Spring Tweets

My Thursday sewing group has been busy working on some lovely garden birds using simple stitches and blending colours, but the project is quite intense and I've had a few latecomers that would like to do something similar but in half the time.

So here is my quick version:  I've used patches of fabric to provide the basic colour and then stitched over the top to add detail and texture.  The bird is worked on calico over a background of printed fabric.  Once the final outline has been worked in backstitch, the calico is cut away to reveal the main fabric.  All that's left to do is stitch some feet!

The Domestic

Oh I'm so enjoying the Travelling Book project!  This month I have been given my friend Marjorie's book to work on.  She chose The Domestic - or Home as her theme and in her introduction she explores the construct of the perfect home.  Images of Milly Molly Mandy and Little Grey Rabbit are interspersed with poetry and prose about the home.  She says she has come to the realisation that for her, home is where she is surrounded by books, music and sewing paraphernalia.

My response to her theme is to create a sample piece called 'Blueprint'.  The Victorian architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52) was my inspiration.  His design for his own perfect house with family at the centre has been stitched onto cotton organdie.  Quilted onto a piece of blanket using a template from wallpaper, also designed by Pugin.  A comfort blanket.  Trapped between the layers are talismen for protection - found objects: a curtain rinng and brass robin from my mother's stash; a button from Auntie Jean's sewing box; a broken earring - a sparkly object; a safety pin - always useful; a baking bean from my kitchen; a book fragment - Marjorie's refuge.

By way of explanation, I have created my own construct for the house.  The floor plan is pasted to the page but an illustration of the house and it's shadow cut from an old book make a 3D house with the wallpaper design offering another wall. 

'In pure architecture the smallest detail should have a meaning or serve a purpose'  AWN Pugin

Developing sketchbooks

Oh the days have slipped by and I realise that I haven't posted for the whole of February!  I have been preparing for a sketchbook project, partly for Skipton Embroiderers' Guild and partly for myself.

As a member of the guild I have signed up to take part in a project known as Travelling books.  These little A5 sketchbooks are a great way of increasing (or perhaps unblocking) your creativity.  Working in a group of 5 or 6 people, you each decide on a different theme.  In the first few pages of your book you create a mood board showing your inspiration and ideas and then produce a small stitched piece (it can be just a sample or a completed work).  At the end of the first month you pass it to another member of the group so that they can add their own interpretation of your theme.  The books continue to pass around the group until you receive your own one back.  Hey presto!  You now have 5 completely different pieces of work based on your chosen subject and hopefully a few new ideas for what to try next.

The project has taken our branch by storm and we have 3 separate groups of 6 but quite a few new members were hesitant about taking part and I realised that they were unfamiliar with the concept of sketchbooks.

We all take hundreds of photos on our phones and cameras but translating these into a creative craft project is quite a daunting prospect.  I have devised a course to guide even the most reluctant artist through different ways of analysing pictures to transform them into a design to stitch.  Using my own theme of Water as a starting point, I've been busy manipulating photos, making collages and prints to show the techniques that I use.  

I'll be teaching the sketchbook project at Skipton Embroiderers' Guild for the next few months but I'm also running a day workshop at my studio in May.  

Roses are green?

Roses are red, violets are blue, but who says we need to stick to these conventions?  I've been indulging in my new guilty pleasure, ribbon work embroidery.

I bought this gorgeous selection of ribbons from Patricia at Mulberry Silks.  They are the most lovely colours and perfect for this style of work.  I'd chosen green for leaves (obviously!) but found that it made beautiful roses, working well with the dusky purple and lilac.

I'll be teaching ribbon work embroidery at my studio on Saturday 4th March.

Flights of fantasy

Happy New Year!  A time of new beginnings and resolutions.  I find myself busy making lists and jotting down ideas for future projects, looking at my calendar and wondering if I can fit everything into the year. 

When I went back to college to study textile design the method of using sketchbooks to explore and develop ideas and designs was completely alien to me.  I had a picture in my head of what I wanted to create and then I made it - simple!  At first I paid lip-service to the sketchbook, leaving blank pages and then filling them in to suit the design I wanted.  I'm not confident with pencils, pens and paints and visual research was a chore but I found ways around this and gradually found my feet.  I realised that the process of studying shape and form made me think about how I could achieve the same in stitch and before I knew it I was designing for real. 

This method has made me more perceptive and taken my work in some unexpected directions.  The first piece I made for Skipton Embroiderers' Guild in October 2011 is a good example. 

From a Victorian collar found in the Rachel B Kay-Shuttleworth collection at Gawthorpe Hall, my doodlings took me to a key motif and made me think of a chatelaine.  Further research lead me to some of the great women reformers of the Victorian era:  Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon.




The 'keys' in my piece were coloured with inlaid fabrics of blues and reds to represent the blood, sweat and tears associated with reforming women's rights. The collar is constructed from silk organdie, a fabric that pops up time and again in my work.

I was starting to find my own voice!


Having said all of that the photo at the top of this post is a doodle, plain and simple.  Something to make me happy without any real thought or consideration towards design. It's needlefelt applique with fine DMC crewel wools (possibly out of production) which were a joy to stitch with!

Wishing you a happy and creative 2017!

Happy Christmas!

Another year of crafting!  Here are my final two projects:  machine embroidered robin cards for my sewing group and no-sew patchwork Christmas trees with a group of friends. A lovely end to the year.

Wishing you a very happy Christmas and a creative New Year!

Doodle flowers

Looking rather pale in the Northern winter sunshine, this is a quilt that I've just completed for my daughter.  She wanted blue but it had to fit with other soft furnishings in her room and so we arrived at a compromise of this blue/green.

I based the design on a doodle.  Large flowers with loose curly tendrils have been appliqued onto a background and then top-stitched to give the effect of illustration.  The border is strip pieced in a random fashion.

Slightly too late for her first term at Uni but I'm hoping it will be a nice surprise when she comes home today.