August Samples

18/31 Chain stitch on soluble fabric  (that's 2018, week 31 by the way!)
A technique geek one this time. Not many people seem to play with hand embroidery on dissolvable film, but I can't resist. It's quite challenging... try it and you'll see!

I worked rows of chain stitch in grey, blue and turquoise pearl cotton, adjacent but not linked. Then to hold them together I threaded pink-mauve through the straight stitches that appear on the back of the fabric when you stitch chains.

Carefully dissolved, and voila! A fabric made of chain stitch embroidery. So what if it'd be quicker to knit, this is something different. But which side is best? The back looks like this:

 

18/32 Pattern Stitch fabric

Still in the mood for creating "fabric" from just stitches on dissolvable film, this time I went with machine embroidery. But built-in, automatic embroidery patterns, not free machining.

 

Thinking of the sea (it's right in front of my desk!) I chose a curled, wavy pattern:

I stitched three layers of this pattern on Romeo, working from dark at the bottom to light at the top. By the third layer, the Bernina had sussed that I wasn't using its pretty patterns as intended and started protesting by breaking the thread, but I pushed it on - I am very cruel to that machine.

In the end it was quite successful. I deliberately (honest) didn't align the stitches of each row, but it's all stayed together well and the curly pattern shows in places.

   

18/33 Gannet eye

I love watching gannets diving for fish in the bay - they're so spectacular! They look amazing close up too...

 Solid free machining (sometimes called thread painting) on calico.

 

18/34 Hand embroidery in air

There's such a craze for "hoop art" at the moment - embroidery displayed in the hoop used to make it. So of course I have to try it with dissolvable fabric!    

 

I decided I'd need a solid fabric edge, as tying a lacy confection onto the hoop would be messy at best. So I hooped up some felt with my dissolvable film and made sure all the stitching was attached to that.

I used tiny circles of felt for the flower centres - you do need somewhere to fasten threads on and off! They're linked with green running stitch, knotted at the junctions. Then simple straight stitch for the flower petals and French knots for the centres.     

 

18/35 Felt jewellery

For a change, I followed an online course in Wool Felt Jewellery throughout August. It was great fun, I can highly recommend Fiona Duthie's courses! 

 

We learned all sorts of techniques to make wet felted beads, cords and lace. I especially loved the cords, and made several bangles. I haven't done a lot of felting, so there was a lot to learn; I made sure I tried everything while there was someone to consult - Fiona and other students were very helpful.

 

My final experiment was this brooch idea, combining the felt I'd made with a bit of free machining on dissolvable fabric.        

It's a felt bead trapped in flat felt as it was made, then revealed as an "inclusion". I cut out the circle, then stitched it onto a larger circle of felt that I'd edged with cable stitch worked on Solufleece.

I focussed so much on learning all the new techniques that I ran out of time for making finished pieces. But I still want to make myself a cord necklace, with slider beads and inclusions.

It was wonderful to find I could make small felt pieces at my desk without getting water everywhere. Now I know that I'll definitely do more wet felting to combine with my stitching.
  

Samples 2016: Week 29, Spotty/Biscuits

Sometimes my random sample suggester makes life easy! Spotty design, biscuit colours - Jammy Dodger anyone? 

I dug out felt in biscuit, jam, cream and pink icing colours, and cut circles. These were embellished onto a creamy felt base, then freely hand embroidered with stranded cottons. Layered felt like this makes a lovely base for embroidery, a real treat to stitch into and thick enough to hide the thread ends easily.  

Samples 2015: Week 51, Christmas Cactus

Pink felt and loose wool fibres embellished onto black felt. Hand embroidery – stem stitch, straight stitch and French knots using stranded cotton. About 5.5cm.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 19/12/15:

“Cactuses are for life, not just for Christmas. The cactus is not the pinnacle of environmental friendliness, but at least it will flower again for the next festive season.”

‘Christmas cactuses are very easy to please.’ Photograph: Getty Images

Sample design
Cropped section to include stamens and the dramatic contrast of bright pink petals against black.

Samples 2015: Week 38, Tridoku

 

Coloured felt squares applied to white felt using the embellisher. Each colour then hand stitched with a slightly darker shade of stranded cotton.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 19/09/15:
“Nested fish and golden triangles: adult colouring and the beauty of maths. These mathematical patterns, by Alex Bellos and illustrator Edmund Harriss, are intended to engage the brain as well as provide a moment of stress-free satisfaction.”

Alex Bellos and Edmund Harriss

Sample design
This week I really fancied some simple colourful hand stitching so I pinched a small section of this image. Felt is so lovely to stitch on! 

Samples 2015: Week 27, Dune

Embellisher felting and hand stitch. Two layers of fine wool mix felt meshed together by using the embellisher on the purple side only, in the dune pattern.

Then stem stitch in stranded cotton.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 04/07/15:
“Dune, 50 years on: how a science fiction novel changed the world. It has sold millions of copies, is perhaps the greatest novel in the science-fiction canon and Star Wars wouldn’t have existed without it. Frank Herbert’s Dune should endure as a politically relevant fantasy from the Age of Aquarius.”

On the desert planet... Illustration: Robert Ball/Review

Sample design

Love that tangerine and purple – reminds me of my teenage bedroom! Needle felting (using the embellisher) seemed the best match for the soft dune pattern, but I wasn’t sure if it would be enough… it wasn’t. Running stitch didn’t work on the thick felt, so I tried stem stitch – and really enjoyed it! The slowness didn’t help my post-holiday catch up, but I think it was worth it.     

