One year on!

Last February we had a fantastic Print to Stitch workshop at the Guild with Jan Dowson. One of the pieces I created was based on the paisley stamps she had made for us.

Seeing my starting point now, after a year of covering it with stitch, it seems so bare!!

I started with some Pekinese stitch around some of the paisleys.

Then seeding around the paisleys in a variegated stranded cotton. Doing that amount of seeding is pretty mind-numbing so I mixed it up with more decoration on the paisleys – split stitch on the right.

It was a great project to take out and about, even making it to London with me last summer when the temperatures were through the roof and I was trying to keep cool in the Chinese galleries at the V&A.

More seeding in seed stitch and french knots with chain stitch accents and woven and back-stitched spiders’ web stitches in the middles.

Getting there… finished all the internal stitching on the paisleys and now just seeding at this point because I’m still not sure what stitch I want to outline the other paisleys. Something as bold as the Pekinese stitch but different.

It wasn’t until I began to explore Palestrina Stitch over Christmas prior to teaching it in a workshop that the penny dropped.

Palestrina in a heavy perle was just right to balance the Pekinese.

And the completed piece!

No idea what I’m going to do with it, but that’s not the point. I love the colours, shapes and stitches and it’s been a pleasure to work. That’s all you need, sometimes, isn’t it?

 

 

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Found objects and a dove.

This month’s Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild meeting was a talk given by the very talented Jessica Grady, whose vibrant work includes embellishments made from all sorts of upcycled materials.

In the summer, to link with this talk, our chair gave us all an identical pack of bits and pieces to create something. I did blog about the start of my piece back in September when I hadn’t read the instructions and thought it had to be done for October’s meeting!

My starting point was the pale green tubing and a huge metal ring, to which I added a copper coloured earring middle and a holed limpet shell.

There were more jump rings in the pack which I stitched down with random straight stitches to echo the big one…

…and I also found a broken agate slice pendant which was a good colour match for the copper earring.

Next I added turquoise coloured beads from the pack.

Using the same metallic gold thread for all the stitching helped to bring it together. A few more smaller jump rings from my tool box and some gifted flat beads completed it and I even manged to get it mounted three days before the meeting!

Needless to say, all the entries were amazing and incredibly different, give that we all had the same starting point.

The other finish for the meeting were the embroidered Folk Art doves that will decorate our Christmas tree at the local Festival of Trees. They were a lovely fun, relatively quick stitch. Mine looks like this:

And these are some of his friends:

Even though a few more arrived later, there isn’t enough here to fill a six foot tree, so the chair has been frantically stitching over the last couple of months to add extra additions to the flock!

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Show Stitching, Act 2

The applique for Lady Margolotta’s bat themed blouse is finished!

The biggest ones took 20-30 minutes each to stitch on and the smallest ones 10 to 15, so all twenty together have been quite a long job. Stitching with black thread on black felt has also limited when and where I can stitch, but in spite of that, it’s done with time to spare, thank goodness.

Baby leaf tailed dragon now has leaves sprouting from his lower tail.

He would have had another leaf completed but after a busy evening rehearsing and stitching, I went to put the couching stitches in and realised that I had put a whole leaf’s worth of laid stitches in vertically, instead of horizontally… He learned some new rude words that night.

Before the summer break, our ever-inventive Chair gave everyone who wanted to take part a pack of odd and interesting found objects to create a piece of found object embroidery. She included an instruction/guideline sheet as well, which I did refer to, noting that the finished piece should be no more than 7 inches by 5. However, I didn’t note that it was to be due in for November’s meeting. I assumed it was for the AGM last Saturday. Result – frantic stitching last week until a friend who had read the instructions properly, pointed out that I was two months too early. Moral of the story; don’t skim read and make the gaps up as you go along, Alex!

There was a load of thin plastic tubing in the pack and that suggested spirals to  me straight away.

It’s couched down with gold thread for some sparkle and then I played with widening some of the lines with more of the tubing to give the spirals a bit more weight.

Next to be added from the pack was a very large metal ring which I also couched down with gold thread in a starburst pattern. The broken earring front fitted perfectly in the middle of it and I love copper and green together.

Then I added a holed limpet shell from my own collection  to echo the shape of the loop of tubing.

At least I’ve made a start and hopefully won’t be rushing to complete it for November’s meeting!

 

 

 

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Hitomezashi samples

I missed almost all of the June meeting with Gilli Theokritoff at Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild as I was working that day, but I did make it through the door in time to lay my hands on the kit for the afternoon project which was stitching samples of hitomezashi sashiko, which are more like all over patterns than big designs. I didn’t manage to start the kit until I went down to London to visit my eldest a fortnight ago but it was perfect to stitch on the train.

