Second module, second attempt

Having originally started Module 2 using an old version of the syllabus I have now restarted it using Sian's latest version and put my Bayeux stuff to one side. This partly accounts for the long gap since my last blog: I have been swotting up on Opus Anglicanum and getting distracted with all manner of amazing stuff about the Middle Ages. Also, after a longish gap, the need to go and earn some more cash finally overtook me and I have got a full-time contract for the next 6 months. Unfortunately, this means I have very little time to work on my C&G. However, the contract is at least a little better paid than Opus Anglicanum: records of an altar frontal embroidered for Westminster Abbey in 1271 record that it took four women 3 years and 9 months to embroider it, for which their total wages bill came to £36. The materials in the frontal cost more than six times as much....

I have had a go at the technique and it is really, really hard. Here is my incomplete Virgin Mary done in split stitch with a single strand of silk and under-side couching on linen. I think she is going to remain unfinished, I'm afraid. 2.2

I was a bit demoralised by Opus Anglicanum but happily got inspired by Lobster's blog and decided to try and follow her wonderful example by launching straight into chapter 2. All the pieces that follow are stitched on squares (about 12cm x 12cm) of hand-woven Harris tweed that a kind friend brought back for me from her holidays. It is lovely stuff to stitch on. The couching thread is red silk in all the examples. This first one is gold braid 2.3
This one is strips of metallic, corrugated card 2.4
Sequins (the sort that come on a roll already threaded for you)

2.5
and the negative version 2.6
These two are strips of metal cut from a tube of tomato puree (once it had been emptied, flattened and washed!). Also, there are some crimps sewn on just for fun 2.7
This sample is gold braid woven through gold mesh and 'couched' with little brass safety pins 2.8
This one is brass wire 2.9
Finally, the hens I wrote about on my last blog are flourishing and 3 out of the 5 are now laying one egg per day each. They have ignored their hand-made, bespoke nest-boxes and created their own nest behind the bushes, underneath the downspout to the left of the front door. They form a more or less orderly queue for use of the facility each morning! Here is the all important First Egg.

This is just by way of a warm-up..

The new picture at the top of my blog shows my cat Oscar shortly after our house move. Needless to say a picture of me taken at the same time would NOT have looked like that. I had forgotten how exhausting it all was. The packing took more than 3 weeks in-between bouts of Swine Flu, first me then the better half, and then the thankless task of unpacking. However, we are more or less straight now. This is a bit of the orchard at the back of my new house

It takes an hour to mow with a tractor mower if you empty the grass box on the way. We are getting a mulcher so we don't have to! Going shopping from here is interesting and best you are not in a hurry. This pic was taken by me on my way to Tesco. It is a bit smeary because I shot it through the car windscreen. Yes, the car is very grubby
As well as unpacking and mowing we dismantled the base of an old bed we didn't want plus a pallet that the fridge-freezer was delivered on and constructed the very long desired hen house. Well, I say "we": I sort of helped. And painted it.
The girls came on Saturday and I am like a new mummy I am so proud of them. 3 Goldlines and 2 Marans (the blackish ones). They are 16 and 14 weeks old respectively and I just love them to bits although it will be quite a while before I get to see any eggs as they are still babies really. They like scratching, eating and clucking and that's about it but they still fascinate me
I have called them the Miss Bennets as there are (deliberately) 5 of them and Pride & Prejudice is my favourite book. I am not getting a Darcy, though (or a Wickham). I am waiting for their personalities to come out before I decide which is which but the two little black ones will probably be Kitty and Lydia because they are quite skittish and with a distinctive flounce and temperament all their own. This one is probably Elizabeth:
Meanwhile my Module 2 manual has surfaced from the packing and really there is no excuse not to immediately get cracking on the Bayeux Tapestry. And I will, I will. But now I must just check on the chickens...

