April and, as one of two executors, but the one closest to her both geographically and emotionally, I have been dealing with her estate, which is taking some considerable time. I have still been stitching, just not had the energy to post here about what I was doing. I did have a break from this in June when I went with Stitchtopia to Indonesia for two weeks; a fascinating tour, rather spoilt by going down with Covid as soon as I got back. I am still contemplating what I thought of the trip, but will try and post in the other place once my ruminations are done.

My priorities have been twofold; first getting the stitching finished for my part in the lovely book we made to celebrate the life of Christine Chester. This was entered into the Quilt Creations Gallery at FOQ this year, where it garnered much enthusiasm and comment, including from the delightful John J Cole-Morgan of IQuilt Studio who featured it in his live feed on Facebook, calling it “one of the most stunning pieces at Festival”. Liz did us proud in talking about it, having been caught completely on the hop! You'll see a couple of brief glimpses of my finished piece, Moonflowers, as they flick through the book, but also so many of the other lovely artworks which our Studio11+ group created in Christine's memory. I also had the honour of stewarding at Christine’s retrospective gallery. It was such a pleasure to talk to folk about her work, and see how many visitors were deeply touched by the message behind her pieces. One of my favourites is this beautiful sheer image of her Dad using English Paper Piecing and fabrics she created herself using voile and paper lamination (here demonstrated by Claire Benn from whom I suspect Christine learnt the technique she made her own). Don't you just love those echoing shadows on the wall?

My second priority has been making a small floor quilt to welcome the latest great grandchild in my husband’s family. He was born on June 1st and I have just completed the finishing touches. Summer suns and little creatures to greet a summer baby, a couple drawn from his cousin's quilt to create a family link, along with a rabbit and fox to talk to, some mad cats dancing with the birds, and lions and tigers contemplating the fluttering butterflies. It will be given to his parents in late September when we are all meeting up during our annual pilgrimage to the Lakes. 

By then I will hopefully have a third quilt almost finished for his next cousin, who is due in October. What fun "senior cousin" will have with two boys to boss about; she will be just three when her brother is born. This will be the fourth in the series which started back in 2019 with a little girl who is now about to start school! How time flies.

I hope your summer has been productive too

Designing a series from scraps

After adding some more stitch to my Honouring Christine piece, I am still working with scraps of the same fabric from that original course. This next piece was a trial to see how Mistyfuse might work to hold the various scraps of fabric together on an underlying base of "harem cloth" a fine muslin cloth which Jude uses regularly. I found that layer of glue, although ultra fine, still had a tendency to catch the tread a little on its way though and make the fabric stiff, though that got less annoying the more I handled it. For some reason I think of this piece as Sea Flowers, not sure why.

I did the designing for this on a graphics programme on my iPad: in this case the free version of Sketchbook, though I'm sure other equally valid apps are about. As long as you have layers, a simple selection of brushes and the ability to pick colour you have all you need. In the screenshot below there are five different layers, the top four holding an element of the next section of stitching I was trying out - the flower to the right and the fly stitch and running stitch in the centre and top. An earlier incarnation with a more fleur-de-lys shaped flower was quickly rejected without any reverse stitching required. Then I could tack some boundaries onto the cloth and stitch away knowing that I understood where it was going.

The second bit of stitching began on harem cloth (the trilithon in the centre) I extended the design by incorporating some surroundings, using "glue stitch" to combine all the layers rather than Mistyfuse. Below I have pinned down a printed version of  my stitch design from the iPad so that I can tack the next circle (cut away from the paper) to be stitched once the paper is taken away.

And here is where this is going - Moonhenge. I am unconvinced by the stitching in the reflected moon at the base, it seems to disrupt too much so I may take that out and just add some circular running stitch. 

Both still to be bound somehow.

Such a long time ago, using Connie and Harry's sheets for fabric as I was so unsure of whether the results would be usable. There may be another piece before I finish. An accidental series.

If you are interested in the memorial book for Christine, it should be on display at the Festival of Quilts this year if it is accepted into the "Quilt Creations" category. Twenty four of us have banded together to stitch or weave a piece which exemplifies the creativity which Christine fostered in each of us at Studio 11. We had a meeting this week to review all the pages of the book prior to assembly and were thrilled at the variety and quality of each artwork. Do pay it a visit if you go to FOQ this year, and treat yourself to the Christine Chester retrospective gallery which will also be part of the show. You might catch me stewarding while you're there.

