Stitched yarn

Last Fibrecircle day, my friend Helen brought over some samples of stitched yarn. She made them by laying down yarns next to one another and zigzag stitching over the top.

I love the gorgeous texture of these pieces, so I just had to have a go with some of my ten thousand yarns.
This was my first attempt. My, is this process slow! After a while, I got so bored that I added in some strips of bright pink paper ribbon, to make it grow a little faster. The ribbon is not especially robust but there is enough yarn over it to hold it all together. I really like the way the ladder yarn gives an airy effect.

Then I thought, "there has to be a faster way!". So I tried with a bundle of yarns of different thickness, about six or seven strands. Of course, this is way wider than just two strands, so instead of the zigzag stitch, I used that machine mending stitch that's a zigzag shape but each zig is made of three straight stitches. I found that the outer strands still tended to get missed. So I tried twisting the yarns together as I went, and that worked better, though I still had some loops along the edge. Then I tried loosely plaiting the strands and that worked really well. I was using multiple strands so I switched them around as I plaited. This is how the whole lot looked once I had stitched the sections together: I like this so much, I've started another one! I like the way the strands twist in and out of one another. It looks very organic, like rock strata or sand patterns. And yes, it is faster than sewing them two by two!

Aw gee!

I just saw that Carol has presented me with this award! Thanks, Carol, that's high praise from you! Carol's blog is full of wonderful and inspiring things, so I really urge you go and have a look - just click on her name.

It's difficult to choose the five blogs that I find most inspiring and creative.
1. Creative Dabbling: I love to visit Erica's blog because she's always busy and she writes about so many interesting things. She always gives me a new way to look at the world.
2. threadsandthoughts because Rhonda's embroideries are just exquisite, and her photographs too.
3. Dyed and Gone to Heaven - Lisa is having such fun with the City and Guilds work and she does way brilliant work!
4. Digital Gran Fabulous work from Margaret as well as incredible photos of Wales
5. Magstitch The marvellous site of Maggie Grey, because her work always inspires me to try something new.

There are lots of others I could have chosen - maybe next time!

God is telling me not to felt

Well, perhaps not. But I have this very elderly UFO. It's my oldest UFO, in fact, because I began it when I first learnt to knit squares at about the age of seven. In fact, some squares have been cast off by knitting two together, before I learnt the proper way. (It makes quite a pretty edge.)
I stopped knitting squares when I got to 100 (I was probably about 16 by this stage).
I was going to sew them together into a rug (see, even then bright colours and patchwork fascinated me!) but then I hit a snag. I hate sewing knitting together. With A Passion. I sew my jumpers together because if I don't, well, I don't actually have a jumper. And that seems a bit pointless. But I have to grit my teeth and make myself do it, so I have the jumper to wear.

OK, I thought, I'll crochet them together. But by this stage, I was a penniless young mother, and buying a whole lot of yarn just to crochet these squares together really couldn't be justified on our budget. I tried cheap yarn - oh, yuck! I tried scraps of leftover yarn from my knitting projects on the principle of the brighter the better, but no, it just wasn't right. I have dragged this bag of knitted, half-crocheted-together squares around with me through fifteen house moves.

Then I had a brilliant thought. All these squares were knitted with 100% wool yarn and hey, I could felt them! Then I'll have a whole lot of brightly coloured felt shapes to use in my textile work. Or I could sew them together on the machine and embellish them a bit. I decided to do a test felt on a couple of squares by beating them around in a little bit of hot water in a bucket until I lost interest, and then washing them with other stuff and tumble-drying them. Result, two rather startled, slightly fluffy squares, not looking anything like felt. Hmm.

OK, do it properly. All the squares into the washing machine, add hot water at the lowest level and wash. Halfway through the filling process, the washing machine died.
It's hard not to conclude that this is a Message.

Wedding wrap

Here are some more photos of the wedding wrap:









You might guess that I am pretty chuffed at how this turned out! But I am even more thrilled to have received a commission to make one in black as an evening wrap! It's on the loom at this very minute, so stay tuned for a photo once it's finished.

Some generous friends...

... sent me these lovely postcards before I went overseas. They knew I was way too busy to make any myself, but they sent me some anyway. How nice is that! The theme was Share a Cuppa, because we are nearly all a long way apart and a virtual cuppa is all we get to share. Thank you all!

This one is from Kaite, who initiated the swap: Isn't it brilliant? Thanks Kaite.

This one is from Prue, whose great love is her garden: It really makes me feel like I am sitting in her garden, sharing a lovely afternoon tea!

