Things can only get better?

A slightly more cheerful week this week, although my insomnia has been particularly bad. But I slept well last night, the sun was shining when I woke up, and we had already planned a Sunday saunter. It was the last day of the Kathakali exhibition at the Discovery Centre, so, unusually for us, we ventured out at the weekend.

We thought the Discovery Centre opened at 10 at weekends, so we postponed our morning coffee till we got there. Bummer. It doesn't. And the Theatre Royal, which is our fallback coffee bar for such occasions, was closed too. As was the cafe across the road we've never been in.

But the new icecream parlour on the corner, which I have walked past and drooled at, was open. We resisted the icecream, but had lovely coffee (locally roasted), even nicer cheesecake, friendly and helpful service. And the reflections on the base of the table were fascinating.

I think the library cafe may have lost some customers. 

At 11, when the DC does open, we drifted along to find it was open but the Kathakali exhibition wasn't, yet. Bummer 2. So we went upstairs to watch 'Close Protection' by Graham Gussin again. 

We found it was well worth seeing twice - new ideas came out on a second viewing. (If you visit that link and read the description, although it seems like pure art speak, having seen the videos, it makes sense!)

When we went downstairs the Kathakali exhibition had opened, so we did manage to get a look at that. Wonderful vivid costumes with lots of bling, as well as more everyday dress. It made me want to visit Kerala, and see some Kathakali dance.

That was actually our second textiley trip of the week. Now the VHC is in nursery full-time, we have a little more time to ourselves in the middle of child minding days, and there is only so much shopping you can do. So we have been looking for places that are near enough for us to get there and back in time for the school/nursery pick up. This led to a second visit to the National Needlework Archive. (Only taken 4 years!) The main exhibition was of panels from the Quaker Tapestries. As I have made clear before, I'm not always a fan of representational embroidery, but this was different. Of course it's essential, given the nature of the subject matter, but the panels are beautifully designed and made, and the story they tell is fascinating. And there is an additional poignancy in seeing such a celebration of peace in the spiritual heart of the former Greenham Common Air Base. The women of peace got in in the end!

We also looked at the Country Wife, which who is under conservation there. When we went 4 years ago she was wrapped in bubblewrap and being saturated with nitrogen to debug her, but she is now lying down, being prepared for conservation. If you pay £2 extra admission, you get to see her and hear a talk about the conservation process - which is how I know why she was all wrapped up 4 years ago!

That was Thursday - Friday was the first session of this year's Contemporary Textiles Workshop, for which I have been repeating myself all summer. This session was about pattern - we had a Powerpoint talk (that's a first!) before trying a little pattern making - 

geometric collages

and geometrically based drawings.  In case you can't tell, this are my inept attempts at Escher-ish tesselations. (Actually I'm quite  pleased with them, and I'm thinking of trying one of them out with some transfer dye and a bit of poly satin...

I thought the collages looked like canvas work, so I set out to translate the green and purple one into stitch. I spent a lot of time faffing around with different threads and sizes, then got going with this.

Er - can you spot the deliberate mistake? Bummer 3.

I'm not going to unpick it now, I haven't got enough of that wool to start again, but I may try to do it properly at a later date. 

Living in interesting times.

It's been a bad news/good news couple of weeks. We had some worrying news at the start - the sort of sitation in which, because it involves other people, all we can do is offer support and hope for the best.

For some reason, my frustration led, not to embroidery, but to patchwork - just throwing together scraps of the colours which reflected how I felt. Then I found myself squaring off the resulting polygon - perhaps habit, perhaps my need to try to control what was happening. That was followed by scraped-on paint and some very undisciplined machine quilting. It is stalled now, partly because I need a break from it, but more because, unusually for me, I have plans for more machine work on it and I can't machine sew and watch cycling at the same time.

Fortunately, a few days later we got some excellent news. Let's just say that Babybel, to her delight, will be a bridesmaid some time next year. I'm not sure she knows what a bridesmaid is, but she knows there will be a pretty dress and an important role for her!

What with cycling and stress, not much embroidery has taken place, but there has been a lot of knitting. The second using-up-the-leftovers blanket has made quite a lot of progress. 

Before all the excitement, I decided I could improve this.

Definitely better - amazing what a little paint can do. The paint has also stiffened it up, so much that I don't think it would take stitch now.

