Thursday update

Hi everbody.  Hope you have all been stitching away this week, especially now the weather is going cooler again.  I have been tidying up my work book, painting pages in my stitch book ready to put the work into it and doing some of my running stitch samples.  I also decided I would like to do a Trading Card for Coronavirus  so here is my effort.

I cut the pieces from the newspaper but appreciate the figures are only to the present day so I have put the date on the back and maybe when we now the final death toll I will write that on as well for the future.  Don't know if you can read the other article but it is about the Belgian potato farmers asking the public to cook twice as many 'frites' at home as there is a glut of potatoes with all the street sellers closed.  I stitched the gold beads on with red thread which I thought made them look a bit like the pictures you see of the virus.  A bit morbid but maybe it will represent a change in how we look at the world in future.
While clearing out and tidying up I found this little book I made while doing the sketchbook course.  I really like the cover but I had used thin brown paper for the pages and then covered them with gesso. I had obviously got something in mind when I did this but I don't think I anticipated that the pages would all stick together.  I have seperated them but some have torn, I thought of dismantling it and replacing the paper with something else but the more I look at it the more I like the effect, so I am not sure what to do now.  Suggestions welcome./

Having really enjoyed the hand stitching I have been doing, I am now embarking on a piece for the art group exhibition in November.  We have a copy of a poem by Anne Bronte which we are all doing a piece of work for, all the same size and in matching frames.  Because the piece is only 6" x 4" it is a bit small for some of the pictures that the words conjure up.  The poem is Lines composed in a Wood on a Windy Day.  The line I have chosen is 'The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing' and I am now ready to start stitching.

The pattern in the blue fabric I used for the sea, looks just like Whitby pier.  I plan to cover the whole of the front area with wind blown grass, so that is going to take me a while.
The clouds outside have now blown over so I am going out now for my walk.  See you next week.

Thursday update

Don't know what happened to one of the photographs I posted last week but it seems to have disappeared.  I am having trouble uploading pictures from my camera so I will have to sort that out.  I have re-taken the picture on my phone so here is the finished piece.  You can't really see the gold stitching round the stencil but it looks OK.

Cath sent me this picture of a lovely Moroccan door that she has done using tea bag paper and machine stitching.  I love doors, I take photo's of them everywhere.

I spent some time the last couple of evenings stitching into the silk paper I made and now have six card pieces ready to mount as soon as I can get some cards to put them on.

I have also been doing something with my challenge of using something I had bought and never used.  I chose Funtex and had a go with it yesterday.  I must say, it is nothing more than fine kunin felt and I think I will file the rest away under that name. 

I painted the felt, layered up some chiffons on it in similar colours then stitched this pattern on it with machine stitching and black metalic threads.  I then zapped it with the heat gun which has made it crinkle up as it is quite a thin fabric.  Not sure how I could use this yet, I might stitch into it and maybe bed it into a thicker, softer background.

I have also finished stitching my second Africa piece based on the Hausa boubou that I did earlier.

This time I have used stronger colours and made it a bit more modern, I think!  I really enjoyed doing these two pieces but I'm not sure how to mount them yet.  

Keep stitching, I was wondering whether to change the stitch we have been doing.  Maybe next week I will send an email out.

Thursday 16th April

Can't believe we are half way through April already.  The time has flown by for me.  This is one of the jobs I was doing this week:

Sorting the bit box.!

Thanks to Roma for her comment, she gets her fabric from the africanfabricshop,  click on the comment below for the details.
I haven't done quite so much this week.  I have made some silk paper using gummy silk from Art Van Go which isn't as good as what I used to buy from Oliver Twists.  It has lumpy bits in and has dried to a crisp paper rather than a soft one.  I'll see what it's like when I stitch into it.

Iam going to make these into cards, unfortunately when I went to get my pack of blank cards I only have two left, so will have to wait until Boyes opens again to finish these off.  I can do the embroidery on them though.
I have also finished the piece I started last week using a used (and washed) face wipe.

I have stitched round the stencil shapes in gold thread on the machine but you can't really see here.

Lesley has been busy as well.  Here are some of her pieces for her stitch journal.

Lots of lovely work being done.  Looks like we will have another three weeks at least of catching up on our stitching!

Update

Diane has been busy again trying out some different things.  Here she has been usingMarkel paints with a stencil and then sashiko stitching round them.  The effect looks quite delicate.

