Hand turned knitting needles and works in progress

When I went to visit my parents at Easter I spent some time with my dad in his workshop. He turned me a couple of pairs of knitting needles from yew last year…

…and I used one pair to knit him a hat but the knobs on the end were a bit too small and they were a little on the short side so he turned me a version 2:

in lilac wood

with laburnum collars over the ends to make the knobs a better size.

Laburnum is a fabulous wood. Who could have guessed that the small slender trees which rain down their clusters of golden flowers in suburban gardens at this time of the year have such rich dark wood. I’m not sure where my dad has managed to get so much laburnum from, but you can really see the deep colour of the wood and the dark, spiralling grain in a mouse and egg he made years ago.

Anyway, whilst in the workshop, to my dad’s bemusement,  I managed to score an assortment of scraps and offcuts of various woods. This is apple, which he has used to make some gorgeous chopping blocks.

I added some kantha style rusty doodling. (That rusted sheet came from the workshop too, as I remember…)

With some pieces of watch mechanism added…

I think this will probably become a brooch.

Also time I was thinking about upcycling a random notebook – the sort of thing that comes full of gorgeous pictures and inspiring ideas inside glossy lifestyle magazines – into a holiday journal. Usually I just fuse fabric to the inside, but there was more writing on the front than I wanted, so I made a cover sandwich, with fabric inside…

…and outside.

I’ve just started to blanket stitch the edge for decoration, to keep the edges of the fused fabric from flapping up and also for adding strength to the cover.

I’m using a slightly lighter weight perle that I have done before with these journals and so have put the stitches closer together which means I need to concentrate on keeping the spacing neat!

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Bracken

This is the second piece for the journal I’m creating for our Lake District holiday. It was inspired by the intense rusty orange of the dead bracken stalks on the side of the fell as viewed from the lounge.

I used a mixture of three different threads on my needle, a single strand of silk floss, a single strand of cotton floss and a length of variegated very fine mercerised cotton. A square of paper was backed with masking tape to stabilise it and I used free cross stitch, french knots and long and short stitch to fill the space as the dead bracken stalks filled the fellside.

Blocks of ‘stone’ were created by building up layers of gesso which were then painted to echo the colour of the green Langdale slate

Underneath the embroidery I used some of the amazing pencils I bought from the Lakeland Pencil Museum in Keswick to make colour swatches.

And I also stuck in a beech leaf, found on the aborted walk in question, which fitted in with the colours I was using.

Windows cut in the previous page give glimpses through.

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Lake District holiday journal – first piece

The starting point for this holiday’s journal was my middle one, who is doing ‘A’ level Art and is creating some very interesting and effective work stitching into photos and paper. I’ve been really inspired by this and to go along with the paper theme, I decided to alter a book as the journal. Here is the first spread,

I used the top of the image on the left which I transferred to a piece of indigo dyed cotton with gel medium. The medium dried quite opaque, giving the image a very evocative, misty feel.

Then I used a single strand of Caron Waterlilies variegated silk thread in a very loose stem stitch to pick out some of the detail.

Really enjoyed my experimenting.

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International Blog Hop

I was delighted to be tagged to take part in this by the very creative, talented and witty Iz, from Threadnoodle and it was lovely to welcome people who had popped over from her blog. So this week is my turn to talk in a bit more depth about myself and my creative process.

I live in North Lincolnshire in the UK although I’m originally, like Dickens’ David Copperfield, from the little village of Blundeston, in Suffolk. Among other things, I’m a writer, a jeweller and textile artist. But not necessarily in that order.

1. What am I working on?

Erm… everything? I have a second book of short stories and a novel both on the go as well as an article which has been back-burnered for various reasons. There’s a box of partly completed rings,

pendants and other odds and ends which need finishing.

Journals, books and altered books,

kits, summer holiday diary fragments,

the crazy patchwork cushion for my son,

felted and goldwork brooches,

 

my hearts commission,

my rusted fragments art quilt…

…you get the picture. I long to have a go at everything and greedily want 36 hours in each day to try, test and explore my latest passion to its full extent.