Saints and packing cases

The packing cases are because we are moving in the next few days. Just 10 miles down the road into Devon, but it may as well be 10,000 because everything has to go into boxes and all the glasses have to be individually wrapped just the same. Why have I got so many breakables? Our new house is in a very rural area, close to a large lake. Here it is On Google Earth:

This piece is 24" x 10" and is made of many scraps of mostly hand-dyed fabrics stitched to a felt backing. The wooded valley is made from scraps of 'crashed' fabric leftover from my first 3D item - the Darley Oak clock - and I think it is quite effective. Here is a detail
and here is another one
What I am supposed to be doing is an illustrated study of the Bayeux Tapestry. Rather than using A2 boards - which are a pain to store - I have made a fold out, concertina book. It is long and thin in the manner of the Tapestry (60" x 9"). I made it from textured, linen effect wallpaper painted with tea to discolour it. I took lots of photos of the tapestry (they are in the folder, top right) - photographing the illustrations in this excellent book but before choosing some and doing the written work I thought I would look first at colour and stitch. Here are some wrapped threads. They are hand-dyed using natural dyes by this company and are quite a good match, I thought. 2.1.1
Next I decided to do my laidwork handstitch sample. As my new house is in Devon not Cornwall - even if it is only 10 miles away it feels like I'm emigrating!! - the subject I chose was St Piran, the Patron Saint of Cornish tin-miners. He has his own Saints Day - March 5th - which is a sort of unofficial Bank Holiday in most of Cornwall. He lived a good deal earlier than the events in the tapestry (400-500AD) but this image of him from a stained glass window is Mediaeval in origin. 2.1.2
I found laidwork difficult to do neatly but enjoyed it once I was in the swing of it. Doing letters is very hard, though. I chose silk noil as background fabric as I had no linen in the house at the time. Letters would be easier on an evenweave, I guess.

That's it for the time being. Packing cases must take over from saints!

Laced Clock

After getting some feedback from Sian I decided to have another go at my 3D item, this time to make it a more obvious development from my previous design, shape and colour work. I started off with the idea of the wig-wam clock on the previous design board and worked it up in a more practical way to enable me to actually make it. This photo should blow-up for a more detailed look. 12.5
Then I set about making the textile panel for the clock. I forgot to take photos whilst it was in progress, but basically I fused a large number of hand-dyed fabric strips onto Bondaweb and chiffon which I then cut into 3 panels. Two were free-machined in circle stitch having cut out the shapes that will form the sides of the clock first. The 3rd and largest panel I attached to solufleece then free-machined bark shapes quite densely and crashed the fabric as per the description in my previous blog. Then I joined the three sections together. The colour scheme is chosen from my work on the bluebell wood in spring that I did earlier in Module 1. 12.5
Then I made a frame for the clock. Using ash twigs and a wig-wam shape was too hard so I used those green plant sticks you can get in garden centres and made two equilateral triangles (with a glue-gun) which I then joined with further sticks, 2 to form the base and one at the top. Then I wrapped the whole ensemble with PVA and plyed yarn 12.6
Here is a detail of the fabric 12.7
To make a dial (clock face) I experimented with trapping stuff inside laminating pouches and posting them through the laminator. I tried threads, chiffon, pleated chiffon and a combination. In then end, I swiped some acid green acrylic across the inside of the pouch with a comb and put that through the laminator and that was the one I chose: I liked the squidgy edges and the transparency. Here is the clock 12.8
and a sideways view. I punched eyelets into each of the shapes along the sides and threaded hand-dyed bobbly thread - acid green - through each of the shapes and laced the clock to the frame 12.9
I also experimented with the hands, dribbling glue on them and then painting the glue acid green and subjecting them to various other torments but the trouble is clock mechanisms are to some extent precision made and if you raise the surface of the hands even just with a coat of paint it impedes their rotation. I draw the line at precision engineering my own clock parts, frankly! And what is the point of a clock if it doesn't work? You can see it works look because the second hand has moved since I took the last photo..!

12.10
Hope you like it. Many thanks for the kind comments about my last clock. It is really nice to get comments and I do appreciate it. Now, though, I have Had It Up To Here with clocks. Module 2 beckons as all my plans to take a break and get out and about more have been stymied by the weather. The rivers are in spate, the roads are awash, the cows are sinking up to their knees in the muddy fields, the cat is in a permanent sulk, the sparrows are soggy and quite possibly the whole of Cornwall is sinking under the weight of water. So I'll read about the Bayeux Tapestry instead.

