As I mentioned a few weeks ago in Colours and Textures, from our kitchen and bedroom windows we see fabulous sunrises behind the church and the beech trees for a couple of weeks leading up to Christmas and a couple of weeks afterwards, weather dependent.
The first I’ve seen this year was yesterday …
It was nothing like as dramatic as this one back in early January 2018…
…. which was marred by the scaffolding at the top of the church tower.
It must have been a good year, as another morning it was even reflecting off the wet roofs of the library and village hall.
I love the silhouettes against the sky. This one was taken on a college trip to Berlin when I was doing my degree, but I think it was probably a sunset. They all make me want to reproduce it in some way. Paint? Watercolour? Silk paint? Twisting wires? Cut paper? Stitch?
I did do a small series in acrylic paint when I was doing AS Art back in 2008, from photographs taken through the car window as we drove back from Birmingham while the sun was going down (several dozen, as the sky and light were constantly changing).
It’s a subject that has long caught my attention, and at this time of year sunrises and sunsets are probably the brighest colours we see in nature. In between doing things for Christmas, I really want to have a play somehow, more than just taking photos!
This is the theme we have for the travelling pages for S.E.A.T.A. this month. We did a printing workshop with Jan Dowson a couple of years ago, when it was still Scunthorpe Embroiderers Guild, and I wrote about the process in Colours and textures 16 October 2020. And although I deliberated about what to do with the more or less finished main piece in Decisions, decisions 23 October 2020, I still haven’t done anything with it.
I knew that I had a test piece of four paisley shapes, printed with acrylic paint, on some gold-coloured sheeting that is about the right size for a travelling page. I used the big piece to give me ideas for stitches. The perlé and cotton thread colours that I used echoed the printed colours.
I backed it with a piece of calico, and used my go-to stitch of reverse chain stitch to outline the first “whale”, and French knots to fill the shape.
The next one was outlined in Coral stitch wanderingthreadsembroidery (also known as Snail trail stitch or German stitch), a knotted line stitch, then filled in with individual fly stitches
This one is stem stitch round the edge and lazy daisy stitches to fill in.
The final one was button hole stitch and stab stitches to fill in .
I’ve started stab stitching around the shapes, but not finished it yet. It looks as if it will be a last minute finish this month! The piece of mount board is cut ready to lace it round.
I can no longer resist that autumn has arrived, the colours in he plastic wallet with the Jan Dowson project ‘Stitching into Print’ are exactly the colours that surround me.
Even the box of eating and cooking apples in the kitchen that are taunting me to do something with them are the same tones. A good year for our eating apples: the one tree, less but much bigger than ever before, the other bigger and more! But from the cooker we had only 6 apples and none very big, a frost at just the wrong time for them to set.
On the left cookers from friends, on the right eaters from one of our trees.
I’ve made the odd apple cake, apple sponge pudding and creamy apple soup so far, but none have gone into the freezer yet. Nor have I made apple jelly, although the rose hips were picked and frozen this week to do apple and rose hip jelly. I find that the fruit and berries give up more juice when they have been frozen resulting in more jam or jelly. Nor have I done any chutney, we have been given a few jars by a friend that are delicious, so I really should make some while we have the apples.
I picked up this paisley piece weeks ago when we were still able to stitch outside, as the wisteria first started to change colour. I’m pleased to say the colour change has only really gathered pace in the last week or two, and the wisteria still appears not to have lost many leaves. In spite of all the ones we’ve swept up, it still looks like an unruly, bad hair day. It needs a serious prune so that we get more flowers next year, but it can wait a while, so we can hang on to the mass of green and yellow.
This is how it was when I picked it upBad hair day from the bedroom windowMore yellow underneath
The stitching on this piece had been put on the back burner while I worked on other things, but it has been good to work on while I decide where to go next.
It’s a fairly loose weave of cotton or linen, about 10 inches square, and started out white or cream. The paisley was printed with acrylic paint on a block, it was mirror imaged in both directions, with browns, and sludgey greens. It was left to dry before painting it with a bright yellow procion dye. Once dry again, it was ironed and tacked to a backing piece of felt.
Then the fun started, no, it was fun to print and dye too. Even before the stitching started, it had different textures across the piece. The procion dyed background felt much softer than the acrylic painted paisleys, and even these varied, some had more paint on than others, some smoother or shinier, some sitting on the surface more, some sinking in, some varying across the print with little rough patches, but surprisingly easy to stitch in to.