Honouring Christine

 I'm sorry for my recent silence. it has been a busy several months and I always find that winter saps my creative energy. In the intervening time I have been involved with a group of Studio 11 folk, all of whom are missing Christine, the Studio and that sense of fellowship which came with it. She truly achieved what she set out to do all those years ago.

We felt we would like to do something to honour her in some way and, after several ideas were mooted, we have fixed on creating a book in memory of her. Each of us are stitching patchworking or weaving something which embodies the creative freedom and teaching she gave us. Each piece, no larger than 8 inches each way, will be attached to a page of khadi paper: those pages will be assembled into a book in honour of her. We are entering it into the "Quilt Creations" section in Festival of Quilts this year, where it will be displayed. There should also be a link with either the retrospective gallery of her work (do come and see it if you are going to FOQ), or the Creative Textiles Studio where Christine was a regular tutor. 

Following that we have agreed that the book will be given to Christine's family as a lasting memorial to her and as an expression of our gratitude for all that she gave us.

I thought and thought about what I wanted to do. In the end I felt the most fitting tribute would be to use some of the fabrics I dyed in the very first course I did with her; "Tie Dye Mini Quilt", way back in 2012 when she first opened the studio. I had no idea what a wonderful journey she was going to encourage me in, and I have valued every minute I spent in the studio since.

I am calling this "Moonflowers" and have kept it very simple. Minimal stitching enhances what is already there, and I have so enjoyed creating this; Christine's voice in my ear encouraging me and memories of her wisdom and bright heart pulling us all forward in our creative journeys.

I hope it will be a fitting addition to this book which will enclose our creativity and be a memorial to Christine's inspiring teaching.

Remembering and Honouring

This is a hard post to write. If you look at my "word cloud" you will see Christine Chester's name shining large because I have mentioned her so very many times as my source of inspiration and textile education. I first met her when I did the Tie Dye Mini Quilt Course at Studio 11 when she first opened it back in 2012. I was the only participant, and it was the start of 11 years of inspiration, experimentation, laughter and friendship as the Studio 11 community grew. 

Last month this dear soul; friend, teacher and incredibly talented and thoughtful textile artist died after a courageous battle with cancer. We, her friends and students, joined her family last week to say goodbye to her and to celebrate all she had given to us over the years. 

Christine created a vibrant community of like minded folk centered on Studio 11. She gave of her time and skill so generously as our teacher, and also scheduled regular textile "Re-treats" where other textile artists came to share their skills and inspirations with us. In 2019, when she faced the challenge of losing the Studio because the rent had risen beyond her ability to pay, she simply packed everything up and relocated to her basement flat, rearranging her own life to prioritise her creative endeavour and, of course, source of income. I deeply admired her fortitude and refusal to give in to this difficult circumstance. Then Covid19 hit, another challenge, which she rose to by devising a series of Zoom classes which we could all do at home. This carried us through the pandemic in an incredibly supportive way, keeping our creative ideas flowing with courses on transparent fabrics, a "potato chip quilt" and Poetry of Stitch, exploring stitch as a mark making and expressive tool. Zoom also allowed her to host folk from further afield, extending the reach of her teaching beyond the south coast. In mid 2021 she found another real life studio for us to come to, and we were once more able to meet face to face, enjoy each other's company and share our creative endeavours. The new studio was a lovely airy space in an old building once used by the Plymouth Brethren as a meeting house. It was a beautiful place in which to learn; full of light, vibrant with colour and music, peppered with laughter as we, her students, were joined with her again in one place. Sadly, with her death it will close and become once more an anonymous old building on a small street in Eastbourne.

You may remember that in May 2021 she reconnected me with a cushion that had belonged to Ganna, through a piece of total serendipity. It has taken a back seat over the past few years due to other projects taking my time. I have now returned to it, and with each stitch I am connected in my heart with both my beloved grandmother, and with Christine. She used to say to me that I shouldn't feel guilty about not finishing things, if the inspiration to start them had fled. I store those words carefully in my heart as a quiet wisdom. But this project will be finished, with daily stitch, in honour of her and all she gave to me and to my fellow Studio 11 members. We gained so much from here, and do not know what we will do without her.

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.

