So what was the third type?

Yesterday I was cutting out a paper snowflake - as you do - when I realised that some of the cathedral tiles looked as if they had been designed by cutting folded paper - or whatever paper-like material was available to medieval tile designers. Look at this lot and see if you agree.


So I decided to try it for myself, inspired by the tiles top left.

This is the negative version - not very well stamped, I'm afraid. I realised too late that using green ink on a green stamp is making life difficult for yourself.

One of the results of the paper folding method is that, with only one fold, you end up with a design which is only symmetrical about one axis [to get a bit mathematical] That means that the design can look slightly odd on its own but usually looks better when repeated. If you rotate the layout round a single point, you can get some interesting secondary patterns. This is a much better snowflake than any I produced yesterday, even if it has only got 4 points.

You will have noticed that there hasn't been a lot of embroidery on this blog for a while. I have been working on some postcards and ATCs for a swap but I can't show you those until they have arrived at their destination. I have also been spending a lot of time sorting out my room after Wensleydale finished his DIY in there - which took a little longer than anticipated, partly because somebody changed her mind.

This is my new paper and paint area - now on the opposite side of the room to the sewing section. [The wonky heater is there, in addition to the very effective radiator, for insomniac nights.]

This is some fairly eclectic storage - the shelves were the last minute addition.

This is the unnaturally tidy sewing alcove. The weird white cat is a cover for the machine. And the photographer is, fortunately, obscured by the flash ...

And this is the bit that remains to be tackled. Yes, I have got a lot of books ...

I think it is going to be a big improvement ,and hopefully when I have finished sorting the books I will feel more inspired. I have had some ideas about the stamps - just need to make myself follow them through!

Pondering on tile design

I said yesterday that I had been thinking about the design of all these tile. They seem to me to fall into three main types - with a few exceptions, of course!


There are these sort of heraldic ones, which I don't think I will be trying to reproduce. Not that I don't like them, but they are a bit complicated and I am not sure what I would do with them.








Then there are the geometric ones, which can be reproduced fairly easily with a pair of compasses and a ruler. I have tried out several of these and will probably do more.






Yesterday's effort is one of them - and it was great fun to try out and play around with.

I tried tiling this one in a design programme but the computer appears to have eaten it - or saved it somewhere I didn't intend!

This combination of the positive and negative shapes is more interesting anyway and one of my tiling attempts did get saved where I wanted it.

A lovely Art Deco feel to this one. Not sure how I would embroider it - perhaps more of a background?

Thanks to Jackie for her suggestions on getting Blogger to behave. It still won't let me put gaps everywhere I want them - but it's better.

P.S. - I go away, eat my supper [excellent veggie chilli made by Wensleydale] - and the spaces have miraculously appeared!

No new stamp today

I have made a couple but the glue is still wet so I can't show them to you.

However - I found this amongst my photos from the Cathedral

and that led to this.

I am getting more and more fascinated by these tiles, so you will probably see a few more of them before the month is out. I am beginning to wonder about how they were designed originally, and by whom.

I have a little book on medieval tiles but of course I can't find it - have to do a bit of Googling instead.

I am also realising how much I take for granted that I can go a few miles into the City and visit an 11th century building with art works which span nearly 1000 years - although unfortunately it is no longer free!

And once again Blogger has decided it doesn't want spaces where I want to put them ...

A different s[tyle].

Still working on the tiles - but a different technique today.

Initially I thought I would make a string stamp for this one but then I realised that the lines crossed several times and crossing lines are not a good thing in a string stamp.

So I decided to make a polystyrene stamp instead. Now you can buy the proper stuff for making these stamps, but it is about 70p a piece.

Or you can buy a frozen pizza, enjoy the pizza and get the sheet of polystyrene under it for free. Guess which one I used? Of course it isn't such good quality as the real stuff [I've used both and there is a difference] - but I'm a cheapskate - and it's recycling!

N.B. - I didn't use my good rotary cutter to cut the polystyrene - I have a spare one, in which I put old blades, and keep it for paper and other non-textile stuff . It is carefully marked with nail varnish to prevent unfortunate mistakes. You can cut the polystyrene with scissors but the rotary cutter gives a cleaner cut.

The lines were drawn with a sharp pencil, and I used the wrong end of the paintbrush to make the circular marks. Despite practicing on paper first I didn't quite get the proportions right, so I added a few more small circles.

