nine patch laid

Being a follower of Jude I have developed a great affection for the sweet simplicity of the nine patch. Of course she takes it and does the most wonderful things, setting it free to celebrate the spirit of a loved cat, stitching it into stars, bending and weaving it around the moon. I love the subtlety of her work, the frayed edges and the gentle colours, the way she invests so much of her life into it's being, and brings us into her story with her honest words and beautiful cloths. I have watched what she does for some time now, popping over for each update, diving off into the blogs of her followers to see where others take her inspiration. One day, when I have more time, I would like to take one of her online classes, to see where that inspiration could take me. But for now I am learning, learning, learning, in between working and doing life. As well as taking Christine's monthly classes at Studio11, I am currently stitching samplers for the City and Guilds; our theme is grids - how appropriate. So we've had a splish splash splosh day with Barbara and have been sent away to explore the grid and to try our hand at laid work and couching. Well, I've not done either before, so am really enjoying learning new things. I've done a little bit of couching, but there will be more to do before next Saturday if I have time

With the template we made at the class, which reminds me irrepressibly of the Playschool Windows, I've done some design work on grids,

 my favourite probably being the black and white one

and I've been practicing my laid work as ... a nine patch

Of course this is quite different from Jude's subtle colours and complex cloths. It's a simple exercise in stitching, and tremendous fun to do. But still, it has the tiniest element of Jude in it, just a whisper in the shadows of the stitches really, a thought of her, as my needle went in and out, to and fro, weaving colours into cloth.

It pleases me. I hope it will pass muster on Saturday when we have our next class.

Goldwork dragons and a Royal wedding dress

The sun shone this weekend, after days of grey skies and intermittent rain - the ground is soggy, but the hazel just outside the window where I sit during the day has been just wonderful, clinging to it's leaves through all the wind we've also been having, as they have changed from their summer green to the beautiful clear yellow they are now. The colour just sings when backlit by the sun, bright, clean, uncomplicated. But even on those days when the mist has closed in and our view has not extended beyond the walnut at the end of the garden, this yellow has still shone for me, glowing with it's own inner light, right through to sundown and beyond - a smile outside my window each day.

Yesterday was our monthly Embroiderer's Guild meeting. We had the pleasure of a talk by Sophie Long about her experience of being an apprentice at the Royal School of Needlework. It was immensely interesting, especially as, having graduated, she then had the honour of being part of the team who worked on the Royal wedding dress. She brought along examples of the work she had done whilst studying at the School. They were really impressive, and many are shown on her website, including the most delicate whitework swan, a very clever blackwork image that was based on a photograph of her sister, and perhaps my favourite, her goldwork dragon. None of these pictures give you more than an inkling of the detail and craftsmanship in these pieces of needlework. We were able to peer closely, as she allowed them to be passed round as she was talking - I seem to recall her saying that the whitework piece took around 90 hours of stitching. I was really struck by how much work the apprentices had to do, both during term time and in the holidays - not for the faint hearted. Of the intake of 7 when she started her apprenticeship, only three graduated and she is the only one still working at the craft. She was very modest about her success, putting it down to the stroke of luck that meant that, just as she was finishing, someone in the Embroidery Studio was leaving and she was offered the place. I suspect this offer wouldn't have been made had her skill not been considered up to their very high standards.

After her talk, she had brought along bits and bobs for us to look at or buy. I succumbed to some lovely threads - now I look at them, perhaps I was influenced by the tones of Autumn ...

It is such a pleasure to belong to a Guild like this. There is so much to learn; both from the people Brenda invites to talk to us or run workshops, and from each other. Having not been a "joiner of things" in my life up 'til now - perhaps the result of being an only child, I am now reaping the benefits. In addition, after the talk a little group of us who are doing the City and Guilds together, got into a huddle to discuss our progress so far!

Thread storage

I've been taking part in a November Post a Photo a Day group on Facebook, which has been great fun; a theme for each day to photograph, then everyone gets to see and comment on everyone's pictures. There have been some great, funny, well taken, quirky, revealing (not in a naughty sense) and interesting pictures to see. Everyone has different perspectives and it is, to me, one of the great things about the Internet - the way it connects people. So, today's theme was "Man Made" and I added a picture of a rather lovely thing my ex-husband (but still friend) made for me many years ago. A bespoke set of little oak drawers in which to store my embroidery threads, which has been used with great pleasure ever since. It has caused so many positive comments that I thought I'd better share it here as well. Isn't it beautiful?

Then I made a comment about not showing "the other one with the fancy threads" and someone said "can we see that too" so I took, and posted another picture. This time a very old piece, which came home with me from Cecil's earlier this year when she was having a "purge".

It's a miniature Wellington Chest, very battered and worn and will have been in the family for ever, like much of our "stuff"! I gave it a clean up, pulled all the drawers out to wax the runners, tentatively put my hand into the opening for the bottom drawer, where something had rattled, and found, buried in some decidedly creepy black fluffy dust, those little bone handles embroidery tools you can see in the very bottom drawer. Once they were cleaned up, I thought they'd better go back in the drawer where they belonged, along with some ancient packets of needles which I'll include for Joe's particular pleasure, since I know he loves them.

Treasures indeed!

Mushrooms!

so here they are, all finished though not yet framed. I'm really pleased with the way they turned out. I didn't expect to be able to create something that looks so complete from just one workshop (OK and a week off sick!), but having a kit to work from made all the difference as it provided the framework, all I had to provide were the stitches and a bit of thought about what colours to use.

 

A couple of closeups so you can see just how 3 dimensional they are once all is put together on the ground cloth

the grassy knoll

and a few little dewdrops, just waiting for a fairy to gather for her morning skin care routine.

Would i do more stumpwork? Yes, absolutely; it has a magic about it that I really enjoyed; the detail is such fun and creating a little three dimensional world ticks all sorts of boxes for me. I just need to practice more.
But first, there's a City and Gilds to work with. We had the first of our "splish splash splosh" days with Barbara yesterday, which was great fun, as ever. I have homework to do, having created a distorted grid stencil to play with ... oh and there's Cecil's quilt to finish. That's this afternoon's pleasure

Ready to come together

I've still been felling pretty rough over the last couple of days - in fact I had to forgo my next workshop with Christine at Studio 11 yesterday, as I really didn't feel up to it. However, as long as I sit quietly the world stays relatively still and I can get on with some stitching, so have been adding to my stumpwork piece and now all the separate elements are ready to come together, so here they are before being assembled

 the completed mushroom stems along with the background grassy blobby bits

and a close up of the blobby bits so you can see where I've tried to give a bit of variety and evoke the "greenery yallery" fantasy natural feel of the original pieces. Sadly, you can also see where the padded stem stitch is less than perfect. if I were doing this again I'd probably do the background first, then the stems as the stitching, once done, is rather vulnerable to a moving needle trying to create French knots!

 and the two extra pieces that will sit over the base of the mushroom stems to give that 3d effect, along with two of the mushrooms - the canvaswork one you've seen before and the one from fancy fabric which will, I hope, blend well with the colours of the threads I've used. These two bits and the stitched mushroom will now be cut out, the edges turned and applied to the stems with, hopefully, neat, invisible stitches!

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