Inspired by Poetry

This was the theme for the next travelling book to reach my hands and it very nearly undid me. I love poetry. I get huge pleasure from reading and writing and performing it and I couldn’t even whittle down my favourites to a long-list of 100 poems I could do without! But one line jumped straight into my head as I flicked through the pages.

“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough…”

And I jumped at it. The other poetry could argue as much as it wanted. Picking the first poem to come to the front of the crowd (and sticking to it) was the only way to get anything stitched in a month!

The next thing was to find a suitable photo to work on. I’ve enjoyed the effect of stitching on paper recently and cherry blossom just lends itself to french knots. A vintage 1970s calendar picture of cherry blossom near Wray Castle in the Lake District was a good starting point. I trimmed the image and fused it to some indigo dyed cotton to make it easier to stitch.

You do have to look closely…

Better get back to the stitching – Saturday is coming up fast!

A Shropshire Lad. 1896

LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman (1859–1936)

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Rusting, running stitch and text

It’s been really busy with the show and then playing catch up to all the things that have to be put aside to give that level of commitment to a week long production but I hopefully should soon have some pictures of my new project.

In the meantime, this is a small piece I made last year from a long scrap of rusted old cotton sheet, some medical gauze, a piece of vintage ribbon and off cut of hand dyed cotton.

“Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.” T.S. Eliot: The Four Quartets.

Ripped strips of cotton give a wonderfully soft frayed edge.

Strips of very open medical gauze  are layered under the ribbon. Rows of running stitch over the gauze keeps it anchored to the rusted cotton – in places.

Straight stitches in fantastic variegated metallic Madeira thread hold down the ribbon. Since both sides are accessible it needs to look neat on the back too.

Kantha stitched end ‘tag’. Also reversible.

I love embroidering text and The Four Quartets is one of my favourite poems.

 

It’s designed to be pulled out and read like a scroll. I’m still looking for the right thing to wind it onto – a chunky piece of driftwood perhaps or an antique wooden cotton reel or a turned wooden spindle.

I’ll know it when I see it.

 

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