Basque stitch.....

This is just a quickie this week because I am off to the beautiful island of Cyprus tomorrow, for two weeks Yipee, so I will be playing catch up when I come back.

The moment I saw "Basque" I thought of Jean Borotra the "Bounding Basque" and of the game Pelote the incdedibly fast game which is played against a wall with a sort of scoop shaped basket and a very small ball. So my basque stitch is based on the "basket" complete with flying ball!!!



I like this stitch, at first, I was making it like a detched chain without the twist and then the penny dropped. It does have a sort of folklore look to it a good stitch for building up layers as you can work it both ways.

This is from last year. Can't wait!!!

A bit about me.......

I have been tagged by Gunnel, I feel quite honoured. If you look at her blog and her Flickr you will see some beautiful needlefelting and antique fabric collage.

Well I am supposed to tell you 7 things about myself so here goes.

1. I have been married for nearly 46 years, as you can imagine he is pretty special as are our two children. I blessed with some wonderful friends, they know who they are.

2. I love colour, I have been known to burst into tears if something stikes me as particularly beautiful, eg entering the big marquee at the Chelsea Flower Show for the first time and a wall of Pale purple Wisteria and yellow Roses at the Alhambra Palace in Grenada.



3. I love live theatre, especially musical theatre. I love the works of Stephen Sondheim and Kander and Ebb, Jerry Herman and Maltby and Shire. I like going to the cinema too, next on the "to see" list are Hairspray and Pirates of the Carribean 3.

4. I like music from Billy Joel to Prokofiev but I HATE "background" music in shops and lifts, television, and toilets. What is it about? There are many people who are a little hard of hearing or like myself have mild tinnitus and this constant bombardment is a real irritation. This is one of my two pet hates.

5. I don't like to see push chairs which face forward and create a barrier between the parent and child. It seems to me that a great number of the times you hear children crying in shopping areas is because they are trapped and bored, very often the parents and siblings are walking behind talking and laughing and the child in the push chair is completely excluded. As for the kind that have a sort of parcel shelf for the second child....don't get me started. Did you guess this is my other per hate???



6. I am known to have a soft spot for Johhny Depp, who can blame me?

Courtesy

7. I love all things creative, from photography to embroidery, I like to mess with paint and papers, play with Paint Shop Pro and trying new techniques and searching for that perfect combination which will allow me to create something lasting.

Well that's me, now I am supposed to name seven others. I think most of the seven people will have been tagged many times before and so please do not feel obliged to respond, just take this to be a mark of gratitude of the pleasure I have had from reading your blogs. First of all Sharon B, it was working with her on Encrusted Crazy Quilting course that widened my horizons and of course her inspirational Take a Stitch Tuesday has brought so many of us together.
Purple Missus is generous with her wonderful experiments in combining fabric and paint. Someone who makes me want to reach out and touch her work is Kay Susan her blog is Smockery I have to thank Dot as the little dolls I have made from her design have charmed my friends.Next is Marianne, the bags she had made from her TAST samples would grace any boutique. Margaret is someone else who is generous with her experiments and also shares beautiful photograph. So many more I could and should mention but my last is not "a lady who sews" (but his wife, my best friend does) Tony likes to chip in with the odd comment now and then and I do enjoy reading his blog about his village and his passions(birds and moths) and it makes them feel not so far away.
Thank you Gunnel for giving me this opportunity to say thank you, of course you are on the list too.

All this has made me realise that I must update my links, I have so many people on Bloglines that do not appear here.

Wheel Stitch - week 18

I am going on holiday on Thursday and everything seems to be happening at once, golf games, theatre trips, dentist visits, not to mention lipstick searches. Why is there always so much to do before you go on holiday, my younger brother asked me what was the difference between holidays and being retired. I told him that Holidays are harder work!!!! I have just finished my sample of wheel stitch My first thought was of the inside of a watch or clock and I started looking for images on exactly how they are set. Wandering around I came across the Antikythera Device ,an Ancient Greek "computer" which was found at the beginning of the century. Fascinating stuff. So this is my offering based on the picture from the Nordex site.


I love these textural stitches, especially when you start to pile them on top of each other. I particularly like the pink wheel on the left where I reversed the stitch for a couple of rounds and it made this highly satisfactory machine wheel look.

