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.

A peek at last weekend’s Grasby Embroiderers Exhibition

Since most of my blog readers weren’t able to visit our Grasby Embroiderers Exhibition at Grasby Church last weekend, I’ll show some of the photos that I took after we set it up. I’d intended taking more when I was there stewarding on Sunday, but somehow the day disappeared so quickly with so many visitors that I never gave it another thought.

Jean’s “fishes” and Helen’s “tree stump” were beside the path into the church.

My “sunflowers” from the “Out in the garden” exhibition were hung in the porch on either side.

On the font Mary and Jean had done an arrangement with dried flowers and the Tyvek “seed-pods” that we did at a workshop with Karen Lane a couple of years back. They fitted together really well.

Opposite the entrance was our large “tree”. We had all made “leaves” for it, covered in fabric from our own stashes. It stood next to Lorna’s “fern” and felted “parrot”, again from a Karen Lane workshop (the rest of us had done “cockerels”).

On a clockwise walk round the church the “Altered images” pieces came next. Mine is the purple “peacock feathers”. I’m still not sure whether to leave it as one or to make it into the triptych that I originally intended.

Then came the “Botanicals”. I did a felt background with organza “hydrangeas”, the piece draped over the front, next to Eileen’s “sunflowers”.

The copper wire “wrens” were perched on twisted branches in one of the windows (a workshop with Wendy of “Twigs and Sprigs”). They’ve darkened over time!

I’m missing the altar cloth and a couple of other pieces, as I was taking photos while some of the others were still making finishing touches.

On the other side were the shells that Mary had given us from a trip that she’d made to a beach in Norfolk. We could all take our pick from lots of different ones, and the ones that jumped out at me were the very large mussel shells (on the right)……

…….which I drilled holes into and stitched through. On some of them the backs were as interesting as the front, meaning that they can be turned around or I can display them so they can be seen from all round.

We all did the black 8 inch frames called “Putting the garden to bed” after we took down the “Out in the garden” exhibition last year.

Mine was inspired by Mary’s “succulents” that went in the succulent glass house among the real ones at the “Out in the garden” exhibition.

The landscape canvases were displayed again by popular request, as several people had missed them in the summer house at the garden exhibition last year.

And finally, there were the linen tablecloth pieces (from Jean) that we all interpreted in totally different ways, as always. My embroidered “vase” just had to sit on a shelf!

We had lots of positive feedback, and the sun shone the whole weekend. There were lovely cakes by the local parishioners, who also manned the refreshment stall in shifts; the profits are for the upkeep of the church. All in all a good weekend, thank you to all involved. It was just a shame that I’d not taken more and better photos.

Grasby Embroiderers Exhibition

I am part of the Grasby Embroiderers group, and we have been working on a new body of work with a difference. Normally, as you would no doubt expect with embroidery, it has been exhibited inside, in a clean, dry environment, but most of this work is outside and exposed to the elements, at Mill Farm Garden, between Brigg and Caistor. In the middle of the week we went to hang the finished work ready for the opening tomorrow.

Helen Boothman, who owns the garden, was excited and intrigued by the idea, and after an initial consultation we went as a group last summer to look round the beautiful, large garden (3 acres!) for inspiration, seeking possible sites to hang the work, with cameras and sketch / note books to gather ideas.

We all came away with our own ideas for individual work, but we also wanted to do a group piece, which we discussed at our next meeting.

I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do for my own piece, but knew where I wanted to hang it! This diamond-shaped peephole into the slatted wooden stucture had caught my attention when Colin and I had visited the garden with Winterton Gardening Club a few years ago. It suggested stained glass to me, using transparent and translucent fabrics.

Once we had had time to mull things over and develop some ideas, we had a second visit as a group, by which time I was thinking sunflower and took some organza to try out. Even with several layers it wasn’t right, so that was put on the back burner while I got on with my leaf for the group piece.

The ferns in our garden were beautiful last year, so I decided to do a machine embroidered fern. My very scribbly quick sketch was about 50 cm high …..

…… some more scribbles…..

……. a test piece on paper …….

……. more tests on dissolvable mediums, layers and layers of zig zag stitch on the sewing machine, hand stitching and more machine stitching of wire, a few broken needles and it became the middle back leaf on the group piece (in situ). All the leaves are different techniques and Mary’s flower is Tyvek.