She then went and ordered some African fabrics on line and bought these amazing fat quarters.

Anyone interested in where she got them from I am sure I can find out for you.

Thursday 9th April

I was looking the other day at the stats for this blog and realised that there are several people from America, Canada and Australia who look at our blog, so a big hello to any of them that are still with us and hope that you enjoy what we are doing.
Spring has really got underway here.  The plants seem to grow overnight.  I have got two walks I go on during the lock down, for a short walk I go round the village and on my way I pass this lovely magnolia which has been a joy to see.

On my longer walk which I do about twice a week, I go up the hill behind the village and then I am into open countryside and farmers fields and there is hardly a soul around and I can hear the skylarks, it makes being locked down worth while because I wouldn't do this walk very often if I wasn't.

I have also been busy with my sewing this week.  I have copies of two of Mary Sleigh's books and I found this idea in one of them.

 It's just a basic patchwork but I have used my fabrics that I printed a couple of weeks ago.  I just used the edges of the fabric that weren't printed so well so that I could still use the rest if I wanted to. The pattern fabric on the outside is some scraps I had from a bag I made.

The little decorations I have laid on are things I have been making as ideas came into my head. The top left is beadwork done on a loom. second row is canvas work in cushion stitch, third row is leather and the bottom is canvas work using a zebra as a pattern.
Not sure if this will inspire me to take it further but right now my brain has been captured by something else.

I saw this picture in one of Mary's books.

 This is called a Hausa boubou from Nigeria.  It consists of strips of silk sewn together and heavily embroidered to make sumptuous robes.  I decided I could do this.

This is my interpretation.  It is difficult to see but it is stitched all over.  I used chain stitch, buttonhole and eyelets as well as straight stitch. I really enjoyed stitching this piece and decided I would like to do another.

 Instead of neutral colours I thought I would like to do something with a more African colour scheme.  I won this pack of Mulberry Silks fabric and threads and thought they would make a good piece.

I found some other fabrics and lots of threads so watch this space for the next piece of work.

I have been allocating Wednesday mornings for 'messy' work. So I got my gelli plate out again and did these leaf prints. A technique I found on Youtube.

 Paint your gelli plate with black acrylic, lay the leaves on, take a print.  Take a second print if there is a lot of black paint left. Remove the leaves and use them to make a print, leave the gelli plate to dry. When the plate is dry cover it with a pale coloured acrylic and take a print. You should get the black leaf designs coming through the pale paint.  Mine weren't so good, I think the paper I used was too thick and using red instead of black didn't work at all.

 But you do get some lovely painted leaves which I covered in acrylic wax as soon as the paint was dry.

One last thing.  I found this idea in a book.  Take a used face wipe and wash it clean. When it is dry, paint it with watered down acrylic paint.  When that is dry, stencil on some molding paste.  When that is dry, paint it then attach it to some felt and free machine around the molding paste with gold thread.

This is as far as I have got.  I thought the colours were a bit dark so I have just used the end where it was paler.  Not sure what colour to paint the white paste.  Hope to finish it for you next week.

New Work

Roma has been doing a Dionne Swift workshop and has produced her first log cabin piece of patchwork.

I love the colours and the fabrics.  Keep your photo's coming, they are keeping us all focused.

Thursday blog

I am trying to update the blog every Thursday so you know when to look for something new.  I usually go to the gym of Wednesday morning so have decided to make that my messy morning at home and do printing, dyeing and anything else I can think of.  So yesterday I got my gelli plate out again and did these.

I'm quite please with some of them.  They are all done on paper, printed on both sides so I hope I don't want to use two on the same sheet.

I have also started a piece of stitching inspired by a photograph of some fabric in one of Mary Sleigh's books.  Hope to have that finished to show you next week.

A CHALLENGE.   I am sure we have all got something in our stash that we bought because it looked interesting, lovely fabric, pretty colours, etc. Some of you might like to go through your stash and pull out one of those items to do something with over the next few weeks.  I have chosen this Funtex which I have had for a few years now and not used yet.

It's a bit like a fine felt that you can paint, melt and stitch so now I have to get my thinking cap on and work out what to do with it.

I have put a link on to Skipton Embroiderers' Guild.  They had been doing some interesting things with tags before they stopped meeting.  Going for my 'Boris' walk now.