These are my other papier mâché experiments. Abaca tissue and muslin on the left, brown paper and muslin on the right. And yes, it. is wonky!

I'm pleased with the contrast between these, but I'm not sure what stitch to try, so I'm putting papier mâché on the back burner for a while. (Sounds a bit inflammatory.)

Over the last couple of days, I have done something other than knit and worry.

A bit of hand quilting - transfer dyes on polyester satin, left over from my initial explorations of  repetition.

And some more experimental stitching on metal mesh - which is difficult to photograph with all the reflections.

Mmm - I seem to have developed a taste for bling!

Circuits and Bumps

All circuits now complete, I'm glad to say. I've had enough of circles.  These are all the circle pages.

They are even bound, and labelled. 

Although I've been thinking that it's time to stop repeating myself, it hasn't quite happened yet. I made these Kandinsky-inspired shrink plastic 'bumps' when I was doing City & Guilds, but never used them. I came across them when I was looking for something else (story of my life really) and decided their repetitious time had come.

This was inspired by some bedtime reading. In Moyra McNeill's book on drawn thread embroidery, she suggests màking slits in non-fraying fabrics like felt or Vilene, and working drawn thread stitches through the slits. It sounded repetitious to me, so here is an apped photo of the wrong side of a stained glass window at Salisbury Cathedral, printed on Tyvek. I cut it and worked twisted border stitch using lace instead of thread - photos before and after ironing. I've got some Evolon, felt and PVC lined up for similar treatment, though probably without the ironing.

However, I have moved on from repetitions. During another bit of bedtime reading, Fibrefusion's 'Beyond Boundaries', I came across a recipe for papier mâché you can stitch into, using muslin and abaca paper. Ah, paper tubes! (Maybe I am being repetitious?)

This is my first attempt. The odd colour is because I was using up some brown abaca. The bandaged appearance is because I got bored with wrestling with wallpaper paste and little scraps of musin and resorted to strips. I didn't take a 'before' picture but Wensleydale said it looked like a bleeding stump.

As you can see, you can stitch into it, although it helps if you make the cylinder big enough to get your hand into. The odd pattern is because I ran the couching along the edges of the bandage muslin.

Today I got a bit carried away. The one on the left is abaca and muslin, the one on the right is brown paper and muslin. Now I have to wait about 24 hours for them to be dry enough to bring into the house, and another 24 for them to dry out properly. Good job I've got some undrawn thread work to do.

Obviously I haven't given up repeating myself at all!

Four more pages finished.

Though not without some anxious moments. The top left page has drawing pin stitched circles - OK apart from the appliqued fabric not lying flat - and the smaller flower stitcher circles. First I had to remember how to use the flower stitcher, the instructions not being completely clear. And then I realised that the machine wasn't stitching out the patterns I had selected. They were interesting variations on zig zags, but bore even less resemblance to the diagram on the machine than they usually do.

Quiet panic set in - was I going to need a new motherboard? I have just had a welcome tax refund, but nowhere near enough to pay for a new Bernina motherboard!

Then it dawned on me that you drop the feeddogs to use the flower stitcher, so - I think - the machine was stitching out the sideways movement, the flower stitcher was doing the forwards movement, but any backwards stitches were not happening.

At least I think that's what it was - it stitched OK as soon as I tried it without the flower stitcher.

On the positive side, I had an idea what to do with the very boring bit of hand quilting below the flower stitched piece. It was coloured with Markals but it seems to get paler every time I look at it, so it definitely needed a lift.

The answer was elephants. 

I bought them ages ago and never found a use for them. I had to glue them down - no stitching holes - but they definitely improve the page.

The other two pages are pretty ordinary but, to tell the truth, I'm getting circled out.

Just two more to go. Some more boring quilting, machine this time, which is going to get some couching over the top. It was coloured with spray paints which are also doing a vanishing trick.

The other one is the sunprinting, which I didn't expect to work, but which was very successful. More couching for the larger circles - I'm pondering on what to with the smaller ones. Buttonhole rings come to mind...

Then a quick Japanese style binding and no more circles! Probably.

And finally - an apped-about photo from our Wednesday wander. We went to Salisbury to see the Rex Whistler exhibition at the Salisbury Museum, which is recommended, and I took a few photos of the cathedral, to play around with. I'm rather pleased with this one. Apps were XNSketch, Popsicle and iColorama, to blend the other two together.

