more serendipity

Because it was in my mind, and because I have been working with the design, I was putting strings of likely keywords into the Ubiquitous Search Engine. I found this on Etsy, with closeups of the stitching. It could be her cushion cover, the fabric looks the same. I wonder if it came as a kit. Not sure I'll use their method of six strands of embroidery floss though, which looks rather bulky. I'll have to have a think about what will work better. Even three strands of floss would give more delicacy to the image.

How strange it is that this object from my long ago past has been strewn in my path by the universe! 

I have the design sized up on baking parchment

and quite a nice piece of oatmeal coloured Irish linen, which would acknowledge her Irish heritage. 

I also remembered the "this will come in useful one day" purchase from long ago which still seems to work - a pink transfer pencil. Now to see if the current measurements come anywhere near standard cushion pads! 

And, of course, to delve into my stashes of thread!

Such treasure

This is Ganna's chair.  

It was always called "The Bergere Chair", and she sat and pondered in it every day. It lived in her ground floor bedroom, just beside the window which looked out over Alexandra Park. It proved a difficult object to negotiate in the middle of the night when, creeping back in, having forgotten my key, I was glad to find her window unlocked, but dismayed to find that the back of the chair was hooked over the brass handle, with which one pulled up old fashioned Victorian sash windows. It added somewhat to the weight I had to lift, and made waking my grandmother, at 1am, far more likely. 

When she sat in her chair, she always had a cushion at her back, stitched by her. It was one of the things which drew me to embroidery. To my dismay, it disappeared from our trove of "household objects" at some stage, and I have, over the years, trawled the web to try and find the pattern, to no avail.

I sit in her chair most days, tucked into another bay window, in another Victorian house. I ponder in it sometimes, but stitch more often. I too use a cushion at my back. I have a great deal more muddle around it than my orderly grandmother would ever have tolerated!

As you know I am part of Christine's Studio 11 community. Yesterday, on Facebook, she posted about a piece of fabric, part of a trove of vintage linens that have come to her. She has plans to "stitch it to show deterioration due to age and dementia", part of her long running series of textile works which reference her experience of losing her father to the disease. But first, she has kindly photographed it for me. It is, of course, Ganna's cushion, unmistakable. I can trace it out for myself, and use to recreate this early treasure, and lean against it in the chair that held its original. 

Given my track record this may, of course, take a while! I hope I can do it justice

What a compliment

I popped over to Rachel's blog today to find that she had very kindly put me up for an "Outstanding Blogger" award. I'm sure she must mean someone else really, but as I have been offered the honour I shall respond. There are five questions to answer, so here we go.

What would my perfect holiday be?

Well that's a rather difficult question to answer. I would love to be able to take the sort of holiday my very fit cousin takes, walking somewhere wonderful and remote for days and days, with a comfortable place to stay at the end of each day. Not being particularly fit, I will stick with the somewhere (reasonably) comfortable. I have a great hankering to go to Japan both to see their beautiful Zen gardens, and their textiles. Having done a little bit of Shibori in the past I am in awe of the way the experts in Arimastu create stunning fabrics with their nimble fingers, beautiful designs and careful dyeing techniques. So that is on the future plans list. 

A little "moon over the sea" shibori

I would also love to go back to Bhutan, every time this picture comes up on my desktop I think, "gosh, I took that, I really was there". 

Those are, of course, travels to distant parts, but for the most part our annual holiday is taken in the Lake District, in a self catering lodge near Ambleside. After 15 years going there I still look forward to it every year. As Autumn approaches my heart lifts and I think "not long now", so perhaps I already have my perfect holiday, the one I take every year; its perfection in recognising that I don't need to go very far to find happiness

Where is my favourite place to walk?

Lockdown has inspired me to walk more than I have in the past (despite best intentions). For the most part this has either been around my local streets or on our lovely seafront. This is a great pleasure, the view across the sea to Beachy Head as the sun goes down never fails to raise my spirits. 

But, if I were braver, and fitter, I would love to do one of those long walks across the South Downs, finding a hostelry to stay each evening, and glorying in the rolling hills, the song of the skylark above, the wind rippling across the hills and valleys, and views, views, views in all directions to set the soul free. And, of course, that sense of long past human activity in the patterns of the fields, the clusters of tumuli on hilltops and, at times, the things we have engraved on the landscape. I visit them occasionally for short walks, and they always make my heart sing.