These characteristics were disguised or emphasised with the stitching, partly with thread colour and texture, partly with stitch type. It’s a very tactile piece, my fingers keep going to it now, as I think about what to write next: some smooth and flowing; the stem stitch and running stitches; others bumpy, knobbly or ridged; the blanket stitch and French knots. The lazy daisy stitches feel quite different with the variation in the thread thickness, the pale green ones feel soft and smooth, whereas the thicker variegated ones coarse and you can feel the holding stitch as a definite bump.
Top left, variegated lazy daisy stitch, below pale green chain edge and lazy daisy infill. Blanket stitch top right, below French knots, and stem stitch.
The blanket stitch gives a very different look depending whether it outlines the shape; it gives the appearance of it being appliqué, as opposed to round the outer edge of the shape, where it then appears to be a sunken piece.
Applied or sunken appearance depends on whether the blanket stitch is inside the shape or outlines it!
It’s surprising how a flat piece of fabric can change optically with the use of different stitches, the bottom left (above) appears to be padded.
Also the size and spacing of the stitch can give different effects. The tiny, close together stab stitches (appear and feel more raised) look very different from the bigger wider spaced ones. The bright yellow background looks very in your face, whilst the area covered in the muted green stab stitches tones down the yellow a lot.
Work in progress
The learning curve on working this piece has not been anywhere near as steep as some of the other pieces I’ve worked on recently, but nevertheless I have learnt at lot from looking and assessing the balance of the overall piece as I’ve stitched. And it’s a lovely piece to handle, and no fear of getting marks on it as I worked. Thank you, Jan, for a fun workshop at Scunthorpe Embroiderers Guild, in the dim and distant past before lockdown.
Over the last few weeks I have been playing around with colour in various ways. Dyeing and painting fabric and paper with different media.
I started with painting some linen with acrylic paint for the ‘Beach in a box’ containers for the Debbie Lyddon workshop I did a few weeks ago.
A beautiful afternoon so I decided to paint outside. I didn’t want the fabric to be too stiff to stitch, but apparently the paint helps to stop it fraying. So a bit of a balance between the paint and the fabric. (It does seem to work pretty well). I wet the fabric first, to try and help keep it soft enough to stitch, still only beginning to stitch at that stage. Then mixed red and blue to try to get a colour that would tone with the grey stone. Added more watered paint in each colour directly on the fabric to get the right hue.
Red and blue
Then started the rusty coloured piece, bit more tricky to get the right colour. Started with the red, yellow and blue, a bit of peach and a bit of green, mixing as I went, then adding more of single colours directly to the wet fabric until I got it right. I didn’t want to match the stones and shell exactly, but wanted something that toned with them.
The three primaries – red, yellow and blue, peach, burnt sienna and green
This time to go with the shell, more obvious colours in it than the stones. I used the same tubes of paint as I wanted them to harmonise with one another, as well as pick out the object colours.
Again the same colours to mix with I do like the palette – sad but true
I’d got some paint left over, and the paint on the plastic bag I was working on, so not to waste it I painted a few more bits of the linen.
Waste not, want notHung out to dry
I’ve only started to stitch one so far. The idea is for each container to have a grommet in, which in effect is a little window to peek at what is inside. I have used strands from the unpainted linen to stitch the grommet with and will do the other two grommets in the same way. I want the surface stitching to echo the surface texture of the treasure inside. I realised after starting that I should have done the plain one first and made it up to solve any issues with it before spending time on the surface stitching. The perfect reason / excuse for starting the other one. The surface stitching will take a while on the greyish one, and longer for the shell.
Painted fabric with stones and shell
I was filling up the turmeric jar last week and a bit got spilt, so I mopped it up with a bit of cotton fabric, knowing how it stains if you spill anything with turmeric in down your front. Lovely bright yellow, so washed the empty bag out into a large yogurt pot and added the fabric and left over night. A beautiful sunny yellow.
Turmeric powder.
I’m not sure what I’ll use the fabric for yet, but several photos I’ve taken in the last few weeks are this colour. Seems I need a fix of sunshine at the moment.
Water irises at a local wood.Dandelion when out on a walkTulip in the garden
debbidipity 