Alice Fox Workshop

After Saturday’s talk, a whole Sunday workshop with Alice Fox. We had just been asked to bring our normal sewing kits plus threads, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, making it even more exciting. There was a tempting array of papers, threads and ephemera laid out…

…along with some examples of Alice’s own work for inspiration. To start, we were each given a selection of different papers…

…and a prompt sheet asking us to explore how it felt to stitch into them. I used a template from my silversmithing course five years ago to do some feather stitch in various weights of thread..

I really liked the rough texture I got from putting stitching holes into the heavy tracing paper, so once I’d stitched through it, I used a metalworking scribe to mark wavy lines into the paper without piercing it before punching varying sized holes from either the front (smooth) or the back (rough).

I really like the differences of line and texture on this. And it reminds me of the sea.

The next prompt was cutting and patching.

So a piece of old map cut along the grid lines became the fragment on the right.

As you can see, by this time I had succumbed and made a little book for my fragments. It started off as an origami book, folded from a single piece of paper with one cut, but I wanted a bit more stability and to have access to all the sides of the pages, so I pamphlet stitched it in two places and tore the double pages into singles. Winging it, but it works.

Next was couching.  I followed the road and river lines on this scrap of map.

By this time we were all engrossed in our own thing, and although there were two more prompts about deconstructing marked papers and accentuating printed marks, everyone was well away with their cutting, stitching, tearing, patching and experimenting.

At the end of the day we ended up with with a fascinating range of responses.

Alice uses rusting quite a lot in her work and so when I got home to my rusty washers, I couldn’t resist some mark making on tea soaked paper.

My little book was over half full by the time the workshop ended.

With my rust and tea stained papers and these that I didn’t get round to exploring…

…I have every intention of playing with some more of Alice’s prompts and completing my little book!

Read Full Post »

Lockets and The Sea revisited.

Embroidery as promised. I not only finished off the faux driftwood piece I stitched at our sea-themed Embroiderers’ Guild March workshop…

…but also found a framed ceramic plaque for £1 in a charity shop which after a bit of sanding and dry brushing with some pale blue emulsion paint yielded the perfect frame.

The beaded fish is now nearly a name badge. I just need to add a brooch back, ladder stitch the two sections together and bead it round the edge.

On Saturday it was our April Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild meeting and an opportunity to revisit the embroidery we produced in March after Mary’s workshop. It was lovely to see such a variety of outcomes.

 

This was followed by a fascinating talk by Alice Fox, learning about her creative journey and focusing on her ‘Findings’ body of work. Anyone who beach and pavement combs and turns the oddments she finds into works of art is a woman after my own heart. We had a workshop booked with her on the Sunday but I’m going to blog about that separately.

I’ve also been embroidering more pieces of silk carrier rod to inlay into upcycled jewellery – two lockets and a pendant. The pendant was first: vibrant green carrier rod with a crimson ribbon embroidery rose circled by five little leaf stitch leaves.

This went beautifully with a stamped filigree brass frame to become June Rose.

Then I moved onto the smaller of two gold tone lockets. I used a wintry blue carrier rod and embroidered it with tiny snowflakes in two weights of silk thread. 

It really is very small – the central oval is about 2cm by 1.5cm and the finest thread is thinner than normal sewing cotton. The snowflakes aren’t quite well stitched as I wanted, but embroidering something that intricate freehand was quite a challenge.

Snowflakes is available here.

For the second locket I returned to a familiar design, an undersea landscape of waving feather stitch fronds of coral or seaweed and tiny nuggets of sea glass.

I chose a variegated pink and turquoise thread as a starting point and teamed it with turquoise/blue carrier rod, three nuggets of multi-coloured Seaham sea glass and a couple of darker pink threads.

The Coral Garden locket is quite a bit bigger than the Snowflakes locket at about 4 by 4.5cm. I really like the colour combination. I wouldn’t have necessarily put the two colours together but they worked so well in the variegated thread.

I really love stitching these little vignettes and using them to make bits of junk jewellery into things of beauty again.

Read Full Post »

Transformation.

They started as part of a five piece graduated set of wedge shaped pendants. The central sections had been filled with glittery golden sticky backed plastic – horrible but easily removed to give a blank space full of possibilities.

As you can see from the above photo, I already had one idea brewing – to use some of the scraps of fabulous yew wood veneer I scored from my Dad’s workshop a while ago. I liked the look of the wood against the gold coloured edging, but felt that to do all of them the same would be too much and just one wouldn’t showcase the wood enough. So I decided to make a trio of pendants, using the two smallest and one of the medium sized sections.

I cut the veneer to shape and carefully finished the pieces with clear Danish oil and micro-crystalline wax before insetting them into the pendants, adding a gold plated chain and listing them here in my Etsy shop

That left the largest and one of the medium sized sections for something different. I really enjoyed working with ironed out silk carrier rods recently and I had just found three bags of them I didn’t know I had (hangs head in shame…) in my favourite colours – blue, green and turquoise – so that was the next design sorted. I cut a piece of the green to fit the largest section and started to create a little garden corner. Straight stitch stems and french knot flowers in various weights of silk thread.

