Fiddling and Felting

Christmas is the perfect occasion to make little bits of inconsequence and sell them off at the School Fair. A crowd of tinselly owls has gathered on my dining room table over the past month, and now they have been joined by elves, robins, snowmen, gingerbread men and santas. I have taken my life in my hands and been at work with the viciously barbed felting needles.

The felting needle close up.

 To needle felt, you stab like fury into a mass of wool fibres, hopefully avoiding your fingers. The barbs on the needles catch the wool and matt it together to make a felt surface. In this way, you can sculpt the shapes you want, without having to cut out complicated patterns and sew seams and darts. You can then add small details, with more gentle stabbing, and keep working at the surface until it is as smooth as you want.

Here comes Santa Claus. The wool fibres before I get needling.

The fibres tamed into a ball. This tool contains 4 needles and is good for
 starting a model.

Needle felting is perfect for making Christmas decorations. It is possible to make tiny shapes like a snowman’s carrot nose and attach it without sewing or glue.  It leaves an attractive fuzzy surface, and you can easily add soft wisps of wool for scarves and Santa’s beard. Pompoms can be needled securely into the felt, relieving the need for the dreaded invisible thread.

Santa and one of his elves, watched over by the baleful eye of a tinsel owl.

I had a surplus of polystyrene balls left over from another Grand Project, so I have used these as a base for heads and bodies. The wool is stabbed directly into the polystyrene. The trickiest part of making a character is always the eyes, so I’ve tried out a variety of methods. It’s possible to needle felt in tiny circles of wool, but hard to get a neat result. I also used  pompom eyes and stick-on boggly eyes, but my favourites are tiny round black beads, either sewn or glued on (very fiddly, either way!)

The Christmas Fair is on Friday, so this rather drunken crew will soon be off to their stall. I’ve enjoyed having them sitting around on the table – but let’s hope they don’t suffer the indignity of coming back unsold!

I just had to make a squirrel! This little chap is one inch high, and he will be staying with me.

The Patchwork Background

In the design stage of my holiday quilt I carefully measured the squares which would contain the pictures so they would fit nicely into a patchwork background.  Unfortunately, after the first couple of pictures had been created, I completely forgot about these sizes and so a bit of re-designing was required. 

I started by drawing up squares on paper to tack the pictures in place so they could be worked into a patchwork background.

Tacking the pictures onto their paper squares which were drawn out with the very useful patchwork template Sar gave me during our session at Chesterfield

I then started to make the small blue squares which would represent the narrow canals.

Those blue squares do look very small!

With the help of graph paper I drew up the design around each picture and now I had strayed from my original design I was able to create different spaces around the square which I thought were more interesting.  I marked out the patchwork pieces ready to be cut into templates.

The design on graph paper with each piece numbered and this photo was a useful reference once the template had been cut up.

The process seemed easy in theory and I gaily cut out the templates, tacked my fabric to them and started sewing them in place.  But it soon became apparent I had missed an important point, the squares didn’t fit accurately together due to the thickness of the fabric which I hadn’t taken into account.

The bottom of the dark green square should have fitted flush with the bottom of the cygnet square

It took a bit of fiddling to reduce some of the templates so all the pieces fitted snugly together.

The cygnet surrounded by green countryside

The next pictures were given a surrounding in a similar way but I used a bit of guesswork to trim down the templates so they fitted together.  The lines of small blue squares represent the narrow canals and the wider blue squares are for broad canals. 

Progress so far and the quilt is coming together

As always I'm thinking ahead to the next stage and hopefully it won't be long before I can start adding the finer details to the quilt.  

The Last Three

My three remaining pieces for the holiday quilt were all executed in embroidery but in very different styles.  For the first piece I used the Birmingham Museum's mock up of Staffordshire Hoard ornamentation as the basis for my first design. 

Birmingham Museum's reproductions from the Staffordshire Hoard

I love the intricacy and fine ornamental shapes in the top item but also wanted to incorporate the bright red garnets which featured in so many of the treasures found in the hoard.  My design quickly took shape but the stitching was not so straight forward.  The red bead 'garnets' didn't stand out against my bronze thread and the ornamental shapes in the design would also be lost.  The gold version of this thread wasn't a very attractive colour so after some experimentation on a try-out piece I settled on a bronze outline filled in with variegated yellow to represent the reflections of shiny gold.  The red beads and red sequin eye stand out on the paler background and I was pleased with this interpretation of my design.

