Busy and Birthday

First of all, Happy 11th Birthday to this blog, which I actually began on May Bank Holiday Monday, the 2nd of May in 2011. It wouldn’t be a birthday without a cake, so please have a calorie free virtual piece of this strawberry pavlova on me!

Things have been very busy as usual, and with three workshops and two days teaching in the last nine days and with all the workshops needing samples and instructions I’ve been working flat out.

Tomorrow I’m teaching my Kamal Kadai workshop to Selby Textile Art Group. It’s a technique I’ve taught at least twice before and so I already had a folder containing all my samples etc. I thought I’d just stitch another piece with smaller unbeaded Kamal Kadai flowers to add to the samples…

…and I’d tidy up the instructions and do some templates for stitching the variant through four-hole buttons. Not a lot to do. Famous last words…

Good job I got the folder out in plenty of time. For a start, my button variant samples were nowhere to be found and even though I’ve turned every workshop folder inside out and emptied the box and cupboard they live in, still no sign. So here are my two new, frantically stitched button variants of Kamal Kadai.

I’m particularly pleased with the red one as I’ve added a smaller button decoratively stitched over the larger one.

Also, now I have more experience of leading workshops, the samples I was so pleased with three years ago, just looked untidy, so I ended up re-mounting them all. It took ages to do them properly but it does look a lot better.

Just one more button piece to mount and then I’m ready for tomorrow.

Next, the final update on April’s Move It On Project, the Newgrange stone. I found a good reference picture of the spirals to work from but unfortunately because of all the workshop preparation I just didn’t have the time to do anything else to it. However, I am pleased that I got the silk attached with the needle-turn applique and now it (hopefully) should be a relatively quick finish.

May’s Move It On Project was started in June 2017 and to my surprise, I’ve only blogged about once, in reference to the Embroiderers’ Guild workshop in which I started it, when it looked like this:

It has developed quite a bit further but May will be the time to see if I can move it on properly.

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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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Kamal Kadai work

I’ve always kept a folder on my computer of images of things that I’ve come across on blogs and other lovely places across the internet that have piqued my interest. My own private Pinterest, I suppose. As the lovely group of ladies at Brigg Allsorts, (I taught a felted spiral brooches workshop there last September), have asked me to work with them on a regular basis, it is proving a treasure trove of ideas for things to teach.

My first workshop of 2019 with them was earlier in the month and from a selection of my treasure trove ideas they chose Kamal Kadai work. This is a type of needle weaving, sometimes beaded, which I believe originates in India and it was a real pleasure after the intensity of panto costume to get down to some sample pieces.

My first sample was a piece of beaded Kamal Kadai. My first attempt at guidelines was based on four diamonds which meet in the middle.  I also drew my lines by eye, but measuring accurately would help improve the result!

The beads are added during the initial phase when the warp threads are being laid down. I found the single stranded thread such as perle and coton a broder worked best for this.

Then, one section at a time, you fill the diamonds with needle weaving. Once you reach the first pair of beads you stop weaving on those warp threads and carry on on the ones left until you reach the final three threads.  It’s quite a challenge to get it even!

I also found some examples of Kamal Kadai worked over buttons which I was keen to experiment with. I used the button as the basis for the guidelines.

First with five threads per section:

They look quite attractive even before you add the needle weaving.

Then seven threads:

And completed in the centre.

It was a nice quiet relatively easy post-Christmas and New Year stitching workshop.

The actual basics are relatively simple – straight stitches for the warp and then needle weaving, but as with a lot of fundamentally straightforward stitching, it’s the care and precision of working that gives the best results and we certainly had some lovely work from the group. I’ve added Kamal Kadai work to my range of workshops, so if you are interested please see the workshops page for further details and contact me (details in the side bar) for prices and further information.

After being extremely careful to keep the tension even on all my samples, I did wonder what would happen if I pulled the weaving up tight on each row. This is definitely something to explore.

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