Elizabeth Arden what have you done.........

Courtesy The Scream
....that's it. I went to day to replace my Elizabeth Arden 8 hour lip salve, colour MELON. To be told, because it is not popular in the EU(European Union) it has been withdrawn. I pointed out that we English Roses have a different skin tone to our undeniably beautiful European cousins but this was received with a sympathetic continental shrug. All other lipsticks go ten shades darker on me, what am I to do, I must become a recluse, I NEED MY LIPSTICK. Why can't these companies warn you when they are about to remove your favourite product, I've never really recovered from the demise of Yardley's English Rose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paintings in Felt.

I just had to pass this one on. I found this link on Heegeldab's blog. Jeanne Roberts who makes pictures out of felt, she share her technique, as well, though the skill involved must take years of practice. I love the flowers but the portraits are just amazing.

Straight stitch

Well, the simplest stitch so far has taken me the longest time to do. I wanted to try and do something with sheer fabrics and stitches under and on top but the everyday world took over this week and I have just rushed to complete it this morning.


I love this simple stitch and the things it can do to lead the eye round a piece etc.

This is cheating but here is an experimental piece I posted earlier this year

.

It was EG yesterday and we had a talk called "Adentures in vanishing fabrics" by a gentleman called Arthur Ridley.
He showed slides of his work and exp0lained the processes and also had loads of pieces to look at. His hats and masks were great fun.

Palestrina stitch

Another new-to-me stitch this week. I like this stich, great opportunities for variation and texture, once I can stop myself lapsing into buttonhole stitch there is a nice rythmn to it.

I had a search to see what I could find on Palestrina, I knew vaguely that it was a town in Italy. My search turned up this picture of the little hill town near Rome with a quaint custom in June. The gentleman below it its most famous son who rejoices in the wonderful name of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina a composer of church music.


This idea didn't quite come off but I wanted to use the yarn my daughter brought me back from Italy(the thick one).

You can learn to love......Oyster stitch

Learning this stitch was about as difficult as trying to open the real thing!

I thought I would show this piece in all its horror. I could not get the hang of this stitch, I ranted and raved at it, pulled it out, pulled it into knot. I was just about to give in, when the penny dropped. You can see on the white lines how I struggled but fared better with the rougher, thicker yarns which gave a very satifying texture.


The inspiration came from this picture from Tony Boon's site which has some great photographs and some fun things too.



One of these days I will try and do it justice.


Congratulations to all those who have managed to produce beautiful samples.

Tuesday

I've just spent a wonderful day in workshop with textile artist Cas Holmes It was part of Kent County Council Arts Development Countywide Migration Project and I was there thanks to the Sevenoaks branch of the EG. We made a mixed media piece where we worked backward, doing the stitching first and then adding the other media. Fascinating and great fun, the theme was journeys either personal or actual. This was my piece after my stitching



In my dreams my Senior Bus pass can take me......

and this is it at the end.


Nowhere near as beautiful as Cas' work but you did get a great taste of all kinds of new possibilities. She was very generous in sharing her techniques. A good day.

Posting delayed because blogger was being awkward with photographs!!!

Now to get to grips with TAST stitch Oyster, another new, to me, one.

In my Easter Bonnet................

......well you knew I wouldn't be able to resist, didn't you. TAST week 14 and another stitch I had never heard of. After a couple of tries where I kept trying to do the bottom bit without putting the needle through the material, daylight dawned and it began to flow. I really like the stitch and will give it a try in some thicker yarn as I can see it has great potential for alteration. But I just had to get this out of my system first.

This is the sketch I did in The Scribbler

Happy Easter everyone.

A gentle art????

Purple Missus,who incidentally has a nice line in things you would like to touch(see below), left a comment on "Just a quickie" which made me laugh and set me thinking. I find when you mention Embroidery to non needle-threaders the usual reaction is a polite, sympathetic smile. Little do they know that so many of us have a desire to slash and burn, amongst our silks and fabrics are to be found soldering irons, hammers, and pliers. In fact you are liable to find your embroidering friend in the aisles of the DIY store eyeing the brass fittings and the washers as possible additions to the latest project. Cling film and vegetable bags fill us with delight and we comb £1 stores and charity shops for items that we can rip apart, stab with our needles, dye or otherwise recycle and transform.