The sunflower idea had developed over the time it took me to do the leaf.

I had intended to use these agate beads for the centre.

I tried them out in a bracelet, right size, but it was too flimsy to take the weight.

I tried them out within a very large, sturdy earring.

I layered lots of different fine translucent and slightly opaque fabrics together in a hoop. One of the very large earrings was stitched down in the middle, and a hole cut nearly up to it. The extra bits were stitched over the earing, then double petals cut out to go front and back, running stitched through all the layers. The whole flower has several layers of diluted PVA on both sides and then cut out…..

…… but I decided to leave the centre open, so that you can still peep into the wooden building

There are two diamond-shaped “windows”, so I made another sunflower in a different fabric.

The petal outlines are couched down with perlé thread. (These are samples that go with my artist statement.)

This second sunflower does have agates in the middle, but isn’t attached to a backing fabric so the light comes through the gaps between them; the outline of the centre is a twisted cord.

The plants will grow over the next few weeks

The peephole works, as demonstrated by Lorna!

These are a tiny taste of the work and of the lovely garden which is open over the summer every Thursday, Sunday and Bank Holiday from 11am to 4pm. It’s £5 admission to the garden, including the Exhibition.

We just hope that the weather is kind to the work and to the garden!

Felting with Karen Lane

Last Saturday’s S.E.A.T.A. workshop was a felting day with Karen Lane; her blog is well worth a good look. I had a fantastic day. I have done some felting over the years (bag and scarves) with various felt / textile artists, and a few bigger projects myself at home (slippers and sunflower-hanging, 1m by 2m).

But as with most things there is always more to learn, and everybody’s approach is slightly different. Tempting as it was, I didn’t order a kit from Karen, since I had most if not all of the requirements list. Still, it was the usual mad panic on Saturday morning of gathering together the last few things. I couldn’t make up my mind what colour palette of fleece, so took along three bags, greens (predictably), blues and a more mixed bag that included some rusts and browns. It was far more than I could possibly use in the day, but I was keeping my options open.

A demonstration from Karen gave me several new things to try before we started ourselves. The most exciting was using two little dog brushes as carders. I have used traditional carders in the past, with not a great deal of success, as they are heavy and unwieldy. The dog carders were ideal for the small amount of fleece we were using, and very quickly I’d got some lovely blends. The other thing that made the difference was when you’re carding to spin, you need to keep the fleece staple going in the same direction to prevent felting. Now I wanted them to felt, so the direction of the fibres was unimportant, to the point of them being all over the place was beneficial.

The little balls of blended carded fleece were put close together to give soft edges on a piece of bubbles-up bubble-wrap. My colour choices were very autumnal.

Karen had demonstrated using just two fine layers of fleece, one going left to right and one going top to bottom. The blending shows up more on this one.

Then it was pre-felting to the point of being handlable, and cutting the piece into squares, re-arranging and laying it out again, then flipping it over before putting a backing layer of fleece over the squares and re-felting.

In this one I used the wispy edges on the inside of my square.

While this one had the more solid squares butting up or slightly overlapping.

The more organic one I didn’t want to cut up, I liked it as it was and wanted to see what it would do left in one piece when it was fully felted.

I used an olive green on the back.

After this I was also rather wet and soapy and forgot to take any more photos. On the two square pieces I used rusted coloured fleece, and on the one a piece of rusty coloured scrim.

We’d also had bits of silk and other threads on the requirements list. I’d brought along this very old test piece of silk painting, and used the top two pieces on my round piece, as well as some bits of scrim and other threads.

We were then ready actually to felt and full the pieces. A new (to me) term of “fulling” was used; I had heard it before, but now have a better understanding of the word. It is when the felt shrinks in size as you roll and bash it about, changing the direction of the piece in the roll every couple of minutes so that it shrinks evenly.

The silk paints had obviously not been fixed, as the colours are now more muted, but I’m very pleased with the result, it’s now ready to be stitched.

Detail of above, the colours are pretty true on the whole piece.

The scrim has given a wavy edge which I like, but also almost looks like French knots in places.

I didn’t put fleece all over the back, the bottom third or so was just scrim.

I love the subtle colour changes on this piece, and it will be good to stitch into.

We were also shown a couple more techniques in the afternoon, but they are not quite finished yet.

It was really interesting to see the variety of work that was produced by the group when we all had the same starting point.

