A little stitched celebration

One of the Embroiderers Guild members has a significant birthday approaching and we have all been asked to contribute a flower. They will be gathered together to make a little book of floral celebration - a delightful idea, but I had been scratching my head wondering what to do. Watching Jude, Joe and others, creating cloth stories from scraps and whimsies is a huge inspiration, so I rummaged through my scrap bag to see what I could find. With hellebores in mind, I found this, a scrap from a very long ago dress that Mum made for me to go to a cousin's wedding when I was I my teens. With a little thought and a few more bits and bobs scavenged from Mum's multiple button boxes and more scraps from my stash, I came up with this, which will, I hope, give pleasure.

I may add a little more stitching just to bring the front and background cloth together, but I think it's pretty well what I want.
Behind the fabric, you can see a piece of knitting that has been on the needles for rather too long, but will be a lace snood when its finished. I'm really enjoying making it; challenging, but it always makes sense if you pay attention. As I knit, I often ponder on the hows and whens of the craft - someone a very long time ago worked out that you could make a fabric from looping thread together with needles, but from that to the sort of complex patterns that make up, for example, Shetland lace, is a very long step and a wonderful example of our very human ability to take the very simple and introduce artistry and complexity into the mix, creating beauty of all sorts.

Magic!

Tomorrow we are off the the Norfolk/Suffolk borders for a proper holiday. Best I go start packing I rather think! I'll be quite without access to the Internet while I'm away, and will, weather permitting, get wonderful views of the stars as we're in a cottage that is part of a farm complex in the middle of rural Suffolk. Bliss.

more grandmothers gifts

I am gradually sifting and sorting "things", and thought I'd share a few more precious bits that have come to me, handed down through the generations. Some I found in the past, some have come more recently on Mum's death. They are little fragments of lace and embroidery about which I know nothing. I have treasured many of them for years, tucking them away in a drawer, wrapped in acid free paper to try and ensure they don't deteriorate, though I have to confess that the little embroidered bag was once home to my marbles! I have no idea of their age, but suspect they are mostly Victorian. I do know that my great grandmother's family moved from Ireland to Liverpool in about 1869. My great great grandfather had been a Methodist Minister, travelling all around southern Ireland preaching. He lost his faith after the deaths of six children from illness in a very short space of time. Once in Liverpool the family seem to have set up as drapers, and are recorded as such in the census. My Aunt recalls her Aunt Annie doing the "most beautiful delicate smocking" on dresses, and teaching her the skill; my grandmother embroidered, knitted and worked crochet lace; Mum knitted and sewed and my Aunt is a very skilled needlewoman. I like to think that some of these things were worked by family hands, I am happy to feel that I carry on that tradition in some small way. 


Here are just a few of the treasures.

little hanging

Now Christmas is over and my lovely daughter has been and gone I can share this little something I made for her.

I blogged about it earlier in it's life here. It began as an experiment - a few scraps from the quilt top I was making using squares I had cut out pre rotary cutters and cutting mats. Many of these were from fabrics used by Mum to make dresses for herself before I was born, or for me as I grew. Mum was not a confident seamstress, her first dress, made to prove her usefulness to Dad before they were married, brought her out in a rash "all over", but she persevered being a very tenacious soul, and by the time I came along she was sewing with great accuracy and determination, though not with the confidence that she knitted. I cut up these bits of cloth when I was in my late teens, then packed them away in a bag and carried them around from place to place for about 30 years! Having finished the patchwork I sewed a few scraps together and gradually a little "picture" emerged as I experimented with some machine and some hand stitching.

Then I added a border from some remaindered curtain fabric I bought and another from some delicious velvet I found in Penrith.

I have backed the hanging with a panel from one of Mum's dresses. She probably wore this when she was carrying me, if not within her womb, at least when I was a baby. It seemed a poetic thing to give to Jen, now Mum is gone. Fabric new and old, fabric which enwrapped me now carrying my love to my own daughter, my stitches and Mum's combined to create a thing for someone we both love(d).

And the stitches

The sky has become almost an exploded bargello pattern, as I've been trying to capture that shimmering quality it gets sometimes

There are little hesitant clouds of wear in the denim sky





french knot woodlands bordering the fields -






and a hedgerow that will extend into the borders once they're attached

Thought you should see the back

This always looks so tentative, as though the stitches were slipping away by themselves.
The piece is a mish mash of textiles - a corner of my old gardening jacket - I couldn't bear to throw away the soft worn corduroy; a piece of my daughters old jeans, cut up to patch newer ones that fit and the offcuts from a skirt of my Mums - the dark green bit on the front that defines the hedgerow. She wore it when pregnant with me, I found the trimmings when sorting through her stuff after her death - a sad and ongoing process, like domestic archaeology.

stitching Norfolk furrows

this little panel is coming along quite nicely.

It's just an experiment, inspired by a brief view of a landscape in Norfolk, which I managed to hold in my head until we got back to the hotel and I could get my sketchbook out. I've never done anything quite like this before, so it's all rather inspiring. Just playing really.

As I was stitching I realised there was a great glowing in the garden, radiating off the brick walls of the houses at the end. I went to the front of the house to find this wonderful sky. What beauty there is in this world.

Tomorrow I'm going here which could be very dangerous. Perhaps I should leave my debit card at home and only take cash!!

Crikey!

You put bits of fabric together, and this happens, unfinished as yet, but really rather surprising.







Ditto this. Again, unfinished, but my first attempt at just putting stuff together, in this case trying out stitches on my new sewing machine with scraps from my first quilt top.

All rather good fun!