Debbie Lyddon Textile ReTreat

I have just spent a very pleasurable four days on a course, Decorative Surfaces for 3D Textiles, with Debbie Lyddon over at Studio11. She is a textile artist based in Wells-next-the-sea in Norfolk and a member of The 62 Group. Her work is deeply rooted in the landscape which she has been coming back to for many many years; you can read more about it here. I first came across her via Christine and then was lucky enough to see some of her pieces when she exhibited at Festival of Quilts in 2014. I find them quite magical, the way she evokes the experience of landscape and the sense of "hidden and revealed layers" in her work. She was a delightful and generous teacher, sharing with us the techniques she uses and enabling each of us to create things that drew on our own inspirations using those techniques. 

There were seven of us on the course, three friends from Studio11 and three new folk. One of the delights in working alongside other people is seeing how they use what is learnt to express their own vision.

On our first day (and on subsequent days) we went down to the seaside in the morning, the Studio being a short walk from Eastbourne seafront. Debbie encouraged us to look and listen carefully to our surroundings. Then we made some very sketchy visual notes of things that drew us or excited us in the little sketchbooks we had made before leaving the Studio. I have done this before on an Alice Fox workshop and have found both times that this quiet, almost meditative looking and quick sketching is a marvelous way of awakening one to the surroundings without adding the angst of "am I drawing this properly?" which so often defeats me when I try to sketch outdoors.

I admit to "cheating" by taking a couple of photos on my phone as well. But, with sketchbook in hand, I was reminded of how easy it is to "just" take photos rather than really looking at what has drawn me to the thing I am snapping. When you sketch you are drawn in (if you'll pardon the pun) to the subject matter, you really see it.

I loved the lines of the wooden groynes, the punctuation marks of the rusting bolts, and the way the brilliant green seaweed showed the pull of the sea as it flowed across the wood

The pier with its wonderful crisscross girders, tensioning irons and rich rusty orange was very eye catching

and I have always enjoyed the layers and echoes on our beaches that come from the repeated shapes of the groynes and the contrasts of the colours in the shingle with the sea and sky.

Once we had gathered some ideas we went back to the Studio and spent the following days watching, learning and trialing as Debbie talked us through folding paper into simple (or complex) shapes, applying emulsion, wax, home made gesso and stitched/found textures to linen, canvas and muslin. We added colour to those pieces of cloth, using watercolour paint and her secret ingredient - boot polish! Once we understood how the techniques worked on the ground fabric Debbie asked us to think about how we could use these, and what we had learned from the paper folding exercises, to reflect on and evoke the objects and textures we had experienced as we walked on the seashore. We were tasked to create something that brought all these things together. Debbie commented that she always wants her students to be able to create a finished object to take home, rather than a muddle of samples that we might do something with "one day".

I had picked up some lovely sedimentary pebbles with layered lines on them, and some flint stones with interesting cool grey and black pits and marks. I used these and the colours on the seashore as a starting point and created a linked set of three "pots" with the emulsion and wax techniques. These can sit inside each other, or next to each other, depending on space available, and are another way of creating a piece which is formed of layers. You can see them in the foreground here, slipped inside each other with the stormy sky behind.

With the gesso technique we had stitched linen to fit round our formers, in my case a piece of plumber's pipe, before applying the gesso. Once this was dry we could then add texture. I had collected a couple of silvery blue mussel shell fragments, some fine shingle and a bit of sand. These were applied to the outside of the pot by using a "plaster" of gesso soaked muslin. Then I added colour with watercolour, a little bit of drawing ink and the merest whisper of dark oil pastel over some of the highest points of texture. 

These images were taken on the final day when we returned to the beach; linking the made objects to the source of our inspiration; allowing them to speak to each other.

Once back in the Studio all our works were arranged together on one of the benches so we could look and admire and be encouraged by what each of us had made.

You can see some more closeup inspiration from the course on Debbie's Instagram here.

What a marvelous way to spend four days doing delightful things with a generous teacher. My thanks to Debbie and, of course, to Christine who made sure we were Covid safe, and provided us with delicious lunches each day. It was an enormous pleasure to be back in her Studio sharing a love of learning and textiles with everyone else in the group.

Such treasure

This is Ganna's chair.  

