little boxes

 I have been creating more little boxes. The first, another version of the one I created some time ago, the Foxy Loxy Boxy which now lives with darling daughter. The new box is the same construction technique and also utilised an embroidery from a past Sussex Stitchers workshop, many many moons ago; this time a little piece of blackwork which was finished at the time, but to which I have added a bit of gold just to give it a lift before putting it on the box top.

The box was lined with a toning red fabric (such a hard colour to photograph) 

and I was really pleased when I managed to get the pattern lined up on at least one side. The other three sides aren't bad, but not quite as happy as this one!

So, flushed with success, and given appropriate encouragement I thought I'd make another one. I had an old kit, picked up in a quilt show from a sales table I think, which included the pre cut cardboard and instructions to make a hexagonal box. It was a Dilys Fronks kit, and I have only just realised, having Googled the name, that I have admired her quilts at several quilt shows in the intervening years.

I thought this might be a quicker make, as glue was involved - none of that fiddly lacing of fabric onto inner and outer boards, but in fact it has probably taken just as long. First one glued the lining fabric to each of the sixteen rectangles of card for the sides, and the two hexagons for lid and base. Glue dried, the sides were stitched to the edges of base and lid, before flipping them up and stitching together to form the container. The lid top and bottom were then covered - more glue involved, before cutting two strips of fabric, turned in along the long edges, to be stitched around the "walls" of the top and the base. Sounds simple, and it was, but all that gluing, despite my being as careful and frugal with it as I could, meant that sometimes I was stitching through fabric firmly stuck to the card. Pliers were occasionally utilised. Fingers and shoulders got very tired. Several pairs of glasses were donned (sometimes together) and removed, and sometimes the stitching was so close to my face I nearly stitched my nose to the box! However, it is all done, and I am very happy with the result. I used a lovely Japanese style fabric for top and base

The inside is lined with oriental butterflies

Top and base match, but are not identical, and I'm very happy with the wisteria flowing down the side there.

The sides of the base are a rather nice deep red shot silk. It is repurposed from a shirt bought many years ago from a charity shop, just because I liked the fabric. Never worn, it feels new and is a much better colour than appears here.

I am particularly pleased with the gold thread, beads and sequins which I added to the fabric on the lid, they just lift it a little and give it a bit of sparkle.

It is destined as a Christmas present for my dear heart's daughter. I will pop some chocolates inside, tuck it into a repurposed shoe box and mark the parcel FRAGILE! I hope she likes it.

Chalkhill Blue

Back in March I introduced my second bit of stitching for our Sussex Stitchers banner and gave you an update in April. I'm pleased to say I have now finished my little butterfly and am very pleased with the result. It has been slow going though. As mentioned before, the application of magnifying lamp, extra glasses. alternative glasses and bright light still didn't quite compensate for my ageing eyes, at times I was stitching, glasses off, with it held right at the tip of my nose! Perhaps it is time for another visit to the optician.  However, the sunny circle is attached to its blue background and a ring of flowers in fly stitch and detached chain have been added to give him some nectar to sip while he flutters there. The colours are not quite right here, too dark, but when I adjusted for the blue ground the detail of his wings became rather washed out

Here you can see a bit more of the silk shading, all a single thread of floss; also the very enjoyable and, I hope, appropriate Turkey Rug Stitch which has given his furry little body just the right texture

I'm very much looking forward to seeing our banner completed, with all the individual embroideries gathered together. Sussex has provided all of us who are taking part with some very interesting imagery and we have a fine range of techniques and expertise to express those ideas.

taking shape

Given my upcoming adventure there won't be any stitching done on this for a couple of weeks, but I think it is doing OK so far. It does require much use of the magnifying light or application of two pairs of glasses depending on time of day and levels of tiredness, but I have high hopes. The male chalk hill blue has varying amounts of "donkey brown" on its wings, which leaves me plenty of room for interpretation, but I am trying to ensure I balance both sides by stitching them in parallel.

But for now it must sit in my study and sun itself until I return from far flung excitements

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.

Foxy Loxy Boxy

It was darling daughter's 35th birthday last Wednesday. How on earth has she managed to get that grown up? I'm sure it's only a few years since she was this size!

We had a very enjoyable afternoon tea in a lovely café in Hastings. As one of her presents I had been hoping to finish this little box for her, and just about managed it in time. 

The little fox on the lid was begun during a beadwork tutorial that Steph did for Sussex Stitchers back in November 2019. There was finishing to be done for that to start with!

Then at our last meeting she gave us a morning tutorial in making little boxes - Steph is a woman of many talents. As I had the little fox, and had some foxy material from the quilt I made for our new arrival, I though this might be appropriate for my box.

As you can see, I managed to get the little foxes pretty well lined up, from bottom to lid, all around the box, much to my amazement. It was a slightly stretchy fabric in all directions, so a lot of pinning, re-pinning, pricked fingers and expletives deleted were involved. Fortunately no blood was transferred to the fabric.

I found the box construction really interesting from a technical point of view, and am eager to make another one (we have a second workshop in January). The hardest part was using the curved needle to attach inside to outside and lid to top. They work incredibly well for this task, and come highly recommended, in particular by Sarah Homfray, as you ca see in her excellent video tutorial on how to use them, but ohhhhhhh I found it difficult. The needle kept slipping and sliding in my fingers at critical moments and the point sometimes refused to pierce the fabric. At least when dropped on the floor they are easier to find than straight ones! Have you ever tried using them? Did they get your vote?

I'm please to say Jen was very happy with her gift, and the little pot of nice face cream and extra soft socks hidden inside. After all one shouldn't give an empty box as a gift should one?

