Category: textiles

A textilelicious week!

stitchesoftime2 Comments

I have had a very creative week  so I thought I would share these projects with you. As I mentioned in my last post we were doing transfer printing on Monday in my Creative Textiles class. I want to do my City and Guilds Diploma in Embroidery sometime but I need to get better at the design process and build up a scrapbook of ideas and this is exactly what I have started to do with this course.

I took a lot of flower pics over the summer with a view to using them as inspiration so my homework last Sunday was to create a picture to use as inspiration for the transfer printing. Firstly I sketched this clematis from one of my pics and coloured it using pastels.

The drawing of the clematis with my ideas for layering with organza
The drawing of the clematis with my ideas for layering with organza

Next I tried to create a clematis using tissue that I could then recreate in the transfer inks.

The two loose pieces are the flowers I created by painting transfer inks onto paper and cutting out petal shapes
The two loose pieces are the flowers I created by painting transfer inks onto paper and cutting out petal shapes

I then ironed these onto my fabric – transfer inks work best with synthetic fabric so this is some shiny satin from my textile mountain stock!

Printed flowers and some other experiments with bags and paper cutters
Printed flowers and some other experiments with bags and paper cutters

You can print from the originals several times until they fade out as you can see they have done here. The colours when printed onto fabric are much brighter than the originals on paper. I am very pleased with these.

My next step is to cut out the petals in the purple and the pink colours, applique them onto matt satin backing fabric, applique organza over this and do some embellishment with machine embroidery and beading. As I have never done machine embroidery before my homework for this week will be to create a test piece that I can experiment on before I tackle the real thing. All very exciting stuff!

I have also been getting on very well with the scarf that I started at Knit and Natter last week. I went again this week and caught up with two friends who I hadn’t seen for a while which was very nice. I have changed the pattern for the scarf and am now doing this simple garter stitch one with a slit in it.

The pattern in called 'Tuck' and you create a slit in the knitting
The pattern is called 'Tuck' and you create a slit in the knitting by dividing the stitches
I did realise after I had divided it and knitted the one side up for 4 inches that when using self striping wool as I am that means you have to start with the same colour when you go back to the other bit so that did involve a little bit of unravelling but it has not turned out too badly. It is all a learning curve!
The Noro scarf with slit - the self striping wool works very well
The Noro scarf with slit - the self striping wool works very well

My scarf is a little wider than in the pattern so the scarf should bunch through the slit attractively I hope – will get Jake to model it when I am finished. The pattern comes from the book below – Funky Chunky Knitted Accessories by Jan Eaton.

The knitting book
The knitting book

This is a great book for an inexperienced knitter like me as it has lots of pics, clear instructions and lots of very simple patterns that have embellishments like pom poms and beads to make your very easy creations look fab.

I do like knitting over Autumn and Winter. The weather has been pretty nice here the last few days – quite sunny – but there is definitely a chill in the air and the leaves are starting to drop. I do like Autumn as a season – working in teaching it always means the start of things to me rather than the end – a new term, new students and lots of new projects. And I rather like snuggling with my candles and some mulled wine and my latest project of an evening.

I have also been doing some stitching but can’t post any pics of that as it is for my Autumn Exchange on the All Seasons Ornament Exchange blog. I have completed the stitching on the piece now just need to get some materials for the finish. I’m doing a finish that I have not tried before so that should be interesting. Then I can post it off to the USA!  Am also signing up for the Xmas ornie exchange – can’t miss stitching my fave stuff ever!

Am planning a whole weekend of creativity as I have lots of Xmas gifts to make so will be stitching and quilting solidly. Really looking forward to a quiet weekend at home – the first in a while!

New beginnings

stitchesoftime2 Comments

We have just come back from dropping Ellie off at Uni – it was a lovely sunny weekend – very warm which Ellie was very pleased about as she was hoping that moving down South would mean less Yorkshire rain!

She has settled in very well – we moved her into her hall on the Sat so here are some pics of her new digs.

Chandler Hall where Ellie is now living
Chandler Hall where Ellie is now living
Ellie looking out of her window
Ellie looking out of her window
Not a very good pic but this is Ellie's room in hall
Not a very good pic but this is Ellie's room in hall

We took her to Sainsburys so she could do her first shop on her own as she is now fully self catering in her little kitchen below.

The hall of residence kitchen
The hall of residence kitchen

She is having a great time – has made lots of friends already and has been out the last two nights at the Students’ Union. She has hall accommodation on campus which is only 140 paces from the union building so she has not far to come home after a night out! (she told me off for counting how far it was!)