My Staffordshire Hoard bird

 On one of our walks we came across a large family of swans, 7 cygnets came across the canal in the hope of being fed but they were out of luck.  I pondered a design of 7 cygnets but even in very basic outline the resulting square would have been out of proportion to the rest of the quilt.  I settled for just one cygnet sewn in long and short stitch in various greys and I have to admit it gave me some trouble.  Luckily the fabric stood some unpicking when I inadvertently used a green-grey on the body and then again in my attempts to complete the bill within the outline.  And after all that I am not really happy with the result so there might well be a rethink and another version of the cygnet at a later date!

The cygnet which may be replaced

I may not have saved the best to last but it certainly was the easiest, a little mouse from the vesta box. 

The mice on the vesta box in the Jewellery Museum

The mice on the box were carved with little detail beyond the outline so I've represented this with a simple outline sewn in stem stitch, my favourite stitch.  The black bead eye was attached with the not so popular invisible thread.  

The little mouse sewn on calico

So now my animal squares are complete my creation moves into it's next stage, the patchwork canal and it will be interesting to see how that works out. 

Tessellations and Tribulations

Deb came for a visit over half term. As we all know, Deb is renowned for her challenges, but this time it was me in the driving seat. At school, we were planning a STEM week (science, technology, engineering and maths), and I had to come up with a tessellation and transformation activity, that would be suitable for all ages and abilities, from suck-it-and-sneeze-on-it 4 year olds to the hard-to-please 11 year olds. My inspiration came from the yellow patchwork quilt hanging in the living room, and the Perfect Pattern game was devised.

Many patchwork patterns derive from right angle triangles, particularly in blocks of 16 squares. I decided to keep it simple for the kids, and made the squares for them, divided into two triangles. Deb was roped in to aid production, and we soon had an efficient system of slicing, gluing and laminating, incidentally introducing Deb to the joy of the rotary cutter.

In full triangle production. Note the healthy snacks!

With a good selection of triangles, we settled down to trying out game rules, and found many ways of making patterns, the aim being to get a pattern with horizontal and vertical symmetry. Of course, just messing about with the pieces was fun too.

Making perfect patterns with the patchwork cards.

The patterned sides of the playing pieces were made from card. Deb and I had a walk down to the great little craft shop in Staveley (Time2Craft) to buy it, and were unaccountably sucked in to the wool section next door, which was full of delights, including colourful tinsel wool. I announced to Deb that a ball would be purchased and transformed into small glittery owls, to sell at the school Christmas Fair. (The school fair is a great excuse to make bits of nonsense without them hanging round to annoy you afterwards.) Back home, we experimented with less demanding wools before trying out the tinsel. Deb producing a sparkly snowman in white, sewing the tiny pompoms onto his face with invisible thread and heroic determination. It turned out to be impossible to crochet the tinsel thread, but it knitted up quite easily and several owls have so far been produced. Unfortunately, the long strands refused to accept pieces glued on, even after holding bits in place till the fingers lost all feeling. Invisible thread to the rescue – whatever did we do without it?

Tinselly owls and Deb's jolly snowman

While Deb was here, we also had a trip to Hobbycraft, and, for the first time, saw a tambour needle for sale. I fancied trying one; after all, how difficult could it be? I spent the afternoon making holes in fabric while the thread languished on the back, refusing to be caught by the tiny hook. Deb retreated to the loft to sort her stuff, suggesting that YouTube was my only hope. I found an instructional video and put it on repeat.  Eventually a wobbly line of chain stitch emerged. The good thing about the tambour needle is that, if you make a mistake, it is very easy to undo. The bad thing is, even if you haven’t made a mistake, it is very easy to undo. In fact, when you have just done a perfect line of evenly spaced chain stitch and you are standing up proudly to show it off,  it is distressingly easy to undo

Never one to give up (especially having spent money on the thing), I have persevered on a test piece, which has turned out rather jazzy, because I tried out every type and thickness of thread I have. It’s good for very fine threads, and also metallic threads that take a lot of punishment when they are constantly pulled through the fabric by needle. My skill level is still firmly at beginner though – there won’t be any chain stitched fripperies at the Christmas Fair this year.