Fishy business

We who are Sussex Stitchers had a lovely Zoom workshop on Saturday afternoon with Becky Hogg who lives just down the coast in Hastings. We all worked on the same project, a kit by her called Hastings Mackerel. My good man bought me mine for Christmas. It is a delightful design, as are all of hers, and presented in lovely packaging - I still have two awaiting my attention from the last workshop we did with her - the woodpecker which took me so long to complete.

Becky is a generous and charming tutor and, making the most of social technology, she set up a WhatsApp group so we can communicate in between sessions, sharing pictures of our work and asking her questions where advice is needed.

So, after a Sunday morning’s gardening, I spent the afternoon completing the first stage of the project. On Saturday Becky talked us through applying the felt, the organza for his back, and his silver fishy face and beginning the couching on on his silky silver belly.

Using the giraffe as a table frame was really helpful

The back seems to be inadvertently rather fishy in texture as well

I completed the couching on Sunday. I felt it had, perhaps, encroached rather too far into the other half of the body, the stitching was far from regular and that I had squished the felt a bit by being slightly too firm with my stitching, but it made me smile, and reminded me of a squid.

Then I decided that perhaps it did look a bit flat, and really was too far across the middle line. Mindful of Rachel's patient unpicking in pursuit of perfection, the scissors came out and all but the first two rows were taken out.

Lining up the away knots and setting in the next row - more on, rather than over the central line and with a bigger interval between each starting point

I come to the conclusion that the central line is perhaps, not quite central, but the belly is more rounded, the stitching is more even and, interestingly, I found I had space for one more row of silver. There is a little bit more space for the mackerel stripes too, which I'm looking forward to.

I love the way the moiré pattern of the folded organza gives my fish some water to swim through 

Next time we will be finishing; plunging the thread, if there are any left to plunge, adding the mackerel stripes to the back, the pearl purl outlines and giving him an eye to see with and a tail to swish as he swims about on the Hastings shoreline.

Guidelines

We have started Christine’s online Poetry of Stitch course, so had our first Zoom tutorial on Friday. One of the group asked about getting stitches straight, and Christine mentioned "auditioning” the thread before stitching it, like this; drawing it out with the top hand to see where you want it to lie

before pinning it to the cloth with your needle in just the place you want the next stitch to be made.

I remember learning this, possibly on a Sophie Long workshop, and realising how helpful it was when stitching regular rows or patterns, as we are here. The first tutorial will be familiar to anyone who has done the Textile Artist Community Stitch Challenge earlier on in lockdown. Use straight stitches to show the same curve drawn repeatedly within a grid of two inch square boxes. I need to define the open edges as well and then it's done

We did the same thing with her as a Zoom tutorial with Sussex Stitchers, so in true Blue Peter style, here’s the one is did earlier - nine boxes rather than four

Starting and finishing

Moaning Mona, as she is becoming known, is nearly finished. She should have been handed in at our meeting last Saturday, but she's nearly there.

This meeting involved several very enjoyable little workshops being run by members of Sussex Stitchers, embracing the sharing skills and knowledge side of belonging to the Embroiderers' Guild. We have also been running a monthly stitching group (called Fly Stitchers) for some newer members to give them more confidence in their (already very good) stitching. One of the questions we are often asked is about starting and finishing threads.

There are a couple of schools of thought on this. One of the most common methods is the "away knot", where the end of the thread is knotted and brought down into the fabric far enough away from your starting point that you can take it through to the back of the work and weave in when you have finished. This is a really good method if you are working on small motifs and designs, or using a stitch which isn't intended to cover the fabric.

In the case of Mona, however, the area of her hair is densely stitched with a mixture of stem and outline stitch (of which more in a bit). This being the case, I've used the method recommended by RSN teachers, which is to run the thread down on the line you will be covering with stitching, then bring it back up and take a small backstitch to anchor it before starting the stitching proper. When you get to the end of the thread, you do a similar thing in reverse.

So here you can see various "freckles" in the unstitched area of her hair, where I have got to the end of a thread and "parked" by making a small securing stitch, bringing the end of the thread to the surface again and snipping it close to the linen. It will stay there until it is covered by subsequent stitching. (The bottom edge is much squarer than it appears here!)

You can also park thread temporarily, as below, where in the foreground and further up you can see threads ready to be used for the next bit of stitching. I have started stitching upwards from the area of organza where her hair meets her face, rather than working from the top down and risking a bulge in the layers of organza.

Here, below, you can see where I have started a strand of darker brown, the loose end is middle right, and if you look closely you can see the tiny anchoring stitch just before the needle goes down into the fabric, having come up where I am starting this colour. On the left are two more needles with different blends of brown as I am mixing colour both in the needle and as I move across the hair from left to right.

The other thing I am doing is mixing stem and outline stitch so that there is more texture in the hair, rather than having the twist of the stitches all one way. If you're not sure of the difference, the source of all good stitchy information Mary Corbet will tell you here.

Now for the other bit of finishing - i.e. finishing Moaning Mona

Having seen lots of our other stitchers' contributions, I think she's going to look rather wonderful when she's done. I'll be sure to take a pic to show you.

Tapestry Update

Once a month the little group of us from Sussex Stitchers still get together to do our bit of weaving. You'll remember I started with this - which has a few nice bits, but is basically about learning various techniques. 

I enjoy the colours, and they have a relationship with the photo collage that I started with, but the forms are uneven and don't relate to the design.

"Life is for learning"

Here is where my current piece has got to - shown upside down, as that will be the orientataion when it comes off the loom.

loosly based on the Nazar symbol, but there will be more below. Shapes symbolic of house and home if I have the space.

I'm rather pleased with it so far, though looking at the bottom, lighter area, I can see that I need to rework it to cover the warp better. I either need to loosen the tension on my weft thread or use a slightly narrower weft. I'll see which works, and refer you to the quote above :-)