Homage update

No, I haven't stopped stitching on this, but other things have been taking precedence, like learning all about colour and dyes!

Here is where I am so far. The three maple leaves all stitched around now, some spirals

and some little seeds floating down.

I will add more of these as I like the floatiness of them. As ever, forgive me for the blurriness of iPad images - I can't work out how to improve, though I'm sure there must be something in the settings I can change!

I'm happy with how things are going but, as with all projects like this, the further along I get the more worried I am that I'm going to mess it up with the next thing I do. While I was away learning about colour I did a little trial with two types of thread, to see if I could stitch some maple seeds to tie in with the leaves.

Problem is, I love them both! Christine's very wise suggestion was that I scan the image in, cut out several and try them each to see how they look on the cloth. What a wise soul.

Colour all week long

I had a delightful time the week before last at Committed to Cloth, experimenting with colour, enjoying the companionship of the rest of the group and learning from Leslie, who is endlessly generous with her advice and expertise. We all experimented with mixing colours, each from her own source of inspiration. These included pictures torn from magazines, photos of favourite garden flowers, views of much loved scenes, paintings, advertising images, all the colours of the rainbow and more.

Some images were delicate and muted, some vivid and bright, we all brought or own interests and personalities to the workshop. Throughout the week Leslie talked to us about colour and shared her own working practice, inspirations and knowledge. We learnt about cool and warm colours, about tone, contrast, mood, proportion and the way to use the colour wheel to understand what colours go with each other and how they react to one another.

The first day we spent working from just one image, taking two colours from it and attempting to mix each from the eight dye colours available to us. We mixed a base colour, then diluted it, then diluted the dilution, if you know what I mean. These three source colours, light, medium and dark, were then mixed, each with each to achieve a palette of fifteen colours, graded from light to dark, from pure to mixed. The resulting colours were applied in little squares to the pre soda'd cloth of our choice. The studio was awash with little pots of colour and samples pinnned up on the design walls or pinned to the benches as we all experimented to our hearts content.

We were encouraged to "document, document, document" as this is the only way to truly understand the process. We were also encouraged to "steal" from each other, though only in the spirit of knowledge sharing. So, at the end of the first day we each went round everyone's table, with little bits of cloth, and took colour samples from everyone else's families, making notes on the mixes as we went.

This way we all benefited from each other's experimentation and colour interest; those working with a soft muted palettes could have brilliant brights as well, those working with darks could find out about pastels. Oddly, three of us, including me, worked a range from purple to green, my source being the Mackintosh Descent of Night which I had taken with me.

In the following days we either mixed yet more colours, refined the ones we had already mixed, worked on creating imagery from those mixes or some or all of the above. By the end of the week the studio was full of colour samples and creative fabrics produced with our colours. In between these experiments we were fed delicious soups and salads, were tempted by several yummy cakes and a sumptuous cheesecake, had the opportunity to browse the books on the shelves in the studio and were given encouragement, help and advice from Leslie. We also had the pleasure of sharing each other's interests and expertise, and watching everyone's imagery and colour palettes develop through the week. With such a wide variety of experience and practice there was more inspiration than one couple possibly absorb in one week. Plenty of food for thought to mull over in slow time.

You can check out the C to C Facebook page for the results and some details of the lovely work produced. My own images were drawn in part from the pictures I took along for inspiration and in part from experimenting with the tools available in the studio. I became quite adept at applying colour with Leslie's favourite tool, a credit card, tried out some of the thermofaxes, made a thermofax of my own, experimented with brushes and a bit of monoprinting and used masking tape and a silk screen to blend a grid of colours from one of my experiments. All in all, a wonderful week of experiment, learning and laughter in in the company of like minded, creative, talented women.

Maksing tape screen in purple and gold

Monoprinted blues that I couldn't bear to waste

Thermofax umbellifers in greens and golds

Credit card drawn image loosely based on Eric Money's beautiful The Ferryman

layered work in progress from purple to green 

Must try harder

as my teachers always said! I have been busy, just not astonishingly productive. We had teenagers to stay so the house had to be made ready, then it had to be made tidy again and unteenaged! Not that they were too bad bless them; they went to Hastings together and played Crazy Golf on the seafront - mad things. It's a regular ritual when they come and stay. Should I admit to never having played Crazy Golf?

I've been doing little bits of stitching here and there, mostly on the Homage Cloth and my breakdown printing piece which is finally coming together, albeit slowly. I won't post pictures today is it's getting dark outside and artificial light just doesn't pick up the colours properly. I will announce an adventure though. I have next week off work and am going to another workshop with Leslie Morgan at Committed to Cloth. Having worked my last work day today I can now begin to believe I'm having a holiday (life is stressful in the world of libraries just now!)

So, this is what I'll be doing next week, every day. Won't that be fun? I've got some fabric to take with me - 3 metres of cotton poplin, and will buy some of Leslie's lovely cotton sateen while I'm there; it takes colour so very well. Even better, one of my friends from Studio 11 is coming too, so we can swap notes and report back at our next session there.

