A little bit of stitch

I seem to be taking a dreadfully long time with this. It's the Branch Stich Book and I have been neglecting it badly, busy with other things and with trying to maintain enough energy to actually get anything done at all! However, I'm back in touch with it again now - do you find that? You seem to miss some connection with what you're trying to do so it goes on the back burner for a while, though this really should have taken priority! My stitch is blanket stitch, it's a really nice opportunity to work with variations of one stitch, also to try out different threads from ones store. 

I've also jut done the first year's account balancing act as treasurer of our local branch. It doesn't need ot be in 'til next month, but The Lakes approach so I want to make sure all is good before we go away. 

Everything balanced, hurrah hurrah ..... I'm very pleased with myself

Detail

Just thinking,

looking at the patterns and flows of colour, trying to work out what will enhance

 where to go, what to stitch and what to leave

Suspended from the floor lamp in my (horrendously untidy) study in lieu of a design wall 

Those swayings away from True, across and down; the not quite lined up. Do I straighten them out or do they add a slight movement within the grid structure, a bit of unrule

True ... Truth ...

Squares of colour

I've been doing a little stitching, quietly in the evenings and at our first Studio 11 class last week. This started as something I took with me to Birmingham so I'd have some bits of cloth to play with in the evenings after looking at all those lovely quilts during the day. The squares began life as a tea towel, lovely loose weave linen, worn with years of smoothing cups and plates dry in my grandmother's hands. I used it in my first year with Christine as something to experiment with, to learn from, and to see the different way in which linen took up colour. I wasn't happy with the inital results - eventually the linen was torn in two and treated slightly differently on each half, way back here, but cut into squares, rearranged on some dark blue linen, stitched down with little stitches that match the background colour, I hope perhaps it has some potential. I think I've managed to keep the squares reasonably ... well square ... two layers of soft woven linen can surely wriggle about a bit in the hand when they're being stitched together. I rigged up the giraffe (OK it's a craft stand really, but you can see what I mean) to hold my embroidery frame and that made the stitching go a lot easier. I'd like to add some embroidered stitch, perhaps a little sparkle, something to enhance what's already there, but not intrude or detract. Simple. Careful. Sympathetic.

What happens now, of course, is I get the awful heebie jeebies, having got so far, and totally stall because I can't work out what to do next. To me, it says light falling to the forest floor, other might see different. What do you think?

Festival of Quilts

Well, this time last week I was just back from my first experience of this amazing celebration of all things quilt related. I had the pleasure of helping out in Christine's gallery on the Saturday morning - there is a lovely blog post here by Helen Conway which says much better than I can what a lovely and moving gallery it was. It was very engaging to spend the morning there greeting people who came to look, watching their reactions to the emotion and thought in the textiles, moving towards and away to get the detail and the overall view. In expressing her experience of watching her father succumb to dementia, it was obvious that these quilts and textile portraits were deeply moving to many viewers; they touch a chord with those of us who have watched one we love slowly disappear, piece by piece, as the mind fragments; I felt privileged to be there.

Christine Chester - Palimpset, detail

So what is my newcomer's impression of the event? Astonishing, exhausting, inspiring, overwhelming, um, all those superlatives. It shows one how wide the umbrella is that embraces the term quilt; themes were as broad as human ingenuity can imagine:

there were traditional quilts, 

Lynne Johnson - Billings Coverlet Reborn

Liz Jones - All Things Bright and Beautiful

art quilts

Chrry Vernon-Harcourt - Coastal Study 1

hand quilting, 

Vanessa Stanfield and Tricia Neale - A Medieval Bestiary, detail

machine quilting, 

Ximo Navarro - It is not a dream, this quilt is real, detail

pictorial quilts, 

Hilde van Schaardenburg - The Threatened Swan, detail

Sally Hutson - The Clothmakers Window, detail

landscapes, 

Kate Dowty - Marshwood Vale

Jean McLean - Silence. Judges Choice

quilts full of detail, 

Kirsti Hovland - The Milky Way - Stars Wandering

Kirsti Hovland - The Milky Way - Stars Wandering, detail

quilts with presence, 

Judy Doolan Kjellin - Sadness, detail

those about ideas

Natalia Manley - Beyond the Black Hole. Judges Choice

or poetry - in this case one of my favourites by Yeats

Jill Exell - Stairway to Heaven

or history, 

Marisa Marquez - Lost Inheritance

decorative embellishments, 

all sizes and shapes, 

Amanda House - Dragons Ho!

