sampling for embroiderers' guild course

These are my samples for straight stitch, fly stitch and detached chain stitch for Module 1 of the Embroiderers' Guild hand embroidery certificate course I'm doing.

ready to start stitching

This is my piece for my Mastered course and I'm all ready to start stitching. I've transferred the design onto a piece of linen using tacking stitches and have stapled it to the frame - good and tight.

I've chosen my colours and the only thing I'm not too sure about still is whether to use Perle cotton no. 5 or no. 8. The whole thing will be stitched in twisted chain to try to preserve the painterly feel and this stitch will also be robust enough to take the wear and tear a cushion has to put up with. I may do a little more sampling before I start because I don't want to get it wrong.

design sketch

This is a sketch for development into a hand embroidered piece - probably for a cushion cover. I may use a mixture of appliqué and stitch or just stitch. Or both. Much experimenting and sampling to be done plus design development.

Pity about the shadow in the photograph but it covers most of an A2 sheet so was too large to scan.

burgundy and gold

I did this whilst on holiday in December last year. Silk and felt fabrics with various threads. The photo makes it look a little brighter than it actually is.

Tree Bark Studies

I took some photos of interesting tree bark today for a stitching project:

Burgundy and Gold

It seems so long since I've posted anything at all but I've been working on my stitching experiments and have also started to weave a tapestry for an exhibition in March (unjuried or I wouldn't have tried for it!). Plus the usual butterflying around between dozens of different projects!

Retirement is coming up in a few months and there's another puppy to think about finding so Rosie has a companion. She's curled up alongside my chair here in my workroom as always.

stitching finished for first page

This is the first page with all the stitching finished. I scanned it this time rather than photographing it and the colours look much better. Can't seem to get the hang of photographing this sort of thing - the light always seems wrong and the colours don't look good. I'm not going to finish making this into the properly backed page yet because I want to do a few more before I decide on the backing colour.

Stitch Sampler

This will be the first page of my stitch sampler book. It's two thirds finished and the stitches used are wave stitch, raised chain band and bullion. It will eventually be cut out around the silk rectangles and mounted on another piece of silk to form a page. When all the pages are finished I'm going to make them into a book, maybe making a cover of needle weaving on canvas, an idea I found in Jan Messent's wonderful book 'Celtic, Viking & Anglo-Saxon Embroidery'.

Stitching again!

Whatever I start doing, I always seem to return to a desire to stitch, or hand embroider. So, with the help of a great book by Effie Mitrofanis, I've decided to start a little fabric book of stitch samples. These three pieces of silk are to be the basis of the first page. Boring, I know, but hopefully the start of something OK. And I'm aware that I haven't posted on my blog for too long, so I'll try to record this project as it goes along. Interspersed maybe with other stuff now and then.

My beautiful old Irish Wolfhound lady, Misty, who is just over nine years old, has been diagnosed with bone cancer. She has a huge tumour on her upper jaw which at the moment gives her no pain thankfully although the time will come. She's still able (and very enthusiastic) to eat which is good but I'm beginning to think of soft things rather than hard now. The forecast from the vet is 10 weeks, possibly extendable to 12 months if we resort to hugely aggressive surgery followed by ongoing chemotherapy. How lucky we are that we can make a considered choice on her behalf, and give her 10 weeks of happiness rather than 12 months of misery. We'll know when she's ready to go and can offer her the mercy that we are unable to offer our fellow humans!

CHRISTMAS GIFT TAGS

I made some Christmas gift tags from strips of fabric, beads, machine and hand stitching. I only made five for my favourite people! They make me think of stained glass windows.

QUILTING EXPERIMENT

Playing around at quilting. I printed my finger painting exercise onto silk fabric, backed it with batting and got stitching. And a little beading. I didn't plan on it being a 'proper piece' so hadn't figured how to finish it off. So I just stitched all around the edge with blanket stitch in different coloured threads.

PLAYING WITH FELT

Just playing around with needle felting! A lesson in how not to approach a piece - no plan, no design, just wanted to play with a felting needle. Put a bit of everything in and then free machined over the top. Learnt a little more about how my sewing machine behaves with different types of fabric though. I think it might be a whale :-)

EXPERIMENTING AGAIN

I've been playing around with my heating tools again!

Recipe:
Take a layer of acrylic felt
Cover with a layer of nylon organza
Follow with a layer snipped up bits of nylon organza in different colours
Cover with a top layer of a different coloured organza
Heat together round the edge with a soldering iron
Attack liberally with heat tool

And, hey presto, it all melts together prettily (or you may think messily!)

The focus on the photo is rubbish because it's so dull today that I had to open the aperture right up to get enough light in.

LAKE 1 APPLIQUE

This is what I did with the materials I collected together the other day. It's my first go at applique and the inspiration was the lake that I walk around each day with my dogs.

At this time of year it's crammed full of Canada Geese and I love their constant chatter and the sound of their wings as they fly overhead.

I think I have a colour balance problem here though I'm not quite sure how to improve it so at the moment I'm going to leave it alone and maybe come back to it when I've sat and looked at it for a bit.

NEXT TEXTILE PROJECT

These are the fabrics I've chosen for my new stitching project. The silk strips are really difficult to work with because my fingers are so dry I keep getting stuck to the fabric! If anyone has any really good ideas of what to use as a deep moisturiser for hands I'd be grateful to hear.

This project is going to be an applique piece - another first for me!

EXPERIMENT IN FREE MACHINE EMBROIDERY

In my defense, I've only recently bought a sewing machine and am still getting to grips with it. It took me at least an hour to thread it up and another half hour to get the tension on the bottom bobbin right. In the end I took a photo of the bobbin and pasted it into my sketchbook so I have a visual record of which way the screw head points for this type of machining!

After all that, as you can see, I had trouble getting control of where the needle went. The idea was to sew a couple of circles just inside each fabric patch and then join them all with circular stitching outside of the circles. I think this is going to take as long to master as driving a car! I was a little more happy with the line of circular stitching on the left but I need to think more about stitch length and also buy some more threads so I have something that will show up better. The lines of hand stitching at the top were a breeze in comparison and I used some gorgeous hand-dyed linen thread from Stef Francis again. It varies between purple and orange. Unfortunately the scan (it's easier sometimes than photographing) doesn't pick up the subtle sheen on the thread.

I have so far to go, but I'm so enjoying playing!

BOLLARDS AND ROPES

This is my stitched response to Kat's lovely photograph. I hope she likes it!  Fabrics are a hand-dyed openweave fabric from Stef Francis with a background of dupion silk. Applique felt and onion bag. Yarns and threads used are Stef Francis's hand-dyed 6-ply cotton, coton a broder and couched hand-dyed cotton texture yarn.

I used Kat's photo as an inspiration so this isn't representational!

MAGIC FEATHER 2

Here's my second magic feather. Now I have two to send to Jude for her Magic Feather project. They'll be floating across the Atlantic shortly to join all their feathery friends!

Magic Feather 1 finished

And here's the finished Feather and Spiral. I'm going to do another one before I send it to Jude - I think it may include a quotation.

Magic Feather 1

I'm stitching magic feathers for Jude's Magic Feather Project. This is the image drawn onto the fabric - I'm just about to start stitching it. It's going to be Feather and Spiral.