Radio and Television

A quick post to pass on a couple of snippets. Did you hear Woman's Hour this morning? Jenni Murray was interviewing Louise Gardiner and Lynne Setterington about contemporary embroidery. During the interview, Louise did a machined sketch of Jenni (doesn't work too well on radio!) - they promised to put a photo on their webpage but no sign of it yet. Click here for more details and here to listen to the programme - it will be available for 7 days. You may already have heard about the tv series Talking Threads starting next Wednesday evening, profiling various textile artists. If not, click here for details. It is available on Sky channel 171 and also online. One of the featured artists will be Fay Maxwell - see my last post about her workshop.

And finally, a bit more progress on the cushion cover.

Cogitation - Finished

I think.


I have left it running so I can see if anything doesn't look right. Over the last week, I have added lots of random straight stitching to the top cogs to add more texture and couched down some wire to create the missing focal point. When I am sure, I will make another film and put some notes on my website - meanwhile, I am planning my trip to Alexandra Palace for the Knitting & Stitching show on Saturday.

Oh no - I started another project...

...but it's so much fun. Last Saturday my branch of the Embroiderers' Guild held a workshop with Fay Maxwell on "Crewel and Unusual". This is Fay's take on traditional crewel work, using dyed blanket felt and tapestry wool on silk to make cushions. This is as far as I got, always a slow worker. When all the decorative stitching on the felt has been done, the background is going to be quilted using kantha stitching. The design wasn't preplanned - Fay got us all cutting simple shapes straight from the fabric. As it is all by hand, I am hoping to work on it while I am hanging around at my daughters' gym/dance lessons. Except that I am partway through some knitting...

More Work on 'Cogitation'

I give in - it started out as a pun but it has stuck in my head as the name for this piece so I am making it official.

I have added some more colour to the background shapes and linked them by stitching across water soluble fabric. Dissolving the fabric in situ left enough adhesive to keep it all stuck to the metal and I brushed some of the colour off the cogs into the spaces. (Click on the pictures to make them larger). The overall size is a little over A3.

The next picture shows how the clock movements have been fitted to the back and I have also added battens top and bottom so it can either stand on a table or be wall-mounted (still dithering). I put felt onto the battens to stop it from scratching my table while I work on it.

In my last post I mentioned I had tried placing lutradur shapes as the moving parts to replace the original idea. I made a second set of cogs, this time with the lutradur backed by craft vilene as they need to be more solid. I used the same paints and stitching and heated the pieces to break up the top layer and make it look a bit like metal wearing and flaking. My idea is that this is a very old piece of machinery that is just slowly running until it finally dies, achieving nothing; the cogs still working have worn through less than the ones that have stopped, but bits have broken off over time.

On a more cheerful note, this is the paper left behind after spraying the shapes - definitely keeping this for future use.

The short video further down this post shows how the pieces move using the minute hands of the clocks - I used time-lapse photography to take pictures over the course of just over an hour to show a complete cycle greatly speeded up; in real life you need to look twice to see that they are moving at all. (If this sounds very high-tech here's how I set it up

- note the children's videos and coffee table, a vital part of any photographic studio.) The reason for the flickering is that the daylight kept coming and going.

Looking at this, I can see that there is no focal point yet - I like the way that three of the cogs converge and separate so I am thinking I could make that meeting point the focus - nothing has been permanently fixed in place, except the clock movements, so I can make adjustments to the cog positions and how they rotate by changing where they are attached. The moving pieces need more definition so the next step may be to add handstitching for texture.

Progress on Cogs

Coming back to this after the summer break and taking a fresh look. At summer school, we discussed ideas for backgrounds and also whether it needs to be wall-mounted or could stand on a table top. In particular, how to bring in stitching as an integral part. I messed around with threads and soluble fabrics but nothing seemed right so I tried using lutradur.

I machined lots of overlapping lines in gold thread on a piece of lutradur 70 coloured it, zapped with a heat gun then added more layers of paint before cutting out cog shapes. The picture above shows the front and back of these shapes so you can see the colour difference. I decided I liked this effect so I tried adding the mock-ups of the moving shapes...