The Darley Oak Clock

Last time I said I was going to try and make my clock. Well, I have done it. The inspiration was this amazing tree I wrote about a few weeks ago, and specifically these photos. 12.0

I had been worried about how to create just the right textured background as the clock frame is long and narrow so the Pleater wouldn't do the trick. Sian wrote about Solufleece on her blog so I looked into that and found this very helpful site which explained how to 'crash' fabric. So, this is the background; from the bottom up: Solufleece, 2 layers of Bondaweb and then loads of sheers and fine copper nets. I free-machined the whole lot densely using copper thread and bark patterns. 12.1
and this is the fabric 'crashed'. I was really pleased with it. I made a sample first which was lucky as I did have two Homer Simpson moments: (1) if you hover the steam iron for ages it releases a lot of steam and sets off the smoke alarm which sets off the cat into a hissy fit etc and (2) when the fabric is wonderfully puckered and ruched and knobbly etc it will not be as big as when it started. Doh. 12.2
Here is the clock: 12.3
and here is a detail 12.3
and another detail 12.4
I would have used real acorns but it's not the right time of year yet so I used beads instead. A clock dial proved essential as the fabric was too puckered to let the hands rotate without one. I used an ordinary white, shop-bought dial with pre-printed numbers and sprayed it black to echo the hollow in the tree. I hope you like it.

Design Board for 3D item

Here is the design board for the final chapter of Module 1. A difficult thing to photograph and blog, but I have uploaded it large, so it should 'blow-up'.

I've looked at 3 options for my clock: a table top clock constructed from ash twigs found in the garden: its pyramid shape was dictated by the shape of the twigs I found; a wall hanging clock constructed from a frame of twigs and a clock built into a pre-bought box frame.

11.0

The photo below is a detail of the top left corner of the board. I had envisaged making 3 embroidered panels, one for each of the 3 faces of the pyramid, with a working clock on one face and mock clock hands on the other two faces. The main technical difficulty with this is knowing best how to strengthen the panel for the main face so it can carry the weight of the clock mechanism, bearing in mind the panel is suspended between the twigs. Changing the battery on the clock would not be straight forward either

11.1

11.2

This is my preferred option. It is a wall hung clock but instead of sitting in a hand-made twig frame like the other version on the top right of the board (which, incidentally, would not sit flush against the wall when hung due to the clock mechanism), my panel and clock would be suspended on the front edges of a box frame.

11.3 I could either lace the panel to the frame - perhaps attaching a mirror or mirror card to the back of the box to reflect back some light behind the panel - or I could attach it direct to the recessed rim of the frame with small tacks. The jury is out on which option, at the moment.

The box frame I happened to have lurking in the house is quite long and thin which is great because it made me think of pendulum clocks and so I thought I could add some mock pendulums made from wrapped cords and machine made oak leaves.

In each of these proposed clocks, the panels would be made of a felt backing and then I would layer on top: pleated organzas, nice sparkly bits and any other interesting bits and bobs, held down with chiffon and free machined into bark-like patterns. Doubtless some embellishment would then be called for: beads, Treasure Gold for accent and that sort of thing. As regards the actual clock, I could attach a shop bought clock face or just let the hands rotate without a clock face. It's not actually necessary to have a face and numbers in order to tell the time. Which I choose will depend on how textured the panel surface ends up being; if it is very barky then the hands might get stuck without a proper face between them and the panel. It would have to be trial and error.

Speaking of which I am now going to go and make it even though the Module says don't because I would like to see how it turns out. This might take more than a week so I don't know if I will post next week! It also means I can postpone for a bit longer the dreaded task of doing Module 1 paperwork - time sheets and costing and that sort of thing....

