Life has got in the way of embroidery

over the last few days, but I did manage to do some. These are samples of ‘leaf litter’ for the 3d piece. I also did some leaves but they are not ready to be revealed to the world yet.

On Friday I got distracted into following up Thursday’s lesson on transfer techniques – although I’m still not sure what the point of it was.

In class we discussed techniques like ‘prick and pounce’ and tacking for transferring designs, and then used some dreadful smelly stuff to transfer photocopies of our designs onto fabric. This is my effort – but as you can see it is pretty blurred [and it still stinks!] Fortunately I had chosen a fairly simple image: those who tried more detailed pictures were very disappointed. I suppose the learning that took place was not to bother with this stuff, the name of which I don’t know!

We also tried Dylon Image Maker, although as I had some at home I left that till Friday, when I got sidetracked into trying most of the transfer techniques I could think of – all the stuff you buy on a whim and never use, or techniques you’ve read about and never tried. Most of these were more successful than the smelly stuff.

I won’t show you them all because they are colour variations on the same image but I can tell you that I printed onTyvek, calico on freezer paper, tissue paper on Bondaweb on its backing paper and Craft Vilene with no ill effects – although the latter had to be put through with care not to jam. This is the result on Vilene.

However if you do the same it is at your own risk!

As usual, I printed onto the wrong side of a transparency in an attempt to try to transfer from it onto fabric. I shall have another go at that today. I used t-shirt transfer paper which worked well, and I also want to use transfer paints and crayons.

All of this seems to have moved a long way from where we started, how to transfer a pattern to fabric for further embroidery – but it has been an interesting journey!

Does silence indicate procrastination?

Well – in this case – yes. I confess, I have been stalling on getting on with the beech/birch wood. I could rationalise it by saying that I was waiting for this lot to dry. I also put some dimensional paint on the tree trunks [and then rather wished I hadn’t] – so I had to wait for that to dry too.

So what do I do when I am procrastinating? I make books. I think I have mentioned Esther K Smith’s ‘How to Make Books’ before. In it she shows how to make a book out of a cake mix box. Seriously. [I have also seen books in blogs made from Ritz cracker boxes.]

Biscuits and cakes rarely enter the doors of Cheese Acres – but when I was going through my stash of paper I found two other possible covers.

The red one came home with Cheese Major from one of his trips to China – it is, I think, the wrapper of a cigarette packet. The brown one was a present from Mr and Mrs Cheese Minor when they returned from living in Singapore. It contained ‘Pocky’ - lovely [Japanese?] chocolaty things for dunking in your coffee.

The boxes are not very strong so I lined them with fabric [the Chinese one] and hand made paper [the Singaporean/Japanese one]. The latter has a straightforward straight stitch binding but the red one is a bit more elaborate.

But - when I got up this morning I was motivated to get started on the 3D piece – hurrah! Not that i seem to have got very far ...

First I found my Angelina and made a few patches see if I liked the effect. Unfortunately none of the colours I have were really right so I will have to see if I can find something more suitable - perhps a trip to the craft shop is necessary?

Next I auditioned all the threads I had that might do – these are the candidates:

and this is the long list – sampling will decide on the final choices.

Then I collected all the stuff I needed to start to turn the pile of fabrics into leaves and leaf litter. Having ‘reorganised’ my workroom recently I couldn’t remember where half of it was …

Here it is all collected together.

The synthetic fabrics were heatgunned / cut up with my soldering iron. The silk was cut up and candled to seal the edges.



I tried what I’d done on the background. This is why I wanted to hang on to A’s frame. The green is OK but that orange is far too bright!

Tomorrow - some embroidery?

Little progress on the 3D piece

apart from removing the wax. Unfortunately most of the crackling came with it. i am thinking of adding fabric paint or dimensional paint to the trunks to replace it.

Instead of the 3d piece I have been working on a stitch sample we started in class on Thursday. The brief was to explore a simple stitch to see what variations we could come up with.

I used a piece of my marbled fabric and chose running stitch - not very imaginative faced with fabric with a lot of lines on it but I wasn't feeling very imaginative.