Thank you, Karen, for sharing your skills and techniques. I had a great day.

Lincolnshire Textiles / Lincolnshire Poacher

I’d almost finished my “Lincolnshire Poacher” piece last week before our Ukrainian “Sunflowers” arrived. In fact on Friday morning I started the last bit, the mounting, so I could blog about it, but things went slightly awry, so in the end I didn’t even get to do my blog until Monday!

Earlier in the week I started the “cheese-making”, using the template that I’d cut to the right size to cut a piece of wool / cotton wadding, which was a scrap left over from my stained glass window quilt, then a slightly larger piece of the yellow to cover it. I loosely tacked it through the wadding, making sure not to go through to the right side.

Just checking the scale.

I then added the “rind” with the textured stretchy fabric, after working out where it needed to go, and putting a long line of thread to define the wedge.

The “cheese” was attached with tiny stitching.

The grapes were stitched in the same way over the wadding, and placed in front of the cheese; no photo of this stage.

Then, after trying various rigid circular things (a DVD was not quite big enough, the lettering touched the edge), a lid off the large bucket of Lidl Greek yogurt was found to be the perfect size. DVDs filled the inside, to raise it level with the top. Next I did running stitches around the edge of the circle to gather it up, and the blue soluble pen was removed.

The “plate of cheese, lettuce and grapes” ready to attach to the 6 inch piece of mount board.

The piece of calico had a really deep crease that wouldn’t iron out, so I blocked it.

A piece of felt was stuck to the mount board to soften it all, and all set to go last Friday morning. We knew the “Sunflowers” were due to dock at Dover at 1 o’clock lunchtime, so there was time to finish the mounting and do my blog before the last-minute preparations for when they arrived.

I attached the “plate” to the backing fabric, then put a couple of pins to hold it in place, even having remembered to sign it with my logo initials.

I started mitreing the corners, and had almost finished the fourth one, feeling quite proud of myself, when I suddenly realised that the felt was facing me, not softening the right side. I could hear my mum’s voice in my head saying “pride comes before a fall”.

And having looked at it before I took it apart again, I realised the lettering was closer to the edge on one side, so laced across the back with it still partly attached to the backing fabric.

I then set to re-mounting it, mitred corners, lacing across the back, thinking I was still alright for time, called Colin through to see if it looked OK….. only for him to say the whole thing looked wrong and the lettering was in the wrong place.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked properly. I hadn’t re-checked the alignment after lacing the back of the “plate” and it had moved on the few stitches holding it down. More haste less speed, another of my mum’s favourite quotes to me.

So, off it came again. Breathe, calm down and slow down. Finally, third time lucky and it was done. It just needed a felt backing to cover the lacing, which I cut ready. But by now I had not only run out of patience, but also of time to do my blog.

I ended up quietly stitching it on once I’d got to the meeting on Saturday morning, and it was handed in and positioned amongst the rest of the pieces. Four more are yet to be added, but all is in hand.

I’ve also handed in my finished shard, so all is ready for the exhibition at Lincoln Cathedral.

Three sunflowers

This week for the first time since the first lockdown I haven’t posted on Friday. It has become part of my weekly routine, but last Friday I had other priorities.

The Ukrainian family of three that are staying with us and our son and his wife arrived, and they have all been with us over the Easter weekend, so lots of cooking and eating round the kitchen table. In spite of everything, they’ve shown us why the sunflower is their national flower.

The brooch is one I made a few weeks ago at an Allsorts workshop with Alex Hall. It was perfect timing to show the blue and yellow of their flag. By a lucky coincidence, the bedroom that the one who’ll be staying with us will be using has walls and carpet in light blue, and yellow bedding…..from 30 years ago!

Sunflowers

Sunflowers
Green and yellow fabrics
Lovely bright colours for a baby quilt

I know it’s really too early for sunflowers, but this lovely sunny weather makes me think of them and it is about the right time to plant them. The bright yellow is just so cheerful and we could all do with a bit of cheering up at the moment, so I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve made over the years with sunflowers as the inspiration.

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Cot quilts
both using the same fabrics as the starting point.

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Jelly roll of sunflower fabrics.
Most of the prints have a version on a white and a black background which I’ve utilised in the overall design giving light and dark stripes.
This is single bed or double lap quilt size, with fleece on the back to make it cosier.