Circuits and Bumps.

You may remember that at the conclusion of my last post I said I was going to play with Grilon, and similar threads, which shrink when exposed to heat.

Let's not talk about that, shall we? I spent the whole day trying to get one which worked. Three went in the bin, the fourth went in my sketchbook as an example of what not to to do. I'm sure it was me, not the threads, but I shall not be trying again.

Thursday was much better.

Wensleydale, Babybel and I (the VHC was in nursery) went to the North Pole. Must be true, here's a sign to prove it.

(Actually it is Mottisfont's 'Pooh trail', but don't tell Wensleydale.) 

So on Friday I turned my attention to a new challenge - trying out every method of adding colour to fabric I could think of. (Bar dyeing, I've done a lot of that.)

These are the results, apart from the transfer crayons which were too anaemic to be used and are hidden under the Bondaweb.

The Bondawebbed one - plus a bit of the Shisha one.

I challenged myself using this fabric - it's a shiny synthetic curtain fabric I bought when I thought my C&G 'goldwork' was going to be copper. 

It, and the accompanying resolved sample, turned out to be gold - and I still love them.

But I digress.

I started with the Gelli plate, freezer paper stencils and Colourcraft Aztec. 

Lesson 1

See that mottled effect? Aztec reacts to the Gelli like watercolour, it beads. Quite a nice effect but not what I was after. It also runs under the stencil, contributing to lesson 3.

Yes, those are holes.

Lesson 2

For machine cutwork, use two layers of tearaway stabilizer, one isn't enough. And choose a thread which   doesn't break every five minutes.

Lesson 3

Freezer paper stencils detach themselves from the fabric and cling to the Gelli plate with a vice-like grip, perhaps because I hadn't ironed them enough - this fabric does not like a hot iron. (See lesson 11.)

You don't need freezer paper stencils anyway, you can just use ordinary paper on the plate. Doh.

Lesson 4

Acrylic paint worked much better, but I overdid the textile medium. It does help to keep the paint from drying too quickly in a hot studio conservatory, but if it's too runny it runs under the stencils.

Lesson 5

Don't do monoprinting in 35 degrees C.

Lesson 6

The splodgy dots were done traditionally, with a stencil and brush at room temperature, but they still ran. I used Opalite which is lovely but I still haven't worked out the best way to use it. 

Lesson 7

Sometimes foil can be too bright. I added Hotspots and foil to the three circles next to the splodgy ones to try and make them more interesting, but now they are OTT. Not sure what I'm going to do with these. Emulsion paint?

Lessons 8, 9, 10 and 11

Markals (right hand end of the top row) and spray paints (underneath it), on this fabric, come out very pale but sunprinting with silk paints works well (left in the middle row). 

And Markal rubbed onto a nappy liner, ironed onto fabric, covered with another nappy liner rubbed with Chromacoal, stitched down and zapped is - er - interesting, but all that heat shrank the fabric

Lesson 12

Don't buy cheap Shisha rings.

All those lessons! No wonder I'm tired. Just hope I remember them.

Going round in circles.

I can't remember if I mentioned that a few weeks ago we went down to Walford Mill to see their 'Going Full Circle' exhibition, but we did, and we enjoyed it very much, especially Jin Eui Kim's  ceramics. (And the salmon salad in the cafe.)

In my my bedtime reading I came across a brief mention of the old technique of sewing circles by fastening a drawing pin to the bed of the sewing machine with masking tape and pinning the fabric to it. So circles became my next repetition - concentric ones, that is.

I have played with the idea before, so on Friday I plunged in without much forethought. Big mistake, as you can see. Another opportunity for learning.

On the right, what happens when the drawing pin moves slightly. If life gives you non-circular circles, make spirals. I abandoned the drawing pin and sewed a presser foot's width away from the previous stitching, more or less. I had intended to change the stitch pattern on each circle, but obviously that wasn't going to happen, so it ended up a bit boring. I tried whipping the stitches, and adding a few beads -  O.K., it's still boring, but slightly less so.

On the left, what happens if you work wide satin stitch without a hoop or a stabiliser. You get distortion - interestingly, there's more on the straight of grain than on the bias. I quite like it, and it has possibilities - W. suggested a floppy hat brim. The centre is too wide, and I went a bit OTT with the beads.