This is the result - I used a terracotta stamp pad and I think it has the feel of old tiles. This could be worked in line stitches and French knots. or perhaps in gold work.

The inverted scan is really moody. One day I must try stamping some of these designs with Lumiere paint on black fabric and see if it gives a similar result to the inverted colour scan.

Of stones, and stamps, and sealing wax ...*

This week's topic on 'Today's title is ..' is 'The Meeting of Opposites'. Nothing leapt into my mind, so I turned to my rather extensive collection of personal photographs. [Not all of them are of Babybel ...]

The first one that caught my eye was this one, taken from the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth - but I decided it's a bit predictable. And they are all sailing out of the picture which is bad,bad, bad, designwise.

Then I found this one, taken at Brimham Rocks when we were in Yorkshire last spring - although it doesn't look very spring-like, even before I tweaked it a bit.

Initially I just saw the two rather amusing rocks as the opposites - little and large. Then I realised there are other contrasts - the solidity of the rocks silhouetted against the light sky, and their roundness compared with the feathery trees.

So that's the stones in the title of the post.

This is today's stamp -another tile. Rather than try to draw it freehand, I cheated and cut out the photo of the tile, and used temporary spray adhesive to stick it to the fun foam before cutting it out with the craft knife. The curved shapes were not easy to cut and if I did it again I think I would probably use scissors and forego the second stamp.

If you remember the sixties, this design may remind you of this or this . Hard to believe such a modern looking design predates them by about 700 years ...

When I made the single star stamp I liked the way the stamp looked and was disappointed in how it came out - perhaps because I used that thick brown paint.

Because this one was such a b****r to cut I wasn't expecting very much from it and was pleasantly surprised by the way it turned out. I might even use this one as a stamp on fabric.

I can also see it as canvas work or layered sheers.

I made a multiple exposure version of of all the images in the collage above - which made me think it would be interesting stamped with Xpandaprint.

If you are not totally turned off stamps by now, do go and look at A's work on Kitty + Stitch. She has had some much more exciting ideas than mine!

And the sealing wax? OK - I lied for literary effect - there is no sealing wax ...


*With apologies to Lewis Carroll. Did you know Alice is buried in Hampshire? Today's useless bit of information, at no extra charge.

Another lazy woman's stamp ...

an idea from Ruth Issett [I think].



These are foam shapes bought from the Inflated £ shop. [It closed as a pound shop and re-opened under the same management as an all sorts of prices but mostly cheap and cheerful shop.]


I think the shapes are meant to be children's beads - hence the holes. Whatever they are you get a lot of small geometric shapes for your money.



This is my version of the tile you can just see between the blue stars in the image above. I was too lazy to try to copy the circles round the stars - so I just copied the stars. I used the usual card, carpet tape and PVA method to make the stamp.






Because the stars are well spread out I could ink each one with a different colour, and play around with the orientation of the whole stamp. The black examples are my usual inverted colour scans.

The original pink and green version makes me think of embroidered tray cloths - does anyone still use those?

If, like me, you don't fancy lots of satin stitch on a tray cloth, the lighter version suggests shadow work and the darker one foiling - again.

O.K. - so I cheated ...

I started this one - or rather these two - yesterday, because I knew the glue would need time to dry.

I liked the look of this little star, so here are most of the materials to make two fun foam stamps for the price of one - almost.

Two pieces of card, one piece of fun foam, some carpet tape and a pair of compasses, because I got all geometrical.

I drew the star on the fun foam and cut out the pieces with a craft knife. I kept all the pieces because I was making two stamps, a positive and a negative.

Then I covered the card with the carpet tape and stuck down the fun foam. If I'd thought I would have used coloured foam to make the pictures clearer ...

You can use double sided sticky tape, but my friendly local DIY-er had the remnants of a roll of carpet tape he was only too glad to donate as he hates the stuff.

The final step was to paint the stamp with slightly watered down PVA [white] glue. This seals the foam [in theory] and desticks the exposed carpet tape.

I left the stamps to dry overnight and tried them out this afternoon.

I used burnt umber like the clay of the tiles but didn't like it on white so I painted it all over with my favourite colours of Koh-i-Noor and sprinkled it with salt.

This could be applique, if you have more patience with little fiddly bits than I have - or perhaps shadow work.

Or how about silver foil on red hand dyed silk?