We've been advised to take some picture inspirations along, so I've put together some images to work with:

Klee - just love the colours here and the way this looks like a quilt. I'm taking another image of his as well for contrast

Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Harvest Moon, my favourite of his, though I've also printed out the lovely Descent Of Night

Jan Myers Newbury, whose shibori pieces are just so amazing

and Paul Nash, whose wonderful sense of mystery and the indwelling spirit of landscape has always thrilled me - though this (Landscape of the Vernal Equinox) might be a bit too gentle for the colour exercises

Hopefully these, and the other six images I'm bringing, including the beautiful Incantation Under a Winter Sun by Rima Staines, will provide plenty of inspiration. I will come home with lots of colour samples like those I did with Michel Garcia, some solid colours, some surface design pieces and a much deeper understanding of how Procion MX dyes can be mixed to get the colours I want.

I do love this dabbling in textiles - what more could you want but colour and texture all together.

Just don't ask me "what are you going to do with all the fabrics" - a common query .... I refer you to my opening statement!

Quietly continuing

There's still a lot to be done on this, but I'm slowly finding my way along, taking each section at a time and seeing where it leads me next.

As I haven't posted about this for a while, here are a couple of close ups

and the whole piece in natural light

I love the delicate turquoise and the way it interacts with the eco colour. I'm aware that those leaf prints may well fade with time, so am accenting them with stitch. I think there may be some floating seeds scattered about at some stage, it has a feeling of Autumn about it. Hardly surprising considering when I started.

I haven't decided on a border yet, I'm waiting to see where I get to with the stitching first, feeling for what the cloth is telling me as I stitch it. Truly a slow stitch project.

Blackwork with a bit of red

Here's the finished piece: yes, something finished! Pam's design was a pleasure to work and she supplied us with a couple of pages of filling patterns to choose from, so each piece will be unique. One of the things I discovered, having a couple of books on the subject, was that these are almost infinite; just take a grid and join up the dots one way or another, any way you can think of, and repeat. It's a testament to our very human delight in pattern making and complexity.

I stuck to Pam's suggestion of working a differing weight of filling for each section, but didn't use my variegated thread in the end, it was a little too thick and would have looked unbalanced against the outline. I did use red though, which is always the first colour one thinks of with roses and this is a sort of rose. I've used two closely allied reds to reflect the way the colour of rose petals is sometimes shaded from centre to tip. I'm really happy with the result though, no, I'm NOT going to show you the back!

Hope you like it.

A very enjoyable interlude

Our Embroiderer's Guild Branch is a select group of talented women. There aren't very many of us compared to some branches in the south, but we do have some great embroiderers. This year as part of our programme we are running a series of mini workshops where three brave members have undertaken to teach the rest of us a technique that they feel they are good at, or love to do. So we have the option of Blackwork, Silk Shading and Ribbonwork over the coming months. The plan is to spend a Saturday afternoon happily stitching under the watchful eye and tutelage of our lovely experts. This Saturday I was reminded what a pleasure Blackwork is as one of our members, having designed a pattern and put together a little pack for each of us, sat us down and told us a bit about the history and helped us to get started. You may remember I did this in my City and Guilds back in 2012; the chance to revisit the technique was not to be missed.

A little bit of history. Blackwork was very popular in the Tudor court, having reputedly come across from Spain with Catherine of Aragon and was known then as Spanish Work. Initially always worked in black silk or cotton, often on even weave cloth. Here the patterns are created by the counted thread method, so working the stitches according to the number of threads stitched over or under. There are a variety of stitches used; one method using a running stitch, which is then worked back in the opposite direction, became known as Holbein Stitch because it appeared so often on the collars and cuffs of Holbein's court paintings. It is particularly clever as it looks the same from the back as the front and so was worked on the edges of garments where it would be seen on both sides. Some Blackwork is not counted thread, examples include pillow covers or coifs and caps worked in fantastical designs of plants and animals. Since then it has gone in and out of fashion and modern Blackwork would be unrecognisable to the original practitioners. One of the beauties of the stitch is the way you can create the most marvellous light and shade effects by both working with threads of different thicknesses and by fragmenting the stitching patterns so they appear to fade out. There are some wonderful examples on the Royal School of Needlework's page here,

So here are my efforts so far, the outlining done and the filling in to be started (whispers ... "don't ask why one of the acorns is wearing a hat"!). Such a pleasure to sit and stitch with a group of friends and share our enjoyment of embroidery. I am thinking of departing from tradition by working the acorn cups in a mid brown and the centre rose in red, possibly even a variegated thread as I do have some treasures I want to try.

So thank you Pam for providing us with such a lovely design, and for getting us started, I'll do my best to do it justice, and get it finished by the next workshop so your fresh band of students can see what is possible.

Shibori too

Some very old bits and bobs, over dyed with a shibori layer. This one reminds me of the Aurora - night flowers perhaps

a tiny scrap with a little shibori applied to the "leaves", previously mono printed

another second layer on my Eco shibori - this with royal rather than turquoise to see what happens; the latest in the the Homage dyeing experiments. I've been stitching that as well but no pics to show at the moment

A bit of silk viscose dyed a couple of weekends ago

And these, given an initial layer yesterday, washed, rinsed, dried, ironed ready for today's layer. These are very small bits of fabric, test pieces to look at how the fabric reveals the dye. Satin viscose and silk velvet - I stitched both pieces with similar patterns.

the velvet was really thirsty for all that colour

Each cut in half. Now to add a next layer of dye. First stitching to re-shibori, echoing what has gone before. Again, I'm also testing to see how much dye each fabric will take.

above shows the backs. I try to echo or at least stitch in harmony with the layer below in the next layer of stitches. All pulled up tight.

Now sitting in a very small pot of mixed turquoise, black and a smidge of golden yellow

Again, I'll report later