This is a piece I did inspired by an article in Issue 2 of Cloth Paper and Scissors using the afore mentioned cling film (shrink wrap) and plastic vegetable bags.

Soooooo cute.......

My I point you in the direction of my friend Tony's blog I have been smiling over this picture ever since I saw it. Those little legs!!!! Fantastic. Todays picture is quite high on the cuteness scale as well.

Well here we are, one quarter of the way through TAST. What an amazing few weeks it's been. I would like to thank everyone who has left a comment, either here or on Flickr and of course to Sharon for keeping the whole thing going. There are so many wonderful pieces on the Flickr site it is always a joy to take a look, so many lovely uses of colour. We all have our favourite things that "speak" to us but one of the things that draws me to a piece is the feeling that I would love to reach out and touch it and there are many of those as well. New month and the stone for April is a girls best friend. Diamond. Could be an expensive month!!!!

Just a quickie...

Just a quickie for TAST this week, Knotted Cretan, I can see what a great textural stich this would be, lots of movement too.I quickly needle felted a piece of previously dyed scrim and couched it down with the Knotted cretan with a sparkly thread.

Overload

Having one of those busy, busy weeks. You know how you do very little and then everything comes along at once. Highlight so far was going with my daughter to the Kylie exhibition at the V&A. It was great fun, my , she is tiny. I now know the meaning of a handspan waist. The Museum Dress made me smile when I realised that some of the fabric were just the same as those I used to use when making costumes for our local amateur theatre, bits still in my stash. Videos of backstage and on stage added to the fun. Afterwards we strolled through the 17th and 16th century British galleries.Wonderful stumpwork boxes and an unfinished mirror frame with beautiful details like a buttterfly which looked as though it had just landed. Museums are such fun these days, I tried on a ruff, good for hiding crepy neck and holding up double chins and my daughter tried tying a cravat which she decided was a good way to tie a thin scarf. We designed out coat or arms and then went to tea. Good day.

TAST Couching

Some years ago we had a talk at the Embroiderers Guild (unfortunately I can't remember the name of the speaker) which changed my way of looking at portraits. Until that time it had never occurred to me how lovingly the artists had re created the fabrics. Lace, satin, velvet and jewels and more mundane materials were recreated by the artists brush. Since then I have been facscinated by how little dabs of white and grey paint can be a piece of lace or rare pearls. Living near London I am very fortunate, as I have remarked before, to have some wonderful art galleries which are free to pop in and wonder. A little while ago I visited the National Portait Gallery and with my new (Sharon inspired!!) notebook I looked at a postrait I had seen before but this time I tried to capture some of the detail. This is a full size portait of Catherine Parr (the wife who survived Henry VIII) Unfortunately this is a very small image, The detail which fascinated me was the band across the neck of the dress. This is my sketch.(I never said I could draw!)


The thing I couldn't work our was how the circles were made, be carefully looking at the direction of the painted impression of the couching stitches I worked out how the thread must have been laid and this is my impression of a detail of that band.

I used little fly stitches to couch a plaited gold thread.

By the way this is on a piece of duster which I painted and stencilled.

Sara's blog

I bookmarked Sara's blog The Fabric of Meditation some time ago because I liked her work on TAST. She has started a new blog
Little People which has some very good technique videos.

Ups and Downs

Went to the Stitch and Craft Show at Olympia today and I have to say I was a little disappointed. I went with a list of things I needed (well would like to tuck away in my stash) but there were non of the really good mixed media suppliers there so saved some money!!!! The whole day was redeemed though by a piece of work by Jane E Hall. It was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. It was a piece called "Spring" I bought the card but how I would have loved the piece itself a thing of such delicacy. It is all made from hand dyed silk and tiny tiny stitches,it took her 5 months to make, rising a 5.30 in the morning. Beautiful, I will not forget it.

I've never felt like this before.......

Sorry for the pun but I am quite pleased with my efforts. I have just made up (designed?) a pattern for a bag and it worked. I have to say the photographs aren't the best but they will give you the idea. I made two circles in crochet. Sewed them together and put them in the washing machine. I then made a lining and sewed on a button (which I don't like but I wanted to see it worked.)What I like about it is that with the straps on the shoulder it sits nicely under my arm which is how i like to carry my handbag.