What inspired me to start a blog?

When Mum died in 2010 and we moved to our current abode I felt bereft and in need of something to keep me going. I started my blog "Of Gardens Grandmothers and Gleanings" just as we were getting ready to move. The first post really sums up my reasons for starting - it was called Beginnings. Since then I have explored many of those things I hoped to explore, joining the Embroiderers' Guild along the way, developing new and treasured friends there and learning so much of value. I've also found many interesting and inspiring blogs to read written by artists with tremendous skill and talent. I have been very grateful for the way the Internet allows folk with like interests to share their artistry and to connect with one another. As the blog continued, I made the decision to bring all things textile over here. It seemed to make some sense to take this interest, which has grown so much, to a new place and continue with my other ruminations back there.

What did I miss most during lockdown ?

Apart from my daughter's lovely long cuddly hugs, to be honest, very little. I am quite a solitary soul. Our stitch group and the textile classes at Studio 11 kept going online so the inspiration and connection was still there, though the pleasure of meeting with the rest of the group was a loss. It will be wonderful when we can all meet up in real space and time once more. The other loss has been that of spontaneity. We have both missed saying "lets go for lunch at the Lamb this weekend" or "do you mind of I trot off the the British Museum next Saturday", little pleasures which we are beginning to enjoy once more.

Darling daughter looking pensive in St Paul's - 2008

What was the last book I read?

The last book I thoroughly enjoyed was The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, a delightful mix of history and fantasy, so beautifully written. I am currently engrossed in the sequel, which is bringing equal pleasure. I read far too much fiction, and always have, and am sure I would get a lot more done if I banned novels for a month, but where would be the fun in that? In between novels, I have also been reading Art of the First Cities, one of many I have read about Mesopotamia. They feed my interest in this distant time and provide visual references as I try and express, in textile form, the things that inspire me about this dawning of history. 

a sampling of layers and stitches and a small bit of cuneiform

When I still lived at home with Mum, and was working in the lending library, I could never pass an interesting looking book by. I remember her dismay one day on coming home from work with yet another novel to read. "Honestly Kath, this has to stop. I've just had to pick up 40 books from your bedroom floor just so I could do the vacuuming"

I have shelves now, but there still may be a few books on the floor here and there!!

And finally, my nominations - all three lovely blogs which are visited by me regularly for the pleasure they bring

Fiberrainbow

Stitchery Spellbook

Tanglewood Threads

No obligation of course, but it would be fun to see your responses. Thank you Rachel for the nomination

Badger developments

Having enjoyed the Becky Hogg mackerel so much, I have now made a good start on her badger kit. With badgers in the garden I couldn't resist him when we did the woodpecker workshop way back when. As with all her kits, he came beautifully presented in a smart cardboard box with each element of the kit packaged separately in paper packets (no plastic anywhere) and full instructions for how to work the project. So far I have just done his body, and then put him to one side to concentrate on that blackwork project our stitch group has been doing, of which more anon. For now, here are some progress pictures.

You can see below that I have tucked my couching stitches just a little too far towards a previous row in one place, so there is a bit of a line along the back, but by the time I noticed I hadn't the heart to unpick. 

The back, with all those strands of silver waiting to be tied down and tidied up

I am so pleased with the progress so far, and looking forward to completing him, hopefully in time for us to take part in the Open Gardens scheme in aid of our local hospice in late June. He can then serve as a talking point for visitors and as a reminder that badgers, who live an a large old sett at the bottom of our garden, dig holes, so to take care when wandering across our "lawn" (we call it a clearing!).

Back to the other stitching which I will report on in a later post. For now, happy stitching 

Making marks with stitch

I have said less about the Poetry of Stitch course with Christine than I might have, since we started way back in September. It has been tremendously interesting. Since those early experiments with weight of line and making our curve apparent, we moved onto the same exercises but using machine stitch. This was followed by taking just one of the designs we had stitched and, using the same fill pattern, find out how a variety of free machine embroidery stitches would behave. These were:

Whip stitch

I had a few tension problems to start here, hence the blue at the top and further down - the yellow thread was in the bobbin.

Feather stitch

This time there was dark thread in the bobbin and yellow on top. On the left hand side the top thread has been removed, leaving just the thread pulled through from the bottom to give the lightest of marks on the fabric. That was a fiddly job! Bondaweb on the back stops the thread from pulling out altogether.

