Little bits.

The poppies harvest wreath has moved on a little further and I’m a bit happier with the balance of the flowers, given that they are pretty random.

I also, in another variation of: ‘Things I’ve Found While Looking For Other Things’ came across some Tyvek this week, which has prompted a little bit of playing (and encouraged me to clear a few bits off the ironing pile while I had the iron out!). I used water soluble oil pastels on both pieces but left one as it was and added water to blend the other to see if there was any difference once I added heat.

In the end there was no difference in the way they behaved apart from the unblended one leaving smudges of oil pastel all over the baking parchment. Probably should have seen that one coming…

I preferred the way the bottom one crinkled up but thought the top one would be easier to stitch into – and it happens to be my comfort zone colours too. So I chose a section to experiment with:

The colours reminded me of some tiny offcuts I couldn’t bear to throw away from the felt I used here:

I thought they would work well with the colours of the Tyvek and provide a textural contrast. A scrap of viscose tubular ribbon ruched and held down with French knots gave me a starting point.

The larger scrap of felt was stitched down as invisibly as I could as there was already a lot going on in it, but I used a series of fly stitches to attach the smaller piece.

I quite like how the melted Tyvek looks and I didn’t want to cover any more of it up, so I added some lines of stem stitch just to follow some of the patterns in the Tyvek and anchor it to the felt.

What I really should have been doing was getting some more pieces of upcycled jewellery made. I need to do a complete stock change from gothic/Hallowe’en to something more Christmas party/presents in Arttopia in less than a week; a stock refresh along similar lines for the Bricktree Gallery in Caistor and then I’ve realised that it’s less than two weeks until my first Christmas Fair with two more following quickly after that!

I’ve made some upcycled pendants from some odd vintage earrings, the centre of a bracelet (the silver flower) and a selection of odd beads and charms and am working on some earrings using sections of broken bracelets.

All I really need are about another 8 hours in each day…!

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Art Swap II

I was very excited to receive my half of the art swap last week and as well as these fabulous prints…

…Nick also sent me some tie-dyed fabric and tote bags that he experimented with during lockdown. I love the prints but the tie-dye blew me away! These tote bags are beautifully patterned and the dye distribution is so even.

The fabric turned out to be three big pieces which are just stunning. In fact, so stunning that I don’t think there is any way I can bring myself to cut into them! The first two are on muslin, which is quite sheer and difficult to photograph.

This one is on something firmer like cotton sheeting. The detail is incredible!

If you’re on Instagram, this talented gentleman is @nick_knox_777 and well worth following.

I’ve been playing with an idea sparked off by a partly finished Victorian patchwork quilt I saw in an exhibition about fifteen years ago. It was an English paper pieced quilt and the papers were still in place. Although the antique silks and velvets of the patchwork front were gorgeous, I was much more interested in trying to read the fragments of unwanted cards and letters which had been cut up to make the papers. Those hidden snippets were tantalising.

As usual, I’m working very small, so I decided to use one text for all my papers – Viola’s speech (“I left no ring with her: what means this lady?”) from Twelfth Night, which is about her hidden identity.

I also chose to keep the text in the right order, again because everything was so small and once the fabric was stitched round the papers, much more of the text, already fragmentary, would be lost.

I used some ordinary light weight cotton muslin for the fabric – after all, in this piece the fabric is very much secondary to the papers! Now it’s all stitched together the text is reduced to the odd word or partial word.

Perfectly hidden, unless you know what it’s supposed to be.

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A Collection of Cards

I was asked to come up with three cards for assorted birthdays and anniversaries in short order this week and having no time to start anything completely from scratch, I went delving into a box of assorted bits and pieces and managed to come up with five finished cards in a day!

First was a piece I started at a 2015 workshop on sculpting silk paper with Linda Rudkin. Sashiko stitching on a scrap of indigo dyed sheeting. This one was completely finished and just needed mounting.

Next a couple of cards created from some samples I made playing with a soldering iron. This one has been enhanced with a scattering of silk French knots.

I finished it by stitching it onto the blue silk backing with herringbone stitch in the same thread.

I’d already started couching a frothy white thread round this sample when I found it.

The layered spirals and slashes combined with the frothy white thread made me think of the way artists like Hiroshige and Hokusai represent sea foam in ukiyo-e prints. I carried on doodling with the couched thread and added some split stitch spirals with the cream silk thread I was using to couch it down and two nuggets of sea glass.

Finished as a card.

Next up a piece of crazy patchwork that I stitched at least ten ago. I had half thought about appliqueing it onto a shoulder bag made from the cut off bottom of a pair of jeans. But the upcycled bags I’ve made in past from jeans bottoms and patchwork panels had very little interest when I tried to sell them, so I decided a card was the more sensible option.

And last, one of the back ground pieces from our teabags workshop with Fran Holmes in October 2019. This literally only needed about a dozen stitches into the lace border to finish it!

