On the canal today . . .

. . . it was a bit cold, but as we had grandchildren visiting we had to give it a go.

Something in silk . . .

. . . for an exhibition at the Macclesfield Silk Museum in April. Using what I learned from Sharonb's 100 details last year, and elements seen in patterns and print blocks at the museum (see earlier posts) I made this crazy p. block. All the fabrics, and all the threads (save small amounts of 2) are silk, and the patterned bits are from the pieces on which I did rubbings from a print block using oilbars. Some rows are adapted a bit. The block is mounted on a piece of board, as requested by the museum.

Inside the books

Some boring pix, but not for Linda, who asked if the pages lie flat with the open spine type of book. The answer is, yes, they do, pretty well, specially if your stitching is a bit saggy! Seriously, yes, compared to the codex type book with the signatures stitched to each other and stuck inside a board cover, they do indeed open and lie flat.

This one has an interesting, sort of shibori-folded and coloured, paper on the inside of the cover.

Another complementary pair of colours

Back in the summer, when I was collecting reds and greens in the garden I said I'd have to wait till the crocuses were out for another complementary colour pair. But here are some nice little irises that were growing quietly in the greenhouse. Unfortunately the purples have not photographed with the true hues. Transfer the colour of the top pic to the one below it to see what the one with purple and yellow actually looks like. The top one is actually a real red-violet, not a trace of blue.

Where does the life come from?

Several weeks ago a small horse chestnut tree in our back garden was cut down . I saved some of the twigs, hard dark brown buds that looked as if they would just shrivel and die, and put them in a jug of water on the kitchen table. And look what has happened!

Making more books

Open spine books, with chain stitching linking the signatures and board covers together.

1. Plain board (sketch pad backing) and A4 sheets folded in half. Paper is from an activity pack for children bought at the Early Learning Centre so its a bit rough and ready! I'm using the book to make notes on the TAST series for which it is proving just right. 2. Grey board covered with printed and painted paper. The print block was made by incising a piece of polystyrene tray used to package meat in supermarkets. The paper is printer paper and thread a multicolour hand dyed mercerised cotton. A5 sheets folded in half.

3. Grey board again, covered with painted paper (back) and more painted paper backed with iron-on vilene and free machine-stitched with rayon threads (front). More dyed cotton thread for the stitching. The paper comes from a scrapbook. I reckoned on using a white gel pen in this book, but the one I bought doesn't show up, so what do I do now? Use it to stick things in I suppose. Bit smaller pages than 2.

4. More covered grey board, and activity pack paper. Bought thread though, a thick stranded cotton. I've tried to find a way of incorporating beads as the signatures are stitched together and have failed, so I stitched this book up, then attatched the beads separately afterwards. Also invented the ties. Pages are A4 torn in 3 across.

Closer view of beads and ties to finish this entry.

I love handling these books, making them is a real joy and using them even better!

TAST Algerian eye/lets

Just a small sample this week as I was a bit stuck for ideas that didn't involve counting threads, which i find so hard to do. Takes me back to the reason I gave up cross stitching - I found it increasingly hard on the eyes.

I like the laced effect, and the patch of varied 'eyes' .

And there is another chevron line at the top.

'

TAST catchup and chevron stitch

1. a catchup pic of some detached chain

2. ditto with cretan stitch

3. chevron on the strip sampler

4. doodling with chevron to make a background for the fish (kantha)

5. chevron used in a complex seam

Journal quilt January 2007

The pic promised in the previous message, plus a couple of close-ups:

Contemporary quilts

This is one of my activities that hasn't had a mention on this blog so far. I belong to the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles, and to a special interest group within it - the contemporary quilt group. This year the group has a journal quilt challenge going, to do one A4 size quilt a month for 2007. We can use any inspiration, theme, technique we want, particularly though trying to stretch ourselves and experiment a bit.

I've decided to work through some techniques that interest me, that I've seen in books or at exhibitions and meant to try out. And I want to link it to the month each time in some way - colours maybe.

So here is how I arrived at January (but a pic of the completed piece will be in the next post because I forgot I've not put it on the computer yet!!!!)

1. Sketch of the view I see from my workroom and the kitchen all winter - a hedge of hawthorn along the towpath side of the Macclesfield canal, at the bottom of our garden.2. A simplified version which got traced onto vilene . . .

4. This base fabric, hand dyed, was placed on some domette . .
5. . . . and overlaid with various fabric strips.

6. . . which were stitched down with horizontal rows of machine stitching.

7. I painted a piece of calico. This was laid on the background, and using the vilene pattern I stitched the design outline from the back of the work.
8. Last stage was to cut back the top fabric to reveal the shapes and do some more stitching to 'paint' the trunks a bit more, adding a backing piece of black cotton.

9. Trim to size, stitch round the edges with several rows of a decorative stitch, (I wanted to try an alternative to binding it) and it's done - but the pic is in the post above!.

Filling a gap . . .

I've just discovered a post I prepared earlier that didn't get published, lurking among the drafts. So look in december 06 in the archives and find 'doodlestrips' 19th december for some riotous stitching!

TAST 4 cretan stitch first instalment . . .

. . . which I tried to put on the blog at the weekend so that there would be something for Sharon's roundup, but blogger wouldn't do it. The green bits are strips of net, couched down by the row of stitches, and the orange is a scrap of organza. I like stitching one row on top of another, in different colours. But I'm not much good at putting the stitches close together to make a solid shape. Meandering fairly freely seems to suit me better. There's some more experiments coming by the end of the week.

new version blog

Well, this is the new all singing all dancing version of blogger. Fine, except that it's taken me half the day to find a way to sign in and get to the dashboard to do a new post! I suppose all this technological 'advance' is really necessary?

