March Pleasures

Well, I seem to have done quite a lot since my last post, all of it pleasurable - lucky me!

Firstly, I have finished the canvaswork piece, better late than never, for my City and Guilds. I am pleased with the result, and hope it doesn't look too much like a mish mash of stitches for the sake of it, but has some sense of coherence.

You can see the original little cross stitch, sitting on its side above the finished needlepoint, reminding me of which colours to use. In the bigger piece I tried to expand those colours a bit, while using different threads to see how they worked on the canvas. I really enjoyed the way the space dyed threads created their own dynamic within the patterns of the stitching, in particular, the wash of pale blue stripes, overlaid with a grid of duck egg blue, in the central block. When you look at the real thing, it sets up an interesting optical effect, as first the grid and then the diagonals take precedence in the eye.

Then, on a warm Saturday, I spent the day with textile artist Claire Buckly being introduced to machine embroidery, something I have been wanting to try for ages, but hadn't the nerve to attempt. I had a lovely time and, with just one other student there, we really benefited from Claire's attention and advice. She also showed us what is possible by sharing the work she did for her MA, beautiful detailed embroideries done with great skill and delicacy.

Last week I was on leave, so on Monday my dear soul and I took the train to London to the very excellent exhibition at the British Library, Royal Manuscripts, the Genius of Illumination. It was enchanting and utterly absorbing; books of all sizes carefully displayed in cases, glittering with gold leaf, resplendent with colour and deep in meanings of all sorts. There were psalters to aid with prayer; rules, regulations and advice about the best way for a monarch to live; early medical books; maps; bibles; genealogies; books of hours and tales of King Arthur and Guinevere. The detail and inventiveness of these early scribes just took my breath away, reminding me of a comment about the Book of Kells: that it was the work of angels. Photography was obviously not allowed, but you can see some images here and look in even more detail in the British Library's excellent Turning the Pages section, which is a real feast of delights. I could have spent hours and hours there, but my body doesn't allow for such indulgences, so restricted myself to an hour and a half of absorbed gazing in an atmosphere that was, despite the large numbers of people there, one of hushed reverence.

Then, on Wednesday, I drove all the long way to York to collect my daughter home for her Easter break.

I always stay at the same hostelry, a lovely B&B called the Warrens, close to the City centre and also to Jen's various places of residence over the last four years. It feels like a home from home, and Richard and Jenny who run it are the nicest of folk. I went, of course, to the Quilt Museum where, each time I've stayed, there has been a new exhibition to inspire. This time was no exception with Decline and Revival the theme, and a lovely selection of quilts on display showing the changing fortunes of quilting and patchwork. Exhibits ranged from its early days of decorative functionality, through the fall from grace as people had less time to stitch and ready made bed covers to buy, up to the current day, with some lovely art quilts from modern textile artists. There was also a great little exhibition in the side gallery from the New Horizons Textile Group, which included workbooks and trial pieces that you could handle, to get a feel for how the final pieces were made.

Having spent a very enjoyable hour there, peering at stitches and fabrics, I went out to St Anthony's Garden, as is my habit when there, to absorb it's lovely tranquil atmosphere.

To my delight, having learnt all about hellebores recently, the garden was simply awash with them, waves of colour, spilling across the soil and giving much pleasure to a visiting peacock butterfly and whole families of ladybirds.

I sat for some time, coatless in the warm March sunshine, letting my inner space meld with the outer peace.

On the following day Jen and I popped in to have a brief look at St Clement's Church, just a short step away from Warrens. It is a rather lovely little Victorian church with a couple of stained glass windows, one of which includes this delightful dragon sending his fiery breath rather too close to the skirts of Margaret of Antioch!

A busy time indeed, and I still have Monday to play with, before it's back to work on Tuesday!

Yesterday evening was so beautiful, I tried to  capture the subtle, misty colours and the flight of the birds across the landscape with my Christmas camera. The longer lense creates more potential for blur in low light, but I like the effect. As I watch them, crows, seagulls, the very occasional sparrowhawk, I wonder about their perception of the space they occupy. To me, because I have human perception and understanding, they appear to be winging their way across a great bowl of green, with a ribbon of road running through it. I wonder what they see and feel as the wind ruffles their feathers. Sometimes great shoals of them flow across the landscape, crows or starlings, raucous in flight.

