I hope I didn't give the impression

in yesterday's post that I was setting myself up as some sort of design expert - quite the opposite! It is because I am not very good at design that I committed myself publicly to exploring ideas in the blog - I hope that will make me do it!

So here is the first effort. It started with a scan of my tracing of the pebble outlines - with added paw prints, after Quality Control inspected it. I was going to weave it through some pink card, but decided it was a bit bland. After I coloured some of the pebbles in with a variety of grey pencils - [some water soluble, some not] - I decided I liked it too much to cut it up.That is the image top right [although it isn't as pink as it looks in the scan].

As usual, I scanned it as a grey scale image [top left], a black and white image [bottom left] and a negative [bottom right].

My first reaction was that it could be shadow work - the sort where you put scraps of coloured fabric behind the sheer, although the herringbone stitch one might work as well. The negative version made me wonder - 'What if I tried shadow work with a dark background and sheer, and light fabric scraps?' I've never seen any like that, but it might work. Alternatively I could try a light sheer, like net.


The black and white scan could be black work - I must try and find some time to experiment!

And speaking of pebbles - enjoy! Hannah Frew Patterson was one of the embroiderers we were encouraged to include in our C&G history of embroidery - but of course I couldn't find many details about her then ... I found this looking for the work of Jennifer Rochester who I knew had used pebbles as inspiration. The gallery page is well worth looking at too.

Life's a beach - but sometimes insomnia can be quite productive.

It was one of those sleepless nights, and as I lay listening to Wensleydale's gentle snores I began thinking about the daily photo. What is the point? I load up the photo, make a few vague comments about it, probably bore the pants off you all - and forget about it.

I was also aware that I haven't done anything in my sketchbook this year - not even stick in a few postcards. So I decided to modify the daily photo process a bit - show you a photo and then explore some design ideas from it, and post some images over the next few days. This may do nothing for you, gentle reader, but should encourage me to play around with design. [I need to get into my head that exploring design ideas can be an end in itself and doesn't have to lead to an actual embroidery.]

So here is the first photo of the new regime - although I don't promise to do this all the time.

This is another photo I took on the beach at Towyn. I was preparing for the C&G Part 1 wall hanging, which had to include manipulated fabric - so I was looking at texture. Hence this exciting photo of pebbles.

My first idea was to trace the pebble outlines.

When I looked at the tracing I realised that the smaller pebbles are concentrated in the centre of the the image, something I hadn't noticed in the photo. I haven't really thought about how I might use that in an embroidery, and as I have said before I need to get away from the idea that I must use the whole image - but I do like the diagonal movement I can now see. Comments / suggestions gratefully

accepted!

I also traced a group of pebbles. I have several ideas about this which I am working on today - and hope to post about tomorrow.

And so, as the sun sinks slowly in the west

we bid farewell to the Hillier gardens. Wensleydale didn't think this would work as I was shooting straight into the sun, but I'm glad to say it did.

Mmmm - I shall have to think about something new for tomorrow. I could revert to the seaside, I suppose - or show you a few photos from India. I have a lot of photos from India...

Reverting to textiles - this is bag number 2. The panels came from a quilt design by Marinda Stewart but I can't find it on the web, so can't provide a link. The panel fabric is my own hand dye with some furnishing fabric for the rest of the bag and some of mum's acres of lining fabric inside.

You may be wondering

whether any embroidery has been taking place chez Cheese recently. The answer is 'No'. There has been a fair amount of stash sorting and some sewing and knitting - but very little embroidery.

I mentioned my new method of storing fabric in an earlier post. This is the result - a [relatively] neat and tidy stash cupboard. It may not look tidy to you - but believe me compared to what it was like before ....

There are other stash cupboards by the way - this is just the fabric one. Apart from the lining fabric which has a suitcase to itself. Why do I have so much lining fabric when I don't do dress making? It was inherited from my mother. Why did she have so much? Heaven knows - she could have carpeted the house with it and still have spare. And why so much bottle green when she never wore green? But I digress. As usual.

In the course of my sort out I found several bits of embroidery and patchwork which had been begun but not finished. Not really 'works in progress', more that I had got thoroughly bored with them. Some immediately got shoved back on the top shelf - but some I decided to do something with. Like make bags.