Spring is in the air.......

and we have had three beautiful days of warm sunshine. Joy. This weeks TAST is Up and Down Bottonhole stitch, another variation I didn't know. So once again to Sharon's invaluable Stitch Dictionary and an 'Oh! I see!' moment. Then I scribbled a bit but nothing came, so I left it alone to think about and still nothing came, so I thought I would really like to show how the little bar goes across and took some thick knitting yarn with no pattern of thought in mind. It kept reminding me of something and then I realised Stonehenge!!!! So here it is. Vernal Equinox.




Incidentally, along the way, I learned the difference between and Equinox Spring Equinox and a Solstice which I hadn't quite appreciated before. Embroidery is a wonderful thing!

What kind of chain.....................?

This is the first of the challenge stitches which was completely new to me and sent me flying to Sharon's Dictionary of Stitches. Well you don't know what you are going to get if you put Barred Chain into a search engine!!!! Well it sounded a bit sado-thingy,... you know! when I started to try it out I thought it was. I have never shed so much blood.
I have not even bothered to scan my sketch because it was just a little wobbly squiggle! I really didn't know what I was going to do with it and I thought I would look up the definition of barred to see if that helped and I came across a reference to a barred spiral galaxy on Wikipedia showing a photograph from the wonderful Hubble Telescope (if you've never visited take a look at the gallery, just breathtaking).
Anyway here is my barred spiral galaxy using barred chain which I have now learnt to love.


Click to get closer. I have posted a photo and a scan as the true colour is somewhere between them both. Aquamarine being the jewel for March, as I think I have mentioned.The material is the remainder of the material I dyed for the EG workshop, the centre of each spiral is a machine made cord and then all the rest is barred chain.I was trying to give the effect of pieces being drwn into the spiral. The scan (at the bottom) looks badly ironed but it is in fact the shadows in the dye.

Still dusting.........

Those who know me will fall about laughing at the idea!!

What I mean is that I am still finding things to make and do with my packet of cheap dusters.


No not a postcard





a new needle book! I quite like the accidental background too. I had fogotten that I had put polythene on my work table when I has using my heat gun!

Moon watch

We had a splendid evening yesterday. The was a total eclipse of the moon. Usually when there is anything of interest going on in the heavens we have thick cloud cover so that it all goes on unseen but yesterday evening was crystal clear. When the cover was complete the moon looked like a perfect pink pearl, a truly beautful sight.
When it comes to spectacular you can't beat nature. We shared the moment(on the telephone) with my son and daughter which made it even more special. My friend down at St Margarets at Cliffe near Dover took some amazing pictures.
I am not that gifted photographically speaking so here
are the hellebores in my garden, we just have this one little clump, if the garden were bigger I would love a whole corner filled with them.



Actually it made me think that Tony might be able to help with my glitter photography problem. Thanks to all who have sympathised with the problem.(Do I mean empathised?)

Boots the Chemist .............

Sales of headache cures at Boots the Chemist at Bluewater must be down as they have now started to play "music". They have always had the odd bit in the cosmetic bit at the front but you could always dash past that. Now it is everywhere and loud! I pointed out that anyone with a sensitive complaint would find it very difficult to talk to the pharmacist quietly, without broadcasting it to the rest of the shop.
What is this obession with shops to play very bad music? If it is supposed to boost sales, as far as I am concerned, it is a dismal failure and the only thing it boosts is my blood pressure.

TAST Cross stitch.

Weatherwise yesterday was miserable, grey and rain real February stuff. I knew what I wanted to do,I had seen a picture of a piece of amethyst and wanted to make a very textured piece. I love free cross stitch because you can build up such texture. Having said all that I am not satisfied with what turned out but it will have to do. One of the problems is that no matter how I photograph it I cannot get the metallic threads to show. The white band had an irridescent thread in it and the "amethysts" have lots of sparkle in them. Ah well another lesson learned!



Don't know whether I am going to stick with this jewel colour theme. The idea was to make me work with colours I wouldn't usually use but I find I have a tendancy to get hooked into the whole "jewel" thing and can't think outside it. Aquamarine is next for March, gorgeous colour, so we shall see.