The  longer zoom also allows me to bring closer to view, those things which draw my eyes as I look out of the upstairs windows. These pylons, about 2 1/2 miles away with, below them, the wonderful delta shapes of the unclad trees, seem ripe for expression in some form of cloth and stitch, if only I could work out how!

Meanwhile, I am still stitching for my City and Guilds, though I have been judged to have passed with merit, which brings great pleasure.

My final two bits of stitch have been part of the counted threadwork bit of the syllabus. The blackwork design was part of this too. When I presented my work, I included the planning for these two bits, one cross stitch, one needlepoint as well. They are both inspired by this lovely quilt I saw in York when I last visited Jen. When viewed for real, the repetition of stripes and strips, with quite restrained colours, creates a sense of almost shimmering movement.

I did some sketches on the spot,

worked up the design by focusing on a select part of the quilt, and drawing out a rough design on graph paper.

The first bit of stitching, which is cross stitch, evolved into this teeny piece. paring all down to simple colour and concept.

Then, on the same piece of canvas, I have broadened out again, allowing myself space to try out a variety of needlepoint stitches. So far I've done this much

and am loving the opportunity to try out differing scales, patterns, textures and types of thread, whilst remaining true to the original quilt in terms of colour and movement.

Now to bring in the red!

dancing along

She's a happy creature, with her attendant birds, the flame of inspiration burning above her head

 perhaps her heart is gladdened by the robin outside the window

 and her soul dancing with the catkins down in the dell

January light

The little Goddess is evolving, as is the space her servant works in. My study has been transformed by the addition of curtains and by dropping the nets (horrible things) down to half the window height. Result?




The sunlight now streams through, warming the atmosphere and illuminating where it lands.

there is a view through. I need some privacy screen at the bottom of the window, as we are quite visible from the road, but hadn't realised how confining the nets felt until I moved them - they previously covered the top half as well. I don't like the ones that are there now, they're synthetic and unappealing, but they shield me from view. I'd like to create something like this, I admire Jude's work hugely, but know I have the neither the skill nor verve.

The glimpse of the sky above, netted in the branches of the tree outside, can be seen opening out as one walks through the hallway from the rear of the house.

It is also thrown through the prisms of the glass in the door,




bounces down the hallway



and is netted briefly in the walnut at the bottom of the garden

 before winging it's way through the gulls feathers and into the landscape beyond.

blackwork and the little goddess

The blackwork project is finished. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this one, choosing the most appropriate pattern for each element and trying to make sure that I used a variety of tones in the image. I'm rather pleased with it as I'd not done this before. I did find it trying on the eyes though, and could be seen on numerous occasions with the needlework almost stitched to my nose in my attempts to see where to place the needle next! Now, skipping quickly over the fact that I've not done the other counted thread pieces, I'm moving on to my little Goddess cloth, which I introduced here.

These are the two designs, the one on the left was intended to be the one I worked from. Barbara gently commented on the amount of detail when I was drawing it, but I wasn't quite listening.

The final piece of stitching is to be no more than 15cm high. Once I realised how small this really is - I grew up with feet and inches - I could see that the image on the left was just too complex to fit in, Barbara was right, so have used the one on the right, which was my original rough drawing from our splish splash splosh day.

One aspect of the course has been to develop our understanding of techniques. The prick and pounce method of transferring a is one I've known about for years, but always avoided as it sounded so fiddly. You trace your design onto some reasonably robust paper,  use a needle (very carefully!) to prick holes around the outline



secure the paper on the piece to be worked, then "pounce" by gently dabbing/rubbing powdered charcoal through the holes and onto the fabric.


What a faff I've always thought, can't be bothered with all that poking and dabbing and stuff. But actually it works really well, better than carbon paper in this case as the fabric, being backed with muslin, had a slightly uneven texture, making it hard to get the carbon paper to transfer properly. With this I ended up with a nice neat little set of dots to guide me, which I then sketched lightly over with a Pitt pen - an idea I picked up from Jude's video on the Magic Feather project  A firm shake and all the charcoal falls off leaving me with a clear outline to allow me to begin.