This one is from Rory: This one has a very garden-y feel too, doesn't it? Love those colours.

This one is from Pamela: We must all be mad gardeners, mustn't we? Pamela has even added some embroidered flowers.

Finally, this one is from Di: Isn't it elegant? And so very English - I love it!

I've finally found a moment to make some postcards in reply.
These will be wending their way to their new owners early next week.

Printing

I missed the Fibrecircle meeting this week, due to my annoying cold, but I thought I would play a little with the materials I had packed to take. The result are over on the Fibrecircle blog, if you'd like to have a look. Basically, I was printing onto fabric using a rolling pin, a brayer, some straw placemats and Fiskar's Texture Plates. My favourites, though, are the monoprints I took from the glass board I was inking from!

Now for the aaah moment...

What a fabulous day!

Kas and Jon listening to the celebrant..

Jon saying his vows...

Kas putting the ring on Jon's finger

and a happy moment during the signing of the register.

And Tim, the bridesman (left of the last shot), caught the bouquet.

"Now", he mused, "I'll just have to get a date..."

Thank you to everyone who sent good wishes for the day. They seem to have worked, the rain held off until ten minutes after the ceremony finished.

And while we're talking about the wedding..

...here's a shot of the wrap I'm weaving for Kas to wear. I'm about halfway through and it's looking great. The warp is fine baby wool, the weft is silk/mohair, so it has a little fluffiness. Very soft, very pretty...

Nest-building

Do mothers of the bride nest-build? Today I was overcome with the need to tidy out the wardrobe in the spare room. I found five bags of clothes that Vinnies will just love, including one bag that belonged to an aunt who died four years ago. OK, to be fair, under orders from the nursing home, we used to mind most of her off-season clothes, because she had no room to store them. But, yes, they could have gone to charity long since. Why this week?

I guess I feel like to should be Doing Something, but most somethings have been done and the rest have to happen this coming week. Perhaps it's a little unsettling when one's only daughter, and last child to marry, finally walks down that red carpet?

Well, psychology aside, I do have a nice clean cupboard and another little task for my ToDo list.

Textile Travels Part 2: Mulhouse textiles

While I was in France, I went to the Museum of Fabric at Mulhouse. I have wanted to go there for a long time, since my friend Gerard sent me posters of their exhibitions, which have decorated my workroom. It's quite a small museum, but very detailed. Mulhouse, in Alsace, became a textile printing area when Louis XVI banned the importation of the fashionable Indian chintzes into France, after a cholera outbreak in Marseilles. At this time, Mulhouse was ain independent principality, and the town fathers saw an opportunity. Many Europeans had travelled to India to try to discover the secrets of Indian printing and part of the exhibition at Mulhouse mentions these people and their contibution to European fabric printing. Once the secrets were discovered, chintz printing became the major industry in this area. The exhibition (all in French) describes the technical processes, including the original design books of some fabric designers and three full-sized looms from different periods, and provides lots of examples of fabrics printed in Mulhouse. There are also some examples of garments made from chintz, and several "boutis", French wholecloth quilts, made from Mulhouse chintz fabrics.

When I was there, there was also a special exhibition called Black and White, of fabrics designed and printed in Mulhouse. Fabrics are still printed there today, but mostly as special runs for couture designers, and for IKEA. There were examples of couture outfits made from Mulhouse fabrics, plus IKEA fabrics and other design works. I'll add photos and more information once I'm home again.

Textile travels Part 1: Tapestries and Sewing Machines

The blog has been quieter that usual because I'm not at home, creating things, but off travelling. I've managed to include quite a number of textile-related things in our travels, which my husband seems to find quite surprising, though I can't think why, since I arranged our itinerary!

First was a flying visit to the Louvre in Paris, as soon as we got off the plane. This visit, I went to see the tapestry collection, and very impressive it is. These were just the first of many tapestries I've seen in France, but I love them and can't get enough! I don't have clear photos of them, as they are kept in low light conditions, but they are wonderful pieces of work.

The Louvre is an amazing museum and I really enjoy going back, because I see new things every time. It's an incredible resource for the textile artist - since it contains so many different examples of material culture, from just about every corner of the earth. I find myself photographing and sketching things I never knew I was interested in, because the shape or line or pattern captures my attenti0n. See this ancient potsherd. Doesn't it have a fantastic design?

And this mosaic.... made up of incredible details like this...

