Autumn Madness

Autumn is a really busy time for me:  preparing for a new batch of workshops, a new season of Embroiderers' Guild work and trying to finish projects started over the summer.

I started sampling ideas  for a new workshop.  I wanted to make an embroidered scarf and found some fine cotton cheesecloth in the wonderful emporium that is Bombay Stores.  I hand-dyed the cloth, before cutting bold flower shapes to applique to the main fabric. I soon learned that I needed some light-weight fusible fabric to help control the shapes and make it easier to embellish.

I'm quite pleased with the result but it has meant spending several days in my kitchen toiling over dye baths.

Other work included a day installing the Textilia 3 Dissolving Margins exhibition at Skipton Town Hall.  Exhibition closes on October 18th 2018.

New venue for Textilia 3 'Dissolving Margins'

Finally, I managed a couple of quite days away in North Yorkshire where I was blown away by the medieval tiles at Bylands Abbey

Medieval tiles at Bylands Abbey

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Skipton calling

Skipton Town Hall, stitched on pale grey silk using stranded embroidery thread.  The newly refurbished building includes the wonderful HUB, which as been a popular venue for Embroiderers' Guild community workshops.

On a street where you live

Oakworth is famous for its little station on the Keighley Worth Valley Railway line which featured in the Railway Children film. Throughout the Summer months, we are serenaded with toots and whistles from the steam trains and occasionally a long wait at the old-fashioned gated crossing.  Its a lovely nostalgic little building full of quirky fixtures and fittings.

Here my station house is stitched on evenweave linen and mounted on a background of painted fabric and Bondaweb applique.

The square will form part of a border for Skipton Embroiderers' Guild Where's My Home community project which will be displayed for the first time at Yarndale.

She sells sea shells

Here is the last in my series of raised embroidery samples.  I've chosen a seasonal theme of sea shells which demonstrates two different styles of padding, a wired shape and some shisha work to incorporate a piece of sea glass.  Worked in soft browns, pinks and cream and a mixture of stranded thread and super-shiny cotton perle.

Nature Table

More raised embroidery!  Another sample for my forthcoming workshops.  This one has an Autumnal theme inspired by my walks around the footpaths and fields at home.  Lots of different techniques but all very achievable.

Everlasting greens

Cacti are the hipster plant of the moment.  We have a few of them scattered around the house, but sadly my girls believe that these desert dwellers need no water or attention.  We have had a few casualties (especially the ones that were left in a dark box for 3 months over the summer holidays!)

Here is my answer to the problem.  Three little stitched cacti in a water-glass terrarium.  No care required.

If you want to know how to make it, I'll be running a workshop in August and October.

Stitched Together

This is a map of Syria, stitched with a group of women refugees now living in Skipton.  It has been made for the Skipton Embroiderers' Guild 'Where's My Home' project and is a collaboration between some of the ladies in the group and EG members.  We have added stars to show where the ladies have come from (Damascus, Homs, and Allepo), 'Syria' written in Arabic script, and a representation of homes destroyed in the conflict.

Although our lives have taken very different paths, we have found each other in the place we now call home and shared a common interest in stitching.