Embroiderers Guild Lincolnshire

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Yesterday I went along for the first time to the Lincolnshire Branch of the Embroiderers Guild which meets at Bishop Grosseteste College (known to its friends as Bishop Grot!). It was a bit nerve wracking to start with as I didn't know anybody but the ladies made me very welcome and I had a great day.

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The guest speaker was Lis Mann, who is described as a multimedia artist and tutor, and she introduced us to her work via the story of her journey through life and creativity so far. Lis had come to the UK from Austria as a refugee from the Second World War and it was fascinating to hear how her early life had influenced, not always on a conscious level, her journey.


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Lis works with layers of fabric and stitch, building up rich surfaces and sometimes incorporating found objects and wrapped wood. Her work is constantly evolving so I don't think you could ever pigeonhole her.


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If you click on the image above you can see the beautiful texture of the surface and the addition of paint inn places to unify areas.

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During the afternoon Lis led us in a mini workshop during which we worked on small samples experimenting with layering fabrics, stamping and stencilling and stitching. The photo shows Lis's own samples and there is a great variety of colour and texture. These small pieces could be used as they are to make bookcovers, boxes even brooches or they could be combined together to make larger pieces of work. The only limitation is your imagination as there is no right or wrong way of working with these methods. I hadn't taken any materials or sewing kit with me so I had to rely on the generosity of the members to be able to join in. My little piece is in its infancy so I will show you when I get a bit more work done on it.

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This way of working on small pieces is a great way to be able to do a little stitching when you have a few spare minutes and I am definitely going to make up a small kit to take with me on holiday to while away any travelling delays.

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Unfortunately my hands are just getting worse to the point where sewing hurts and everyday tasks are becoming difficult so I am going to take a bit of a blogging break to see if that helps. Maybe it will give me time to catch up on some of those books I've bought recently! See you in a few weeks (I'll probably still be looking in at your blogs but I may not comment so much for a while).

Another Little Quilt Swap

I don't know how I've managed it, other than by plain stubbornness, but I've actually completed my quilt for Another Little Quilt Swap. I've called it "Meander" after the stitch detail I have put through the quilt and the meander of the appliqued squares.

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Note: The hanger is not part of the quilt
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I wrote about the design of the quilt here and since Saturday I have stitched a meander design through the quilt in a red metallic thread and then quilted the remainder. Finally I added some gold feather stamps to lift one or two areas. The backing fabric is this traydyed cotton and I have used it for the binding too.

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This quilt has been a considerable challenge and I have really enjoyed it. I wanted to make a wholecloth and explore printing and stamping and I have let the cloth lead me most of the way. It has been fun experimenting and I have also got a Journal quilt for June and several pieces of stamped fabric to play some more with. Yay! One small problem, I've been doing so much sewing I think I've got RSI! My thumbs and fingers are giving me jip! I think some rest is called for!

Circles

The post today has brought me my 3 Circles ATC cards from the latest swap at MixedMediaUK_ATC group on Yahoo. I can't remember whether I have already shown the ones I made so here they are:

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I used my own sun-resist painted cotton and free-machined circles in a variegated thread and added beads and buttons.
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The very pretty ATC above is from Pat and joins several other of her beautiful pieces of work in my collection.

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This intriguing ATC with faces came from Maureen.
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And finally Becky, who organised the swap, sent me this exciting interpretation of the theme. The background is collaged with textured papers and I love the metallic thread woven circle. Thank you ladies for your lovely work. :-)

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Also in the post recently were two items that were long awaited and couldn't be resisted!

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Lynda Monk and Carol McFee's inspiring first book and Maggie Grey's latest book Stitches Straps & Layers, which was published on the same day. Both books are a credit to the d4daisy team and are lavishly illustrated with very tempting photographs. The internet is wonderful but you can't beat holding a colourful and imaginative book and taking your time to soak it all in! I've got my eye on several projects from both books when I've caught up on my current projects.

Another Little Quilt Swap

This is the first of a two part post today as Picasa will only load photos from one location at a time :( ~

Yesterday we had our monthly playday which is supposed to be a painting based playday but for me it is increasingly becoming a textile playday. I had decided to try and progress my ALQS quilt on with a view to getting it finished in the next day or two. I spent a lot of time deciding on the fabrics I wanted to add to the base fabric and then on their arrangement and I have to thank my friends for their input which influenced the final arrangement (thanks Ann!).