The difference with Gilli’s method is that she has a piece of interfacing already marked out with a regular pattern of dots ironed onto the back of the fabric. You work from the wrong side and don’t have any marks on the front to get rid of.

The first sample starts as jujizashi (cross stitch). I used a variegated sashiko thread in lovely shades of blue.

Then you add one set of diagonal lines.

 And the second set gives you komezashi, or rice stitch.

The second sample was kikkozashi, or tortoise stitch. This starts with a foundation of yokogushi, which are staggered vertical rows. The horizontal rows are formed by weaving the thread under the opposite stitches to give an effect like the plates of a tortoise’s shell.

Finally I added some straight stitches in the middle of the ‘plates’.

They are going to become book covers, so I’ve laced them over some squares of greyboard.

And am probably going to line them with this gorgeous scrap of Japanese kimono fabric.

Just need to decide on fabric or paper pages.

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Bayeux Stitch

We’ve just had our final meeting of the year at Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild and it was a fantastic all day long affair, with a talk about the costumes and embroidery in ‘Game of Thrones’ in the morning followed by the opportunity to look at some of the incredible work some of our members have produced over the last year and were entering for the branch’s yearly hand embroidery prize.

Some pieces have come from past workshops, such as the paisley piece below which was started in Jan Dowson’s ‘Print to Stitch’ workshop back in February, or responses to objects in the local museum for our exhibition earlier in the summer, as with the Winterton mosaic piece at the top on the three circles.

Contemporary, modern, traditionally flat or 3D, like the stumpwork flowers and tiny embroidered houses.

Restrained and subtle or gloriously over the top and encrusted with bling.

 

Sometimes a visiting speaker chooses the winner but this time we did it in our usual way by voting in the blue and white saucers with beads. Thank goodness we get five beads each. And even then choosing five places to vote was an almost impossible decision! But after the counting, the winner was announced: Sue’s fabulous blue ammonite, one of the pieces for our museum exhibition.

Glad I didn’t put anything in as I would have been seriously outclassed!!

Then after lunch, a workshop on Bayeux Stitch. I’ve used this stitch on several projects, including Shy Bird,

…the sycamore leaves from Blackwell…

and of course, the Baby Leaf-tailed Dragon kit from Tanya at Opus Anglicanum which I bought and started a disgracefully long time ago!

I really enjoy working this stitch. It works up quickly, which is always a huge bonus and I love the textured effect the couching gives to it.

We had some lovely examples to inspire us, from medieval style designs to working it as an all over pattern to create a solid embroidered fabric as in the purse below and some very contemporary pieces.

 

Although I was very tempted to explore the contemporary design ideas, it was a good opportunity to get a bit more done on Baby Leaf-tailed Dragon.

Every little helps!

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Fabric Fair

Just a quick one to advertise Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild first ever Fabric Fair this Sunday the 9th of June.

A great opportunity for those of us tucked away in the wilds of North Lincolnshire to be able to buy all our stitching stuff in person instead of having to rely on the internet. Nothing beats actually being able to touch and see threads and fabric in person.

I will be having a stall selling a range of vintage buttons, beads, buckles etc. and jewellery components and will be joined by the following traders:

Unravel Crafts – Fabric including Indian and Nepalese fabrics and some vintage.  Haberdashery – vintage and from India.

Quilting with Shauna – Cotton fabrics

Sew Easie – Fabric, craft bags, stuffed toys to embroider, bundles of lace and ribbon

Wemyss Cottage Haberdashery – Haberdashery, fat quarters,ribbon braid, cottons, buttons, felt, Aida etc.

Precut Fabrics – Selling fabric in a variety of ways for further use. Haberdashery and craft products.

Arcadian Bliss – Japanese vintage gold threads,Goldwork supplies, Kimono silk fabric, Sari silk fabric,Leather, second hand craft books.

Pauline Heywood – Plain natural fibre fabrics in small pieces. Mostly cotton eg calico in different weights; some silks,scrims and felt. Small packs of needles in popular sizes. Some good quality second hand embroidery items and books.

Buttons Galore – Buttons, assorted sewing items.

Kate’s Cloths – Hand dyed threads and fabrics

RELOVED – Vintage /ecletic mix of embroidery and sewing stuff, all looking for someone to relove them.

Danuta Wiseniewska – Upholstery weight fabric pieces including velvets, linens, printed cottons, and wools.

Bagladybird – Learn to Sew– Dressmaking patterns, sew in labels for handmade clothes and dressmaking tools.

A really amazing array of stitching goodies and well worth a visit if you are even vaguely local!