Cable stitch

Thick thread hand wound onto the bobbin, then the stitching is done on the back so the bobbin thread is couched down onto the front of the design. It can get a bit too wiggly if you don't get the speed right. It would be interesting to play with colour on the top and bottom threads, and the speed of stitching, to see what colour blending effects might be achieved.

All these, as you can see, rely on changing the machine tension to persuade more or less of the top or bottom thread to be pulled through the fabric. A great lesson in understanding how the different stitches achieve a different weight and character of mark. The following session concentrated on using those stitches to make interesting "blobs" on some fabric which already had a layer of blobby marks. This helped us to move further away from stitch as "a proper stitch" and more towards the possibilities of hand and machine stitch to make a mark on the fabric, a drawing tool rather than a correctly constructed stitch. Something to provide the next layer of marks onto a piece of already dyed/printed/otherwise coloured fabric.

Christine then gave us a series of words; rough and smooth, jumpy, disconnected, sad and so on. First we used our drawing tools to express these in marks. Then it was back to our curves and putting into practice the lessons we had learnt already about how to create texture with hand and machine stitch.

Happy and Calm seemed to go together

Angry and Jealous made another suitable pairing

Rough and Smooth, Disconnected and Jumpy

The final image shows me catching up with homework. I have worked those words with machine stitch, though I admit to too much reliance on straight and zigzag stitches despite notes to self on the drawings. Now I am starting with hand stitch - a layer of herringbone to try and emulate those changes in tone around Smooth. It certainly works better than the machined zigzag, which gave me rather too many staggered edges on the top of the curve.

Now what shall I try for Rough?

finished fish

Our second "Zoomshop" with Becky happened on Saturday so we twelve stitchers joined her to find out how to finish our little fishy.

Again, her teaching was easy to follow - a combination of pre recorded video and demonstrations, and of course she was there to answer any questions we might have. I so admired the way she managed to balance chatting to us and getting on with things on her own while we were stitching. It is easy if you are in the same physical space; the tutor can see how folk are getting on, and often there is a bit of chatter around the table as the next part of the project is completed. With Zoom it is all quite different. We tend to run the sessions (Christine's as well) with everyone on mute to avoid distracting noises. Folk can unmute themselves to ask questions, but the sense of being able to just throw in a little comment, or whisper a query to your neighbour isn't there. I'm sure as tutor it must at times feel as though you should be filling the silence with "something", but Becky allowed a silence at times, and talked to us at others, in between her videos and demonstrations and the afternoon passed incredibly quickly. Making the mackerel stripes with incredibly delicate black purl, which seems almost to fine to be true, was a tremulous operation, but very effective over the metallic silk organza.

I had the bulk of the stitching done by the end of the afternoon, but the scariest part was then having to cut out the fish so it can be mounted on a little piece of silver fish shaped wood to give it some rigidity and allow it to exist independent of the background fabric. I managed, but still had to go back and add in some extra couching to ensure the silver pearl purl border didn't just fall off - having carefully cut through a couple of the couching stitches!

I'm very pleased with him, and glad I re-stitched the main couching on the body. Even though the stitching is not as regular as I'd like, the balance between the two halves is much better. He will be tucked away now and come out each year as a suitably coastal Christmas Tree ornament to add to the little collection of "danglies" we use each year, not being the sort of folk who have to have a themed tree and new set of ornaments each Christmas - just the old ones with the occasional happy addition.

So, a finished something - that in itself is a small miracle. Best I get on with another something now - I am sorely tempted by her badger, which has been sitting in a box upstairs since the original woodpecker workshop we did with Becky back in 2016!

Layers developing

As well as the lovely Becky Hogg stitching, I have been doing some needle musing with the Mesopotamian layers sample, just to see what if?

It is hard to photograph, because the layers catch the light in differing ways. In reality the lightest area, that of deepest excavation, is not quite so contrasting. Stitching is sparse there, because treasure is as much about the shadow of a wall in the soil as it is about gold and artefacts

I have carried some water around the base of the ruin, to provide moisture for the crops in the fields

There is the merest hint of buried sparkle here, something worth digging for perhaps

There might be another hint within those ruins to the north; a regularity under the layers, a glimmer in the shadows? 

I have irrigated and planted the pleasure gardens at the base of the North wall - some more obvious treasure here

And then, of course, there is the inscription, carved on rock on the way out of town, where all the tracks and trails lead who knows where?

Sennacherib, King of the world