Colour play canvas work 4

This week’s progress has involved some unpicking, much as I am reluctant to unpick! I’d torn the edges of the pink backing fabric from my flower for the Great Scunthorpe Embroidery Challenge. I wanted the frayed edges to spill over the velvet and the outer edge, and I’d already done the stepped diagonal stitches, which I liked and didn’t want to cover up. It wasn’t very much to unpick, and was soon re-done.

One of the torn scraps was anchored down with straight stitches on the left hand side. Then a petal of the hand made felt was attached over the corner.

I then echoed the pink straight stitches attaching the velvet at the bottom, to attach the bottom edge of the pink fabric. I did more rows of irregular straight stiches in different colours and weights of thread, including a row of the knitted ribbon which matched the greeny gold sari silk strip perfectly. The flower is just laid on top to see how it will look…..

…… before doing more pink straight stiches and starting to fill in between the two rows of zigzag.

I put more knotted stitches near the eyelash yarn, in different textures and colours; they could hardly be called French or Bullion knots! There are more cushion stitches near the bottom right, coming up to meet the straight stitches.

The bottom is nearly finished, leaving across the top to do. It’s fun to work on, and the colours are feeling more comfortable than when I started. It just needs a final push before I get distracted with the next project at “In the stitch zone”.

Alysn Midgelow-Marsden workshop

Last Saturday at Lincolnshire Textiles, we had a workshop with Alysn Midgelow-Marsden, combining metal and beads with fabric and stitch. After a short explanation and demonstration, and a quick look at some of Alysn’s samples, we were all keen to get started.

Organic shapes were suggested, often a bit more forgiving if not perfect. I’d taken a lot of flower photos on my phone in the garden earlier in the year, and I thought that I could use one of those. I settled on these of Aquilegia, Columbine or Granny’s Bonnets, as they are commonly called. They are such complex shapes that I have never attempted to draw them previously …..

…… but luckily I’d also taken a back view, which was much simpler to draw.

We all had a pack with instructions, a piece of soft metal (mainly copper), some velvet, sari silk, scraps of scrim, etc., and a pack of mixed size beads. On each table there was a selection to choose from. The difficulty was choosing which colour pack to have, because several had various elements that jumped out at me. I settled on a burgundy velvet and a copper with several colours across it.

As often when I get excited and keen to make a start, I forgot to take photos. I’d already drawn with a stick, turned over, burnished, cut out and made some holes to stitch down through, before someone mentioned taking photos. This should have been the right side ……

…… but the back looked more like the shape of the back of the flower.

I tucked a scrap of fine silk under the metal, some scrim and a sari silk strip at the bottom, and started adding some beads, picking them up quite randomly to make little strings and loops.

A close-up photo of the textures and details.

I added more beads, and frayed out the edges on more sari silk scraps. The time went very quickly and it was soon time to pack up and go home, but I’d had a lovely day. Thank you, Alysn.

I want to find some of my own bits to add to where I’ve got to so far. I’m thinking that I’ll have some of the bits coming off the bottom, but not quite sure yet how it will end up.