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

Good bye, hello

Selling what you have made is a double edged sword. You are pleased that someone likes your work enough to want to own it, but sometimes parting is difficult, like seeing your offspring off into the world never to be seen again. I first experienced this when I had a watercolour, which I was very fond of, accepted at the Royal Institute of Watercolour Painters open exhibition in 1989 at the Mall gallery, and had put it up for sale for what I thought was a  lot of money (£200) and it sold. I was at once delighted and flattered and also sorry to see what I felt was my best watercolour ever, (and probably still is) gone. Although I do have a rather poor photograph of it somewhere, the likes I have never achieved again. It was of greater bindweed which grew in abundance in our first garden.  Someone has just bought my leaf journal and I am very pleased and flattered. I still have it at the moment and will actually part with it next week, so I keep having a look at the pages and giving it a little stroke. Luckily this time I have a good set of photographs to remind me of my baby.

One for the archives.

However I do have another which I am adding to my Etsy shop of which I am almost as fond.

This one has a richly embroidered cover and blue pages. I hope someone falls in love with this one too.  I do love making my patchwork item and they have my heart in them, but the hand-made books have a little bit of my soul.

Meanwhile here is my finished covered journal.

 You may guess I am rather fond of French knots at the moment

It will come with a blank journal, but not a shell.

It has taken hours to take the photographs with a couple of reading lamps and an improvised light tent which I managed to melt a hole in with one of the lamps. I thought it was going to be brighter today. Oh well!

I hope you have a bright week,

Jill

Details

I've had a busy weekend, but thought I would just post some details of some of my sewing. You may have seen some of these before.

Have a good week!

Look out for my November calendar post - coming soon.

this week

The weather has been lovely the last couple of days and to show I have a life beyond sewing I thought I would draw a sellection of flora from  the garden. In fact I could have filled several pages as there is so much blooming at the moment including primulas and bergenia - are they late or early I wonder. I was going to post some photographs or my sewing, but now Blogger won't even load the  insert image window.  I am writing this on my lap-top where as the picture above was scanned into my PC a couple of hours ago. So I am not sure if it is the lap-top or Blogger playing up! Yes I am a two computer household - my laptop was a retirement present, and I must say that  I love sitting with it in the evening whilst Mr T watches something  on TV I'm not very interested in - most programmes can be taken in with only a brief amount of attention, I'm sure you'll agree. Although he does sometimes 'test' me to see if I paying attention (LOL).

I have switched to 'Internet Explorer' from Google 'Chrome'  and this seems  to have helped, a bit ironic as I think Google is connected to Blogger.

I've been using the ironing board as an extra work table which is great as I can adjust its height easily. I used the pliers for closing some 'keeper' rings for attaching some charms to the cords on the purse as I haven't and suitable coloured beads.

My button tins are getting a lot of use - here are another couple of purses. They haven't sold as well as the book covers but I really like making them - here are a couple of details.

I find I have favourite patches - stem stitch is my embroidery stitch of choice at the moment, plus French knots. I love the red candy stripes - here with added seed beads.

I love the colours in this one. My favourite machine stitch is the blanket stitch here done in a lovely varigated thread.

I have made a matching purse and book cover in red, black and white. Hopefully they will appear in my shop over the weekend along with some more book covers.  I must say I really enjoy putting the different fabrics together but making sure I photograph them effectively is a bit more of a chore.

Now I must try to catch up with everone else's post. Busy weekend ahead, so posting on the shop will be a priority, hope you have a great weekend - the weather forecast for the UK is pretty good. Hope you are ready for 10/10/10.

Jill



What do you think?

Last Saturday I posted this picture which was a manipulated picture I took of the sea.  I felt it would be a good stimulous for a piece of embroidery, so I had a go and came up with this.

It is worked on a piece of A5 sized pelmet vilene which I coloured first with some transfer dye. I then loosely appliqued on some fabric and yarns and then went mad with the free  sewing-machine embroidery which was great fun. I then added some hand stitching with metalic thread and beads to add some sparkle. I was pretty pleased with the effect.

click image for a close-up

What next?

Despite having some success recently I am feeling in a strange mood.  I feel I am not quite enjoying my creativity at the moment. I have quite a few projects on the go and I am managing to do something most days, but I feel like a headless chicken. I have lost my sense of humour and have been very grumpy with Mr T. He is due in hospital next month for surgery. Nothing very serious, but we are both feeling a bit anxious as he has a very fat file at the hospital!   Perhaps I should allow myself a few days of not doing any arty stuff.

I know you lovely people will say 'there, Jill it is all right' and that is what I need right now. I value my 'bloggy' friends highly, so bear with me through the grumps,

Jill

Something different - again!!