Last of the Design Chapters (12)

Chapter 12 appears to be the last of the design chapters in Module 1 and the last step before coming up with a proposal for a resolved, 3 D item. I made the background from white felt, painted silk and machine-embroidered circles in various colours, then machined over the shape design lines that I drew on the back of the white felt. Then I made a sandwich with some green silk and a bit of wireform before I cut the shapes out so that I could manipulate them more easily if I wanted to:

10.0

Here are some 'arrangements', just having a look to see what the shapes could do. The top picture is just the shapes in a row; in the middle, left arranged almost like buckles or the fastenings on a duffle coat and on the right, in a semi-circle. Bottom left, I attached some of the shapes to floral wire and put them in a vase. Bottom right is a circle made from the negative shapes left on the background fabric

10.2

Here are some negative and positive shapes:

10.3
and this one is me attempting to be a bit more 3D. The shapes are just pinned to the former which is a cone of 'stuff' (no idea what you call it) that you buy to arrange flowers in. The shop called it 'oasis'. Wonderful, as it is so easy to pin and unpin. The background is hand-dyed muslin.

10.4
This is a mirror frame (the actual mirror itself is just card, but the very, very shiny sort) 10.5
And this one speaks for itself. The 'bits' are just arranged, not fixed in anyway. Obviously I will need to think about a frame or former of some sort otherwise there will be nothing to attach the clock mechanism to.

10.6
For my design proposal I am going to work up the idea of a clock. I like clocks. At the moment I'm not sure if I want to make a stand-up clock (as in a carriage clock) or one that will hang on the wall or one that is of itself 3 D like old-fashioned railway station clocks i.e. there is a working clock face on all 4 sides so you can tell the time whichever direction you look at it from.

Alternatively, I have always quite liked that Salvador Dali painting, "Persistence of Time" where the watch appears to be melting. He also made a 'melting' sculpture, that - happily - incorporates a tree. This image is copyright free:

So perhaps I'll make something a bit surreal and whacky: a Time Tree. Then again, maybe not...

Meanwhile, since last blogging I have had a second spinning lesson. I have actually spun some Wensleydale fleece and some lamb's fleece from a different sheep (forgotten its name) and some silk throwsters waste and some wool. It has been brilliant. Classes are in Princetown and Dartmoor has been looking angry over the last few days:

in stark contrast to my tutor's studio, which was lovely
Jane uses all natural dyes for her yarns. She also grows her own yarn, in that she keeps and breeds silkworms at home. They 'free range' in her dining room. Not sure I'm going to go that far! She has a blog about her silkworms' progress. If you want to see how to reel silk off a cocoon - and it is an awesome sight - there is a terrific series of photos on www.wormspit.com. I wrote out the address just because I like the name! The photos are posted here.

Magical Machines

This week I'm afraid it is a cheat post because (whisper) I haven't done any work. The idea of posting weekly was to keep myself on target with this C&G exactly as you would have to be if you went to weekly classes. But then I used to skive those too.. Anyway, a blog is unlike a class - it is more like a pet. You feel obliged to feed it weekly in case it keels over. So, I thought I'd share with you some of my sewing machine collection. I enjoyed taking the pictures and hopefully someone will enjoy looking at them.

This one is my most recent purchase. It is a 1940s Singer 66 Red Eye in a really lovely oak cabinet

I bought it at auction and paid too much for it but it is lovely and it does work. Here are the decals
When it was delivered my first thought was to find out his birthday (it's a boy, I've decided), so I scribbled down the serial number and went to Singer on-line to discover, triumphantly, that it was rare as made in Prussia. I was very excited and 'phoned my lovely German mother-in-law for instant advice on a splendid Prussian name. She suggested Friedrich-Wilhelm and thus he was christened. Then I cleaned him up and removed encrusted dirt from down the decades which revealed a wholly different first letter of the serial number. So he isn't rare. Or Prussian. He's a Yank and one of many. Still, the name has stuck.

This one is a Willcox and Gibbs chain stitch machine (so no bobbin). The last patent listed on the plate is 1874 which I suppose roughly dates it. You sometimes see old sepia-toned photographs of soldiers stitching with these in the trenches of the first world war
These are German toys. At least one of them definitely is. The other I bought off e-Bay and think I was swizzled as I am fairly sure it is a Korean or Chinese copy. Never mind. Wonder if you can tell which it is?
This one is a Mystery Machine. I have tried so hard to I.D. it but I really have no idea. It is iron-framed and a lock stitch with a bullet bobbin case. Almost all the decals have worn off and there is no maker's mark anywhere
This one is probably my favourite. It is a 1947 Singer Featherweight 221 with, as you can see, the art deco plate which I particularly love. It is an electric machine although I removed the foot pedal and cable for the photo and in fully serviced working order. The feed dogs don't drop though so I hardly ever use it as mostly I free machine. Still, that will at least keep it looking nice
This one belonged to my great grandma and is the one I learned to sew on as a child. I made all sorts on it though I don't know how: trying to use a hand-crank now feels like trying to rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time and I can't do it any more
Here is a close-up to show how nice the decals are.
I'm ashamed to say there are several more in the garage but the heat today is overwhelming and they are very heavy as well as semi-concealed by everything from garden machinery to 'Christmas' (the tree and deccies bag that's always in the way) so that's it for the photos. I am going to try really really hard to do some actual work for next week.

