I’ve finished my August Move It On Project! (Well, the stitching part at least – I’ve still got to block it and make it up into a card…) Last week I had completed all the outline stitching and it looked like this:
Once the outline was in I realised I should have stitched that first before I even thought about adding the colours as adding the greens was so much more straightforward. I have no idea why on earth I didn’t, but lesson learned. Dark green first, and I also found a suitable thread to fill in the missing scrap of peach lower right. It’s more like the light peach but it will do.
Then the mid green and a highlight of lime green on the left hand leaf.
Many thanks to Debbie for supplying the perfect match for the dark peach I needed to complete the last few stitches on the petals. Once I’d finished those, the next section to complete was the pale green. Finally, the simple and soothing element I had been looking for as all I had to do was fill in the spaces inside the circle.
To make sure I had sufficient thread, I worked it all in half cross stitch. Just as well, as there was only just enough. Apart from the slight element of thread chicken, it was so straightforward and soothing that I went through it at a rate of knots and rushed straight onto the black before I remembered to take a progress photo!
More straightforward stitching and now I was on a roll, I got my head down and finished the whole of the black in less than an hour.
I’m still not sure exactly what it is, and the name of the design appears to be ‘Neville’, which tells me nothing, but it’s pretty enough, will make a useful card and is out of my to do pile, so wins all round. And I also get extra time to decide on September’s project…
I’m not much of a one for kits usually as I have more than enough of my own ideas that I’m yet to get round to stitch, but some years ago I couldn’t resist a Liberty canvaswork card kit for 50p in a local charity shop. It was a slightly odd design – I’m still not completely sure what it’s supposed to be beyond a flower/flower bud of some kind – but an unopened Liberty kit for 50p was a no-brainer.
I started stitching it pretty much straight away, but soon came up against the first problem. The instructions suggested you use three strands of the six-stranded cotton provided, but I felt the coverage was far too thin so I upped it to the full six strands. As there was not an overly generous amount of threads in the kit to start with (and I bet it wasn’t cheap originally…) I soon realised that the chances of me running out of some of the shades of peach thread were pretty high. I’d probably have some matching thread somewhere but that would require turning out far too many boxes and bags… So that’s where it stalled and that’s where I picked it up last week for this month’s Move It On project.
After the stress of the Ruskin lace I thought a bit of canvaswork would be nice and soothing. Of course it wasn’t. It’s counted and anything counted has the potential to go seriously awry. I started by playing the peach thread chicken to see exactly how much I would need to find and in which of the four shades. The thread use wasn’t helped by the fact that the kit specifies tent stitch, which due to the extra thread across the back, uses up more than good old half cross stitch. As I neared the end of the threads, I wished that I had ignored the instructions and done it all in half cross stitch from the beginning. Especially as after having congratulated myself on completing all the pale peach and peach stitches, I discovered as I added the dark peach, that I had counted wrongly and the middle section of the lower right petal was out in at least two places.
I took out the scrap of peach before reason kicked in and pointed out that it wasn’t the end of the world and no one would really know if I just worked the dark peach and brick red round my ‘mistake’. However, the scrap literally was just enough to cover the few stitches – no room for a needle to work it – so now I was looking for peach as well. Luckily there was enough brick red but the dark peach has come up short.
I also couldn’t understand why I’d stitched some of the cream perle outline and not the rest, so as a break from trying and failing (of course…) to find a distinctly salmony-peach thread among the literally hundreds I own, I decided to finish the perle. Which is when I found the second counting error on the top left hand edge of the left-hand petal. This time I decided just to work round it and alter the last stitch to make the petal join. I really don’t think it’s noticeable so not unpicking was the right call. But so much for it being soothing and easy!
The shishas and couching pieces has moved on to here:
And I’ve been working on more of my upcycled jewellery pieces. This one has been a particular joy. It started off as two odd pieces of two separate mid-century belt clasps or clothing clips.
But one happened to be one with the ‘hook’ and the other had the ‘eye’, and when I idly put them together, they fitted beautifully and I loved the asymmetric shape they created.
Next I reset the missing stones. I was originally going to stick with the original clear diamantes but after finding that some vintage faux coral stones fitted some of the spaces perfectly and gave a fantastic pop of scarlet, I reset them with a combination of the two.
Lastly, I needed something to fill the curved spaces on the left. I had some pieces of a silk cocoon in the same bright red as the faux coral left over from this pendant I made a couple of weeks ago.
Cutting them to shape was a bit of a challenge but they have a lovely subtle texture and silk sheen which was almost impossible to photograph.
I’m delighted with the result and I hope it finds a good home when I list it in my Etsy shop later this week.
I bit the bullet! I finally plucked up the courage to steam and cut the canvas round my Sue Hawkins needlebook and once that was done, the rest just fell into place. The waste canvas folded back a lot flatter than I thought it would and blanket stitching the felt down was a breeze.
The rest of the felt gave me four internal pages and a finish.
It feels very odd to have a roomy book to leaf through looking for needles instead of a scrap of felt half the size of a credit card!
Another finish was this broken vintage brooch…
…to which I added some 3D beading on a piece of dyed pelmet vilene.
The beading was set into the long channel down the spine of the brooch and I set cats eye beads instead of diamantes into the cup shaped settings.