Marvin mini-quilt

I thought I'd try something different - a bit inspired by Cathy's embroidery on Menopausal Musings, I thought I'd satin stitch a Marvin. He has taken a good couple of weeks doing a bit most evenings. I then sewed him with a thin layer of wadding onto a postcard size piece of heavy-weight vilene practising my free stitching on the sewing machine. Outlining him was easier than I thought and made him stand out. I embelllished him with a bit of lace and some mini heart buttons and voila Marvin in his favourite spot - on the duvet. I have failed to embroider the muddy footprints. I popped him in the scanner so it is not a very good rendering.

Mr T looks at me as if I am mad - he can relate to my more practical projects.  I'm into a bit of machine stitching at the moment - so watch this space!

Figgy Pudding

I rather liked this old fig tree at the Walled Garden.

But what really attracts me are the figs.

I photographed them and did some on the spot sketches

This led me to play about with their shapes and draw them in pen

I thought they would look good as a lino print

(Whoops - that last one looks quite good up-side-down)

I don't know what the weather has been like with you, but here it has been rather chilly and wet, so it was a good opportunity for me to practise my free embroidery skills.

I am finding free embroidery a bit of a thrill - take off your foot, drop your feed dogs, and put your (other?) foot down - hard!!  The trick is to run the machine fast and move the cloth slowly. It is a bit like learning to drive. At first I just watched the line I'd drawn and tried to keep to it, but that is a bit like driving with your eye on the kerb - I am beginning to look ahead and follow the line a bit more instinctively, but I broke the cotton umpteen times (thank goodness my machine as a built in needle threader!). The damp weather also gave me the opportunity to have a play with Photoshop Elements and a technique featured in this months Digital Photo magazine.

"Oh excellent! I love a long life better than figs"

William Shakespeare - Antony & Cleopatra

This was the best 'fig' quote I could find - most of the others were long and Biblical, but perhaps it indicates how highly prized figs were, in fact even now fresh figs are something to be relished when they come into season. (I don't care for the dried varieties too much but Mr T hankers for fig crumble like he had at school. Does anyone have a recipe? I can only find 'posh' ones)

Mr T is cooking dinner this evening,  but no figs or pudding!

ERRATUM - it's date crumble he wants not fig! I've still no recipe.

Let us hope the promised fine weather returns tomorrow for the holiday weekend. Luton Carnival is on Monday and so much effort is put into it, it is a shame when the weather is wet. (A couple of years ago it rained so much they had to cancel it). Last year I took lots of photographs, but not sure whether I shall go this year, but it is a wonderful colourful family day out for anyone in the area.

Hope you are having a great weekend, Jill

Happy to be cool

How pleasant it is today, warm enough to be out with bare arms, but not so hot I break into a sweat emptying the compost bin (Just adding to my green credentials).  It is MrT's birthday so we have been out to lunch, he is watching some cricket he recorded and I am fiddling about. As I have been posting a lot of photographs lately I thought I'd do something different. Firstly some embroidery. This piece I finished sometime ago in April, the last of my colour doodle stitchings.

The scanned colour has not come out very well, what looks orangy/brown here is much paler and the real colour range is  from deep acid yellow to pale straw.

After this I thought I would try something more representational and took this doodle -

and turned it into this

My embroidery skills are improving, but Cathy at Menopausal Musings has set the embroidery bar high so I am still reeling in admiration of her work.

Emma is a more recent blog friend. She lives on the Isle of Skye and creates all sorts of lovely art pieces from what she has around her. No popping down to Hobbycraft for her. She has a significant birthday in June and to celebrate being fifty she is arranging a fifty postcard swap. It is always fun to send and receive so I was more than happy to join in and this week I received this -

 A great little multi-media piece of art. Emma's blog is A Little Bit of Everything and I am sure she would be delighted if you took a look or even joined her in a birthday quest.

I have also been doing some art journaling and working on my 'Garden Book', but more of them another time. I hope the sun is still shining with you, Jill

PS. Blogger is really messing about today with positioning pictures - so if it is happening to you, you are not alone!

The next step

I have been begrudgingly doing my chores; cooking, shopping and cutting the moss and weeds - sorry lawn over the last few days when really I wanted to MAKE BOOKS. In fact I have managed to start four! Here are the covers of two of them.

The little heart book has a three fold cover and I have started hand stitching on the dyed pelmet vilene. I only bought a few colours of the transfer dyes so I have worked on it with colour pencils before giving it a coat of acrylic wax to fix the colour. I hope to transform it with embroidery, I shall take my time. I shall fill it with rather girly heart motifs. The larger one I made in the same way but I have started to machine embroider this one and stitch on ribbon and lace. I have an idea of calling this my Book of Days and am toying with a few ideas. I promise to keep you informed. I have made another cover in the shape of a leaf, but I have put that one aside for later. 

This is the little book I have got furthest with.

I have finished the cover with embroidery and beads. The edge of the cover is pierced and shaped with a soldering iron which melts the vilene.

