A quick stitch update

I've not been totally useless these past days, even though I've been feeling pretty grotty. However there were those stumpwork mushrooms to work on. These, as mentioned in my previous post, were all supplied by Kay Dennis in the form of ready to work kits for our Saturday workshop. Here are a couple of pics of work in progress

There's the canvaswork mushroom, OK it doesn't look much like a mushroom at the moment, but this is before I cut it out and shaped it.

Then there's the embroidered mushroom - yes I know it looks like a Christmas Bell. We were told to be as fanciful as possible ... dare I mention, the phrase "magic mushrooms" was heard, and this in a room of sedate middle class ladies all past a certain age!  I had limited threads to use, having put the "going to a workshop kit" together with a bit too much abandon, not knowing what to expect. I'm rather pleased with the sheen of the pink thread; it seems to work with the, hurriedly coloured with what came to hand, pale green background.

And here are the stems - which give you an clearer idea of how the mushrooms are shaped - you can see the felt form for the first one already stitched onto the ground fabric. This bit I found the most interesting as I'd not done anything quite like it before. We started with rows of chain stitch worked up and down within the pre-printed lines given for the stems. Then we laid bars of thread (a single strand of 6 stranded floss) evenly across the chain stitch. Then comes the top layer of raised stem stitch (there's a good photo tutorial on this here) again worked on the first one with a single strand of embroidery floss. The initial foundation of chain stitch provides the plumpness (lovely word that) over which you work the stem stitch. In the middle stem I tried using two strands of floss to enable me to vary the colour a bit. I've shown the final stem before I completed the top layer so you can see how the technique comes together. I love the finished result - not because I think I've been particularly clever, but because using such fine thread gives a wonderful effect that mimics closely that silky/fibrous texture of mushroom stems. Since I worked these bits I've completed the mushrooms; the final one is shaped "fancy" fabric supplied by Kay, folded around a felt form. There are also little shapes filled with French knots to resemble the ground the mushrooms are growing from. The next stage is to stitch all these separate elements onto the ground fabric to complete the picture.

Then there's Cecil's quilt. I finished the piecing today - all now pressed and ready to layer with wadding and backing

I picked up some delightful fabric from Fabric Design in Matlock Bath. It's actually a furnishing fabric, but I thought it the perfect thing for a lady who has spent most of her life working in one of our lovely National Trust historic homes. I think the little vignettes of pastoral folk will delight her feeling for history, her pleasure in fine furnishings and her well developed sense of whimsy.

Whilst all this creativity has been going on, the garden has been settling itself down for the winter. We've been having an exceptionally wet Autumn, following a pretty wet summer and we Brits do seem to love moaning about the weather endlessly. I'm not going to do that - I'm not a great sun lover, I find constant sunshine a bit boring to be honest, much preferring the variety that comes with moisture in the air; it keeps this country green, gives us wonderful piled high clouds, the delights of shade and sunlight, rainbows, mists and mellow fruitfulness. Certainly this little fellow is appreciating the full growth and resulting seeds

as for the resident squirrels, they have been beside themselves with delight at the harvest from the yew tree

 performing the most daring acrobatics to get at that lovely, luscious, jewel like fruit

knitting and stitching

Yesterday I made the long haul to London to visit the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. It was a long haul as well, with work on the fast track and the closure of part of the Victoria Line on the Underground, meaning that it was a 4 hour slog from home to sitting with my cheese sandwich on the steps outside, gathering strength to go in and face the hoards! Mind you I had made the effort to walk up from Wood Green station. I figured it was probably the only exercise I'd get for the day!

My first amusement  as I went in, was to find Barbara, who is part of our local Guild, wandering about with a bag full of goodies, trying to drag herself away as she needed to be in Worthing by tea time. We stopped for a chat, she commenting that she has "all these City and Guild students about to start their course, so she had to come and stock up". Rather cheeky, I thought, to use us as her excuse!

It was, as Gina has commented in her delightful (un)grumpy old woman post, hot and crowded, but not unbearably so yesterday. It was only my second visit; perhaps you get used to the overwhelming nature of the show when you're a seasoned visitor but I did find it left me "moithered" as Cecil would say.

