Sunday 20 March 2011

This week I have...

As so many of you have been  so encouraging in my 'Teach Yourself Textiles" venture I thought I would keep you up to date.  However I am pooped.  Yesterday I helped Mr T spring clean the green house, which involved empying it out, scrubbing it down, and then refilling again.  Mr T did most of the initial work, but I was involved in driving off to Homebase for supplies,  the scrubbing part and putting everything back!  Today I have been switching our e mail address, contacting etsy, paypal, and so on, as well as friends and other contacts. It  has taken hours, so I have nearly had enough of comouters for today.  I did manage a short break hanging out our laundered gardening clothes from yesterday and a quick tidy up on one of the small flower beds. So this is what I have been doing textile wise this week.
On the left are a couple of pieces of couched threads from Pam Watts' book. catching the threads down with sheer fabric and then top stitching and on the right some experiments I did ironing plastic sweet wrappers between sheets of baking parchment - great fun!


These two pages record my last workshop session with Marian Murphy. We concentrated on free embroidery using a zig-zag stitch.  She showed us lots of effects and textures which can be achieved.  We also zig-zaged onto butter muslin which gives a drawn fabric.  This is great fun. The muslin must be stretched in a hoop first and a wide zig-zag is used to make a grid.  The stitch pulls the muslin threads together. You can then 'darn' over the squares giving them texture.  
We also zig-zagged over lengths of knitting cotton and other yarns to create cords,  Marian then showed us how we could join these to make braid and mesh.


Going back to the Kim Thittichai book 'experimental textiles' I took one of her design ideas and played around with it. The theme was Spirals.  I was rather taken with the shapes of spiral galaxies and anticyclone cloud formations. I also stitched a couple of samples

This is black voile on black felt machine stitched with a silver thread on the bobbin and a tight top tension to bring up the silver thread with beads added. 
This one is my favourite french knots on felt.

Not sure what I will do this week - rest?  But I'll let you know.

Have a good week,  and let us hope the news is more hopeful for all of those living through times of revolution and disaster.

Jill

13 comments:

Lalabibaby @ Dreaming of The Simple Life said...

Beautiful embroidery Jill ... I rather like the black galaxy piece .... would love a greenhouse but not practical with all the littlies that come here but we have started getting the veg patch ready for this year's crops. Put your feet up and take a rest now x

Gina said...

Lots of lovely experiments with machine embroidery Jill. Are you doing Marian's courses at Art Van Go?

Marigold Jam said...

No wonder you are pooped - I know the feeling I have been outside all day today painting the table and chairs, gardening and helping to re roof the shed whilst trying not to damage any of the plants alongside including the clematis which was climbing over the shed roof!

Lovely experiments you have there - I did my C&G Creative Textiles course with Pam Watts although we didn't cover machine embroidery!

Have a well earned rest now and let us know what you create after a rest!

JAne

Emma said...

Fabulous, have you tried ironing magnum wrappers (after eating them, of course ;) that's a Kim T favorite! Love your sparkly swirls.

I've got the greenhouse to do yet & I must sew some seeds!

menopausalmusing said...

Lovely experiments. Love the spiral ones. You have achieved such a lot this week, wish I could say the same, but some weeks are just like that. We are indeed living in awful times in terms of revolution and disaster......... hard to make sense of it, so much at once.

Leenie said...

Cleaning up in preparation is difficult work, but rewarding in so many ways. I'm glad you and your guy are well and strong enough to dig in and move the debris about. It will look so nice in a few weeks when green and flowers take over.

The needlework is very amazing! Such beautiful creations. Thanks for giving us a few moments out of your busy day to share a look at them.

webb said...

Your spirals are wonderful. I keep seeing the black one on an evening bag or high on the shoulder of a silk shrug - very elegant for evening.

We are all cleaning, clearing and working ourselves nearly to death getting ready for the season. Don't overdo!

Clare Wassermann said...

Well no wonder you're pooped. !!!!

LAC EMP 2020 said...

Jill,
I'm exhausted just reading this. It is only Monday so please pace yourself for the rest of the week!! Lesley x

harmony and rosie said...

Not surprised you're so tired, you certainly pack a lot into your day. I do love your free embroidery, I haven't yet tried that but it's definitely on the list. Have a lovely week x

Joy said...

I love the spirals and especially the black galaxy piece. I enjoy seeing the fruits of what you are learning.

Heloise said...

Some very interesting samples. The spirals are wonderful.

Linda Vincent said...

You always do such interesting and inspiring things Jill. Hope you're putting your feet up occasionally too! :-)