Starting and finishing

As these bits of embroidery should be seen from the back and the front, I have no muslin to hide threads behind. One way of doing this is with an "away knot"; you bring the thread through from front to back some distance (at least a needle's length) away from where you start, begin with a small back stitch to secure, then weave the waste thread in once you've finished. As this fabric has a good even weave, and is quite firm, I am lacing the tail end through the very top thread of the weave on the back, where it will be over stitched, then taking the securing stitch. It will save me time and the end result is the same.

Finishing off

The tacking thread shows me the perimeters of the space I'm filling in each quadrant. I've divided the space up in a similar way to some of the carpet pages in manuscripts like Kells and Lindisfarne. I'm quite nervous about all this, truth be told, there are so many fine needle women in the guild, who have been members for many years. I hope my stitching is up to scratch! There has been unpicking already!

Auditioning

I am away from work at the moment, on doctors orders. This gives me some time to nurse the daily hurts that come with having Fybromyalgia and a connective tissue disorder, which leave me feeling drained and exhausted. I don't talk about my health much here, it seems too much like an indulgence, and is only part of who I am. However, I reached a point where I simply had to stop. This allows me to do things at my own pace, to rest when I need to and to take a focused course of Ibuprofen to try and help my body to heal itself. I feel like a convalescent, but the positive side is that I have time to work on a stitch project our Branch Chairman has suggested, a sort of stitch dictionary. We chose two bits of fabric and a piece of folded paper on which was writ our stitch - in my case, blanket stitch. One is to work the stitch in as many variants as possible, using a variety of threads and pushing the stitch to see where it will go. The second bit of fabric is to create an image, using the threads and stitches.

The first task, of course, is to audition threads. I tried a varity, the brief being to use as many different weights and types of thread, and to push the stitch as far as it will go. There were a number that didn't work

This little twist of greens (from Cecil's stash), while full of lovely textures, moves the colour range too far away from "neutrals" which was the brief

likewise, the yellow/orange is, too far away from the initial range. 

So here is what I came up with

the darker piece of fabric will be my test bed, the rosy coloured one I'm keeping for the image. This is my excuse for moving the colours towards the rusty and ruddy, which blend with the darker fabric as well. I have a few ideas for an image, but nothing firm yet. I'm waiting to see what the stitch can do and what it says to me.

Here's what happened

a little late in posting because I had to be at home at a time when there was natural light to get the colours right. Here's the piece I showed you in full before I popped it into the dye bucket. It's roughly a yard wide.

It reminds me a little of sunset clouds over the sea - OK that takes a bit of imagination, but if you stand back, squint a bit, and think of mackerel skies, it kind of works. I'm very happy with the way the patterns of the shibori stitching flow with the orange streaks, they zig zag across the cloth without being too insistent. Some of the colours really zing out and when you look at it close up, as with all shibori, you get lovely shapes and accidental images. All part of the technique, not my cleverness I must add.

And the piece I wrapped around the pole? This one is smaller, around 21 inches wide.

A sort of mandala, that spins and dances on the fabric. The plastic capping at the end didn't work, but I think that's OK as it would have left an uninteresting splodge of white in the centre. Again, the colours have gone very zingy in places, which I like, but might not be to some people's taste.

Of course the eternal question that Aunt Cecil always asks is "but what it it for Kath? What are you going to do with it?"

To which I reply, it's for learning ... rather like life I always think.

Shibori experiments

A lovely New Year treat at Studio 11, despite waking up with a horrible migraine. One of my focuses this year is to pursue Shibori further and I thought it would add some interest to use one of the pieces of fabric I dyed two years ago in the Colour Fun workshop that was my introduction to the pleasures of working with dyes and fabrics. So I took this piece, which was a tray dyed bit of cotton, rippled across diagonally then dyed with a variety of reds, rusts and the odd spot of purple and green

I folded it concertina style

loosely tacked the folds down at each edge, then stitched diagonals across the folded fabric, running the stitching in the same direction as the marks on the fabric

my plan to pull all the stitching up and overdye with another colour. But what colour I wondered? After discussion with Christine, who has a marvelous sense of colour, I decided on a mixture of petrol green with a touch of indigo, colours across the colour wheel from the ones already here, in other words, complimentary, rather than analogous.

I also did a small bit of pole wrapped fabric, not the usual pole wrapping which involves spiraling a single layer of fabric around a pole, wrapping thread round in another spiral, then compressing it all by sliding the fabric and thread to the bottom of the pole. This creates lovely rippling patterns, but I wanted to try for a mandala effect.

I placed the pole vertically at the centre of the fabric, drew the fabric up around the pole and taped that firmly while I wound thread in a spiral. I tied a piece of plastic over the end of the pole, intending to create a bright heart, with the pattern radiating out from the centre.

How did they turn out? I'll let you know when they come out of the washing machine.

I also did some work on the breakdown printing for which I dyed a family of fabrics earlier

A Thought

Flow ......

Like this perhaps  

An Experiment

I enjoy testing out theories. This one is about plied threads having a sort of up and down; up and they behave themselves, down and they twirl and twist, squiggle and wriggle, tie themselves into ungainly knots and, generally, misbehave.

I wonder if you stitchers out there have similar "thread lore" that you've been told or have tested

So, a piece of lovely Ed Mar rayon in purple and pink - not being tested on this fabric, that already belongs to a cushion, but at the edge of something. 

I've threaded each end, and will cut and stitch to see how each behaves. 

Same needle, same bit of fabric,

and quite a squiggly wiggle on the right

though subsequent stitches didn't behave the same way, however

the red thread, coming from the left, has untwisted quite a lot at the end, compared to the purple one

and look at how that stem stitch sits in opposite directions, though placed into the fabric in exactly the same way. The purple thread, which squiggled but didn't unravel sits above the line, the red, which squiggled less, sits below. Food for thought.

I am intrigued ...

Catch up

I haven't shown you this recently. I've done all sorts.

I took out these distracting open chain stitches in dark blue and purple - I am learning the value of unpicking and persevering. These were originally done to explore creating a cell like pattern to sit above the organza for the dragonfly project, which is simply in abeyance at the moment, not forgotten

it has evolved into something else, a counter-play between the surface and what lies beneath. Now I'm focusing here in the top left corner. Just an echo of the wave pattern picked up from the fabric below. I need to do something to hold down the organza at the top left. Something delicate that doesn't draw the eye away from the orange wave. So I'm looking at the threads I've got

Absolutely wrong, too pale and shiny though it has been used elsewhere 

A good purple, but too fat and shiny, again it will draw the eye too much.

Lovely colours, and the right weight, but might tucking bright orange up here be a bit distracting, in this quiet space?

But here, the colours of the organza are echoed closely, the weight is right, and it's a matte thread so won't draw the eye, just blend gently I hope. I'm also looking to break the edge at the side by bringing the flow out onto the ground fabric so it softens that line of blue on the left.

And for an interesting change of scale and tone, I have a Studio 11 next week so also need to consider these - not sure if this will become something functional or decorative, but I love the patterns created by the breakdown process shown in video by Clare Benn and Leslie Morgan

The family of fabrics I've dyed to go with the printed fabric - resist screen printed at the top, embedded screen printed  at the bottom. I'm rather pleased with them.