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I think the colours I am working with are particularly difficult to get right on a monitor but you will get the general idea. The smallest squares have some gorgeous little patches of metallic paint on which catch the light. (I've just had a look at the enlarged pic and it is much too blue, there is more purple throughout and the lightest squares are a gorgeous blue/red organza. Doh!)

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The backing and wadding are now in place and I have to decide on my quilting stitch. I think I'm about there so fingers crossed for a clear day tomorrow to get it finished, well at least ready for the binding. Here's a question - dark binding or light coloured? I favour a dark binding. I don't feel I can use the same fabric as the base althugh it may just work!
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Today we took a leaf out of Angela's book and went to Easton Walled Garden which is just a few miles away to enjoy their Sweet Pea Week. The gardens were at their peak I would say and we spent a few lovely hours among beautiful flowers - photos to follow below.

Easton Walled Garden

Easton Walled Garden is close to the A1 between Stamford and Grantham and as you might expect there is plenty of ammunition for the camera!

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I can't resist making collages of photos and you can see there were plenty of design and texture ideas at the gardens. (Also a collage is a lazy way of loading lots of photos! lol)

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The main house at Easton was demolished in the 1950's after being damaged during wartime requisitioning but some of the ancillary buildings remain and provide a beautiful backdrop to the gardens. You should be able to click on the collage to get a clearer view of the gardens. I love the rust structure at the top which is a feature in the gardens. The wild flowers in the top left are planted in small areas under trees and I think this idea would transfer really easily to a small garden. The patch was no more than 3 feet square so you don't need much space for a wildflower area at home.


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If you're ever passing along the A1 it's worth checking Easton's opening hours and calling in. It's beautiful at any time of the year. ( No affiliation).

Dyeing Day

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Have you noticed how, when people say they won't be blogging much they keep popping up with posts? Hmmmmm! Well, I thought I would share with you what I was up to in the heat yesterday. It won't take you anything to guess that I was dyeing and I had a great time! I used just two colours in Procion Dyes, turquoise and magenta, and used a selection of fabrics including some muslin and scrim which I haven't photographed and a selection of yarns.

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In the tray above I folded cotton in half and then folded it into triangles and secured it with strong pegs. The centre parcel is cotton, again folded in half longways and then folded backwards and forwards (concertina'd) around foam letters and numbers (the sort you buy in the supermarket for children to play with. I got mine in Sainsburys). I secured this parcel together with white perle so that would dye too. The final piece of cloth in the tray is cotton pleated and then folded in thirds. All three pieces of fabric were soaked in water and wrung out before I started.
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Once all the fabric was prepared I used droppers to apply the dyes and carefully turned the wrapped fabrics round to make sure all sides were wet. I left all the fabrics to sit in the dye for about half an hour and then carefully dribbled salt water over and tipped the tray up so that the fabrics sat in the salt a bit (very scientific!). ~
I think I left the fabrics for another hour and then poured the soda solution on and left everything to batch for a total of about 6 hours. I had dyed a piece of silk but took that out after about 3 hours and unfortunately the result with that is very pale.
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So here are the results:




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This is the pegged piece. I was a bit surprised by the quality of the white marks but I like the effect.

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This piece I really love, you can make out the shape of some of the letters and you may be able to see the lines of the perle in places if you click on the photo.
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This is the folded traydyed piece and I'm hoping there's enough to make the backing for the Another Little Art Quilt Swap.
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I also did some sun resist dyeing too and I'll post that below.

Dyeing Day 2

Well not so much dyeing as painting! As the sun was so strong and the temperatures so high yesterday I thought it was an ideal time to get a quick result from sun dyeing.

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The first step was to dampen and then paint with silk paints a piece of linen and a piece of habotai silk. I used some droppers to sprinkle the paint on for this too. I had already gathered some plant material and broken up a metal butterfly necklace and quickly placed these on the fabrics (which were sitting on waxed paper on a board). I then carfeully took the board out into the garden and left it in full sun. The temptation is to fiddle with the masks to see what's happening but it's best to go and do something else and forget about it for a while.

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The fabrics did start to dry very quickly and you can see some of the plants shrivelling up as they dried out and starting to reveal the light areas beneath. Once I was sure the fabric was completely dry I removed the masks and this is what I found:

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This is the linen which had lavender, geranium leaves and geranium flowers placed on it.