As you go in you find yourself in the display area where all sorts of interesting things made by other talented craftspeople are there to inspire. One exhibition that really caught my eye was Nancy Crow's Colour Improvisations. This was a group of large, vibrant quilts, based around that single theme - improvising with  colour . Reminiscent of the Improvisations in so many areas of music, from Jazz to Classical. Take something, work with it, see what happens. Many of the quilts were densely stitched. I noticed how in some cases stitching added colour, contrasting or complementary, building on the fabric beneath like harmonies in music. In others it brought the light and shade of texture into play, giving a sense of movement or density. They were all by contemporary quilt artists from North America and Europe, and I could have looked at them all day, going back and forth between them, preferably standing further away in some cases. I guess on a crowded day, this could have been quite claustrophobic, but yesterday there was enough space to gaze. No photographs were allowed, so I'm afraid I can't show you any.

Other pieces that I really enjoyed, and which I was allowed to photograph, were all from member of the New Embroidery Group's Exhibition "Touching the Earth"

Margaret Mary Griffiths : Will This World Survive?

Liz Holliday : Downland Contours, Box Hill and Devil's Dyke

Downland is a theme I particularly warm to since I love maps; how could one not, having worked in a reference library? And I am a Downland person - not in the sense of having lived within their folds, but they have always been the backdrop of my life, first in Hampshire, now at the other end of the Way.

Veronica Chambers : Sugar Beet Singling. East Cambridgeshire Fens, 1950's

Anna Diamond : My Garden

I did my usual trick of pushing my glasses down my nose to peer closely at the detail in this lovely garden piece

Edel Zollinger : Aurora Borealis

And I long to see the Aurora Borealis one day .....

Having spent time looking and learning and being inspired, I then plunged into the fray that is the marketplace, bedazzled by stalls of every colour and design selling far too many interesting and desirable things to take in, especially as the soles of my feet were beginning to feel a bit jaded. I wandered about, looking at this and that, touching, stroking, peeking, squinting, resisting, getting turned around and around in the strange maze that is these big craft shows and emerging, eventually, back to Palm Court where the door to light and air beckoned.

I finally left at about 4:15 and, yes, it did take almost four hours to get home; and yes, I did spend money on thread and silk, but I tried to be prudent!

On the way home, even London managed to look strangely beautiful as the sun set, glinting from the rails

dyeing drying

We really did have a delightful time with Christine yesterday. A select group, all enthusiastic, each with our own ideas and reasons for being there.

As you can see the workshop is a lovely place, full of light (much brighter than it appears in this picture), well set up and with plenty of space for being everything from very precise to making a mess. Rubber gloves are essential at least for some part of the day!

I had come with my pre prepared Shibori as I knew what I wanted to do with some of my cloth - still Harry and Connie's sheets by the way! (I really should get round to telling you about them). But I brought some along as well to play with as well.

One particularly contorted preparation took life, Pygmalion like, and marched across the table! OK, it's not quite Burne Jones, but ... maybe, a giraffe or two?

There were a number of other bits of tying, wrapping, rubber banding, kebab sticking and otherwise manipulating fabric. My final show of things ready for pots various looked like this

Because there were four of us and Christine there was room for more than two colours each, in fact there were a whole variety of dye colours to choose from once we'd all made our own colour decisions

And once brought home, rinsed, rinsed again, then run through a hot but not boil wash, all these varied colours and patterns emerged from the washing machine.

Kebab sticks folded randomly into fabric
purple in the pot, it has washed to a rather pleasant blue

I've included all my bits there, with apologies for the odd layout. I find Blogger a bit eccentric about where it puts stuff sometimes!

The stitched Shibori

folded, rolled then alternately
knotted and rubber banded

The linen took up very little colour

The silk, on the other hand, was delightful. These bits
were wrapped around the bit of blue pipe above

goldfish or autumn leaves

round acetate pieces each side of folded cloth,
elastic banded, not clamped

detail

a faint hint of moon

crumple wrapped in a stocking

can you see the face peering out at the top?

layered whirligigs twisted and bundled into a fruit next
if you enlarge you can see the mesh in the outer corners

lolly sticks and fan folding then the triangles of the
other stitched piece. The stitches didn't show

and finally - the giraffe - explosions of green!

What delights for a day of fun.

Oh, and in the last class, Christine emphasised how important it is to clean your machine between each project

a bit of fluff

She was right

Preparations

Tomorrow, I'm going to my next workshop at Studio 11. Colourfun, once a month for the coming year. What pleasures to come!

The first session is resist dying, which was what I did for the mini quilt workshop, so I've been preparing.

pre-stitched/tied pieces waiting for tomorrow

I've done

cotton stitched in wavy lines, with points pulled up to make spiderswebs

the wavy lines all drawn up into exotic looking ruches

Silk wound round a plastic tube, then bound with, in the one case, fine cotton, in the other, rough thick twine. I'm interested in how the different binders affect the pattern; whether the texture of the twine will appear in the resist.