So yesterday, with the benefit of hindsight, industrial quantities of stitch and tear, temporary spray adhesive and a walking foot, I started again.

First the silly ones. (There are always silly ones.) The one on the left was inspired by the bit of zapped Tyvek left over from something else. You may not be able to tell from the photo, but those two rings of embroidery meet up perfectly. (I'd like to say it was skill, but it wouldn't be true.) It looked like a rosette so I wanted to add ribbons, but the only ribbon I had was too wide, so it turned into prairie points.

The second one is several layers of metallic organza scraps. It was a response to wondering why fake chenille is always in straight(ish) lines. The answer is that the concave side of circular ones is reluctant to fluff up. However a bit of rough handling worked wonders.

Then on to some bigger ones. I love the one on the left -  it makes me think of wedding dresses, maybe because it is made of polyester satin. I used a twin needle for most of the circles, with some gold embroidery on the central disc of gold mesh, and in the too wide gap. (At that stage I hadn't worked out the solution to accurate positioning of the drawing pin. Tiger tape, if you want to know, attached to the machine bed in line with the needle.)  The star shell in the centre is because I'd marked the centre with washout pen and it didn't. (Yes, I know, always try it out first...)

Centres are a bit of a problem: the drawing pin can leave a hole and the inner circles end up relatively big because you can't get the drawing pin very close to the needle, especially using the walking foot. Hence the button in the middle of the brown one, which is gold thread on brown velvet.

Today, flushed with success, I got a bit over-confident. As part of my 'using up stuff I've bought and never used' initiative I tried Trapunto with soluble thread. Which was not as easy as the beautiful examples here might make it appear. Getting the positions of the soluble thread (on the wrong side) and the stabiliser (on the right side) was easy to get wrong, and removing the stabiliser, becasue it wasn't where it should be, removed some of the thread as well. So I had to reapply the stabiliser to repeat the stitching. Then I tried to add some machine embroidery to one but gave up when the thread starting breaking repeatedly. I can't show you these because they are drying after I washed out the soluble thread: that bit seems to have worked. Idon"t think I shall be repeating this any time soon - does anyone know any other use for soluble thread?

The best thing today was this. It finally dawned on me that the circles didn't have to be concentric. Working out how to do it was a little more difficult, A-level Maths or no (it was a long time ago!). I could draw what I wanted with a compass, but translating that to the drawing pin system took two goes. Fortunately I have a lot of plastic pockets and of these bits of bling. Yes, that's a plastic pocket - and it took maths to make sure the final circle wasn't bigger than the pocket.

Tomorrow it's grilon thread to be used up, so shrunk circles, concentric or tangential, or other arrangements yet to be decided.

No more metal!

For a while, at least. I do have some bits of metal left, but no more of the nasty craft vilene I used for the pages, so it's time to move on, and find something else to do obsessively repetitively.

This is the front cover - the name plate was the first thing I did when I started playing around with metal, sewing it on the cover was the last thing.

The cover is layered felt, wire form and lace, with boring repetitious machine embroidery all over it. The tape is recycled - it says 'Montezuma's' on the other side.

The binding is from Keith Smith's 'Smith's Sewing Single Sheets', which I chose because all the books told me to bed the metal on nasty Vilene,which was too thick to fold. Smith says that a binding over tapes swells at the spine, and it does, although it doesn't look like it here - but not quite enough to accommodate all that lumpy metal. Still, I like a book whose contents are bursting out of the covers.

The instructions were to punch the holes for the binding half an inch in, but after I'd done so it dawned on me that, as the pages aren't paper, half that would have done. And I could have tried harder to get the stitches straight. The metallic thread wasn't really a sensible choice, but it looks good with the cover.

After all this experimentation, I've come to the conclusion that I like setting fire to annealing the copper or bronze to colour it, but I am not interested in painting or embossing it, as recommended by well known authors. (And aluminium melts... Ask me how I know.) 

And if I am going to use metal again, it will be wire mesh which I can stitch into or bead, I really enjoyed that, even if the edges were a bit scratchy. I liked the silly ones too, but the idea of lots of free machining round the edges of stamped or embossed bits had no appeal at all - now there's a surprise.

What next? Not sure. I've got several ideas, and a quiet day tomorrow, as Wensleydale has chauffering responsibilities. Watch this space.