Meanwhile if anyone has ever been as puzzled as me about how a bobbin works there is a brilliant little animation here which shows it perfectly. It is also quite mesmerising and hypnotic to watch (you need to scroll down the page a little way, just past the comments, to find it).

Assemblage 2

Well, here is the second one, as promised on my last blog. Second and final. I do now feel I have done Chapter 9 justice as this 'assemblage' was indeed based on my very annoying fragmented shape but at long last the origin of the design has vanished from view and the result is also NOT geometric. Hooray. 9.15

The technique was: white felt backing (with The Annoying Shape traced in pencil on the reverse to mark the embroidery line); mixed fabric fragments including sparkly bits on top, then some Angelina fibres to provide 'glue', and, finally, a chiffon covering. Free machined from the back (i.e. over the traced lines). Soldering iron to remove some elements. Net backing. Oak leaves were then superimposed (leaves = dyed muslin and 2 layers of organza, free machined and cut out); trails of liquid glue from a glue gun which were coloured (when dry!) with black acrylic and then waxed with Treasure Gold. A few beads. The frame was simply twigs glue-gunned into a rectangle.

A closer-up pic: 9.16
and a detail 9.17
Nearly at the end of Module 1 now. I have some 'creative writing' to do - on health & safety for example - as well as a few other bits & bobs - and a design proposal for an embroidered item. Then that's it. Very exciting. Only 5 more modules to go.......Gulp?

Assemblage

After last week's post, I still felt that Chapter 9 was in control of me rather than the other way round and was wondering what to do to get on top of it. Then, happily, I saw Sian's post about her 'assemblage' workshop in Colorado and I thought this looked wonderful: hopefully a way for me to push the boundaries of my very annoying fragmented shape. So here's the result. I have posted the photo bigger than normal so hopefully you can blow it up. I inserted a little zip into my pleated 'bark' to reflect the way very old trees seem to be unzipping themselves as their bark fractures and breaks. Also, I like inserting zips (how sad is that).

9.14

This was such fun to do I'm now going to make another one. What I'm not clear about is what to do with them afterwards: they don't fit in a sketch book and are ever so fragile; at 18 inches x 12 inches, not exactly small either. The problem is exacerbated because I am hoping to be moving house shortly if all the legal stuff goes through. More packing..

I had a great visit to Princetown on Dartmoor the other day. I read about the new Duchy Centre for Creativity and went to have a look. It was great: lots of individual artists' studios as well as two lovely exhibitions. One of the resident artists does weaving and spinning. I have always wanted to learn how to spin and have fixed up a lesson for next week. Very excited. No idea what I'll do with the resulting yarn (if I manage to make any), knitting being one of my least favourite activities. Patterns always assume you will finish a row with the same number of stitches you started with. I never do. Sometimes more, sometimes less - never the same.

On the way back I called into the Dartmoor Prison Museum. Well worth a visit if you're ever passing. A rather macabre collection in parts, including things like a cat o' nine tail which I had certainly never seen in real life; an example cell and various astonishingly creative bits and pieces that prisoners had made in the past, chiefly out of matchsticks. No photos I'm afraid as you're not allowed to take any in the Museum. I was briefly tempted to take a sneaky one with the flash turned off but found myself in front of a whipping post and a collection of strait jackets and thought better of it.

