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.   

Sample Project 2013 - March

One sample per week inspired (loosely) by the photo in my John Muir Trust Wild Nature Diary. Just playing!

  

Week 10: Snowdrops

(Photo of snowdrops in woodland) 

Felting and hand stitch in wool threads on Aquasol.

 

 

 

Week 11: Fingal’s Cave

(Photo of the basalt columns of the cave on Staffa)

Sheet music for Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture, pleated into columns, layered, machine stitched in the turquoise colour of the sea in the photo.

 

 

 

Week 12: Frog spawn

(Photo of frogs with text about spawning)

Black dots of craft Vilene machine stitched in four layers of sheer fabric.

 

 

 

 

Week 13: Wild daffodils

(Photo of daffodils in woodland)

Contrasting record warmth of March 2012 with record cold of March 2013!My own photo of wild daffodils in Farndale on 27/3/12 transferred onto cotton fabric, then machine stitched with white lines to represent the snow of 27/3/13.

 

 

So that’s a quarter of the year done!

If anyone’s noticed this blog is even quieter than it used to be, that’s because I’m spending more time on FaceBook at the moment. Come over and say hi!