Well, I'll stop grumbling and load a pic that amuses me - beach huts at Sandbanks on the Friday before Christmas. The splash of red adds a certain je ne sais quoi.

Another sewing machine adventure.

My versatile husband has 'saved' my sewing machine again. The long fabric strip I'm using for the TAST samples keeps fraying, the stitches will be starting to fall off the edges soon, so I went to my sewing machine to do some zigzags down the sides in a bid to save it. I found as I turned the wheel something was hitting against something somewhere. Great mystery. Anyway, after much staring, listening and exploring its insides, he found a pin had somehow slipped into it, and was blocking the turning of a bit that sticks out from the drive rod connecting wheel and needle mechanism. However did it get there? There must be a gap somewhere on the top of the machine that it fell through. I shall keep all pins well away from there in future.
You've got to have a picture in a blog entry, haven't you, so here's one from our epic journey south for Christmas which featured in an earlier entry - a shop with an intriguing name in Bradford-on Avon, taken as we drove by, hence a bit fuzzy.

TAST detached chain . . .

I found it hard this time to think of variations with this stitch for myself . Except for the curvy line at the top where I was thinking a line in basic chain is obvious, but how could a line be done with separate stitches? And then I tried flowers, using the stitch both ways round, and one with long tie stitches. Also the textural 'jumble' of different threads. Then some couching. Also Sharon's padded flower. Then I resorted to Google and came across Velvet Stitch and an interesting sampler of detached chain, from which I have copied some ideas.

I still want to try some of the variations of chain stitch done as detached stitches e.g. twisted chain etc.
And if anyone please could give me advice on how best to work a 'jumble' of stitches? I found it more baffling than I expected, and I'm usually not bad at random!

New buttonhole sampler . . .

. . . completed this Sunday evening, 19.15 GMT. Looking at Sharon's counted thread samples I was struck with how different the stitch looks worked on that sort of cloth. I tried counting threads on my sampler strip but it proved to be too small for comfort and my eyes were hurting with the effort, so I gave up after two tries. Other bits are buttonhole wheel, done both ways round, couching, appliqué and a small detached stitch piece.

I particularly like the twisty lines top right, the filled areas, the laced back to back rows, the buttonhole bars and the eyelets below the bars (yes, they do have a hole in the middle, hard to see). I've also decided to try and use each stitch in a complex seam, as an interesting exercise , but I think this one could be nicer really.

The last rose of summer . .

. . . is still hanging on, surviving last night's slight frost and the gales of the past 2 weeks. It's beginning to brown a bit round the edges, and I'm not sure if the buds are going to open, but I can't believe it has been there on the end of a long shoot that has grown since the summer! And as for these, camellia and lavatera, have just bloomed in the last couple of weeks in our front garden! We don't live in Australia, someone ought to tell them!

Buttonhole stitch . . .

I've had a bit of a rest after last week's marathon - these pics were not done for TAST but for a hands-on session at the Macclesfield Embroiderers' Guild meeting in November where we could choose one out of five different stitches to play with. I was in charge of the buttonhole table and did these samples of a range of possible variations. So I haven't worked them again for TAST, but in my next stitchy post there will be a smaller sampler with some further interesting applications.
Using buttonhole to fill a space is interesting. If you work from the bottom (here, right), of the space, each following row will come over the ridge of the stitch and give a smooth effect.Doing it the other way round, from the top of the space down, you keep the ridges. These were circular pieces because they were in a small round frame. Obviously need finishing. One day! And this one, just 2 lines of buttonhole, but I like the effect of the space between them.

Herringbone update . . .

I added a bit more to the freeform herringbone sample for Sharon b's TAST challenge. Around the mirror top right and at the bottom of the piece are some of the extended stitches I was talking about in the last post.

Take a Stitch . . . .

I'm not going to be able keep up this speed, you can be sure, but, while the going is good, here's my first response to Sharon Boggon's Take a Stitch Tuesday. Each week she is putting up a stitch to experiment with and over 100 people are participating. The first one this week is herringbone:
I've chosen to use a long strip from a curtain fabric remnant as my main 'sampler', hoping to end up with a long scroll of stitch experiments. Usefully for this particular stitch the fabric is woven with countable threads and heavier lines in the weave across the strip which form stripes of varying but regular sizes. So for once in my stitching life I can get straight lines and even-sized stitches!
I've worked the stitch in, mostly, regular fashion, laced it, repeated it to make overall patterns (which remind me of chicken wire!), tried it close together, stretched out, doubled/trebled /quadrupled. And I've worked a line as if it were a seam treatment in crazy patchwork.
It all looks very sedate for me, but I have broken out with some very irregular stuff on a separate piece, below. The idea is to create texture, varying threads, length and angle of stitch, but keeping to the essential movement of the stitch where the needle is being pushed in backwards but the thread is taken forward to advance the line of stitching against the direction of the needle (if you see what I mean?)

I also remembered seeing herringbone used to sew on mirrors. This is a large holographic sequin. If pushing the needle under the grid of threads that hold the mirror in place counts as the top part of the stitch, then I guess it would count .

I've seen a lengthened form of herringbone used in Indian work, in a copy of Stitch (with the Embroiderers' Guild) magazine, which I shall try out when I can find it.

Later in the day, have found a small picture, in Stitch issue 33, Feb/March 2005. There are 2 articles in the mag., one a project by Surjeet Husain, and one about her and her work. On the link page the last small pic of all shows this stitch. Best I can do.