The theme of this book is the letter J (not too difficult to guess) and I have been making a list of things beginning  with J to go in it. Jokers, jellies, jumpers, jingles-the trick will be to make each page decorative.

Here is the first page - I am the big one!

The pages were lining paper soaked in Brusho water colour, I wrote the letter J on the right hand page with bleach. I shall probably add some stitches too. Got to go now, I am using up valuable stitching time. I'll try to drop in on your posts later.

Jill

Pink and Blue

Thank you for all your suggestion as to what I could do with my embroidered squares and all of them polite! As you have all been so kind to show an interest, so here are the next two.

The pink one is inspired by spikes of flowers and the blue one by swirls of water.

They will both get some more work - I have only just started on a yellow one - I'll post it soon. I have been doing a strand's worth of stitching at every opportunity. At the moment I am finding this very soothing - a bit like doodling - no pre-plan, just go with the flow. I am toying with the book idea and I have thought of making a hanging. Thank you for all our suggestions

Green

This is the first of four pieces I am working on. One in green, one blue, a pink/purple and I've  just started a yellow square.  They are on linen painted with acrylic and embroidered with the machine and by hand. This has some appliqued dyed tissue and muslin scraps.  Each one has been inspired by nature, this one quite obviously is foliage . I love doing them, but have no idea what to do with them now - any suggestions.

I count my blessings

I consider myself very lucky. My new sewing machine arrived today - and yes I had to go out and give my talk! I'll begin at the beginning.

Mr T, love him, said he would buy me a new sewing machine for my birthday, and after humming and hawing over which model he said I was to go for it, so I did and ordered a wonderful new Brother machine from my local shop last Thursday. Mr Theobald from the oldest shop  in Luton said it should be in on Monday, it could even be in the next day. I was like a kid a Christmas, waiting for the phone to ring - only it didn't. Late Tuesday I was beginning to feel a bit sulky - childish I know, but I had dusted, vacuumed, laundered and ironed so I would have a clear day or two to play, but at this rate everything would need doing again (I know, it was only two days).  A phone call to Mr Theobald reassured me that is was on its way - having to order by computer had caused the delay, and he had arranged it to be delivered straight to my house on Thursday. 

Now Thursday - that is the day I am giving my talk, so I wake early with a few butterflies, and lay listening to the Today programme dozing - when .... silence ... no electricity. I get up and check the fuse box - no problem there, so batteries in the radio and I find out from the local radio station that half of Luton has been effected by a power cut. NO ELECTRICITY!  I am giving a talk with a PowerPoint presentation AND I am getting my new sewing machine - I need power. No tea and toast for breakfast so what, tuna sandwiches for lunch, fine - all this going through my head in the first five minutes of no power. Of course, by 8.30 all was restored, I though, needed a calming bath and a bacon sandwich to before I felt restored. The rest of the morning I thought I'd start my April page for my journal to give me something to do. Then I checked and double checked my notes for my talk at 2pm. At 1.30 I was nearly ready to go, dusting of my old laptop bag and making Mr T promise he wouldn't go out in case there was a delivery - I was sure it wasn't going to come - and then there it was - a large lorry with a cheery driver with a box under his arm! How could that be my new machine, but it was - it is about half the weight of my old one. But I had to leave it unopened in the hall and dash off for my talk.

My talk - thank you for all your good wishes - went fine. The projector 'talked' to my laptop and I had time to settle myself in before I began. I had 50 slides and up to an hour and a half to fill. The first half went very quickly and I rather raced through, but after a cup of tea and a hot cross bun and lots of encouragement I relaxed and slowed down a bit. My subject was a local beauty spot which is familiar to most of my audience, but I hope I was able to give them a different viewpoint and a bit of new information.

So it was home to my new toy.

My picture is of a piece I have been working on with painted on dye and hand stitching. It was waiting for some machine embroidery.

Doodle stitching

Thought I'd share what I have been up to. First this is my piece of doodle stitching, as I call it. It is a lovely piece of real wool felt donated by my sister with a couple of fabric patches machine sewn on and then hand stitched with a bit of needle felt too. This is really just me experimenting and trying to remember stitches until my embroidery stitch book arrives - 1p from Amazon plus p&p. Second-hand, but stitches don't change do they?

This on the other hand is a little more ambitious, only acrylic felt I'm afraid, but you may recognise the shape from my photographs of the fan light in the walled garden. I cut out the black outline with a craft knife through tracing paper. Of course the felt stretched as I cut it as I knew it would, but the basic shape is there and I can pull it back into shape as I stitch on it. Not sure what I am going to do yet, but trolling through my scraps for suitable inserts into the panes - I'm not going to do many.

This is a longer term project, but I'm into stitching at the moment, and it is nice to have something to do on my lap. I'll report my progress, but don't hold your breath! Wishing you all a great weekend.