Samples 2015: Week 24, Polka Dots

Red felt punched with holes, machine stitched behind white felt cut away in a tree shape. Mounted on white paper to show through the holes.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 13/06/15:
“Ping pong and polka dots in Gorky Park: Moscow's Garage gallery opens. Dasha Zhukova’s transformation of a vast Soviet-era cafeteria into a gallery designed by Rem Koolhaas has turned grim Gorky Park into a hipster hangout.”

Spotted in Gorky Park ... Yayoi Kusama’s decorated trees infront of the Garage museum. Photograph: David X Prutting/BFA.com

Sample design
This tree was very tempting, but embroidering all those spots didn’t bear thinking about! Or hand cutting spots to apply. Eventually I tried my Japanese screw punch and was delighted to find it happily punched tiny perfect holes from felt. So I decided on punched red felt with the white background showing through. The thickness of felt and tininess of holes means it doesn’t show very well though.  

Samples 2015: Week 22, Great Barrier Reef

Layers of felt, cut out then meshed together using the embellisher machine from front and back. (Only about 7cm wide.)

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 30/05/15:
“Great Barrier Reef shouldn't be on 'in danger' list for now, says Unesco. World’s largest coral reef to remain on UN’s watchlist as draft ruling calls on Australia to ‘rigorously’ implement its conservation commitments."

The Great Barrier Reef in Australia has lost more than half of its coral cover in the past 30 years. Photograph: Andrew Watson/Getty Images

Sample design
A simplified but fairly faithful copy of a small section. I wanted to capture the raised areas and the colours – bright blue, white and brown isn’t a combination that would occur to me but I like it in these proportions. (My blue felt is closer to the source picture than it came out in my photo!)

Samples 2015: Week 18, The Sun

Yellow scrims embellished onto orange wool-viscose felt from the back.

 

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 02/05/15:

“England faces major rise in record hot years due to climate change say scientists. Increased effects of climate change enable scientists to predict localised changes in weather, such as at least a 13-fold increase in record hot years in England.”

Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Sample design
I wanted a more interesting sun! Thinking of swirling heat, coronal mass ejections, led to the idea of fine loops of thread emerging from a disc shape.

Samples 2015: Week 17, Human Body

Bright Kunin felt cut out and applied to black base using the embellisher.
Black FME outline and detailing.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 25/04/15:
“Adventures in medicine: ‘I journey through the body every day’. From the eyeball to the umbilical cord, from a messy corpse to the value of ECT – doctor Gavin Francis recounts his adventures in medicine and explores the wonders of the human form."

Illustration by Edward Carvalho-Monaghan

Sample design
Nothing too off piste here. I just chose three of the little square designs and then changed the colours so they’d work together in a strip. 

Samples 2015: Week 10, Glass cuirass

The design was hand cut out of red felt, then this was embellished (needle felted by machine) onto white felt which shows through the holes.  

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 07/03/15:
“Fierce, feathered and fragile: how Alexander McQueen made fashion an art.
From his lethal glass corsets to magnificent Manga-style helmets to his use of giant antlers, Alexander McQueen’s designs reveal his vulnerability as much as his artistry, as a major new exhibition at the V&A shows.”

Cuirass. Columbia Glassworks for Alexander McQueen. V&A.

Sample design
I didn’t want to do anything too detailed or obviously copied. So I enlarged a tiny fragment of the pattern, with shapes simple enough to cut from felt.

Samples 2015: Week 5, Gap in the Clouds

Silver transfer foil ironed onto felt with Bondaweb. Surrounded by swirls of grey and black wool tops applied using the embellisher.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 31/01/15:

“‘Drowned in a sea of salt’ Blake Morrison on the literature of the east coast. Writers from Crabbe to Sebald have been drawn to the fragile beauty of the east coast of Britain – and have immortalised it in words”.

Shingle Street in Suffolk

Sample design
My first thought was a vertical section, bands of greys with silver and gold. So, just to be awkward, I rejected that and focussed instead on a fleeting gap in the clouds where the sun peeped through.   

Samples 2015: Week 4, Manchester

Background of blue felt embellished with wool fibres to introduce subtle colour variations. Orange wool fibres and yellow felt applied with embellisher. Free machined lines. Buttonhole stitch and French knots.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 24/01/15:

“The new city centres: the alternative establishment that wants to wrest power from the capital. Britain’s locally elected leaders only control around 6% of their cities’ tax base – but in New York, it’s 50%. Now Britain’s 11 biggest cities outside London are teaming up to lobby for a major new wave of devolution.”

Manchester city centre at night.

Sample design
Section of photo abstracted and simplified, trying to avoid being too literal. Felting techniques lend themselves to this as it’s hard to reproduce fine detail!    

Samples 2015: Week 2, Mondrian

White felt applied to black using embellisher. French knots in hand dyed red perle thread.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 10/01/15:

 

“Abstract art: from the radical to the everyday. Mondrian’s bold grids, Malevich’s Black Square, Jenny Holzer’s top secret redacted government documents ... a new exhibition celebrates the point and edge of 100 years of abstraction.”

Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red (1937).

Sample design

Again I had to think twice and not attempt to imitate the source picture! So I took a small section at an angle, and made it fuzzy and textural.