Then an overhanging branch in stem stitch…

…with lazy daisy stitch leaves…

…set into the pendant which can be found here.

A piece of mottled blue/turquoise carrier rod was a good start for a sea themed pendant. I added feather stitch in gold silk thread and three tiny nuggets of rare yellow sea glass.

They were stitched down with fine silk thread and I added another swirl of feather stitch to link them.

I’ve called this one ‘Sunlit Zone’ and listed it here.

Stitching on the ironed out silk carrier rods is lovely. They are firm, like a heavy paper, but much more forgiving if you put the needle through in the wrong place. Pelmet vilene is great too but the colour and sheen of the silk is just very special. I think they have loads more potential in my jewellery work so this won’t be the last you see of them!

Read Full Post »

More small projects

The holiday journal is finished and just waiting for me to add some extra papers, pockets etc. to the inside.

Doing blanket stitch so close together took longer than I bargained but I like the effect.

Then I moved onto another one of my samples for my upcoming Embroiderers’ Guild workshop later in the year. Grey on grey felt embroidered in pale blues.

Fly stitched edge, straight stitches in a radiating pattern and french knots:

Feather stitch edging with a chain stitch spiral:

And I’ve turned what I think might have been a vintage money clip into an upcycled sea glass pendant. First of all I sawed off the long bit of the clip following the lines of the design at the bottom.

Then I pierced and cut out the middle section with a very fine saw, again following the edges of the design, and leaving three tabs to attach the sea glass to.

A lot of fiddly filing happened next, to really shape the central section and tidy up the tabs before I could set it with a lovely piece of deep turquoise sea glass.

I love using the piercing saw and the fiddlier the design, the better. I really need to get back to making some more of my original jewellery…

Read Full Post »

Small finishes

It’s reading for a new show time again and so I have managed to sit and stitch through a number of small finishes. Firstly, one of the designs Ruth produced for us at November’s Embroiderers’ Guild meeting, made up into a card.

The border is in feather stitch, the centre in a spiral of split stitch, the main oval parts of the petals in Corded Brussels stitch (needlelace) and the ends in satin stitch.

Then I decided to make up a little magazine kit I bought from eBay in 2009. Simple stem stitch and lazy daisy stitch for the wheel barrow and the flowers/leaves.

Then french knot middles to the flowers and my first ever attempt at a Dorset Button for the wheel.

I was fairly pleased with it until I put the kit picture next to it for comparison…

Obviously a technique I need to work on but it has made a nice little card.

Read Full Post »

‘Purple Depths’

I’ve had the idea of turning an old pocket watch case into a pendant for a while now, but it wasn’t until yesterday, when after a challenging morning helping my 11 yr old to muck out her bedroom, I felt in need of something simple and soothing to stitch. The watch case itself was ready to go, I just needed to find the fabric…

…then track down the Dinky Dyes variegated silk I knew I had that would go with it, select three tiny nuggets from my sea glass collection…

…and I was good to go. Seed beads first.

And then the embroidery – feather stitch using one strand of the silk and scattered trios of french knots.

To finish I layered a piece of wadding over a circle of card and snipping the edge of the fabric, I wrapped each tab round the card and lightly glued them to the back before setting the whole thing in the watch case.

It’s been a long time in development, but I’m absolutely delighted with the result.

If you’re interested, you can find it here.

Read Full Post »

Daily stitching

My little one has just started secondary school and has gone from packed lunches to school dinners. This has suddenly given me 10-15 minutes extra in the mornings and so I’ve started doing a little stitching before I head off to work.

The huge french knot piece is heading for the last leg. Last time I shared it, I’d got this far:

But a summer’s worth of stitching at boot sales, meetings and these new morning stitching sessions has got me to this point:

The bottom edge is now complete, the second corner defined and all I have left to do is the final edge. That said, there is probably hours of work still before I can put in the final stitch!

The other thing I’ve worked on is my amulet, although I’m thinking it’s more likely going to be a book cover. At the end of the workshop in July I’d feather stitched and beaded the printed fabric to the background felt and used beaded blanket stitch to attach a rusty washer to the centre.

Since then I’ve used my favourite metallic Madeira thread to back stitch all round the printed design. Just enough metal wrapping around the core thread to give a subtle sparkle. It’s twinkly rather than blingy!

To fit in with the found washer in the middle, I’ve added some large textured gold tone loops from a short section of chain. Each one is couched down and then french knots added at the ends of the couching stitches.

I’m amazed at how much I’m getting done in these little sessions, although it is extremely tempting to just do a few minutes more – and then end up late for work!

Read Full Post »