February samples

My latest weekly whatnots: stitching just for fun.

18/05 Hand embroidery on soluble fabric

Experimenting with some bright, lustrous (but also very slippery and springy) threads I was given. On a network of green FME and felt dots I hand stitched simple flowers using straight stitch, French knots and buttonhole. It was hard work! No hiding places for all the ends, and tough getting the thick thread through the centre repeatedly. Shows potential though?   

18/06 Heart
Well it was mid February... what else could I do? Bright yarns, trapped in a sandwich of soluble fabrics, machine embroidered freely and with some built-in patterns. Finished with a few French knots in shaded pearl cotton thread before dissolving.

18/07 Log pile

A pile of logs sits drying in our garden, and I love the pattern they make. But I didn't fancy stitching in woody colours. So, I created spirals of space dyed wool yarn (Colinette, I think) embellished onto a base of indigo dyed wool.  The wool was actually an old blanket - I hot-washed it to shrink/felt it then dyed in an indigo vat (not specially for this sample, I hasten to add). Then free machined lines in indigo rayon 30 Alcazar thread.

18/08 Snowdrops
Flower of the month. I've embroidered snowdrops before, and wanted to do something a bit different. So I focused on a close up view of open flowers, so you can see the beautiful centres. I made a lacy design of linked motifs, ending up with no visible fabric.

The flowers were free machined on Lutradur 30 then burned out with a soldering iron. Finally I hand stitched bullion knot stamens with a single strand of yellow cotton.   

Samples 2015: Week 19, Carnation ‘Blackjack’

Dark red velvet, 6cm square, embroidered with narrow free zigzag stitch in a shaded pink rayon 30 thread. I always find velvet... uncooperative! To put it politely. So this was a bit of a challenge for me. But as usual, it’s solubles to the rescue - I used Aquasol to carry the design and control the velvet pile, stretched in a hoop.

 

The unevenness of the stitching is on purpose, honest – I deliberately didn’t keep turning the hoop to keep the satin stitch straight along the lines, raggedy seemed more appropriate.

 

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 09/05/15:

“Gardens: what to do this week. Try growing summer veg in raised beds made of straw, sow kale, and plant a modern carnation.”

Carnation ‘Blackjack’: ‘It’s clove-like scent makes it great for the cutting garden

Sample design
OK, so it’s a bad week when I have to resort to a photo from the gardening page. But I couldn’t stomach even opening a lot of the newspaper the day after the election results.

And then the obvious way forward for me with these flowers would’ve been layers of white-edged petals, so not that… I decided to pick out the pale outlines only, on a dark red velvet.

Hand stitching? Me?

Ah but... still using dissolvable fabrics!

No Bernina was tortured in the making of these.

 

And no background fabric was used either. They're made entirely of various threads - and full of holes! I've been developing this technique for a while, think I've cracked it now.

 

Several of these little pieces are now available, mounted ready to frame, in my Etsy shop. Postage is free to UK addresses.

Wood Anemones

Every year we have more and more wood anemones spreading across the garden - there's thousands now and they look wonderful.

Living on (in!) the edge of a wood, we really appreciate all the spring wild flowers as very little will bloom once the tree canopy closes.

In the mood for a bit of stitchy play, I happened to see a menu, offering something "three ways"... hmm. How about anemones three ways?
 

Machine embroidery using Flower Stitcher attachment 

 

Free machine embroidery on soluble fabric with scraps of thread and fabric

Crochet flowers on embellisher-ed felt/scrim background

I like the dissolvable machine embroidery best - no surprise there, then. But it does me good to try something different now and then... doesn't it?!

New Brooches

This week I’ve been working on some new little brooches along the same lines as my bowls and bookmarks. Well not everyone can offer a suitable home for a bowl that’s not intended to hold anything, can they? And lots of people have Kindles so they don’t need a bookmark…

 

Note my valiant (?) efforts at “styling”… I find this so difficult, trying to come up with suitable props and backgrounds. I need to work on it though, as apart from adding interest, it helps with the problem where pieces show up at many times life size in my shops – NOT flattering for free machining!

The first few of these are in my Folksy and Etsy shops now.

Bloomers

Or, flowers… but did that grab your attention?!

Hot off the Bernina – a batch of “Bloom” brooches, now launched in my Etsy and Folksy shops.

The design was inspired by alliums, and they did start off in suitable shades of purple, but the colours have branched out a bit now… there’s no limit really, I could do rainbow ones! Each flower head is made up of four layers, free machined on dissolvable fabric and put together to make a lacy, three-dimensional structure.  

I made the first few for Textilia’s recent exhibition at Farfield Mill, to tie in with one of my framed pieces, and they sold out. But for this new batch I’ve switched from stick pins to tiny brooch backs. They looked good on long metal “stalks”, but that effect was lost when they were pinned on clothing, and the stick pins were a bit thick anyway. These will work better on fine fabrics I think.

Only trouble is, they look HUGE in the photos in my shops – bigger than life size, of course they don’t seem as delicate and lacy as in real life. Hmm. There’s an awful lot to learn with this online shopping business.

New work: Bloom

This is one of the new pieces I’ve got on show with Textilia III at Farfield Mill.

It was inspired by alliums, and created by free machining on dissolvable fabric. Each bloom has two or three lacy layers with beads between to make it three-dimensional.

 

As they stand up above the background, they cast interesting shadows – one of my favourite tricks!

Back to bowls

This week I’ve had to knuckle down and produce a few more of my “Botanic” bowls. I’d completely sold out of the two most popular designs, Cottage (or Country) Garden and Meadow. It always takes me a little while to remember exactly how to do them, regain the knack, but I think they worked OK. I don’t have a pattern as such, so every one turns out slightly different – that’s the way I like it!  

These two are now in my Etsy shop. 

 

Cottage Garden

 

 

 

 

 

Meadow