As I have mentioned, before I made books when I wanted instant gratification I used to make bags. So I have - er - several - bags. Patchwork, embroidered, knitted, crocheted. What Imelda Marcos was to shoes, I am to hand made bags. Babybel's mum has taken several of the bigger ones off my hands but I still have quite a few small ones. Never mind - I have made a few more.

The top one is crazy patchwork. It was originally going to have hand embroidery as well as the machine embroidery - but I decided I would never get round to it, so it has ended up as a giant pencil case. Used up a zip from my stash too. Is it odd to have a zip stash?

I think the one below was originally going to be sliced up for fabric mosaic. [Does anyone else ever find things they don't remember making?] I decided to add some couching instead and it has ended up as a sort of mad plaid. A second over sized pencil case, and another zip gone..

This is one of three panels from a lovely quilt that I started a long time ago. I still like the design but I decided there was no way I was ever going to finish it - applique is just not my thing. So this is the first of three bags. It is pretty big - about 20" by 17" by 3" - patchwork always get measured in Imperial here because that is what my patchwork rulers are!

And now for something completely different - the hydrangea. I'm sure there are larches at the Hillier gardens but I didn't photograph one. [And if you don't get that reference, don't worry, it means you are a lot saner than I am - and probably a lot younger too.]

This is my favourite of the photos I took at the gardens - I see free edge applique and French knots. It is not at all my sort of colours - not nearly bright enough - but I don't think I'd change it at all for an embroidery- although I may play around with it in Paint shop Pro later just yo see what happens!

Photo of the day

I can actually identify the shrub in today's photo - it's dogwood. I know because we have some in our garden, although not as well grown as this. We chose it for winter colour, and also because the council use it in their plantings, which suggested that it would cope both with chalk soil and neglect.

On a completely different topic - after I watched the first episode last week I meant to mention the BBC4 series 'House of Chanel'. It is a documentary, made, I think, in 2004. I wasn't sure what to expect when it started, but so far there has been quite a lot about the work of the seamstresses - one of whom has a pincushion to rival mine!

We watched the second episode last night. It is one of those programmes that you have to read - unless your French is better than mine - which means no sewing while its on! My heart went out to the poor woman who is starting on the third version of a particular evening dress, all, of course, by hand. [I agreed with her comments about sewing panne velvet, too!]

I think there are four more episodes - next week's includes a look at the way Chanel's braids are made. Worth catching if you can.

Speaking of photographs

There is some fascinating information here about using them for inspiration. [Click on the box headed HTML version]. Prunella Clough is another artist I had never heard of - and I should have done!

The section 'Inspirations' is fascinating for those of us who think real artists don't use photographs in their sketchbooks. I'm sure Clough used sketches as well, but reading about her working methods is very helpful for those of us trying to develop our use of sketchbooks. Photos and words I can manage! I found the section on how she used cropping interesting. We were often told to do it on C&G - but I found it difficult to get away from wanting to use the whole of whatever image I was working from. Clough's work encourages me to try again.

I got the link from Mags Ramsay's blog - well worth looking at for her comments on art as well as an excellent post on using colour catchers in textile work. [Something else not to throw away ...]

Getting back to pictures - here is today's. More witch hazel, although very different from the shy retiring little flowers on the yellow one! Mmmm - perhaps i need to try cropping this one a bit ...

Photo five - the saga continues

This is the latest installment of our trip to the Hillier Gardens - there were three of these trees with amazing bark. I made a mental note of what type of tree they were - but that was Friday, this is Monday ...

Looking at these photos makes me want to explore different colour schemes - which has been exacerbated by tidying up my stash. [This is a major task taking - so far - a whole day.]

I read a suggestion somewhere that if you keep your fabric in boxes or baskets, you should roll it and store it upright, because then you can see what you've got without having to root through a pile. This is part of the the result - just my pink/red bits, excluding scraps too small to roll.

I suspect the method works best if you have uniformly sized pieces of non-slippery fabric - I found some of the smaller pieces disappear to the bottom and the slippery stuff unrolls and tries to escape - but it certainly improves accessibility.

It also reminded me how much I've got! I am a sucker for bargain packs, so I have lots of bits from those, and because I usually dye gradations I have left overs of the colours I use less like pink, orange, yellow and green. Perhaps a pink and lime green piece is called for?