What's in a name?

A summer diversion for my stitch story.  This week I took part in the Sew Near, Sew Far project at the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, led by Lyn Setterington.

It was unfamiliar territory for me as I used knitting yarn to stitch my name onto coarse plastic netting, but the effect was bold and pleasing.  Lyn is hoping to collect signatures from local people and visitors alike on continuous pieces of plastic net.  The net will then be laid out on the Pennine landscape, forming the pen names of the Bronte sisters: Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell.

The new art work will go on display during the first half of October!

A cloud dress for a princess

My final piece for the Travelling Book project!  Inspired by the story of Princess su su, as told by Suzanne Langston-Jones and fellow artists (see previous post), I have created a cloud dress from silk paper.

The shape of the dress is long and thin and would easily fit into the cracks in the castle walls.  The silk paper is semi-transparent and a lovely blue/grey colour - just the same as the sky.  I have stitched small circles in fine white cotton perle yarn to represent clouds.  Large blueish sequins have been attached in the style of shisha mirrors, a new skill for me and one that I think Princess su su would have approved of.  The story describes her dresses as reflecting the skies and the changing seasons and I think that mirrors would help this.  They are also a common feature of fairy stories, offering a means of seeing the past or future.

I have loved every book that I've worked on over the last 6 months.  It's been a joy to see how others have interpreted the same theme and a huge challenge to produce something new.  Now it's time to kick back and enjoy the summer.  Happy holidays!

Looking for inspiration

The final leg of the Travelling Book journey and the theme is Fairy Tales.  As you might expect with 5 very talented embroiderers' going before me, the task of finding some fresh inspiration is becoming more difficult.

Instead of looking at traditional fairy tales I have chosen to study something in the more recent past:   Artist, Suzanne Langston-Jones collaborated with Clare Phillips to create the story of Princess su su which was told through the work of Suzanne and ten invited artists.  The exhibition toured the country in 2002 and was covered by Embroidery Magazine that year (Volume 53).

Princess su su did not look like a 'real' princess - she did not have long blonde hair and blushing cheeks, a golden crown or a velvet gown.  Her hair was short and brown with bits of grey.  Although she lived in a castle quite hapily, it was not her castle.  The family who lived in the castle did not notice Princess su su because she lived in the wallpapers covering its tall rooms.

My friend Claire Hignett, first told me about Princess su su when I was researching stories for my HNC final show at Bradford College in 2009.  Claire came to my rescue again and has sent me copies of the show catalogue which took the form of a beautiful fan.

All work and no play

Ok, so I've done lots of lovely embroidery but now is the time to kick back and enjoy myself with these slightly bonkers cacti!

Each year, my friend Chrissie and I have a little stall at our local Sue Ryder Hospice Garden Party. We make all sorts of things like aprons, cushions, lavender bags.... but this year Chrissie wanted to make cacti.  Very fashionable, very hipster, very good.  I got a bit carried away and rather than dinky little cacti with flowers, mine turned into a Mexican cartel with bushy eyebrows and moustaches! 

They make me smile and I hope they have the same effect on others.  Come and visit our stall at Manorlands Garden Party on Sunday 8th July.

Sowing the seeds of love

This Travelling Book challenge was a delight!  The theme is gardens but I chose to make an embroidered seed packet with seeds stitched in bullion knots on fine net.

The book is for Margaret, a longstanding member of the Embroiderers' Guild and responsible for inspiring, encouraging and supporting, countless new members over the last 25 years, including me!   I wanted to make something special to reflect her love of flowers and contemporary embroidery.  My seed packet was based on one used as a wedding favour which was inscribed with the phrase "commit random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty".  Funnily enough this same phrase was spoken by Margaret as she gave me a bunch of flowers for running a small errand.

It's a mixture of hand and machine embroidery but the sewing (sowing) instructions on the reverse were printed onto fine cotton and then stitched onto the final seed packet.

I hope she likes it!

Victoria Hall, Saltaire

I love Saltaire!  The fabulous Salt's Mill with its art and bookshops, Hockney pictures and sensational cafe.  Each year the UNESCO World Heritage site hosts an Art Trail in which art from new and established artists is displayed around the village, in houses, churches and other venues.

This year there was an open call for people to create postcards for display in the United Reformed Church.  The postcards will be sold for £5 each for the benefit of the Cellar Trust, a local charity which specialises in helping people recover from mental health illness.

I so enjoyed making my architecture pictures that I decided to recreate Saltaire's Victoria Hall in the same style.  Why not pop along and see if you can spot it?  The exhibition and Arts Trail is on from 27-29th May 2017.

Hidden Lives (part II)

Another month, another book - this time the subject is lace.  Five years ago, I researched the lives of Victorian social reformers, Josephine Butler, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Octavia Hill for an exhibition inspired by lace from the Gawthorpe Textiles collection.  This is a reproduction of the same piece.

It is a lady's cuff: machine embroidered net decorated with hand-made paper couronnes.  Hand cuffs to bind Victorian women, financially to their husbands, intellectually to the expectations of society and physically by a well-defined sense of duty.  With limited means of expression, I imagined a Victorian woman stitching I dream of escape and set me free, unobtrusively working the words into the decoration.  The key motif is reminiscent of a chaterlaine worn by a house-keeper (the only suitable job for a woman).  The paper couronnes are fashioned from old books, alluding to the power of the written word to change the status quo.