December / January Stitchalong

I’ve tried to get in front of myself with this one and not leave it until the last minute.

I picked up Margaret’s which has a garden theme, as does mine. But they look so different, partly with the different starting points, regular squares on a white even-weave fabric for hers and L- shapes on yellow canvas for mine.

This is how Margaret’s looked when I brought it home. She’s asked for colourful and given a whole load of suggestions.

I was struggling to make a decision, then thought of the piece I took to the Seata meeting last week for our first “Show and Tell ” session. It was a piece that I did many years ago, based on a birthday card by Molly Brett. I started it with Pat Phillpot when I was doing a C&G embroidery course, but it wasn’t finished when we moved here 35 years ago. The backgrounds are painted, then free machine embroidery with a thick thread in the bobbin and working upside down: lots of french knots, ribbon embroidery, trapped water lily leaves and gold fish under a plastic bag to give a watery effect over painted silk. It was my first 3D piece, I think.

It was resurrected many years later when I went to a Carol Money class in Scunthorpe, and came out annually for several years when the cherry blossom was out on the trunk road, and the forsythia in the garden. Eventually I realised how much I was influenced by the colours and things I see in nature around me seasonally. The butterflies are from photographs I took myself, printed out on paper and transferred them on to fine silk with Photo Magic. They flutter in the breeze.

I think it finally got finished at Lorna Presly’s Market Rasen group, and ironically Lorna had also gone to Pat Phillpott’s group before they moved up here.

It’s a very different piece of work from how it would have been if it was finished before we moved. Certainly the butterflies couldn’t have been done in the same way, long before domestic computers, and there are other techniques and stitches that I learned along the way.

I thought that I could use it for inspiration, and came across some gauzy yellow snippets from my Grasby sunflower pieces which would make perfect blowsy daffodils. I started with some varying length green perlé stems…..

…… and then anchored down the scrunched up snippets so they look like double daffodils.

Finally I added some leaves and a short stemmed flower.

It’s too early for daffodils yet, but I felt that they complemented the purples and mauves that the others had used being complementary colours.

A happy and healthy 2026 to all my readers, with lots of stitching and creativity.

More dress-making and more …

For some reason, the photos that wouldn’t download last week did it automatically when I was doing something else with the computer last night! Temperamental or what? Certainly frustrating, when it works when you haven’t done anything differently at all.

The photo above was where I’d got to last week, with the Dress-making and Brave, and lucky. The zip was tacked in, a shortish one, just to get the fit right, about two or three inches above the widest part across the hips. To make it easier to tack in and to unpick, I had done a large stitch up the centre back, and on the seams either side to make the back into one piece.

It was a simple, quick little job to do the shoulder and side seams. The lining was assembled ready for a fitting, so I thought I’d put it on my mannequin to see how it looks. Well, it seems she’s had too much Christmas pudding, chocolate and not enough exercise. She’s quite broad of shoulder, and although the measurements are the same as the friend the dress is for, no way would it go over her head. I tried taking her off the stand and putting it on from the bottom, still no joy.

I had already unpicked the stitches in front of the zip, so I unpicked down to where the zip is meant to go to, with the right size zip. I still had to wrestle her into the dress, and it looks somewhat tight, even with the front only stitched up to where the facing would go if it’s unlined.

The armhole doesn’t go to the bottom of the mannequin armhole either.

I know it’s meant to be fitted, but it looks like if she took a deep breath the seams would burst, and she certainly couldn’t move in it. Hopefully, I’ve miscalculated somewhere and the mannequin measurements allow for ease, and aren’t Alicia’s actual measurements.

At least it’s shown that I am likely to have to do some letting out of seams, so to post it and hope to be able to tell on-line is a non-starter. This is as far as I can get at the moment without a fitting, so it’s a good excuse to get together again soon.

I’ve finally finished the leather archway (Carol Money), stained glass (Jan Dowson ), and braided chain stitch (Alex Hall) piece that I blogged about in Tutors and time

It was almost done, but there was something I wasn’t quite happy with, so Jean (one of the Grasby Embroiderers) looked at it with me before Christmas. I’d wondered about a twisted cord on the left-hand side of the window to give the effect of a shadow, and Jean suggested just couching down some strands of perlé. We tried out several colours and settled on a dull darkish brown. I couldn’t finish it then as I didn’t have the right colour of Sylko with me.

Christmas then took over, and I finally got back to it yesterday. I couched four strands of perlé down the left-hand side, plunged them through, and trimmed off the excess “window”. It’s subtle, but just finishes it off.

I’ve backed it, attached a hanging cord and it’s now on the wall.