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Left over tiny bits of the jelly roll
English paper piecing with Ruth Neller at Scunthorpe Embroiderers Guild.
I thought this was really not my thing but enjoyed playing with how to combine the various bits to make a sunglasses case.
It’s a fiddly technique and I have no inclination to do anything bigger.

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Felted sunflowers
Nearly 2 metres wide by 1 metre high

The background was a neutral pre-felted piece 2 metres by a metre
with fleece applied (vertically and horizontally) from the top left to right, working down to just below the middle in a painterly fashion.
The large foreground sunflowers were wet felted and dried as individual pieces before adding to the whole piece then it was all wet felted.
It hangs at the top of the stairs and can be seen coming out of two bedrooms and on the landing. I visualised it in just that spot long before it was made.

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This was a mark making exercise in charcoal I did in a drawing module while doing my degree at Hull School of Art and Design.
Scary where the time has gone. On my 50th birthday I went for an interview at Lincoln College of Art and Design, my 60th last week spent in lockdown.

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The same seed head as used for the drawing above was used to make a mould which was used for the plaster one on the right. Also made wax ones and an ice one as part of the Sculpture module.

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This was done for Sandra’s travelling book a couple of years ago. A technique shown to me by Jan Dowson, bond-a-web, snippets of fabric a chiffon scarf.

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Another early piece, with my favourite chain stitch and beads in the middle. I think it’s another UFO / PHD. The embroidery is done, just needs framing or making into a book cover. Not even sure where it is hiding!

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And last, but not least.
This is a fused glass sunflower I did in a workshop with Hazel Burnham last autumn for Colin’s Christmas present. It hangs in the landing window,
so a bit of a sunflower theme on the landing

Happy Easter

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Lincoln Embroiderers Guild Christmas Present Kit

I’ve still not done any stitching yet. But did manage to cut a thread and put it through the needle left handed while holding the needle in my right. Progress.The toothbrush technique I mentioned last week didn’t work for me.

The Easter bunnies were a Christmas present kit from Lincoln Embroiderers Guild. The coats of mine seemed more spring colours than Christmassy to me, which was just as well as they weren’t finished for Christmas. They’re not quite finished now, they need noses and whiskers but don’t think the others will notice.

The Easter egg mat is a very old PHD from Scunthorpe Embroiderers Guild I came across earlier in the year when I sorted all (well lots) of my PHD’s in to plastic A4 wallets – theoretically with everything I need to finish the stitching aspect of it together to pick up and go. It’s something I started a few years ago, in the main it works quite well, but occasionally things get ‘borrowed’ for new projects and often when a project does get finished the remaining fabrics and threads don’t get returned to the appropriate place. This is problematic when I need a particular colour or type of thread or fabric and results in frantic last minute searching for a requirement list for a workshop or class. Some things I know I have, calico and bond-a-web come to mind, just disappear in to a black hole. One day I will find yards and yards (sorry, metres and metres) of them.

I had when I found the egg mat intended to finish it for this Easter, but it’s not going to happen now. Next year when we can hopefully do the usual Easter long drawn out meal with friends! 

This year we were supposed to be in Germany with our dear friends for Easter and both of our birthdays, the three don’t often fall so neatly together, but the best we can do is to remotely eat together – 5 families round different tables. Fingers crossed it works, otherwise we’ll speak to them all individually.

My blog post and some of the links from last week inspired a dear friend in Aberdeen to have a go at stitching. So I’ve sent her some of my stash, I really wanted it to be a surprise, but thought it more useful to find out what she needed and her favourite colours – pink, orange and blue. Plenty of orange, but couldn’t find much, must be in places I can’t get to easily one handed. The yellow sunflower scrap is from a quilt I made for her years ago for her friends baby.

Inspiration pack. Do yo recognise the sunflower?

Pinks and purples I only tend to use when I am pushing my comfort zone colour wise or making something for somebody else. But managed to find some.

Pinks and purples

Blues I do use, sea and beach projects but much less in my stash than earthy and autumnal colours. It was fun and felt creative sorting things to put together. And helped with coordinating in the opposite way to normal, I can now move my finger and thumb together without pain, not for long or it makes  my forearm ache later. Patience.

The seahorse fabric was in my Regional Day raffle prize from last year.
Thank you Hull Branch for the lovely hexagonal box and goodies.

Looking forward to seeing what these inspiration packs generate by a very talented young lady.

Keep safe and well.