Some time ago i took Sharon Boggon's Joggles class on 'A Personal Library of Stitches' - which was all about how you could develop stitches - but could I remember any of it on Thursday night? Of course not. So my attempts in class were just running stitch in different threads along the lines on the fabric. However when I got home I was able to refresh my memory, and as it was a lovely day yesterday i sat in the garden and played. I had a very peaceful time and I am quite please with the result.

Today I shall put my marbling samples in my portfolio and then I will have no more excuses for procrastination!

I am beginning to recognise the power of virtual social pressure:

if I say on here that I am going to do something – I feel I have to do it.

So, as it was a nice day, I went out into the garden and painted my trees. It was so warm they dried very quickly. I have added some Lumiere in green and bronze, and that has dried too – so I should be able to return the frames to their rightful owner tomorrow.

I am a bit ambivalent about the result – I think it looks better in the photo than it does in real life. I will get the wax off tomorrow and see how it looks then – but I am not painting it again. If it is no good I shall make a cushion!

It will have embroidery on it, when I get round to sampling that: I am not committing myself to doing it tomorrow!

While I was out in the garden I did something else I have been meaning to do for a while – I photographed our silver birch for the write up I have to do about the piece. [I think of the Klimt trees as birches although the title of the picture is ‘The Beech Wood’.] The bark is lovely: this is why I wanted to crackle the wax on the painted version.






To show how much more advanced spring is here, 300 miles south of Yorkshire, here is some more of the garden. There isn’t much in it except apple trees, so it looks at its best at this time of year. We are not great gardeners – the ‘grass’ [aka moss] is cut regularly and that’s about it. I think of it as reverting to the chalk downland it originally was …

No Tuesday trip this week either

as I had a hair appointment. I did take the opportunity to visit the latest incarnation of the Pound Shop in the city centre - it's got more expensive but has a good selection of stationery items, including big stencil letters [about 8 cm high] and similar sized fun foam letters which I will make into stamps.

This afternoon I got on with the 3D work. I painted some silk in leaf and leaf-mould colours. I took A's advice about watering down the paint and i am much happier about the shades I got.

I am thinking of adding snippets to the relevant areas of the shade, holding them down with free motion embroidery. One of the problems with making a lampshade is that the back of the stitches will show through when it is illuminated. I could do shadow work but FME will be quicker.

by the way, neither of these is Quality Control's litter tray - she has a much fancier one provided by her previous owners, although she much prefers the gravel drive.

If you think the drop cloth underneath looks familiar you must have been a Clothkits customer about30 years ago!

I also got started on the shade itself. Making the full scale mock up had convinced me that I needed to think carefully about the layout of the trees - I couldn't just do a few tree shapes as the fancy took me. So I made a 'window' in the proportions of the shade and moved it around on the Klimt picture until I found a section I thought worked.

Inspired by the this section I made a freezer paper stencil and ironed it to the silk. then erected A's ginormous silk painting frame. [You will get it back, A, honest!]

I had to assemble the frame on the hall floor which was the only space big and empty enough. Then I stretched the silk, manoeuvred it out into the garden, and painted the wax on. Fortunately it has been a really nice day!

The technology of the frame means that I couldn't prop it up vertically for the photo. It is finishing off drying now, flat on the conservatory floor.

So far I think it looks good but I can still ruin it when I add the paint. If we have another nice day tomorrow I will try to make myself paint it. [I do have another piece of silk if the worst happens.]

I must also remember to paint some threads in case I decide to add some hand stitching.

I haven't lost my marbles ...

I missed last week’s C&G session on marbling because I was in Yorkshire, so I spent yesterday catching up. I had marbled before so I had a vague idea what I was doing – and of course I had most of the materials somewhere – I just had to find them.

While I was waiting for the medium to mature I did some shaving foam marbling – not sure it was in the class but it’s fun. I usually use inks but this time I decided to try some left over silk paints, and found that they worked well - they seemed to go on producing prints for a long time. Unfortunately I didn’t have a wide range of colours but some of the prints are quite effective. The pale one at the top is on crystal organza.

Once the marbling medium had set I tried that, this time using the ‘right’ paint. With these I usually only got one print – sometimes there was a bit of paint left on the surface which gave a paler second print. The circular one is on a cheapo paper doyley from the Pound Shop.