EG workshop

Saturday was a workshop at the Embroiderers Guild with Lilian Harris. We could choose from several prety little bag patterns, I chose this little cone. At times because you were turning it back and forth from the inside and the outside it all became very confusing and you just had to take Lilian's reassurance that it would turn out alright. I suddenly found that rhyme about Hiawatha, I think it was a pop song way back, repreating in my brain. I couldn't remember exactly how it went so I searched until I found this.
From Wikepedia.Over time, this has been transformed into an elaborated version, sometimes attributed to Strong and sometimes (as in Carolyn Wells' A Nonsense Anthology) to "Anonymous:"

He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside;
He to get the cold side outside
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That's why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.

It was a good intensive workshop, I will try to make another one sometime without quite so many mistakes in it.

Namelians...........

The things you find when you are doing the TAST rounds.
This came via a long trail of links, originally from Dotee's blog
and then back through various blogs to Jo who had the step by step back to Steve's blog, who I think started it.
Well I just had to have a go!!! This is "Take me to your leader".

Coram Boy

I was fortunate to go and watch Coram Boy at the National Theatre. I was not sure I was going to like it, I did not realise that I was going to have one of the most absorbing and moving theatrical experiences of my life. I would love to have seen it again, unfortunately it finished this evening, but I will never forget it.

The picture has nothing to do with the piece, it's just a piece of my digital collage.

Flight of fancy.....

....sorry couldn't resist. Fly stitch week 8 of TAST.
as you can see I was tempted to sycamore seeds and snowflakes but somewhere along the line they gave way to a bird, a dove in fact. I used The Scribbler to make my sketch.

My first intention was to fill it in completety but then I quite like the suggestion of plumage, it is all in fly stitch apart from the bead of the eye.

Having looked at it on the page I may try a photograph tomorrow though the close up is OK.

That reminds me...

Dy of Random Applique posted a picture of crystals growing in a beautiful blue jar. I reminded me of a silly experiment I did some time back where I made a "bag" out of the inside of a kitchen roll.


The body of the bag was made of shrunken shopping bag plastic sandwiched in between
organza, beaded and then covered with net and more sequins and beads.


A bit of nonsense.

More duster

This is another piece of cheap duster (see below) I have called this one April showers. I needle felted a little bit of silk for the clouds and machine and hand stitched the "rain". The flowers are cotton lace which I painted.

Feathers into heather.

I was really hoping feather stitch would turn up in March,(aquamarine in the jewel of the month) as it does make lovely seaweed!!! However here we are in February which is amethyst. In anticipation of amethyst I had made a piece of glue gun jewel intending to use it as a background and my first thought was to do ostritch feathers, something really OTT but I just couldn't get it to have the softness I wanted and it just looked more like fern. So fern's it would have to be and then the heather started to grow. So here we are.

8p dusters

This is the packet of dusters I bought for 99p(about $2 I think),see bird below.
These are some dyed pieces using silk dyes.



and this is a cover for my notebook, (Yes, I now have a notebook, more of a scribble book really but it's a start)
I can take no credit of the lovely shading on these, that came from a piece of rainbow dyed sheer fabric I have been hoarding.




It was really an excercise for me to practice "vermicelli" stitch on the machine. It is getting better but there are still a lot of those nasty little pointy bits.

Happy Birthday

Well here we are one year on. I followed what I believe is a tradition and looked back to the beginning. It has been an amazing year and I have come across many people who have inspired and excited my interest and led me off into new worlds. I feel all the sites in the side bar have given me some way of improving. My "Woman of the Year" has to be Sharon Boggon who has taught me so much through her Encrusted CQ class and through her blog In a Minute Ago.It is a delight to be part of Take a Stitch Tuesday.

My main interests at the moment seem to be needle based, when I started my blog Altered Books were my main focus and looking back has made me want to do some more. I particularly would like to try and combine the needle arts with the paper arts.

There are so many people who are so generous with their time and talents. As my birthday present I would like to share two I have recently "met". The first one is Dotee who has written a tutorial for a little frienship doll. I made this one and it has already gone to a very special friend.


The second link is where I made my birthday "card". ZEfrank has all kinds of interactive "toys" on his site this is my favourite "The Scribbler". I am so excited by it as I feel it has great potential as a design tool for someone like me who does not draw very well. (I am practising!!!)

So there we are, off into another year. My thanks to anyone who has visited and for
all the kind and encouraging comments a special gratitude.