More shells

We had a lovely workshop with Nicky Dillerstone at S.e.a.t.a last Saturday. On a beautiful warm sunny day, it seemed appropriate working with shells and driftwood along with neutral coloured fabric and threads.

Nicky talked and showed us some of her work, before giving us free rein to help ourselves to some of her stash to add to our own, and make a start.

I was giddy with ideas, the others on our table reckoned I was like a kid who had had too much sugar in the sweet shop.

All these lovely fabrics and shells to choose from, where to begin? I’d narrowed things down a little before I left home, not taking very many shells, a few (!) pieces of sea glass, my precious sea marble, and some of the fine fabrics and threads I’d taken to Amanda J Clayton’s workshop a few weeks ago.

The squarish piece of driftwood (above) has been on the window-sill in Miles’ bedroom for several (!) years, and I finally thought I would use it. I even arranged a few shells on it. Then I saw the piece in Nicky’s box which I couldn’t resist (bottom left in the above photo).

I started tying the shell to the driftwood, wanting to leave the hole in the shell as a spyhole to show off the grain of the wood, but it was slipping around too much. Nicky had offered to drill holes in the shells for us, so I asked if she could drill it while still attached to the wood. She’d try. Yes. How many? Three, please. Where? There, there and there.

I didn’t want to use them to anchor it any more, but to thread net through …..

……. some pale gold organza, a bit fiddly ……

… but managed.

I then used a strip of some softened (washed?) canvas wrapped in the fine wire from a wine bottle threaded with beads. This wouldn’t go through the final hole properly so a few stitches held it in place.

Some tiny beads were strung on the netting with a Madeira metallic thread.

A tiny felt ball, the size of my little finger nail, has some of the same beads stitched to it, but it’s not finished yet.

I’ve gathered up the gold organza with a few rows of stitching, and used some more of the wire to anchor the shell better to the wood. This is as far as I’d got by the end of the day.

I asked Nicky to drill some more holes in another shell for me before we finished for the day. Drilling shell isn’t something I’ve done yet, but I’ll certainly have a go.

I’ve put in some blanket stitches and started some button hole stitch.

I’m just experimenting with it at the moment.

As always I came away from Nicky’s workshop inspired. Just thinking of her and her work is inspiring. Thank you, Nicky.

Continuing with the scrappy nine patch

Even though I just wanted to continue with this piece after Alex’s workshop, I really needed to finish off other things first (some of which I have managed to do). I took it along to “the move it on session” last week at S.E.A.T.A. (Scunthorpe Embroidery and Textile Association), and have continued with it this week between other projects.

I started by anchoring down some of the bullion knots on the limpet shell, with some matching sylko. That stopped them wriggling around so much! But once they were not moving all over the place, I realised I need lots more, so back to the Bella Donna viscose thread.

You can see how it quickly unravels, but the sheen gives just the effect I want.

The limpet shells are perfect to obscure things partially, which pulls you in to have a closer look. The two limpet shells were just the right size for one of the recycled jewellery spirals that Margaret gave me last month.

And another shell, over the printed fabric, looks as if you are seeing what’s inside if it didn’t have the top missing.

The little bead fishes got caught in the net.

A scrap of Angelina from some long forgotten project gave a little sparkle on the fleecy piece of fabric, before the shell was attached with some long stitches in perlé thread.

I’ve started to couch down the ends of the Prima Donna viscose thread from the “Pomatoceros” (a tube feeding annelid worm).

Most of the pieces are anchored down now, but time to assess what else to add.

Some long legged chain stitches represent the ropes on the fishing net.

A variegated thread is used to anchor down the shell that already had three holes in, and the fabric cascading through it.

Then a twisted cord in Madiera Metallic added another layer of sparkle. The dyed / painted piece of fabric has been ruffled up, and stitched down to look like patterns in sand.

A few beads are added in the folds of the tea dyed calico.

A satin stitch shell was added in perlé, and a few strands wrapped in gold coloured silk to give the effect of patterning on the shell. Some of the very unravelled Bella Donna from the “Pomatoceros” was plunged to the back and then brought up from the inside of the shell, and a few strands of perlé were unravelled to give some movement.

This is where it has got to so far. The difficulty is knowing when to stop. It’s lovely to work on and by far the most free thing I’ve worked on for a while: it’s good to respond to what’s there without having a preconceived idea of where it’s going.

Scrappy nine patch workshop

The workshop we had last Saturday at S.E.A.T.A. (Scunthorpe Embroidery and Textile Association) with Alex Hall flew by. Alex’s intention was for us to use different ways to attach found objects (like plastic rings) to fabric using a variety of stitched techniques.