The tambour needle and my wobbly, lumpy, but colourful chain stitch, with a hopeful smiley face drawn in the corner for reasons unknown.

The Lock Box

Canal lock gates might not seem an obvious source of inspiration, but Deb and I both liked the way a jungle of plants had managed to grow within the wooden structure.  This was one of the first photos I took on our holiday, and I thought the patterns of textured wood and leafy plants would be perfect for embroidery. The colours, however, were going to need a bit of artistic licence  - even in sunlight, lock gates can never be described as  vivid.

Plants growing against all the odds.

I had set up my hoop to make a companion piece to the cogs and wheels embroidery, but thinking about the jewellery quarter in Birmingham had suggested the idea of a jewellery box, and this thought proved difficult to dislodge. I decided on an easy cube shape, using a strip of fabric about 12 inches long to make the four sides. I would worry about attaching the base and lid later on.

I'd popped into my favourite shop, Boyes, earlier that week, and come out with a loosely knitted tube which, judging by the illustration, was meant to  be worn as a neck warmer. Stretched out, it had a lovely open texture, and so was cut up for a higher purpose!  I used this with some lacy fabric that I bought with Mum in Chester to make a base for the embroidery.  I machined it onto backing fabric with some difficulty, as it refused to lie flat and unravelled itself every time it was moved. It was finally tamed with firm rows of zigzag stitch in blending colours. 

Wool and lace gave texture to the background.

The plants were made by chopping up tiny scraps of wool, net, velvet  and sheer fabric in light and dark green. Then I let loose with free machine embroidery in lovely shiny threads. The result was a bit flat, so I dug out the dreaded invisible thread to sew on tiny beads.Threading the tiny needle took longer than sewing all the beads on, and the whole thing nearly went in the bin when the invisible thread got an invisible knot.

Machine embroidery and beads.

I chose a blue lining to represent the water ( a far cry from the murky grey reality). For the lid, I wanted a wood effect, sewn in back stitch over more of the woollen mesh and I was quite pleased with how this turned out. I decided to leave the lid loose, rather than give it a hinge - partly because it was so much easier! The bottom of the box is felt, attached with fabric glue which kept it in place while I secured it with more invisible thread. Inside, the box has a shimmery bottom, with scraps of blue and white velvet, netting and lace, heavily machine embroidered, because this can get a bit addictive! I like the idea of it secretly shimmering away to itself inside. 

The secret bottom of the box

The final box is about  a three inch cube,  and, with all the layers of texture and embroidery, stands up firm and square. Now I just have to find something to put inside it.

The finished box.

The Long and short of it

The fourth square of my holiday piece is based on the magnificent bronze bull standing outside Birmingham's Bullring shopping centre.  It's clearly a popular attraction and I found I couldn't take a photo without including other tourists. 

The bronze bull complete with tourists

My original plan was to develop a design based on the whole bull but the size constraint of the finished square would not allow for the level of detail required.  Instead I concentrated on his head and started with a pencil drawing.  This looked a bit odd because the bull's head is at a slight angle so I squared it up for the basic design.  

The pencil drawing

The design was too complex for applique so I decided to use embroidery.  I played about with coloured pencils to plot the colours on another outline.    

The colours to be used 

Long and short stitch is often used for a 'painted' effect and I have tried it before but only in small try-out pieces so the next step was to practise the stitch and the graduation of colour. There's no photo of this step!

I'd selected some blue fabric for the background, transferred the image with a fine waterproof ink pen and finally started stitching.  I stitched the horns first starting with a button hole edging.  Initially I used 3 colours, cream, mid-brown and dark brown, the yellow was added at the end to keep the colours on the horns consistent with those on the bulls face.

Partway through stitching the forehead I found a rhythm, long and short stitch became more of an overlapping long stitch which was satisfying to sew and gave a good result.  I also used stem stitch for the strips of plain colour and for the dark outlines which were added at the end.  

My version of the Birmingham Bull, he is just over 3 inches across

Running in circles

The last couple of weeks have seen a lot of messing about with scraps of paper, cutting up fabric, scribbling in sketchbooks, and staring at photos in the hope of inspiration. The holiday challenge is underway! After much pondering, I have decided to make a set of three related pieces using one of my favourite techniques – embroidery in a hoop.

