Hand Quilting Experiments

some leaf like shapes

So I have been a busy girl what with whizzing up and down the country for various cultural and artistic ventures! The visit to Art in Action was brilliant but details will have to wait for the next post.

My travels have involved a lot of sitting on trains and in cars and to while away the time, and in the car try to take my mind off the chaos on the roads, I have been hand stitching. This follows on from my CQ summer school workshop with Helen Parrott.

using variegated silk thread

I have used some of the hand dyed cotton kindly donated by my dear friend Sandra and various threads just to see what happens. Strangely, although it's only rows of running stitch, quite a lot happens very quickly. Sadly though, not all of it is as intended e.g, this sample using silk thread doesn't look right. I think the thicker thread tends to dominate taking the eye away from the "ripples", and the ripples are what it's all about!

sand ripple sample using cotton thread

 So here is the first of probably many similar samples inspired by ripples in the sand after the tide has gone out. Using longer stitches meant that there is also rippling inside the stitching and I'm not sure this is how I want it to look.

So I will block it and see if that makes it more acceptable.

 running stitch using cotton machine thread

In the meantime, I'm putting the stitching to one side while I play with the toys  I bought
at Art in Action. Namely the fabric crayons, the Inktense blocks, Sue Rangley's book, Embroidered Originals and a lovely new journal sketchbook!

So, blogging may have to wait a bit!

The benefit of reading the small print

 So the DH, seen here doing his bit in Trafalgar Square, having received his senior railcard decided we needed to have a day out in London. The plan was to have a nice lunch and spend some time at the Cartoon Museum to see Steve Bell's cartoons and then to perhaps go to the British Museum for a bit of culture before having a nice meal and catching the train home.

But of course, being us, we failed to read the small print and discovered when we arrived at the CM and tried to open the door that it was closed on Mondays!

So we decided to walk down to the Embankment and go to the Watercolour Exhibition at Tate Britain instead. Strangely there were a lot of people around and not all of them English.  London it seems is a popular tourist destination!!!
Walking through Russell Square we helped two very nice young men find their way using our ancient and very tatty AtoZ. We were also accosted by two rather insistent people of uncertain nationality who spoke no English who wanted to change a £20 note for four £5 notes. They ended up almost destroying the DH's peace of mind by grabbing his wallet and checking that, no as we said, we couldn't help before trudging off muttering in some unknown tongue!

 So onwards and Southwards we went, passing some lovely buildings and pausing briefly to look at some of the sights.

This statue is on Whitehall just opposite the Household Cavalry and I don't remember seeing it before. It is extremely moving and although the photo only shows one side of it, I didn't feel like standing in the middle of the road to get photos of the other sides!

And just across the road were two members of the Household Cavalry on duty,  resolutely silent and still despite the throngs of tourists and this one.......


.....is a young woman! Who'd have thought it! I'm not sure how aware most other people were  as most of them were surrounding her male colleague. I didn't know that women were allowed to join, but I'm glad to see that they can and do!

I didn't take any photos of the peace camp in Parliament Square, just because it was difficult to find a spot to get them in where I wasn't likely to get run over, so here's Big Ben instead. They are obviously very well organised and dedicated, but I'm not sure how much notice the tourists were taking.  Good on them and I hope a good few of our politicians learn something about morality and justice from them!






And so to the Tate where after the exhibition we rested in the cafe for tea and cake. No images from the exhibition I'm afraid, but it is well worth a visit. The DH and I fell completely in love with Turner, and although there were other gems, his sketches small paintings had the most impact.

Then outside to get caught in a heavy shower, but fortunately we were able to shelter under this lovely plane tree. I had forgotten how lovely these trees are and there are so many of them!


Despite the rain I managed to get some photos of leaves and bark and the seeds which have a lovely texture.

Very ominous clouds over the London Eye, and very choppy conditions on the river. So we didn't go for a trip on the Duck, but we did see one driving along the Embankment with a lot of very wet people on board. Next time perhaps!
 

A "Duck" on the Thames! Just what you want on a wet day like today!!!

Summer school

I'm feeling a bit flat today after a weekend at CQ summer school at Belstead House in Ipswich. The workshop with Helen Parrott was very enjoyable and relaxing, but above all it was FUN!!!

As I am not renowned for the quality of my hand stitching and find using a thimble nigh impossible, I had visions of a rather bleak weekend. I needn't have worried. Noone, including Helen, produced a thimble and I soon learned the difference between hand stitching and hand quilting!

Our first task on Friday after dinner and introductions was to quilt a traditional pattern onto the fabric sandwich Helen provided. We then moved on to stitching parallel rows of running stitch across the width of the fabric. After a while, the fabric began to ripple, although I was quite slow so didn't get quite as far as I had hoped with mine.



After the class broke up, we decamped to the bar where several of us stayed until quite late. As I am so new to this sort of event, and know so few people, it was really lovely to meet and talk to other members and put faces to names I had seen on the Yahoo messages.

On Saturday Helen put us through various exercises in stitching and design and I had a real eureka moment. Helen had brought lots of photos, postcards, magazine articles etc and we were asked to choose up to 15 images that pleased us. We then had to arrange them on our table in a way we found pleasing and write down what we felt about the images we had chosen in our secret book! Then everyone went around the room and wrote down on little post it notes  what we felt about the images each had chosen . Then there was a general comparison of notes and a discussion of how we all felt about it all. It was interesting to see what other people had written about someone else's choices and amazing when I found that someone else had made a comment about my choices that was exactly the same as my own.  Helen did not tell us why she had asked us to do any of this until afterwards when it became clear that this exercise is a way of getting started on a design process!

My collage of images.

So on came the light bulb when I realised that you don't have to know what you are actually going to do before you start. You can just play with images, found items etc and the ideas will start coming!  Not knowing what the end result was to be is why I have found it so difficult to actually get started on anything, but now I feel energised and full of confidence. So thank you  to Helen for helpimg me realise this.

Saturday afternoon gave me an opportunity for a short walk around the lovely grounds before getting back to the stitching. More chat in the bar on Saturday evening before turning in and at last getting some sleep! 

On Sunday there was more stitching, including French knots, and different techniques for distorting the fabric , e.g stitching spirals, knotting and making huge loopy stitches! There is so much variety from just very simple stitches. Why had I not realised this before?  Well, like many others, I've got very absorbed in fancy gizmos and had just forgotten what you can do with a bit of thread, a needle and some plain cotton fabric!

Would I do it again? Well, I'm not keen on being away from home in unfamiliar surroundings, but it was wonderful to have met so many lovely people and to have had the luck to get a place when so many others had been disappointed and I'd love to go again sometime.

I was a bit remiss in not taking photos of the event, but here are a couple of the lovely surroundings to whet your appetite! I hope there will be some more photos to see on the Yahoo group message board.

Now I'm really looking forward to going to the Festival of Quilts to meet up with some of those lovely people again. I hope by then I'll have some wonderful rippled hand quilted work to show off!

Grasses in the meadow

Textures on a wall

Bark on the Scots pine by the front door

Lavender in the garden