It was always called "The Bergere Chair", and she sat and pondered in it every day. It lived in her ground floor bedroom, just beside the window which looked out over Alexandra Park. It proved a difficult object to negotiate in the middle of the night when, creeping back in, having forgotten my key, I was glad to find her window unlocked, but dismayed to find that the back of the chair was hooked over the brass handle, with which one pulled up old fashioned Victorian sash windows. It added somewhat to the weight I had to lift, and made waking my grandmother, at 1am, far more likely. 

When she sat in her chair, she always had a cushion at her back, stitched by her. It was one of the things which drew me to embroidery. To my dismay, it disappeared from our trove of "household objects" at some stage, and I have, over the years, trawled the web to try and find the pattern, to no avail.

I sit in her chair most days, tucked into another bay window, in another Victorian house. I ponder in it sometimes, but stitch more often. I too use a cushion at my back. I have a great deal more muddle around it than my orderly grandmother would ever have tolerated!

As you know I am part of Christine's Studio 11 community. Yesterday, on Facebook, she posted about a piece of fabric, part of a trove of vintage linens that have come to her. She has plans to "stitch it to show deterioration due to age and dementia", part of her long running series of textile works which reference her experience of losing her father to the disease. But first, she has kindly photographed it for me. It is, of course, Ganna's cushion, unmistakable. I can trace it out for myself, and use to recreate this early treasure, and lean against it in the chair that held its original. 

Given my track record this may, of course, take a while! I hope I can do it justice

Making marks with stitch

I have said less about the Poetry of Stitch course with Christine than I might have, since we started way back in September. It has been tremendously interesting. Since those early experiments with weight of line and making our curve apparent, we moved onto the same exercises but using machine stitch. This was followed by taking just one of the designs we had stitched and, using the same fill pattern, find out how a variety of free machine embroidery stitches would behave. These were:

Whip stitch

I had a few tension problems to start here, hence the blue at the top and further down - the yellow thread was in the bobbin.

Feather stitch

This time there was dark thread in the bobbin and yellow on top. On the left hand side the top thread has been removed, leaving just the thread pulled through from the bottom to give the lightest of marks on the fabric. That was a fiddly job! Bondaweb on the back stops the thread from pulling out altogether.

Cable stitch

Thick thread hand wound onto the bobbin, then the stitching is done on the back so the bobbin thread is couched down onto the front of the design. It can get a bit too wiggly if you don't get the speed right. It would be interesting to play with colour on the top and bottom threads, and the speed of stitching, to see what colour blending effects might be achieved.

All these, as you can see, rely on changing the machine tension to persuade more or less of the top or bottom thread to be pulled through the fabric. A great lesson in understanding how the different stitches achieve a different weight and character of mark. The following session concentrated on using those stitches to make interesting "blobs" on some fabric which already had a layer of blobby marks. This helped us to move further away from stitch as "a proper stitch" and more towards the possibilities of hand and machine stitch to make a mark on the fabric, a drawing tool rather than a correctly constructed stitch. Something to provide the next layer of marks onto a piece of already dyed/printed/otherwise coloured fabric.

Christine then gave us a series of words; rough and smooth, jumpy, disconnected, sad and so on. First we used our drawing tools to express these in marks. Then it was back to our curves and putting into practice the lessons we had learnt already about how to create texture with hand and machine stitch.

Happy and Calm seemed to go together

Angry and Jealous made another suitable pairing

Rough and Smooth, Disconnected and Jumpy

The final image shows me catching up with homework. I have worked those words with machine stitch, though I admit to too much reliance on straight and zigzag stitches despite notes to self on the drawings. Now I am starting with hand stitch - a layer of herringbone to try and emulate those changes in tone around Smooth. It certainly works better than the machined zigzag, which gave me rather too many staggered edges on the top of the curve.

Now what shall I try for Rough?

stitch and stitch

Our next task for Poetry of Stitch has been to stitch our curve once more, again four iterations, but this time all in the same direction, and all with line stitches. I have been experimenting with chain stitch, cable stitch, and now some couching. I am varying the placing of the couching stitch to try and create a lighter and darker effect within the curve, and have varied the chain stitch density and width with the same intention.

Sometimes the back tells its own story

And sometimes it's just rather fun

Progress so far, the top left being the "control", with just a single thread laid across closely spaced, to mark a starting point for this tonal exercise.

then there is the homework ....... 

Magick

There are old magicks in this landscape

Hidden things

Buried secrets

Secret flows

accumulation

Things are building up, layer by layer

The wider view

Playing with a scrap of organza, 

A river perhaps