We learnt to embroider as children. I can clearly remember Nanny Edwards teaching me how to do lazy daisy stitch. Recently, I rediscovered an ancient work of art, which I think I must have done in my teens, on material cut from an old sheet (presumably with permission from mum!) It looks like I had a new stitch book and was trying everything out. Autumn colours were obviously a favourite even then, and I still like to stitch right up to the rim of the hoop.

Early adventures with stitches.

I always have some embroidery on the go. In between grander and huger projects, it’s relaxing to catch a circle of fabric in an hoop and just stitch away. I have plenty of hoops, but my favourites are about 10cm in diameter, which means they don’t take long to fill, even if, as occasionally happens, I feel the need to obsessively cover every inch. I like to work on coloured or subtly patterned fabric, usually cotton. Recently I’ve discovered that felt also stretches nicely in the hoop and gives a lovely soft texture to work on, although the smallest stitches sink into it and disappear. I always use single strands of embroidery silk, in many colours; over the years I’ve built up a rainbow collection, all lovingly wound onto thread holders and filed in colour order.

Felt work in progress. This hoop is only 8cm diameter and very fiddly to manoeuvre the needle at the back.

Occasionally, I have a design in mind, but mostly I just start with a line of stitching and see where it wanders. Running stitch is the simplest of stitches, and I like to work it in undulating lines, avoiding using the same colours next to each other. I keep adding lines until it’s as dense as I want it. The ‘in and out’ of running stitch produces a rhythm across the fabric and very slight variations in stitch length keep it from looking too regimented – I have never like to be too neat! This and the wavy lines give the embroideries an organic feel. I have some favourite patterns that sneak in to whatever I’m sewing – concentric circles, spirals, dots and waves.

Pebbles.
The stitching is in continuous lines around the oval shapes, and reminds me of coloured patterns we used to make as children.

 

Because the size is so small, it’s hard to add much detail, so I usually stick to the abstract. This embroidery is one of my favourites – it started as the central circle and I added radiating lines, with a seed stitch and a few French knots. I think of it as a sea creature, floating about with its tentacles waving.

A many-tentacled blob 

This embroidery (nearly finished) unexpectedly sprouted a village with a whirlpool. I thought I would have fun using different stitches for the patterned roofs, but in fact they are so small that you can’t see the detail, and they were painstaking to do. The window panes are about 1mm square.

Rows of wobbly houses are also a favourite theme.

So back to the holiday challenge. For my first embroidery, I’ve taken inspiration from the jewellery factory that Deb and I visited, and combined the shapes of the cogs and handles of the old machinery with the delicate colours of the jewellery in the displays upstairs. The base is blue green cotton, and, as usual, its worked in single strands of embroidery silk. I took a photo after each session to show how the piece evolved.  Unfortunately, this also shows how difficult it is to capture an accurate colour representation, especially as the silks reflect light so well, giving the actual pieces a beautiful rich glow.

Cogs and Wheels -the finished piece.

I need to decide whether to back the finished piece onto card or leave it framed in its hoop. Then its on to my next subject - more about that another time!

A Start on the Challenge

We had so many ideas during our holiday it was difficult to know where to begin but I decided to pick 9 items from my list of images to use in the piece.  7 of the 9 were animals so I thought that was a good idea for the theme. 

To tie the images together I am going to create a canal route in patchwork to represent our journey and I'll incorporate some of the features we saw.  'Flying Geese' triangles are used for locks and create an impression of movement and the canal will be given banks in squares of green, brown and grey.  I've also added a railway line and some bridges which will be embroidered on.  

A very rough plan of the design with the approximate sizes of the images.  The patchwork squares would be a 1/2 inch square.

As you can see in the photo I have tried out making the banking squares irregular and varying the width of the canal squares but further experimentation is required before I make a final decision on this. 

My first piece was creating William de Morgan's red cockerel running boldly across a plate.  I have tried for a realistic copy of the original and fortunately had some bright red and purple batik material in our pack from the show and some matching silk thread.  I started by drawing the outline, then traced it onto interfacing and cut it out.  I stuck the cut out onto the batik and then cut round it to go give an accurate copy of my motif.  I stuck the motif onto calico to give a neutral background.  I have found interfacing and fabric glue are very useful tools in this type of work.  