 More cotton, a strip this time, folded into triangles, concertina style, then stitched right through at the borders with, perhaps, the arms of a snowflake pattern. The stitching then drawn up on two sides, and on the snowflake arms, for texture. I'm hoping the stitches on the long edge will resist right through and leave a little ant trail at the folds end make the final arms of the snowflake. Alternatively, there'll be a jumble of textures, reading as nothing!

Then there's the old linen tea towel, probably Ganna's; folded, again concertina style, (linenfold) then folded again and wrapped, not too tight, with a rubber band

Lastly, some leaves, perhaps, or maybe little fish ...

stitched into the single layer of fabric, drawn up tight and tied off, with a little spin round the nubbin for added texture

 then I pleated (as best I could) the fabric across it's width, leaving the little nubbins sticking out. We'll see.

Where are the ideas coming from? From Janice Gunner's Shibori for Textile Artists. It is full of so many interesting things. You may remember the video I posted on Shibori a while back. It's the Japanese art of tying  binding, pleating and otherwise adding resists to cloth with thread, clamps and "stuff". Having absorbed plenty from Christine's last workshop, I really wanted to have some ready prepared cloth as well as doing some more folding and clamping tomorrow, with the other bits of cloth I've not shown you!

I wonder what pictures I'll be posting on Tuesday!

Ta Daaa!!

OK that might be a bit OTT, but I've been trying to post this for days and seem to have been very busy. I finished it on Friday evening.

Here it is on the patio on a sunny day with the light streaming across from the west as the sun started to sink. As yet unbound - which sounds rather liberated!

Particular favourite bits are

Moons drifting over the downs

in particular, this little one with it's own lonely pine

fields of flowers

Bracken and dandelion clocks

butterflies, forest moons, rippling water

I really am ridiculously pleased with it

Show and Tell!

Had a little show and tell with my Aunt Sylvia yesterday, who is a spry soul of middlin' years and who was married to my Dad's twin brother Andrew until she was widowed in the late 1990's. She is a sweet soul and I don't see her often enough, considering how close she is to me, being another South Downs dweller. So here's what I showed and told!

Some embroideries old and new. There was also my quilt, which has been trimmed and awaits binding. I cut the binding strips today, the final cuts, so to speak

But now to the garden, which is full of sunshine too good to waste

Varieties of patchwork

I've been working steadily on my quilt, moving it to and fro under the evenly bobbing needle, twisting and folding to get the fabric where I need it to be, to stitch where I want to stitch. I have managed to do all of the "decorative" - for which read rather trembly, wavering, slightly rambling stitching. Here is the back, so you can see the patterns, as in front view they tend to get lost in the pattern of the fabric itself. The colour is all wrong as it was taken in artificial light; it could do with a good press as well, but you get the picture.

I'm really rather pleased with it, as I've not done any machine quilting before and only a tiny bit of hand stuff, I'll post a picture of the front once I've added the binding - the next big challenge. Before that I have all the loose ends to sew in and lose in the layers of the quilt, but that is rather pleasing to do when sitting down watching the TV of an evening.

Meanwhile another kind of patchwork is taking place, in our side yard, the one I mentioned as being destined to be a courtyard. Well, progress is taking place, though first you should see it's original incarnation to appreciate the change

Crikey! It's a bit of a jumble isn't it? Bits of quarry tile mixed with bits of crazy paving mixed with bits of shingle and the odd row of brick edging to catch the feet of the unwary. It's where my slow trees live for the most part, so I can appreciate their seasonal changes from the kitchen window. From the opposite end it looked like this when we first arrived, with a scruffy, but extremely useful shed that has been housing odds and sods.

It is part way through it's transformation now

further on than this, in fact, but you can see the patchwork analogy. My dear one has been acting as labourer, digging holes, filling them in again, moving vast quantities of earth and "stuff" into the skip out the front, salvaging topsoil and barrowing it down to the kitchen garden, cleaning off the black quarry tiles as I want them reused as part of the final design and generally being all round useful, while Ray has been doing the skilled work.
The scruffy looking wall will be painted eventually but before that happens, yet another type of patchwork is being done; pointing, to fill in all the gaps between the bricks where the old pug has fallen out. This, along with the pointing between the pavers, and eventually the painting, is being done by another expert

My daughter