... and didn't like it at all. Maybe a different arrangement?


Maybe not. It is all a bit too solid compared to the background. In a last effort before packing up for the day, I grabbed some of the cog-shaped off-cuts of treated lutradur and put them on as the moving parts - they looked pretty good but I forgot to take a picture. So I am going to colour and stitch some more cogs and break them into pieces, so that the top layer becomes fragments, and will see how that looks. I have pretty much decided that I will make this piece to stand on a table and be seen from above, and have attached battens to the back for it to rest on. It could be adapted for wall-hanging but it is rather heavy.

Cleaning the upstairs rooms may have to wait a few more days while I get this sorted.

August Stitch Explorer - Pattern Darning

This month's challenge was to explore pattern darning. I had a go using net backed with cotton to give a hexagonal grid to work on and changed the scale and direction. Have look at the flickr group here to see what other people have done.

What is it with cats and quilts?

I guess it serves me right for using a fish design.

I decided it was high time I picked up this quilt again as my summer project having started it in May of last year (see here for previous posts explaining how one quilt turned into two). I find patchwork and quilting work well in school holidays. As long as I have done all the planning beforehand, I can work in little bits without losing the thread. I finished the piecing last week and I am quilting with digitised patterns of fish scales, waves and little fishes.

Quilts 4 London

I just came across this so I thought I would share it with you. It is a project to make small quilted pennants (based on A3 size) to give as gifts to the participants in the 2012 Olympics in London. Go to http://www.quilts4london.org.uk/ for more info.

August ATC - Sea and Sand

A quick post to show my ATC for the August Facebook swop on the theme of summertime. Wool tops felted on the embellisher with a little bit of stitching added. The organiser, Sue, has started a blog called Crafters Corner where you can see all the ATCs in this swop group.

Catching Up (2) - July ATCs

For the July swap at ATC Swap UK on Facebook the theme was It's a Man Thing. After some dithering, I came up with the idea of a circuit board which I stitched on baize.

Catching Up (1)

It has been two weeks now since we got back from our holiday and I still feel as if I am just catching up. I keep writing blog entries in my head but not getting to the computer for one reason or another, and they have rather mounted up, so I am having a bit of a catch up session and will try and do a series of short posts today.

Firstly an apology - I read quite a few blogs and normally comment fairly often, but I have just had a mega-catch up reading session and haven't left any comments, and now I feel a bit guilty. So if my friends are reading this (and particularly fellow students), I'm still interested in seeing what you are up to and keep up the good work.

Holiday was two weeks in Spain staying with friends who have retired and moved over there. Lots of sun, sand and swimming with the kids. We did sneak in a bit of culture by taking the train for a day in Valencia but discovered it takes a longer than you think to walk everywhere when the temperature is over 30 degrees. We also got caught out by the siesta - we hadn't realised that absolutely everything closes for the afternoon, not just shops but museums, cafes and bars. Even the traffic and pedestrians disappeared. We have got so used to the 24 hour culture that I couldn't imagine a city in the UK being that quiet. Anyway - some pics (in the wrong order because I forgot to reverse them - bother).

Above - parts of the City of Arts and Science in Valencia. I love the stark white architecture in bright sunlight. The arts centre was closed and deserted for the summer, but we had a good time at the aquarium. The children especially enjoyed the tunnel with sharks swimming overhead.

Below - the station at Valencia and vaulted ceiling in the merchant's hall.

And finally - some rather nice metalwork on a shop front.

ATCs From June Swop

I love getting things throught the post - on Friday this delightful pair arrived from the June ATC swop on Facebook. I am scratching my head for July on the theme of "It's a Man Thing" at the moment.

Summer School

Finally sorted out the pictures from Urchfont. As usual, my head is spinning from all the ideas. We had a two day workshop with Janet Edmonds working in 3d and a morning with Sian using solubles. I spent a lot of time experimenting with samples so I have ideas I can use later but no finished piece to show you. Here are some fancy close-up shots of the paper design based on -guess what - cogs.