We spent Sat afternoon shopping in Worcester which is a very pretty city – it has a lovely cathedral right by the river. Sat night we went for a very nice meal with my sister Jacky and her kids Sam and Sarah. Ellie is looking forward to being able to spend more time with her cousins, as are me and Jake when we go and visit.

Sam, Jake and Sarah
Sam, Jake and Sarah

I am sure Ellie is going to have a wonderful time – I clearly remember leaving home and moving to college 27 years ago and I loved every minute of it so I am sure she will have an excellent time. We will miss her of course but I so pleased that she has got where she wanted to be. She really deserves it after all her hard work over the last two years and has not let anything deter her from her goals.

I have had an exciting new start as well as I have begun a Creative Textiles class through my local Adult Education Service. The first meeting was today and I had an excellent time in the company of a group of women who like me wish to improve their creative and technical skills and a lovely tutor called Brownwyn.

Today we did some transfer printing – I have actually bought some transfer paper but was not certain what to do with it. Bronwyn had printed some fish pictures which we colored in with pens then ironed on to fabric , sewed onto to a felt backing then stuffed. I now need to quilt and add beads to my little fish but I am very pleased with him so far.

My little multicoloured fish!
My little multicoloured fish!

In the coming weeks we are going to do transfer inks, batik, machine embroidery and quilting. I have homework for next week’s class which I am planning to do on Sunday looking at some inspiration for my printing.

 I am also planning to join a Knit and Natter group that meets locally which one of the other women at the group goes to so will have lots of lovely textile related fun going on each week!

A textileicious talk

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A few weeks ago I had a textileicious day and this week I have had another one at my Embroiderers’ Guild meeting. The morning was a sewing workshop though as usual it was more talking about stitching than doing any!

In the afternoon we had a speaker, a wonderful woman called Linda Rudkin who does a talk called ‘Colour from Nature’ about using natural plant dyes. She does the most amazing work with her dyed fabric and thread and the colour boards to show the different effects of each dye were textile works of art in themselves let alone all of the beautiful cushions, bowls etc she brought with her. My favourite was the large box pictured below embellished with a wealth of three dimensional leaves that were all dyed from one source.

Linda's amazing 3D leaf box
Linda's amazing 3D leaf box

I was particularly interested in the use of dyes as it fits in very well with the medieval period and she also does something called Flower Pounding which as it sounds involves hitting flowers leaves etc with a hammer to extract the dyes straight onto fabric. She had the most beautiful examples of these flower pictures with her.

Go and have a look at her web site for inspiration – we are all hoping she will come back and do a workshop for us next year.

I bought her book, called Natural Dyes and also some fabric which has been pre-treated with mordant and some dye stuff. Our branch of the Guild has its bi-annual exhibition in September and we are making a rainbow of individual panels to display – each person has chosen a colour. Mine is indigo which of course is a natural dye in itself so I am going to do some experimenting for that piece. Watch this space!

New stash

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The weekend before last I went to the wonderful Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate. If you have never been to one you should – they are held about 4 times a year in various places in the UK and apart from the hundreds of wonderful stalls selling everything there are exhibitions of textile art and workshops on various different things. We had a girls’ day out with everyone from the re-enactment group and I spent far too much money as usual! A large part of that was on beading supplies for Ellen as she has just got a beading loom and there were some fab special offers at the beading stalls but a lot of it was stash for me for the next round of Xmas ornies.Here are some pics of what I bought.
Xmas fabric 1
I am planning to use all of this for the backing for Xmas ornies next year – particularly the blue fabric in the middle with snowflakes on. I thought it would look very good with the (multitude!) of snowflake designs that I have collected this year and not had time to stitch!
snowflake
The snowflakes are very slightly sparkly as you can see from the above pic so I will stitch on the wonderful sparkly Aida and evenweave that I also bought at the show. I discovered this last year for my Xmas stitching – as well as the Aida with gold, silver ,blue etc fleck woven into it I have also found this lovely sparkly stuff that is more subtle. It just looks like it has been sprinkled with glitter rather than having an obvious weave.
Xmas aida

I bought more traditional colours as well for ornies and baubles – mainly fat quarters as I don’t need much – most of the ornies are only a couple of inches square.A couple of these are patterns I had last year as well and I particularly like the red ones.
Xmas fabric2
I then promised myself that I would not buy any more sash (ever!) but the following week I also found some wonderful co-ordinating fabric in my LNS that matched a piece I bought from Hobbycraft a while ago and I just had to have it so I did. This is honestly the last bit of Xmas fabric I will buy this year – I will stop now I promise!
Xmas fabric 3