Canvaswork and Rescue work!

The pesky last Tattershall piece is still not working out so I started to attach some of the already completed finished pieces to the accordion book in the hope that they would help inspiration to strike. The front cover is glued as it’s paper with a bit of stabilising calico behind.

Then I added more stitching to the batik bricks in order to sew it to the brick fabric background.

But still nothing, and I’m not sure how to attach the bollock purse or the canvaswork either, so that has ground to a halt. So I decided to do something completely different and start one of the two Sue Hawkins kits that have been my lock-down treat. The first one is the Bright Pyramid needlebook, purely because I need one and am too lazy to design my own!

There have been a few counting issues and associated bad language, but I’m just over half way through the design and it’s starting to come a bit more easily as bits of the pattern start to repeat.

I know that the first two lines are not quite long enough – that was an issue I didn’t realise until I had stitched quite a lot of the hearts and flowers band. There was a lot of bad language at that point… I’m working up the enthusiasm to unpick the ends and restitch them.

On the plus side, I really like the braided effect of the long-legged cross stitch bands.

And if you follow me on Instagram you’ll know that I’ve just become the besotted owner of two more vintage hand cranked sewing machines.

Sadly one of our elderly neighbours died recently (not Covid) and over the last few days it has been quite upsetting to hear relatives clearing the entire contents of her home into a skip. But with charity shops shut and no boot sales, what else do you do with the remains of a life? However, I was able to rescue, among a few other bits, these incredible machines. As both were locked I had no idea what would be inside until I got them home. It was like opening a treasure chest.

It was the fantastic inlaid but badly damaged case that alerted me to this one:

The base is damaged as well, but I’m sure I can sort it out. No idea of the maker but I suspect it’s late 1800s, early 1900s in date. And it has mother of pearl flowers inlaid into the base plate!

And as the case was very simple, I almost left this stunning Singer in the skip! Opening the case was a revelation – the chrome is immaculate, the decals and bright and clean and it even has a Singer tin of bobbins etc. in the base compartment.

We are lucky enough to have a fantastic local sewing machine repairers and once things are closer to normal, this one will be serviced and has already been claimed by my daughter.

I still need to clean them and look at them properly, but I alternate between elation at how beautiful they are and horror that they very nearly went into landfill.

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Bricks and Batik

The all day batik workshop/play day we had at Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild for our February meeting seems a lifetime ago now but I’ve been working on one of the pieces I created during the session.

With the Tattershall bricks in mind I used a tiny Polish kitska, usually used for creating fine wax resist designs on eggs, to draw a little brick design which I then overdyed with silk paints. 

 Not too many blobs, but I had plans for them anyway. Covered with masses of french knots, they become patches of moss.  Rough back stitch and odd straight stitches neaten up the batiked lines of mortar. 

But then it occurred to me that if I covered over all the batik lines there was really no point in the batik. It might as well be embroidery on hand dyed fabric.

So I decided to embroider part of it but let it fade off at the edges. Ripping the fabric helps too.

Second piece finished, but I’ve not finished with the bricks quite yet…

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Starting the Tattershall Memory Journal

The next memory journal combines two trips I made to Tattershall Castle last summer – the first a bit of quality time with my youngest in July after the end of term and the second to a fabulous tourney and medieval reenactment event in August.

The first thing that hits you about this unusual castle is the fact it’s made out of warm chestnut coloured brick instead of stone and that extends to features inside like roof vaulting and some of the window surrounds.

So bricks were the inspiration for this memory journal and canvaswork seemed a good place to start. Although the pattern is simple, as is the tent stitch I used, I put a lot of thought into choosing a range of threads that echoed the different shades in the bricks.

 

However there was one thing I bottled out on – the brick bond. My design is a simple Stretcher Bond where you only see the stretchers, or the long faces of the bricks. Tattershall is built using English Bond as you can see below.

The advantage of that is that instead of getting a wall that is one brick width deep (fine for a modern house), the row of headers give you a wall that is the whole length of the brick deep – much better for a castle.

However, although it may be better for a castle, it was challenging to get it to look in proportion on a canvas grid, so after two attempts I gave up trying to align the ‘bricks’ and concentrated on a simpler pattern instead!

I keep reminding myself that it’s a creative response to the visit, not a slavish reconstruction, but the perfectionist in me keeps muttering that perhaps I just need to try that English Bond one more time…

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