So not only did I manage to deliver the three requested cards, I actually have some in reserve for upcoming celebrations. Makes quite a change to be beforehand with the world instead of chasing my tail!

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Under tension

That’s just my Kamal Kadai work! I did wonder a few weeks ago what would happen if I used a very tight tension on the needle weaving bit of the Kamal Kadai work and since I had a partly worked piece from the workshop, I decided to find out. This is what it looks like when you ensure the weaving isn’t pulled tight:

And this is how it turns out when you pull each row up tightly:

French knot middle in rayon thread. It’s the perfect colour, but behaved appallingly. I really hate rayon thread!

I’ve also started a piece incorporating found objects – plastic rings of varying materials and ages – and fragments of fabric on a hand dyed indigo background.

Exploring different ways of attaching the rings.

It’s exercising my ingenuity and very gently pushing at the edges of my colour comfort zone. I still couldn’t bring myself to use a riot of every colour in the scrap bag but it isn’t just blues and aquas!

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Gilding the lily?

I’ve finished the beaded blanket stitch on the edge of the purple square and am very pleased with it. In fact, I’m very happy with the whole overall look.

But… I keep thinking of the instruction to bling it up and wondering if I should do any more. I’ve thought about various forms of beaded feather stitch across the spiral or rows of french knots either side of it; back stitched lines running through the spiral with french knot ends or oglala stitch beading over the spiral.

Really not sure, so I’m returning to the crazy patchwork bead for a bit.

Any thoughts?

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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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Playing

There is no textile holiday journal this year. Unlike other years I had no plan and rather than make a chore out of something I love doing, I decided to just take things as they came. If I embroidered, then great. If I didn’t then that was fine as well.

So I played – occasionally. The base for this fragment was the paper case from a chocolate. Even after I’d eaten the chocolate I found I was still turning the flattened case round in my fingers, not ready to screw it up and throw it away. So…why not play?

Base fabric of a scrap of African cotton print with organza over the top. Silk throwsters waste inside the paper case, running stitch and couching in stranded silk.

I had fun.

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Folio Inspirations

Our last Embroiderers’ Guild meeting was a whole day to look at and get inspiration from some folios we had received from Headquarters. There was one on plants and one insects and other creatures. All kinds of embroidery styles and techniques were represented and it was lovely just to mooch through these pieces and enjoy their skill and beauty.

This sort of very open-ended session doesn’t suit everyone but it’s right up my street and I soon found a little piece that I loved. Apologies for my phone camera which just doesn’t do even slightly close-up.

Knowing the limitations of my phone, I also went for a watercolour annotated sketch in my sketchbook.  The note top right is a copy of the label on the back.

I liked the idea of layered scraps of fabric and also the limited stitch palette and as I always have plenty of scraps to hand, I was soon layering up frayed rectangles of various heavier weights of hand-dyed fabric and hunting out single strands of silks and cottons to create my scene in lazy daisy stitches with long stalks and wheatear stitch.

There are some Krenik gold stitches in there too, but it wasn’t the brightest of days when I took the pictures, so they’re difficult to spot.

One of the delights of this was how quickly it stitched up and it was well and truly finished by the end of the day, which for me, is almost unheard of! It occurred to me that the technique would lend itself to another similar picture, but instead of the grasses, a wildflower meadow with bright pops of colour for poppies, cornflowers, campion, ox-eye daisies etc. I even had time to piece the base for it, using very similar pieces to the first one…

…but that’s as far as it’s got. Back to the reports for me…

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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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Drilled and stitched slate

Some of the slate fragments I picked up on the various beaches we visited in North Cornwall had split into sheets as thin as card. Sheets thin enough to easily drill; I hoped. On returning home I pressed my trusty bow drill into action and was impressed with how easily it put holes through the slate. (Not sure what it’s done for the sharpness of the drill bit, mind you…)

I chose scraps of hand dyed sandy brown and green fabric with a coarse weave and used a stranded silk to stitch the slate with simple straight stitches through the pre-drilled holes onto the layered fabric bits beneath.

I wanted this piece to be all about the texture so I added a seeding mixture of french knots and straight seed stitches to the scraps of sandy coloured fabric in the same stranded thread.

Then stuck it into my journal…

…before turning my attention to another piece I’d drilled.

This time I used one of the drilling templates I’d made during my jewellery course for feather stitching through brass. The holes are 1mm across.

 

I used variegated silk thread for the feather stitching onto a scrap of turquoise habotai silk backed with calico. A hand dyed cotton shading from greens through browns and purples to turquoise couched down the fantastic slubby thread I’d unearthed whose shades echoed the colours of my journal so well.

Then I cut the backing fabric to follow the lines of the couched thread before it too went into the journal.

I love the ease with which these came together. Slate as shishas is another possibility.

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