A jump ring and a gold plated chain completed the transformation into what my middle one calls the ‘fancy pea pod’ pendant!
The fresh start is the third of my memory journals. Now Tattershall has been put to bed I can concentrate on the Kew journal, remembering one of the hottest days of the year last July when I visited the Chihuly glass exhibition with my son. I’ve completed the cover, another stitched on paper piece which I blogged about back in last August but now I can focus on the Kew pieces rather than being distracted by having all three on the go as I did last summer. So here it is ready to be filled.
Finally finished, thanks to all your help, advice and ideas. I settled on a frame of brick fabric over an interfacing core to finish off the canvaswork bricks and a touch of Inktense to intensify the colours. It’s tacked in place here…
…and slip stitched in place here.
A closure of some grosgrain ribbon printed with maple leaves and a vintage snap was the final finishing touch, and I can now proudly present the Tattershall Castle Memory Journal.
Unlike the Anderby Creek Journal this one is folded as a triptych with the bollock purse in the middle.
And the reverse. The ribbon is stitched to the two folds and passes under the micro quilt which is press studded in place.
I’m delighted to have finished it and am ready to move onto the third in the series – the Kew Gardens Chihuly Exhibition memory journal. I just have to find the black hole that my evenweave fabric has disappeared into first…
I also had fun making a Fathers’ Day card for a friend’s dad. I really object to the tired old football, beer, cars tropes that get trotted out every year, especially as neither my dad nor my husband are into any of those and neither is my friend’s dad. But he does love the Lake District, so I gathered some scraps of hand dyed fabric and started to experiment.
A little bit of ironing later and I had this:
It was a good way of showcasing the different textures as well as the variations in colour and I’m very pleased with the way it turned out.
It went down very well apparently, so another satisfied customer!
Bullion roses first. In fact this is quite an old finish (early lockdown rather than later!) but one I haven’t blogged about at all. I began another tiny locket insert on silk carrier rod well before last Christmas, using silk buttonhole twist to make bullion knot roses.
It stalled as other projects took priority but finally at the end of April I decided to crack on and get it finished.
I was aiming for an asymmetric look but without it appearing to be unfinished and I am very pleased with the result which you can find here in my Etsy shop.
Back to the Tattershall Castle memory journal. ‘It Rained’ is completed and I am really pleased with it. First the split stitch leaves and couched perle thread stalks.
Then I added the raindrops. Flat backed teardrop shaped beads with an iridescent coating. They were the perfect finishing touch and I think this might be my favourite of all of the Tattershall pieces.
This meant that I was now ready to assemble the memory journal, put it away and move onto the third one, documenting my visit to Kew last summer. I blanket stitched a border around the bollock purse…
…and stitched into it with tiny stab stitches to attach it to the page.
Everything else went on really smoothly but then I came to the canvaswork piece…
Unfortunately I trimmed it really close to the edge and this has given me no leeway now I need to stitch it in place. I’m pretty sure that even if I try to invisibly stitch it down the handling will be enough to loosen the last thread on each edge and in any case, I don’t want the spiky bare canvas as an edging.
So near and yet so far! So, dear readers, any thoughts, ideas or inspiration? All suggestions very gratefully received!
The next memory journal combines two trips I made to Tattershall Castle last summer – the first a bit of quality time with my youngest in July after the end of term and the second to a fabulous tourney and medieval reenactment event in August.
The first thing that hits you about this unusual castle is the fact it’s made out of warm chestnut coloured brick instead of stone and that extends to features inside like roof vaulting and some of the window surrounds.
So bricks were the inspiration for this memory journal and canvaswork seemed a good place to start. Although the pattern is simple, as is the tent stitch I used, I put a lot of thought into choosing a range of threads that echoed the different shades in the bricks.
However there was one thing I bottled out on – the brick bond. My design is a simple Stretcher Bond where you only see the stretchers, or the long faces of the bricks. Tattershall is built using English Bond as you can see below.
The advantage of that is that instead of getting a wall that is one brick width deep (fine for a modern house), the row of headers give you a wall that is the whole length of the brick deep – much better for a castle.
However, although it may be better for a castle, it was challenging to get it to look in proportion on a canvas grid, so after two attempts I gave up trying to align the ‘bricks’ and concentrated on a simpler pattern instead!
I keep reminding myself that it’s a creative response to the visit, not a slavish reconstruction, but the perfectionist in me keeps muttering that perhaps I just need to try that English Bond one more time…
There is a huge antiques centre about 20 minutes away from where I live and towards the end of the summer, my husband and I decided to pay a visit since it was far too long since we had last been for a good look around. The cafe there is pretty good too, which helped.
We bought a few smallish bits and pieces and one of the many things, big and small, which caught my eye was this unusual antique backgammon table.
Not only because I like playing backgammon, but because I realised that the game board was worked…
…in tent stitch.
I can only assume that the household weren’t big backgammon players, as it’s in lovely condition. It was also marked up at an eye-watering price. “I don’t think it would be that difficult to adapt an old table,” I muttered as I crawled underneath to investigate the underside of the top. My husband seemed indecently keen for us to look at something in the next room at this point.
I'm a professional scavenger making a living selling curbside garbage. This blog details my finds and sales. It also acts as an archive for things beautiful and historic that would otherwise have been destroyed.
Under A Topaz Sky 