My latest obsession is upcycled jewellery, whether replacing broken/damaged elements with beads like this vintage necklace…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or adding textile elements – felting and beading…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… embroidery or patchwork.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love being able to make something from bits that someone else has discarded as worthless. Little things fascinate me too, and each of the projects is so small that I can be almost finished before I start to get bored. I really admire people with the stickability to work on large ongoing projects, but that’s not me. Whatever I do tends to be small, detailed, and precise, whether it’s stitched into fabric, wrought from metal, words on a page or even part of a show in theatre. For me, the devil (and the interest) is in the detail.

2. How does my work differ from others in its genre?

That’s a difficult one. As regards my jewellery, with its mix of metalworking and fine embroidery, I’ve certainly never seen anything quite like it. There are other artists who create  jewellery with textile components, but it seems to fall into two categories – fairly traditional jewellery shapes such as earring drops, pendant and rings set with pieces of textile work, or textile work with metal findings to make it into earrings, pendants, brooches etc. I do both…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…but prefer to do neither

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suppose that everything we do is unique, but at the same time, everything we create is the result of our experiences. I’ve often thought that if we could break down the DNA of a piece, trace its bloodline of influences and inspirations, it would be fascinating to see precisely how it was born from the tiny fragments we draw from so many things we’ve seen, done and experienced.

3. Why do I create what I do?

Every project gives me pleasure to work and it also gives me pleasure to see how it is received by other people but essentially I create because I need to. Like so many creative people, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t create, from wobbly junk models and roughly stitched dolls’ clothes to furnishings for my doll’s house and stories set in imagined worlds.

It’s my way of responding to something of the beauty in the world I see around me, my way of revelling in the power of fashioning something that is mine alone. I bend the media to my will and I say how it turns out – mostly!

4. How does my creative process work?

The first thing to fire it off is usually a single item but it can be anything: a bead, a thread, some fabric, a fragment of something, an image or artefact. The alliums piece below was the response to the challenge, ‘A flower beginning with ‘A’ for an Embroiderer’s Guild competition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An idea from a curtain I saw on a course

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and an image from a dream…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It can be a very dangerous process to sort through my stuff – I get sidetracked onto new projects very easily!

In terms of how things then evolve, I let my creative subconscious do a lot of the work. Usually I have clear idea of the starting point and an image of roughly what the end point will look like (I write like this too). Then it’s a case of starting and seeing how and where things go. If I get stuck I just walk away for a while and its unusual for that break not to have straightened things out in my head.  If I’m lucky, things work out as well, or sometimes even better than I’d hoped. If not, then it’s good to learn from your mistakes and chances are, I can always turn it into something else one day…

Phew! I think that’s the wordiest post I’ve ever put up! If you’re still with me, then please go and visit my two nominated bloggers.

Firstly, Debbie at Debbidipity. I met Debbie at our Embroiderers’ Guild when I joined several years ago and we’ve been good friends ever since. In the last 5 years, as a mature student, she’s done ‘A’ levels in Art and Photography and then followed them up with a Fine Art degree at Hull. She likes to experiment with all sorts of media and her inspirations are rooted strongly in the natural world that she loves.

From the local to the other side of the pond and Penny at Art Journey. Penny creates wonderful textile artwork in areas that I don’t tend to dabble in but love to look at – punch-needle, doll-making and beading are some of her latest delights, and I consider myself very lucky to have Valentine, one of her wonderful unique dolls sitting on my shelf watching me as I type.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the next stage of the bloghop!

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Just ’cause I can!

I was given a Moleskine notebook for Christmas and decided to use it as an ad hoc journal. I wrote a page in the local leisure centre cafe in January when I was waiting for my little one to finish her tennis lesson and decorated the facing page with some of my latte. A couple of months later I added a splash of Twinings Apple Crunch tea and then decided to use the string snipped off the teabag to cross stitch through the page.

Why? enquired my bemused husband. To echo my teenage middle one: just ’cause I can!

Last week I had vivid pink Cranberry and raspberry tea and as I was finishing off a canvaswork brooch, I also had some offcuts of canvas. Not only could I add the colour to the page, I could use the teabag to dye the canvas and the string of the tea bag and then use one to stitch on the other!

So there you have it: cushion stitch in fruit tea dyed tea bag string on a fragment of fruit tea dyed canvas with a pale lilac splodge of the same tea in the background.

Just ’cause I can!!

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