some to be viewed from both sides 

Sue Palmer - Bou Baretea, one side - detail

and the other

oh I could go on and on. I saw work there that was a million miles from anything I could, or would want to achieve, some that was akin to the tentative experiments I'm working with, some that I might perhaps aspire to one day. And I haven't even mentioned the marketplace!

It is marvellous to me to see how great the variety of human expression is when you come to a show like this, be it large or small. We see things and think, "gosh, I couldn't live with that", or "how on earth long did that take to achieve", others that leave us in awe of the skill or a technique, yet others that we could just gaze and gaze at. It is such a celebration of skill, artistry, invention, technique, thought, hand work, colour, texture; things which we are unique in being able to create and then use to express our endless inventiveness.

Here are a few more favourites

Gloria Loughman - Merrill Hall, Asilomar, California. Detail

Kate White - Dragonfly Studies, detail. Judges Choice Contemporary Quilts

Dianne Firth - Earth Bones

Annabel Groom - Costa Rican Moons

Christine Restall - Estuary

Mary McIntosh - Copper Plates

I loved it!

Maroon Breakdown

Which sounds like a band, and has been languishing. I may have found a way to move forward with these bits of cloth printed some considerable time ago now, I need to just get on with it now! I blogged about this here and here and was supposed to have put it all together as a something by now. that was part of this year's plan, but it kept getting put to one side, and then I got very tired and was doing very little for a while.

So? These are both poor pictures, but may at least be a start. Many many different layouts have been tried, this may be a final one, but I'll need to have another look by daylight.

Without a design wall this involves a lot of stooping and bending and moving and folding to get something like an idea. Then there's the straining to get a picture from the right height, on the correct plane, all in focus with the iPad. I suspect the whole process would appear quite ridiculous to an onlooker! Still not sure about it, but I really should get going and do something with it. There are still a few gaps to fill and plans to draw and the colours all look much nicer than this!

In the meantime I've had a lovely and inspiring three days with Committed to Cloth dyeing silk, linen and velvet, of which more later I hope; also a pleasurable visit to Standen, a William Morris'y Arts and Crafts'y house and garden, built by Philip Webb which has a lovely atmosphere of just occupied immanence, if that doesn't sound odd.

 There are, of course, beautiful embroideries in every room

 and the garden was delightful and full of buzzies taking delight in it

Oh, and I'm off to Festival of Quilts in a little while; Christine is an exhibitor.

Gosh, I sound quite busy don't I - did I mention the day job? :-)

Oh my!

I am almost beside myself with delight

Look what arrived in the post today

as recommended by

preceded by

and hopefully to be followed, at some stage by

though I don't promise to read all of Gilgamesh!

Klimt beginnings

So we had the pleasure of Wendy Dolan for two whole days on Saturday and Sunday, 

There was a plan, which was adapted from Klimt's Stoclet Frieze - the headdress on the dancing girl called Expectation

and layers of yummy fabric, all tacked together, the design traced off

And the basic design stitched into the reverse,

Then came the soldering iron, and the delicate peeling away of layer upon layer, carefully separating with a needle, then melting away, stitching, foiling, stitching some more. We were, at all times, guided by Wendy's patient, good humoured, informative, ably demonstrated and skillful support. 

I think we all did rather well. It is one of the great pleasures of doing a workshop with a group of friends, you get to see so many differing and beatiful interpretations of one idea.

And mine so far? It all depends on which way the light falls

Plenty more to do, but I'm rather happy with the start