Off to Summer School

I don't seem to have made much progress on the module in the last few weeks, but my excuse is the sun is shining and we have to take advantage while we can - who knows how long the glorious weather will last. I have got as far as fitting the clock movements to the sheet of copper, but am being hopelessly indecisive about what to do next.

Never mind, I am all packed and ready for the Distant Stitch summer school at Urchfont Manor College starting on Sunday evening - two 1/2 days and evenings focusing on textiles hurrah! - and expect to come back fully enthused. I am going to get there about lunchtime on Suday to have a look around the Open Day and exhibition which I can recommend as a day out to anyone in the area. The college is in an old manor house set in its own grounds in a pretty village near Devizes, Wiltshire, and is a lovely place to visit on a summer's day. The Open Day is from 10am to 3pm.

If anyone is going and wants to meet up, drop me an email.

ATC swap for June

Here are two ATCs made for a Facebook swop on the theme of 'things with wings'. I digitised a drawing of a dragonfly and stitched it out in different ways. The one on the left is scrumpled tissue on pelmet vilene painted with layers of Moonshadow mist. On the right is hand-dyed fabric topped with silk paper and then stitched.

More Module 3 Chapter 8

Experimenting with various way of edging fabric, starting with a batch using fraying. From the top we have

1) edge cut at 45 degrees and frayed on left, threads withdrawn on right with running stitch added.

2) horizontal threads withdrawn part way up the fabric, machining over vertical threads into bars, fabric folded and twisted to leave machined bars at the edge.

3) bottom edge frayed for about 2 inches then folded to the back and the frayed ends pulled through and stitched down in bunches.

4) bottom edge frayed as before and threads withdrawn further up. Folded back and machine stitched to make a hem with the area of withdrawn threads at the edge and the loose frayed ends hanging behind. A strip of dyed scrim is slotted through the loops.

Stitch explorer - A Bit More Needleweaving

A little sample for the May challenge, trying out weaving without withdrawing any threads.

Edges for Cog Design

Another good afternoon for getting work done today. I decided to pick up the design work for the assessment piece again now I have moved on a bit in module 3 - I am trying to balance the two. The cardboard model I made here has been sitting on the sideboard all this time and each time I walk past I have been thinking about how to make the cogs. Today I sat down with various bits and the kitchen scales and decided that the best option will be to replicate the card versions in pelmet vilene with paint and metallic stitching. I had hoped to use metal shim but found the various pieces were either too floppy or too heavy to work properly (now you understand about the scales). I retrieved the copper sheet from the garden where it has been quietly sitting getting distressed (and we all know how that feels) and took a photo of the card cogs in place.


I set myelf the task of coming up with a series of ideas for the edges of the metal and also to think about the background in case I do not want to use the ideas from my earlier post. I figured the easiest way to do this was to print out lots of copies of the photo, stick them in my sketchbook and doodle away. I came up with the 6 possibilities below before running out of time. This project is the first time I have put my notes directly into a bound book and I think it is doing me good as I can't just bin or hide the ones I don't like, and it is much harder to tear out pages.

Now to sleep on them over the weekend.

Module 3, Chapter 8

Investigating edges - for this exercise, I have taken strips from this fabric and come up with some alternative edge designs, based on what is on the strip.

1) Felt tip and pastels. I enjoyed drawing this but then realised I had created a new repeating pattern rather than an edge.

2) Coloured pencils
3) Brusho ink and koh-i-noor dyes.

4) Felt tips and pastels. Not sure if these are pea-pods or teeth.

Stitch Explorer - May

I have slipped behind with the stitch explorer challenge on Pintangle, but as June is going to be a catch up month, it should sort itself out. May's challenge is needleweaving so while I think about it, here is one I made earlier for the City and Guilds Part 1. It is made in three layers and is a picture of snakes in a tree.