You get more control with ‘proper’ marbling but as I’m not very good at it that isn’t a major advantage! The big problem is that these are taking for ever to dry, perhaps because it’s quite humid in the conservatory where they are.

We are apparently going to be using these in class on Thursday which is why I wanted to get them done.

Today I have made the full stage mock up for the 3D piece. I had hoped to get more done but I’ve run out of drying space so the mock up is drying on my work table, which is preventing me from starting waxing the silk for the real piece. It’s not procrastination, honest!

I haven't fallen off the planet -

I’ve been on holiday. [This is a long post because my fried A. said she was looking forward to reading what I wrote – so blame her if you get bored!]

The co-grandparents, R&S, had told us about the cottage in the Yorkshire Dales they have been to several times. Wensleydale has had a very busy time governing recently so when the chance to go there came up at short notice we leapt at it.

When we got there we understood why R&S [and Skye, their amazing footballing border Collie] love it so much – this is [part of] the view from the front door. The cottage is in a village of 35 houses up a single track road a looooong way from anywhere.

This is the water supply for the cottage - the water is filtered and irradiated and perfectly safe although it is the colour of over-watered Scotch.

In the photo of the fosse [waterfall] you can just see the end of the footbridge over the river which is at the foot of the garden. From the opposite bank you can see the cottage at the right hand end of this building.

Lovely as it was, we did leave the village on most days. We went to Hawes but it was full of retired holidaymakers [!] so we passed up the Wensleydale Cheese Experience – after all, I have that all the time.

We went to Bolton Castle instead, which was much quieter. It is one of the many castles Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in - an embroiderer, so of course she appears in my magnum opus, the History of British Embroidery.

We followed a school party in but there were only a minibus full and they were better disciplined than the coach parties in Hawes - they didn't mill all over the place or suddenly stop in front of you.

I didn’t explore the castle fully – I don’t like heights or spiral staircases. I do like windows and there were lots of interesting ones, so I photographe

d them while Wensleydale climbed higher. Then we had a cup of tea in front of the log fire in the tea room, and took some photos from the garden of the thunder storm approaching down the dale.

We also went to Fountains Abbey – in fact we liked it so much we went twice. We are National Trust members [it's obligatory for retired teachers, you know] so we got in free – and of course, like most Trust properties it has a very good tea shop. Fruit cake with Black Sheep Ale, anyone?

I was fascinated by the contrast between the ruins of the Abbey and the 19th century church. by William Burges. in the grounds. The church looks fairly plain on the outside but the inside is a little more elaborate.

I think you either love or hate Gothic Revival – I love the intensity of colour and pattern on every surface. Unfortunately I neglected to take a photo of the organ housing made to look like a medieval house, b

ut this is the Lion of Judah. The sun was shining weakly - it

must look magnificent with strong sunlight through those windows.

On the way back from the Abbey we went to Brimham Rocks. Wensleydale remembers going there as a little boy and having a wonderful time climbing around. We were a little more restrained this time but I did take lots of photos. They are natural formations although some look as though they have been carved. This is just a sample - they cover several acres [or hectares if you prefer].

We also visited Skipton and bought cheese in the market - mostly Wensleydale, naturally, but also some called Bowland, which is the local area my grandmother was born. We also visited Skipton Castle -another Mary Queen of Scots connection, and more windows.

I bought some postcards of portraits of former owners of the castle to go in the magnum opus. [You thought I’d finished that, didn’t you?] These were 16th and 17th century residents and their clothing was embroidered, so I had to have them. Plus they were only 20p a time. I also bought a book on the Bayeux Tapestry to add to the three I have already …

We had a very relaxing time but it was good to get home and Quality Control was glad to see us back. [She did have a cat sitter while we were away, my first DIL Ginge who used to own her - thanks, Ginge!] [No, she wasn't christened Ginge.]

We were struck that in Yorkshire the daffodils are still out and, as you can see from the photos, the trees are only just beginning to come into leaf. At home the trees are fully out and our apple trees are in blossom. The weather is pretty much the same though – sunshine interspersed with gloom and occasional rain.