I had already decided before I arrived that I was going off piste. I had some limpet shells that were almost rings that I wanted as my starting-point. This also influenced my choice of background fabric and my scraps, with a lovely piece of indigo batik / tie-dye that was just about the right size for a front and back. While looking for more limpet shells I found a plastic box full of seasidey bits and pieces gathered for a workshop with Nicky Dillerstone years ago: tea-dyed towelling and calico, blue velvet, a scrap of print in blue and cream spirals, textured synthetic (heat gun?), a strip of painted calico (sea and beach?).

With a little ripping and cutting, moving things around and assessing balance, I was ready to start anchoring down. The left hand side looks like sea and the right more beachy.

Looking through a jar of beads I found a little fish, which I thought was a bit twee, but then found several more. They are really tiny, kept in a spice jar lid. One has got away already.And there were exactly nine mixed in with beads and sequins etc.

Then I found this bit of net, and thought they could be caught in the net, with one or two escapees.

The shells below are ones I started painting at my painting class earlier in the week. Alex had informed me that the wonderful textures on the largest shell and the left foreground one, are “Pomatoceros” (what a lovely word!) – a tube-building annelid worm.

The central limpet shell was quite smooth, so I decided to add some “Pomatoceros” texture with bullion knots in the “Bella Donna” viscose thread that I’d vowed not to use again a few weeks ago!

At the moment they are wriggling all over the place and need anchoring to the shell with some matching sylko, but are giving the effect I’m aiming for. Even for bullion knots it’s horrible to work with, but it does slide on itself quite well.

Not much has been stitched down yet, and it will no doubt evolve from here as other things jump out at me, like using a limpet shell over the printed fabric to see the mollusc inside! One of the new members very kindly gave me the two silvery spirals, from a recycled piece of jewellery she’d found in a charity shop. Much to my shame, I can’t remember her name (sorry!), but I think she got my travelling book piece from last week.

I’m looking forward to getting back to it, once I’m up to date with the other things that have deadlines.

Debbidipping from one project to another

I’ve swapped from one project to another this week, some days several times, and some of the changing project has been at the different classes I go to.

It started off with a sweetie-wrapper workshop at Scunthorpe Embroidery and Textile Association (seata). I have had them saved for years and have rarely used them, so now I only save the really unusual colours or patterns that I come across. They are stored in a tin, and you can only buy them in plastic tubs nowadays. We were given a handout with five or six techniques, three bags of goodies to supplement the requirements list, a run-through of the various methods and shown samples.

Where to begin? Most folk were starting with the first technique of sticking the wrappers to felt before hand stitching them, something I already have as a work in progress (WIP), so didn’t really want to start another one. I should have taken it with me and continued with it.

But a new project is always tempting. One of the ideas was to trap the sweetie-wrappers on some wadding under net to make a square bowl. The outside fabric had an all-over design of what made me think of smiling lips, just showing pearly teeth.

A sewing machine had been set up ready, so I thought I would make use of it. Confetti. Snippets of coloured silver paper, cellophane, a little of the fabric out of one of the goodie bags, all in shades of red and pink to complement the piece of fabric.

Julie, the workshop leader, suggested I use felt rather than the wadding, as you could see quite a lot of it. I managed to find two shades of pink big enough to cover the fabric, and rearranged the snippets.

I trapped them with a piece of red net.

Then I machine stitched using a preset pattern with a gold coloured shiny thread.

I’m not convinced about the bowl, so this is where it is for the moment.

I then had a go at making some cords, something I have tried not very successfully in the past. But Julie gave me a quick demo, and said to knot the threads together at one end AND to knot the machine threads to them too, twisting them together slightly before stitching. This meant that you didn’t need quite so many hands! You can just hold them altogether at the back and zigzag over them all without it getting taffled (a little bit of tension, using one hand at the back and one at the front). The first one worked beautifully with some shiny purple thread, then the bobbin ran out! I put in another already wound, and the top thread snapped half-way down. The third length broke twice, and the fourth and final length broke every couple of inches. Frustrating, but I wanted to use the same shiny thread on them all, not to have to use something different when I got home. I was sure I’d re-threaded it correctly, so why it suddenly wouldn’t stitch I don’t know.

However, it’s certainly a technique to try again, lots of possibilities with different threads.

At “In the Stitch Zone” with Alex a couple of weeks ago we started a woven piece with sari strips, lovely bright colours, and I love the frayed edges. I left gaps between the weft strips because I like the bright yellow background (thanks, Janet), but kept the warps close together. It was all pinned down and then tacked. I then realised that something didn’t look right: instead of having squares of colour like everyone else, I have some long rectangles! I checked my unders and overs. Fine. Alex checked too, yes, it’s right.

But leaving the gaps between the wefts had given me a different pattern. I decided to go with it and stitch them as they are.

Here’s how it’s got so far, with some kantha-style running stitches and some fly stitches down the centre.