Today was contemporary textiles day …

the last one as it happens, because we’ve decided not to go next year.

So of course it was the best one we’ve had.

We were told to take a box, so I took one I've been saving for years, just in case.

Amazing what a bit of spray paint and a flash photo can do – unfortunately it doesn’t quite look like this in real life.

This is just a slip case -

 

 

this is what it looks like inside. [To give you an idea of scale, it originally held two miniatures of Talisker, a present to Wensleydale, though I helped him drink it <g>.]

 

We had to make an ‘environment’ inside, inspired by our choice of poem. Sensible people chose poems with lots of visual imagery, but I chose ‘Remember’ by Christina Rossetti.

Having a gold box, I had only taken gold and black fabric and threads, so I was a bit restricted. And I’d been looking through this book by Rozanne Hawksley before we started, which might have influenced my choice. [The only time I ever cried at an embroidery exhibition, was at Hawksley’s ‘The Seamstress and the Sea’, which we saw some years ago  in Portsmouth, a particularly poignant place to see it.] 

 

But I digress. By the end of today’s session the box looked like this inside.

 

 

I had also tacked this together, to go inside. It was going to be a panel placed on the other layers that are in there already - there are another 3 you can’t see.

But when I got home it folded itself over and told me it was a book.

It will become a book of photos of my parents and grandparents – I have several of those tiny black and white ones they took in the 40s and 50s, which I think will fit quite nicely.

On a much less serious nautical theme, the mermaid’s purse is finished. Note my attempt at set dressing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And another bit of seaside felting – I can’t remember if I showed you this bit of hand needle work.

Tomorrow we’re off to ‘Sea Fever’. All this salt water splashing around. Must be the summer …

Some unsuccessful experiments?

I’m not sure.

This is the Trapunto’d and quilted on to felt piece after it emerged from the washing machine. It is difficult to see in the photo – but it is now very puffy. The fleur-de-lises are about 1” deep – and I only used low loft batting to Trapunto them. So if the experiment was to find out of the process worked – yes it did. i haven’t measured how much the felt shrank, and I'm too lazy to get up and do it, but I'll try to remember to do it tomorrow.

The ‘background’ where there is just the layer of felt under the fabric, and which I seed stitched, has a lovely texture too – the whole thing is very tactile.

But it still looks like a multi-coloured lump …

I also had these in the washing machine – 3 little bits of knitting [I haven’t completely abandoned  brown.]

This was an experiment in felting some  wool i hand dyed ages ago – and didn't like the colour. It felts beautifully though – very soft and with a faint fuzz to it. I’m thinking this could be used in the embellisher – definitely successful – apart from the colour …

I spent the afternoon working on a background with the embellisher, inspired by Sheila Smith’s ‘Embellish, Stitch, Felt.’ [I had to get up to check the title so I measured the multi-coloured lump – out with the calculator – about 25 % shrinkage. No wonder it went so puffy!]

Back to the embellisher. The piece looked best at Step 1 but I forgot to take a photo. it was one of those pieces where everything I did to it made it look worse …

This is step 2.

This is dyed scrim embellished on to felt, stitched and then pieces cut out and rearranged.

 

 

Step 3, In an attempt to cover up the holes left by my inexpert cutting I embellished some scraps of silk and metallic organza on, definitely not an improvement.

 

So – step 4 - I added some glitzy fibres  - which I think cover up some of the sins.

It was so nice before I started mucking about with it …

And here is the final brown image – and probably the final colour image as I've run out of colours.

An image from the Watts Chapel near Guildford. No floor tiles [that i remember, I may be wrong] but lots and lots and lots of inspiration.

I've been experimenting ...

in a strictly non-scientific way.

This is the smaller of the two quilts I ended up making earlier in the week - no stitch on it yet but I have plans.

Nothing has happened to that piece because I got side-tracked by the one below.

A while ago I bought C June Barnes' lovely book 'Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art'. The second section of the book is entitled 'Shrinkage' and covers Barnes' techniques for quilting, followed by shrinking, followed by dyeing.

Well - I have - er - quite a lot of hand-dyed fabric - so I decided to cut out the last stage by using pre-dyed fabric. I fossicked around in the cupboard till I found this not very exciting piece, and free motion quilted it to a piece of felt. [You need wool felt for this, obviously, as the man-made stuff doesn't shrink.]

Because the fabric was already coloured I used coloured thread for the quilting, purple and pale turquoise, and played around with different quilting patterns. And those circles ...

Barnes discourages you from using fancy quilting patterns, as the detail will be lost.

This is the piece pre-washing. The quilting alone produced some distortion.




And this is it after a trip through the washing machine - 'cotton eco' wash, with a load of towels. Not much difference? I thought so at first, but I had taken the precaution of measuring the felt first - and it had shrunk by up to an inch [2.5.cm] on each side. Not evenly of course - this is not the technique to use if you want a flat piece with straight edges ...

Barnes suggests you will get 25 % or more shrinkage - mine was [reaches for calculator] about 8%. But Barnes' felt was 70% wool, 30% viscose. I suspect mine may not be so 'wool rich'.

However - I am not sure I would want more shrinkage - I like the look and feel of what I've got. Wensleydale was a bit underwhelmed - he looked at it and said 'bedspread'...


Here is is with some hand stitch - the rabbit ear is because I haven't finished the overstitching. For some reason, although the purple arrows were easy to do, overstitching the edge was really hard work and at times necessitated that essential embroiderer's tool, a pair of pliers. I think it was the combination of one layer of felt, two layers of tightly woven cotton and a thick thread.

The piece reminds me of those doodles I went mad about a while ago - every section filled in with a different pattern.

In complete contrast - today's red photo is a beautifully flat piece with immaculate embroidery. One of the last events of my C&G course was a display of Chinese ethnic embroidery - and this is an example. Unfortunately I can't tell you which Chinese minority group was responsible - but isn't it lovely?