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A Fish and an Elephant

The fish is my name badge for Embroiderers’ Guild and another quick finish. Well, quick is a relative term. Technically it was as long in the making as last post’s hedgerow pinwheel given that I’ve been a member of the Embroiderers’ Guild for ten years now and it’s taken me that long to finally getting round to stitching my name badge…

The fish was printed at a Sea themed workshop led by one of our talented members, Mary, in March 2018 and I actually did the vast majority of the stitching and beading in the workshop.

I finished split stitching my name and laced the fabric over two circles of pelmet vilene…

…but so close to the finish, it stalled and languished in my projects bag until Easter, when I finally found the time to finish it with a beaded ruff and a brooch pin.

I’ve just started working as a casual tutor for North Lincolnshire Adult Learning and taught my first full day workshop on kantha and boro stitching last month. The elephant was my sample kantha piece for the afternoon activity.

He’s cut from a scrap of Indian printed silk scarf and blanket stitched onto a piece of painted/dyed cotton that I acquired from somewhere. The background is then covered in running stitch using some softly variegated green and purple perle thread.

I love the way the kantha tones down and smooths out the colours of the fabric behind and it is so incredible tactile.

I also stitched a little modern kantha sample using some circles of Harris tweed in vibrant oranges and golds on a piece of heavy weight cotton.

Not my usual colour palette at all but it was interesting to move away from my blues and greens and also to stitch with Harris tweed, which is a new one for me.

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Pattern

‘Pattern’ is the name of the Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild exhibition, currently on at North Lincolnshire Museum. Those of us who took part all chose an object from the Museum’s collection and created a piece of embroidery in response.

When I went in January with four friends, we had an interesting discussion about the items we were drawn to and whether or not we should deliberately work out of our comfort zones and choose an object that didn’t appeal to us. There is definitely a time and a place for that, but I suspect that working on something with which I didn’t have a natural connection might have made it a bit of a chore. So unsurprisingly, I went Roman and chose my favourite thing in the whole museum: The Winterton Cup.

The Winterton Cup is decorated with rows of enamelled squares on a copper alloy base. Some of the enamel has been lost, but the original pattern of diagonal rows of alternating yellow, red, blue and turquoise can still be made out.  Enamelling on metal is a technique found in the Romano-British tradition which carries on into the Roman period and the Cup is one of a small group of enamelled vessels which are apparently souvenirs brought back by soldiers from Hadrian’s Wall.

The squares immediately said reverse applique to me. I had some amazing silk which was hand dyed with natural dyes and a silk scarf dyed in dark blues with flashes of pink and gold which reminded me of the oxidised metal. I would do the stitching with my sewing machine and it would be a reasonably quick job. Famous last words…

I started by cutting a piece of tracing paper to the same size as the scarf and made a template for the size of squares I wanted so I could draw it all out life size. Then I cut out the hand dyed silks and began laying them in place.

So far, so good.

Very pleased with the result.

Next to pin the scarf over the top, ready for the machining.

This is where the photographs of the process stop. My beloved Frister and Rossmann decided that this was the one thing that it wasn’t going to stitch and ate the fabric instead. Once I had rescued the silk and managed to straighten out most of the chew marks, this left me with forty-eight squares to hand stitch round as well as attaching the other silk scarf I had chosen to back it with.

Let’s just say that there were a number of stupidly late nights before I got to this stage.

I am happy with the concept – that is exactly what I initially envisaged, but the double running stitching really doesn’t bear close inspection (as you can see in the photo below – which is the closest I am prepared to show!) and I just didn’t have time to fray check the cut silk, so I am a bit disappointed with myself over all.

Definitely better at a distance in one of the exhibition display cases.

 

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Canvaswork and more stitching adventures

Our March meeting at Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild was Canvaswork Stitch play, led by me. Unfortunately, due to a combination of everything coming on top of each other,  being ill and then completely forgetting about the workshop until about two months before it was due to happen, I wasn’t as well prepared with samples as I would have liked. But I am pleased with what I did manage to stitch.

First sample was the same thread but different stitches.

The upright cross stitch was a revelation. You would never guess that it was just upright crosses – I just love the interlocking texture it produces.

Then I worked a sample which was all the same stitch – cushion stitch, but stitched in as many different types of thread as I could. I am particularly pleased with the effect of the chenille (small pale beige rectangle at the bottom), which is such a difficult thread to actually stitch with anywhere else!

I also had a lovely time running a Ribbon Roses workshop with Selby Embroiderers’ Guild. I had been experimenting with some pelmet vilene based brooches featuring the ribbon roses both with beaded blanket stitch…

…and also normal blanket stitch edging.

(The second one ended up as an emergency Mother’s Day card for a friend!!)

  

So I decided to turn the design into kits, which went down very well.

And I even managed to turn my sample/teaching example piece from the workshop into a birthday card.

And finally another piece of jewellery upcycled with a ribbon rose and beautifully modelled by my little one, who is not so little any more. :o(

Available as always,  here in my Etsy shop.