The next stage of my textile travels took me to the Peugeot Museum, in Haute Saone. Yes, strange that you should ask, the man I love *is* interested in cars, but I found to my surprise that the Peugeot company began life as a tool-making concern, and their tools included sewing machines, which they continued to make until the 1930's. Of course their museum wasn't very interested in providing the large amount of detail I wanted about their machines, but it was fascinating to see these old European machines, dating from only shortly after the more familiar US machines. Here is an 1867 hand crank machine:
And a pedal machine with an alternating foot action:
This one is one of their last machines, in 1936-37.

I love the way that utilitarian items were made to look so beautiful.

Next, textiles in Mulhouse....

Big update!

I haven't been idle lately, though nothing has reached the blog!

First of all, I made some more pants. I'm really on a roll with pants lately! The first pair was made from a navy blue wool-polyester blend, lined with polyester lining. They feel lovely to wear and very warm! The second pair was from grey polyester, lighter weight but very comfortable. These ones have dark grey contrast topstitching. I've since made a third pair from charcoal-coloured polyester, with a long half-belt waistband.

I also finished the jumper I've been knitting this winter. It was based on a jumper I once saw in a magazine from the eighties. I started with a basic jumper pattern, as I mostly do, and worked out the variation. I'm very happy with it! I also finished weaving a second scarf, which I haven't photographed yet. It taught me that, if you make a mistake in the warp, it really is better to start again, rather than try to fudge it! The scarf itself is nice, but it's a little too short because the warp problems were so annoying and I spent a lot of time unweaving to correct errors. Lesson learned! I've just finished a third project, a wrap, which I made from leftover baby wool. I wanted to try weaving with fine yarn, and I wanted to practise getting my selvedges nice and even. I also wanted to try out using a pattern stick, which was very interesting and worth exploring further. It's turned out very well, and I really like it. The colours are the ones I wear often.

I've also been preparing patchwork blocks to take on my travels. I did a test block, which looks like this: The fabrics are pretty florals, in pinks, yellows and blues, from a range called Amelia's Garden. I'm combining them with toning plains in a positive-negative layout. So one block will have flower baskets on a plain background, and the next plain baskets and a floral background. I'm not used to using plain fabrics - tone-on-tones are much more usual these days - but it's what seemed to work best with the soft florals. It will make a lovely quilt for my favourite little girl. It was going to be a pink and yellow quilt, but somehow those blues just sneaked in!

Scarf finished!

I've fallen behind with blogging these past few weeks - just too much happening out there in the real world. But I did finish my first scarf on my beautiful new loom! I just love it, even though I can see all the things I need to learn how to do better! I couldn't think how to photograph it so here it is hanging on my bedroom door.
I deliberately have kept to firm yarns, not the fluffy or feathery ones that are more forgiving for the beginning weaver. I really want to learn how to weave neatly, making nice firm selvedges, so I need to be able to see every time I don't get it right.

Making silk paper

Another fun day playing! Today, Fibrecircle made silk paper, which I find is a Very Useful Thing to have in one's stash. The process is really easy; the hard part is choosing fibre colours that work well together.

I made one multicoloured one in blues, reds and golds


and one in red and gold with sparkly Angelina fibres embedded in it. This one is hard to photograph, like all shiny things, even without using flash.
I always seem to be a bit stingy when I lay down the fibres so the result is always quite thin and lacy. I quite like that but I need to learn to apply the fibres with a more liberal hand!

Silk paper is really easy to make. I used tussah silk and added Angelina fibres.
I laid down a piece of tulle (netting) and laid silk fibres onto the tulle until it was covered, making sure the fibres crossed one another and were not all lying in the same direction. On the second piece, I laid the fibres at a 45-degree angle to the sides of the piece and at right angles to each other, to avoid the obvious vertical stripes of the first piece. I placed another layer of tulle over the topand brushed over a detergent solution on both sides, to open up the fibres and make them receptive to the adhesive. Then I brushed over textile medium on both sides. We tried drying the samples flat but they are very wet, so we eventually hung them to dry, which was naturally much faster. When they were dry, I peeled off the layers of tulle.

A little catching up

I've been meaning to share these lovely things that friends have given me lately.

First, Erica gave me these gorgeous dyed cheesecloth pieces a few weeks ago. I don't know what they will turn into but aren't they beautiful? I just love these rich colours.

Then my friend Prue brought me this gorgeous little owl bead from Timbuktu To Kathmandu in Noosa, because she knows I collect owls. Sorry about the picture quality but it's so hard to photograph such tiny things. Isn't it cute? I'll have to think of something very special for this one!

Then my friend Kaite sent me a little piece of MailArt to brighten my day.
I'm sure my postman will be very intrigued!

My new toy!

