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

Cecil's Saga

Cecil is my Aunt, or more properly my first cousin once removed. She lives in the delightfully named Felix Lodge in a little village in the heart of the Home Counties. She stood as my godmother when I was a baby, is the only remaining strand of this part of the family apart from myself and Jen on this side of the water, and has always been an inspiration to me. She never married or had children, much to her sorrow, and worked at a variety of jobs during her life. She rose to the challenge of paying off all her father's debts when he died, leaving her and her mother bankrupt, and cared for her mother as dementia took hold, for as long as work allowed. Her final job was a custodian to one of our country's beautiful National Trust properties, Grey's Court, where she initiated one of the first tea rooms at a National Trust house, drawing great trays of delicious smelling cakes from her Rayburn to sell to guests. I had the pleasure of staying with her many times as a child and young adult, thrilled to be sleeping in "the Keep" one of the cottages in the complex that made up the Grey's estate, which was her home until she retired. She is that sort of middle class Englishwoman who are the backbone of  country life across the land - a keen member of the WI, active in the church, an arranger of flowers and mender of vestments, helper of friends and organiser of good works. When we celebrated her 80th birthday I was deeply touched by the number of her friends who told me what a kind and caring person she was, how often she'd helped others and how much she was appreciated and how little she expected for herself. This attitude might be sneered at now, derided as some sort of submission to an outdated expectation of woman's role.  In a culture more interested in individual rights, gripped by a consuming desire to have all, altruism seems to have gone out of fashion. I think that is a rather sad thing; it makes people unthinkingly unkind and seems to have brought a hard, uncaring tone into our lives. If we don't care for each other, who else is going to do so?

Here Cecil is, with her mother, me and my dear little mum, on one of our get togethers with each other, when I was somewhat smaller than I am now!

Last week I went to visit and help her celebrate her 87th birthday. She is getting old, her short term memory is gone, as I've mentioned before, and life is often difficult for her, despite having a very fine carer called Phyl, who comes in daily during the week to help out with the practical and to bring some fun, stimulation and interest into her life.

What do you give someone who is 87, who has all the things about her that she needs, and whose life is closing in? Well, Cecil has always been a very fine needlewoman. She and my beloved Ganna inspired my to stitch in my youth and she has always taken a great interest in what I've made over the years. Her house is decorated with a number of lovely bits of embroidery done by her with delicate and varied stitches, beautifully executed. She made me dresses as a child, and also clothed my doll, Amanda Jane, including this rather fine rose pink outfit with matching hat!

Well, Phyl, during one of the many "sortings out" that happen from time to time, came across a piece of embroidery that Cecil did when she was 23. It was done as part of a course she went on - sadly she can't remember quite what the course was, but they had evidently been tasked with some autobiographical stitching. So she created Cecil's Saga, a beautifully worked piece of stitchery which includes little vignettes of her life - or rather what small part of she'd lived up until then. I brought this home with me some months ago, delighted that it had been found and thought, "now, what can I do with this lovely cloth"?

As her birthday approached, realisation dawned. Of course; the obvious answer! What gives pleasure to those whose present is dimming? Thoughts of the past, that "other country" which comes and goes in our minds and has, in part, made us who we are. So, knowing of a rather good picture framers in Hastings who have done lovely work for me before, I took it along to consult. Of course they could frame it, what frame would I like? what mount? what size? I left it with them, in pleased anticipation, and when we collected it I was really delighted with the result. The framing was lovely and the mount really sets off the muted colours of the cloth it is stitched on. I brought it to her home wrapped in the Tie Dye quilt which both protected it and was taken to show and amuse in it's currently unfinished state. The cloth was carefully raised, like a stage curtain at the beginning of the play until, voila, the whole could be seen and the spreading smile and exclamations of surprise from her were just marvelous. The gift had worked, she was thrilled, here she is, holding it proudly, with one of her finest knowing smiles!

And, here, since it is rather large, are some of the details so you can appreciate their character and whimsy

Joining up toward the end of the war, moving from civvies to uniform. On the day war was declared "Daddy said, 'well, we'll have to get you back to school my girl'", so she was evacuated with her school from home and family in Sussex, down to the rural West Country. Then, when she was too old to be at school any more "Daddy said, 'come one Totty, time to get you in the army'". So Totty did as she was bid and joined up - terrified, but also glad to have her freedom and a comfort to other young recruits who'd never been away from home before

Commemorating the Battle of Hastings. Hastings had been home before the war as her grandmother (Nanya to me), and three daughters had moved there from Ireland in 1921 after Sinn Feiners, pistols at the ready, creeping though the house in the night, made staying in Arklow less than attractive.

 A delightful little group with their bicycle - Cecil couldn't remember their significance

and Great Aunt B with her cat.

The picture, as you can see, is rather large, and I was a bit worried as to where it might fit in her very small cottage. However, we found the perfect spot here

It is just inside her sitting room door, ready to greet her each morning as she gets up and takes her cup of tea there to sit and read the paper. I'm sure she and Phyl will spend time looking at it, talking about what each image represents, visiting the past and happy times. If you look just past her head, you'll catch a glimpse of the other gift I brought with me - an angel sun catcher with the word PEACE dangling below in rainbow colours, to hang on her conservatory door. I felt it was a good thought with which to start the day.

So thank you Phyl, for finding this gem and bringing it to my attention; thank you Empress Art of Hastings for giving it such a lovely frame, and thank you Cecil for always being the best Godmother and Aunt I could have wanted.