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Surfacing…

To paraphrase Sir Steve Redgrave, the British rower,  “Anybody who sees me volunteer to costume a pantomime again has my permission to shoot me!”

You would have thought that after the last minute dash to get two World War 1 era evening dresses made for Blackadder Goes Forth in October that I would have had more sense, but no. No sooner had the curtain gone down on Blackadder then I was straight into costuming Scunthorpe Little Theatre Club‘s 2019 pantomime, Dick Whittington.

I did think I was on top of it nice and early, but I had stalls at a couple of Christmas fairs/markets which meant I needed to keep making stock…

…and our Christmas challenge for Scunthorpe Embroiderers’ Guild which was to make a Christmas themed brooch to fit in a box we were given in September (silk thread and sparkly blending filament crocheted into a snowflake shape and beaded) …

…the Christmas meeting which was making temari balls with Hazel…

(my attempt has got no further than this, but I did learn that rayon thread, however shiny and pretty, is a very, very bad thing with which to wrap your temari ball)…

…and of course, all the extra work that Christmas causes meant that I had very little down time over Christmas. Although I had been working on the costume since October, starting on New Year’s Day I sewed, altered, mended and generally worked like something demented for eight days straight. There are some odd photos of my labours but most have been taken as afterthoughts very late at night so apologies for the randomness and poor quality!

As the dame (Sarah the Cook) was a big lad at 6′ 3″ and build accordingly, most of our stock didn’t fit him so I ended up making a lot of it, starting with a baking themed skirt to go with an existing floral top. The skirt was plain cream and I made some felt gingerbread men and cup cakes to go around the hem.  They are roughly A4 size so they really stand out on stage.

The sequins caught the stage lights beautifully.

Then there was an existing red and green skirt but the top didn’t fit, so I remade that using the bodice pattern from the dress pattern I planned to use later. Have to remember to add the length to the sleeves for taller men.

As it was for the scene where the dame serves in the shop, I added a rosette of medieval silver pennies and tickets to the matching mob cap.

The main dress was for the ship/shipwreck part of the story and had to be made from scratch. I used a commercial broadly 18th century dress pattern which had a very full skirt to go over the traditional dame’s hoop and was open down the back – ideal for a Velcro fastening and quick changes. I uncovered some ‘Finding Nemo’ fabric in our club store which was ideal and used it for the sleeves and back of the skirt.

The bodice and front were in two types of toning blue fabric (trying to use up what we had and not buy any more) but I broke up the bodice with a triangle of the Nemo fabric with extra fish added in the spaces and then created a set of felt signal flags to go across the skirt. They actually spell out something and no, it isn’t rude, although I was sorely tempted!

It was worn with a ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hat before the storm and a very cute octopus (here modelling a miniature prototype bycocket hat for Dick) …

…who was attached to a head band with crocheted seaweed for after the shipwreck!

We splashed out and bought a sparkly silver and blue walk down costume but when the headdress I had found in stock didn’t fit, I ended up the morning before opening night making a steeple hennin from very stiff lampshade fabric, more Finding Nemo fabric and the floaty veil from the original headdress. I am not ashamed at this point to confess that I used more glue than stitch!

Instead of a good fairy we had Neptune, but the director didn’t want an old man in a toga, so I ended up designing a more military costume. The basic garment was a tunic created from some fabric that looked watery and amazing but as the crescent moon pattern was created from  a layer of loose threads between two layers of organza it was a nightmare to stitch and I ended up fully lining it with some left over fabric from one of the Blackadder dresses.

It was worn with scale patterned leggings, tribal style tattoo sleeves with some amazing fantasy style leather armour on one arm, a scrim sash to look like a fishing net and a faux leather apron belt which was a cross between Greek and Roman and based on one worn by a character from a computer game! I had an interesting time cutting it out by eye, hand stitching it to look like separate pieces of leather and then making a medieval ring belt to go over the top.

I wish I had some photos of the full ensemble. :o(

I also made bycocket hats for Dick…

…an extravagant turban for the Sultana of Bungahie…

…based on a 1970s turban hat and dressed up with oddments of pleated metallic gold and blue fabric stitched over the top.

And a proper chaperon for Captain Cuttlefish to wear in the walk down. I made it as per the real thing, so it can be worn as a caped hood with a liripipe (long tail)…

…or turned…

…and worn with the head through the face hole and the cape and liripipe hanging down on either side.

Another one that I had to cut without a pattern following an image on the internet, but I am delighted with the effect.

The show went very well and the costumes were much admired. Now all I have to do is to wash them all, and put them all away in the right boxes. Fourteen characters with between one and four costumes, each made up from a number of different elements… I might possibly be back before Easter!

 

 

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