Chapter 9 design work

Rather a flat title for today's blog. Probably due to how I'm feeling. It has been a struggle to complete the exercises for Chapter 9. I grumbled previously about the way my shapes insisted on turning themselves geometric and how much I hated that. Have decided it isn't geometry as such I hate though - just my own version of it! I have been looking at Richard Long's website and his work is all about line and geometry in many ways but I absolutely love it and wish I could get to Tate Britain to see it. This is my favourite from his on-line gallery, although I pretty much do like everything. Including the tree one...

Anyway, moving on to exercises in abstracted fragments. Here are the green ones: 9.8

this is a detail of the one on the bottom left. It is silk paints, felt tip pens and loads of fabric fragments embedded in gel medium

9.9
This is a detail of the one on the bottom right. Silk pens, felt tip pens and sequins embedded in gel

9.10
and here is the red series. Don't know what red has got to do with my tree theme, but I fancied a change from my usual colour schemes. They are made from scraps of all different sorts of paper including those cheap, shiny and corrugated papers usually found in toy shops or similar.

9.11
Finally for today's post, because I was feeling despondent with my design work I took some of the pleated 'bark' that I made last week and turned it into a tree. A very little tree. A stump, actually. But it is 3 dimensional and it does stand up. Sort of. It is made from pleated polyester mock satin which is then smocked very unevenly. Uneven honeycombe stitch makes good bark: excellent news because I can't smock in straight lines to save my life. I also added open chain stitch, a great long woven picot, a few beads and embellished the whole lot with ivy leaves made from silk velvet dyed with Procion MX in Leaf Green.

9.12
and here is a detail 9.13
I did make a 2 dimensional tree a few months ago - this piece sits in a box frame hence the slight haze in the photograph - this comes from the glass. To that tree I added a nest that I made from dried grass off the compost heap lavishly held together with PVA (I have no idea how birds manage without PVA). The feathers are real, obviously. The eggs however are quail's eggs from Tesco. My other half very kindly blew them all for me. It took him ages and ages. I felt quite guilty. They look nice, though, don't they?

9.14

Thanks to readers who have sent me cheery comments. I really appreciate them.

Design work, Auntie's wallpaper and a strange mammal

This week I have been working on Chapter 9 of the first module - explore with abstracted fragments. The instruction was to search for an interesting but uncomplicated set of lines to work with, set within a rectangular frame. Well, that was a challenge as trees are pretty complicated, but eventually I selected a simplified set of lines from one of my photos of the Darley Oak, below left 9.0

And then set about reproducing these lines repeatedly and embellishing and elaborating on them

9.1
The instruction then was to manipulate the lines on a computer. Two hours later, Photoshop and me remained estranged: in fact, I think it fair to say that hostilities broke out, so I reverted to my simple camera software. This limits how much manipulation I can achieve, but I managed some simple distortions and twirling. I also had fun with the airbrush tool

9.2
The green ones on the right were created by importing the 'painted' image into Pages (the equivalent of Word but for a Mac) and duplicating and flipping the image both horizontally and vertically. Many thanks to Julie for the inspiration and tips on doing this. I couldn't resist putting my multiple flips together to achieve this:

9.3
The combination of the pattern and the rather bilious colour scheme quickly brought on a headache and slightly queasy feeling. I wondered what it reminded me of. A wall-covering from an Austin Powers' movie, perhaps? It would fit, wouldn't it: it is a rather ghastly example of early 1970s 'chic'. And then the penny dropped: it exactly echoed the patterns and colours so greatly beloved of my Auntie. My childhood nemesis. The one with the orange lipstick. Aaagh.

I am amazed how I can start off with a lovely, knobbly, curving tree and end up with a geometric, symmetrical tiled pattern without having the slightest intention of doing that. Weird.

Talking of tiles, here is a wonderful tree. It is in the market place in Tavistock (Devon): 9.4Very difficult to photograph, it blends so beautifully into its location. This is the inscription: 9.5
And here is a detail 9.6
Finally, the other evening we saw an unusual creature sniffing around our strawberry pots clearly in the hope of finding some tea. We watched it for several minutes before it spotted us and took off at high speed. I thought at first it was a polecat but my book says they only live in Wales, not Cornwall - I have obviously just over-dosed on Springwatch. Anyway, this is the spitting image of what I saw. He is a ferret. I think.

9.7