Embellished jacket

A couple of weeks ago I finally made a start on a long-planned piece of work. In fact it was started some time ago, as many of the pieces were just waiting to be stitched on, and with some of them it was a case of finding them, having been tucked away in a variety of folders. The main one was the “bubbles” piece, which was returned to me after the Lincolnshire Textiles exhibition at the Chapter House in Lincoln Cathedral at the end of August. It was / is to be the focal point on the back of the jacket.

I’d envisioned it before it was even finished stitching last year. Once I had it back, I’d had it pinned on the back of the jacket on my tailor’s dummy, but I tried it on and got somebody to take a photo at “In the stitch zone” a couple of weeks ago. I felt it needed moving a little higher or even…..

….. putting across the back yoke. But it isn’t symmetrical in shape and not unsymmetrical enough to look intentional. It just didn’t look balanced. The bottom piece was done years ago – a workshop with Mary on Kantha work, which I’d never heard of at the time, but I loved the effect. Ironically I’d decided I should make a whole jacket in it, but it hasn’t got any further since! It may end up on this jacket, or maybe another project, who knows?

I also tried other pieces on the front. I thought the cream one would be more likely to get grubby near the bottom, so stitched the brown and orange one down over the pocket, making sure not to stitch through the front as well, so that the pocket is usable.

I rotated it ninety degrees anti-clockwise as well, and extended the stitching on to the jacket using the same variegated thread. I was so excited about it, that I wore it with just this piece on.

I then added the bubbles to the back, slightly higher than the top photo, using tiny ladder stitches and turning the excess under as I went.

By the end of the second session, I’d got a couple of inches left to do, and again wore it with a few threads dangling – it was the easiest way to carry it, rather than it being crumpled up in my bag. It’s all stiched on now.

I’ve found some more pieces for the front, and have made a start on adding more stitches to the orange crazy patchwork butterfly piece. There’s still a long way to go, but it will evolve as I go along and I can at least wear it while it’s a WIP.

Windows to the soul

The theme for travelling book (pages) this month was ‘Windows’, so plenty of scope there. My second travelling book’s whole theme was ‘Stained glass windows’, and some wonderful work went into it, with lots of ideas for further development.

But no, what popped straight into my head were eyes, the windows to the soul. On several occasions I’ve tried to take some really close-up photos of eyes, without much success; particulary bad were the first selfies, trying to take my own eye.

I’ve tried the phone and the iPad, tried my own eyes, Colin’s, Miles’ and Lera’s, got Colin to try mine, all to no avail. Alex tried last week for me (better), but too many reflections – next door’s house and garage and the window frame.

Then I tried with the macro setting on the bridge camera, me taking Colin’s eye.

And Colin took mine, but far too many wrinkles. I’m not used to seeing myself so close-up.

However, once they were cropped I’d got something to work with.

So far, I’ve done my own eye, because there’s more variation in colours to play with.

I’d originally thought about doing silk shading, and doing several. Then I decided that one bigger iris would be better on the A5-size page. It’s 7cm (3 1/4 inches) in diameter, so it meant a lot of stitching and not a huge amount of time.

I thought it was a good idea to put some background colour in first. I started working with the soft cotton, really tight in a small frame, and dampened Derwent Inktense pencils, making radiating lines between the inner and outer circles, adding more and more colours.

I used a charcoal grey for the pupil, leaving a tiny bit of the white fabric showing.

Then I strengthened the colour around the outer edge of the iris.

I was really pleased with the finished result, but thought I’d better put some stitches in, from a selection of possible threads (but not the reds and corals, of course!).

I did straight stitches of varying lengths, echoing the pencil marks radiating outwards in three or four different shades of green and greeny blue.

Then I did varying length stitches around the outer and inner edge of the iris. The yellow is a subtly variegating slightly thicker thread with a few green stitches mingled.

I now need to stretch it over some mount-board, do some print-outs of photos of work in progress and a colour-chart of the pencils….. and today, so I’m not last minute again tomorrow morning!