I've done some practice runs for the face and the main body, just to see how the threads and stitches went together. Again, this is something I'd not bothered with before in embroidery - but then my past embroidery has been restricted to six stranded embroidery floss.

Part of this course has been about experimenting with different threads as well as cloth and stitch; such delight! When I was last in York I went to the Viking Loom with Jen and had to be steered out as there were so many good things to buy. I came back with some Stef Francis and Edmar threads in delicious colours, some of which will be used in this piece.

When I'd finished the design on the left above, I showed it to my good soul. He took one look and said - that's your daughter.

She's a little older than this now - OK, about 19 years older - but I do see what he means!

Seems appropriate somehow; Mum's hankie, my stitching, Jen's spirit, three generations in one Goddess.

Manorial stitching

While my back has been, and is still being, painful, I have been trying to keep up with the embroidery - though sitting is not a good thing for bad backs, so it's been a bit intermittent.

This piece is sort of finished - I keep wondering whether to work a border, but will try framing with card to start with. I particularly like the way raised chain band can be used as a filling - it looks so different worked in differing threads, here with a shiny purple rayon contrasting with a matt bluey green cotton 




Then there's the Blackwork project, based on an interior view of an old old house, Avebury Manor in Wiltshire. You can read about it here and here, I discover that it's been the subject of a TV series, To the Manor Born, with Penelope Keith how delightful!

Sadly I can't find out who the photographer of this picture is, but it comes from the National Trust Magazine Autumn Issue

This design the result of another glue and stick day at Barbara's. This time I'd come  ill prepared, so had to make do with images culled from her store of magazines. This image caught my eye as it was very simple, but resonant. I love interior views, from Vermeer to Hammershoi the interiors have an intimacy; in this one you can almost feel the presence of someone, just out of view, their breath moving invisibly across the threshold. The room was the dressing room of a Mr Kieller, or Keiller's jam! 


First there's stitching the basic outlines of the design

Then there's stitching the design itself. Sometimes I use the frame, sometimes I hold it in my hand. There are two basic techniques; one that is worked as two complementary rows of running stitch, the return path filling in the stitches the first run missed, the other is to work the design in backstitch. I've used both as appropriate.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome so far, still a bit more stitching down the right hand wall.  Here I'm starting to use a double and single thread in different parts of the design, hoping to give the effect of light and shade. I'll gradually miss odd stitches as I get towards the bottom to increase the amount of ground fabric, ad therefore light, in the image. 

and some stitching

I'm still stitching away on the City and Guild projects, each a little exercise in a group of stitches.  The latest piece is taking it's time, and mine, in between visits to York and the Quilt Museum, which was delightful as always.

This was the source - from one of our splash and splosh days at Barbara's

And this the work in progress. The colours aren't quite as disparate, but one was taken by lamplight and one by daylight. Fabric, a zingy recycled shirt found in the Lakes in a charity shop.

The idea in this one is to use composite stitches like raised chain band, guilloche, pekinese, amongst others and interpret the splishes and sploshes in the collage. It is slow but fun, and should be followed by three exercises in counted thread work, - canvas, cross and blackwork.

However I need to get the inspiration and the preparatory stitchings together for my final piece, which is based on this lovely pot that you can find here

She's a goddess of creatures, mistress of the animals, and dates from about 680 BC, called Potnia Theron. From this I got to this, with apologies for the poor reproduction of the drawn image

Again, a bit of splish and splosh as we were encouraged to explore our image, hence the collage, which could translate in to an interesting applique at some stage. The gold of the fabric, which will be quieter in the final piece, is one of the hankies I dyed here.  It seems fitting that a  little goddess cloth should have one of Mum's myriad of hankies as its base - with a  muslin backing to give it some substance. In the hemmed edge of the hankie there is a little row of three birds who will be her animal representatives. I want to use toning, quiet colours that fit with the original image, which is black on terracotta. I have to get this "idea" in by next weekend, which means this week as I have to go up country to visit my Aunt Cecil next weekend and get her settled down for Christmas.