The feet and chest feathers were added in stem stitch and the white details picked out with running stitch.  Unfortunately the beak fell victim to the added detail and the end of it disintegrated; I remedied this with some more stem stitch in the silk and for continuity picked out his crown in a similar fashion.  

The bold cockerel

The little khaki bear was an obvious choice for this project and his outline was very simple.  He was cut out from brown batik and stuck to pale blue fabric as described above.  The blanket stitching edging reflects his home-made origins from a khaki blanket.  I had experimented with more complex stitching on his features but in the end decided keeping it simple was more appropriate. 

The khaki bear, I have tried to keep true to his character including his skew whiff eyes.

The little scottie dog represents the Jewellery Museum, it was a charm for a bracelet which was being stamped out during the demonstration.  Having drawn the profile I had all sorts of ideas for the background but after some experimental stitching I came back to the simple idea of edging the motif in a close blanket stitch.  Then I spent some time practising the blanket stitch to make sure I could achieve a reasonable finish round the tight bends.  Once again the fabric glue and interfacing were a great help in placing the motif for sewing. Luckily I had some blue/grey background material which is printed with flecks of gold (you may recognise the curtains from the bungalow!).  This was ideal for representing the gold dust and trimmings which were so carefully collected for recycling in the Jewellery Factory.  

The Scottie Dog charm

So 3 down and more fun to be had with this holiday challenge.

Hardwick Hall

The sun was shining, and I have a new car to try out, so Pat and I whizzed one junction down the motorway to Hardwick Hall. We’ve both been before, but, on at least one occasion, that involved accompanying a group of school children, itching to touch everything and desperate to eat their sandwiches. We were a little bit better behaved than that, and had a great day immersed in Tudor history.

Hardwick Hall is fascinating for anyone interested in textiles. Most striking are the huge tapestries covering many of the stone walls. These were purchased by the formidable Bess of Hardwick for colour and warmth in the large rooms, but also as a symbol of her wealth and status. The tapestries  are faded now, with patches and repairs in places, which I found very evocative – a reminder that all artefacts have their own history.  Their fragile state means that most of the rooms are kept quite dark, which makes photography difficult. However, the National Trust has loads of information here http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/place/hardwick-hall.

A squirrel hiding in the tapestry. Photo by Pat because I wasn't tall enough to get the camera angle.

The tapestries are impressive in their size and workmanship, and largely depict stories from the Bible. The figures are on a grand scale, which personally I don’t find very  appealing. I was much more inspired by the Noble Women hangings, commissioned by Bess. These show strong women from classical mythology such as Penelope and Lucretia, and symbolised Bess’s power, wealth and education. Who could fail to be impressed! I was interested in the construction of the hangings.  They are made from fabric taken from Medieval church garments, including velvet, satin, silk and cloth of gold and silver. This has been cut up, appliqued and outlined with gold and silver thread.  The National Trust is great about supplying detailed information about the hangings, their meanings and their makers.   http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1129593.2

A grand four poster.

The house is full of other rich textiles.  I’ve always wanted to sleep in a four poster bed, and this one has gorgeous, heavy curtains. At the other extreme, there were colourful examples of proddy rugs in the kitchens and servants’ quarters. And there is modern work on show as well. This beautiful panel marks 400 years since Bess’s death. The portraits are very finely done, but I especially liked all the embroidered animals dotted around.

The displays around Hardwick have been updated since I was last here, and I loved the way information is now presented in a creative way using fabrics and furnishings. Here’s a quote describing Lady Arbella Stuart

And rather less glamorous

Textiles are fragile, and there has been a concerted effort to restore and preserve the precious collection at Hardwick. There is a wealth of information on display to describe the construction of the pieces, and the conservation that has taken place, right down to the identification of bugs that eat away at the fabrics. It was great to see the examples of the back of the tapestries, where the colours are less faded owing to the lack of exposure to light.

Comparing the back and the front of the tapestries

There was also an interesting exhibition about Evelyn, the last Duchess at Hardwick, who died in 1960. Evelyn was committed to the preservation of the textiles within the Hall, and worked on the some of the tapestries herself. Her workbox was on display too, a personal touch amongst all the grandeur. 

Even a Duchess can have a messy workbox