I haven't been blogging much lately, mostly because I have been busy with Real Life Stuff (RLS). RLS is usually considered boring but, as part of it has been making my only daughter a wedding dress, I can't really say that, can I! Nor can I really show you a picture of the toile version, in case the Man Of Her Dreams happens to visit (hi Jon!).

But it hasn't been all RLS, because on Friday I took delivery of my New Toy. Here it is: Yes, it's a little travelling loom. I love it! I love the possibilities of it, I love the way the scarf I'm weaving from cheap Spotlight wool is coming out,I love the way weaving has the same Zen feel of hand quilting. You just sit there and your hands do stuff and your mind goes away into some far, far place, and returns refreshed, and gee, did I do all that while I was gone? (Reminds me how I've missed hand quilting. I really must sew some backings for the pile of quilt tops awaiting attention... once the RLS is over and done with!) I'll show you the scarf once it's off the loom. It's nothing very complicated, because I decided, for once, to start easy and work up to the trickier things. But the colour is that hard-to-capture deep turquoise, alternating with purple in the warp and with a couple of other yarns in the weft. I'm learning a lot and I already have yarn for the next scarf, which will be a houndstooth, I think.

Playing with Foils

Today I played with foiling onto fabric with the Fibrecircle group. I'd played with this before, using fusible web and foiling glue, but this time I also used the hot glue gun and bonding powder. We used foiling packs from The Thread Studio and Jones Tones foils from Spotlight. The Jones Tones foils say they do not need heat to transfer, just pressure & glue, but we found they were not very successful cold-foiled, and transferred much better with heat as well as pressure. I haven't distinguished significantly between the two types of foil, since we used the same method with both.

First we played around with glues. We used a grey glue sold by Diane Groenewegen in her classes and a white foiling glue, just called Glue for Foiling. We tried painting the glue directly onto fabric, stencilling it through paper stencils cut with scrapbooking punches, stamping it with wooden stamps and drawing freehand using the applicator nozzle on the white glue. We also made patterns with the hot glue gun. We set these aside to dry and moved onto fusible web.

This one was done with a piece of fusible web, with straight strips of a type of hemming tape, marketed to quilters to adhere 1/4in seams, ironed onto the fabric. I always find fusible web gives a very strong transfer, which is fine for big patches of colour, or when the foil sheet is almost exhausted, but otherwise is a bit strong. I also stamped some leaf shapes with a wooden stamp on the lower part but they are not very clear.

By this time, the glued fabrics were dry. I began with the sample brushed with glue. This was acrylic fabric I had melted over a candle, and I just brushed the top with the glue. The low heat of the iron did not affect the fabric at all. I used a copper-coloured foil.

Next, I tranferred foil onto the stencilled glue images. This was a scrap piece that had previously been painted and stamped. I made glue stencils of tiny leaves to foil. The stencils were not always very successful, perhaps because the stencils were so small, but they do look somewhat leaf-like.

I began to play around with the different glues. The grey glue gave very clear stencils, though the second stencil was also from a punch, measuring about 1in square and with a lot of detail(second left bottom). The white foiling glue was not as clear when stencilled (first and third left bottom). I also tried drawing with the white glue applicator (centre) but that was not very successful, though others had better success with this technique. Using very fine bonding powder gave quite coarse results through the stencil (upper right) and some of the bonding powder adhered to the baking paper and retransferred when the foil was moved. The bonding powder was very hard to control for this kind of use.

Howeevr it's fine for general sparkle effects.

I had used the hot glue gun to draw a combination of thicker and spidery lines onto red velveteen. I foiled it with a gold iridescent foil. I found that the hot glue gun took the foils extremely well but the glue didn't adhere to the red velveteen at all well. It would be possible to peel off at least part of the design. But it looks great, doesn't it? This is my favourite of what I did. I'd quite like to try the hot glue gun on baking paper and then foiling it - you'd end up with free-standing elements that could be stitched to other work.

The hot glue gun glue took the foil so cleanly that I had a lovely negative shape left on the foil. I used fusible web to attach that to a deep blue, possibly silk fabric. It also looks great! Much more exciting than it looks in the photo.

It's always hard to tell from samples just how foiling can add to a finished piece, since foiling is usually the last step. That's partly why I used samples that had already been painted and stamped but weren't very successful. Adding some glitz in the form of foils certainly improved them. I'm not sure this is something I will do often but it's an easy way to add a bit of shine.

More quick sketches

Textile progress has been slow here lately, but I have managed a few more sketches, of things I see in my travels.
Lunch at a friend's house
Puddles outside the library