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This is the beautiful silk which had the butterflies, lavender and geranium leaves on it and some geranium seedheads. I am so pleased with this piece. Both pieces just need to be ironed to heat set the paints.

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It's great fun making your own designs in this way. I don't think you actually need the sun to get a result, just paint your fabric and put your chosen items on it while the paint is wet. I have tried it will solid shapes and soft shapes and you get some lovely effects. I haven't tried it on paper yet but I suspect the effect might be different. I've got some more ideas for resists but I may have to wait a few days for the sun to come back as we are promised rain for the next few days. Thank goodness! I don't do well in the heat.

PS If you click on the 'sunprinting' label it will bring up the sunprinting I did last year.

FME Workshop

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What a great day I had yesterday! As planned I toddled off to Peterborough to take a Free Machine Embroidery Workshop with Gina at Art & Stitch. Angela who owns Art & Stitch very kindly sent her DH to pick me up at the station as I travelled down by train and, blissfully, the studio is air-conditioned so we were wonderfully cool all day inspite of the raging (for the UK) temperatures outside.
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Since a lot of the class were relative novices Gina started us off very simply with some genreal free machining of basic patterns. Just remember to relax your shoulders and breathe!
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Sorry, I used a pale-ish thread so it doesn't show up too well here but I did feel that I was learning a bit more about controlling the speed of the machine and the movement of the cloth under the needle. It's surprising how long it takes to do these small samples when you're not used to this activity.
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Our next task was to take a couple of fresh leaves (Gina had made a foray into the undergrowth to pick some ivy for us) and layer them - base fabric, bondaweb film (no backing paper), leaves, bondaweb film and a sheer. After we had ironed to seal the bondaweb the fabric was laid onto a piece of calico and free machined. We used granite stitch ( tiny overlapping circles, or spiky triangles most of the time in my case) in the spaces around the leaves and stitched round the edge and up the leaf veins in straight stitch. Unfortunately my machine decided it was going to have a few grumps so I didn't get this finished but I'll come back to this piece in a minute cos I've loaded the pics out of sequence.

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The next task was to take soluble fabric (Avalon in my case), lay it across your hoop, cut snippets of fabrics on top and cover with a top layer of soluble. The sandwich was then hooped and free machined in any pattern you wish. You could also put a sheer over the snippets if you wished. I was decidely unadventurous and machined grids to hold everything together. You need to make sure that the stitches all cross each other so that it doesn't fall apart when you wash away the stabiliser.

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I did manage to FME a little flower and could have done a lot more had there been more time but by now I was seriously flagging and had had several battles to get the machine to stitch.
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In case you don't know her, Gina is seated at the sewing machine in the top photo. I've asked Angela to order me one of those storage boxes in the photo, they look ideal for keeping unruly spools of thread in line! Not sure who they are made by?

Free Machining Workshop Results

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It doesn't look a lot but this, along with the first practice piece, is the results of my learning yesterday. As you can see I didn't get the leaves finished, mostly because my machine wasn't happy and I've got a few rogue threads but I was getting there. The little flower and the grid all stayed in one piece once the soluble was rinsed off. You could if you wished paint the leaves before stitching and you could also use a metallic thread which would be lovely.

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Gina showed us another technique using felt and cutout shapes but we didn't have time to try this. The principle is to decide on a strong design, fold over a piece of felt and stitch along the edge of the shapes, remembering to take account of the crossovers. The edge is built up by layering straight stitch and narrow and a wider zigzag so that it looks more like a corded edge. You then cutout the negative areas as you wish, which you can see in the pic below. Once the edge of the trees has been defined the cutout shape is placed on a further piece of felt and the spaces are filled with granite stitch (which you can see in the photo above).

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Below you can see a selection of the work some of the ladies produced. The butterfly was particularly beautiful and the lady had even had time to attach a few beads.

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Gina is a very generous lady, both with her expertise and her willingness to share. She was happy for me to include as much detail of her methods on here as I wish so thank you Gina for an enjoyable day. I am going back in October for another workshop on Free Machine Textures so I must get practising and sort out why my machine kept playing up yesterday. I changed the needle and rethreaded several times and had cleaned the machine so it was maybe one of those things.