Goldfinch progress report

Here they are as they are after quite a lot of work on them over the past couple of days. I finished the actual cross stitching on 31st, I think, then spent several hours listening to audio dramas and doing much of the background half stitching. There's just the left hand area, a bit to the left of the top bird's head and a layer over the top from the right hand side of the top bird over the back of the right hand one. It's hard to tell the 2 blue shades apart, but the one I'm doing now is slightly lighter than what's in place in the top and right areas. Should be finished with it very soon as there isn't much backstitching to do beyond facial features and then there are the thistle bits that look a bit like shuttlecocks to do!!! What's the proper name, someone?

Nothing else to show or report. Haven't touched my C&G work, or wanted to. I'm wondering if the fact that I'm rather conscientiously avoiding it is contributing to the horribly unsettled feeling I have at the mo...=( Oh well, C&G's loss is the goldfinches' gain!!!

Backwards, forwards and right here and now!

Oof, another year all but gone - one and a bit more days and it's 2009 already! DH asked me what I thought of the year last night and, whilst I won't go into most of what we talked about here (not 'on-topic'!), I did mention that I felt I'd hardly produced any proper stitching this year! 'Tis too true!=( All I've done is 5 things (2 very small), plus finished off one left over from last year and made up a cushion/pillow cover also left over from last year and got 2 counted thread pieces in progress, (<- here's the current status on the Goldfinches BTW). That's not counting my City & Guilds samples, of course, but I don't really count them that much as normal stitching, but as college work.

So, in detail, what did I do?

Finishing from 2007:

* Finished off 'Bluetits and Seedheads' cross stitch (see here)
* Made up 'Child of Spring' cushion/pillow (photo here)

New in 2008:

* 'Branches of Your Life' card (finish pic here). I did a couple of tiny bits on this in 2007, but it was mostly an '08 project.
* 'Rose Arch' ribbon work, finished into a thank-you card (view here unmounted)
* A simple goldwork dragonfly, (see here), which I still haven't used for anything and is rather too big for a card.
* Helen M Stevens' 'Ornamental Pool' piece (link here)
* Hardanger 'Flowers and Leaves' cushion/pillow (pic here before making up)
* 8 City & Guilds samples

Started this year, but still unfinished:

* 'Goldfinches and Thistles' cross stitch (see above for photo)
* 'Silver Frost' band sampler design (see 2 posts ago for latest WIP pic)
* 2 or 3 more City & Guilds samples (plus more not even started yet...)

Plans for 2009 stitching wise are:

* Finish all WIPs, including C&G stuff
* Get my C&G work done in time, (mid-May for this year's work)
* Do a hardanger cushion for my Taiwanese friend
* Stitch something for my 2nd sister before she goes abroad for a year, preferably something with practical use.
* Take several kits with me when we go back to Taiwan in late August/early September, should all go according to plan, that is!!!
* DH's 10th anniversary card - probably a CQ heart.
* Do some small pieces that I want to do. No more obligation stitching!

Here's my first ever acrylic painting that I had to do as part of the eternal C&G work. I can't say that I'm over-enamoured of it, but it'll do as a first time with the paints and the colours worked out OK. The edges of the colour variations within the petals are nothing short of awful, but, as with most art courses, you get given a subject and a medium and just told to get on with it, you don't get any instruction on how to use that medium! I've now borrowed a book from Leeds City Art Library on acrylics for beginners, so I have an idea how colours can be worked together. I would say that, in the main, I enjoy the course, but I still rather wish I hadn't started it (I knew this would happen.....) as it's just so much work and I feel quite bogged down with it at the mo. I just don't seem able to keep up well at all, even though many of the others do. There's at least one who struggles more than me to keep up, so I'm not the furthest behind, or wasn't at last count anyway!!! Anyway, here's the current state of the stitched piece this will be. It's to be cut-back appliqué, so here are 4 layers of fabric tacked together and waiting to be machine stitched. You can just see the blue markings on it if you look closely. I'm rather nervous of my machine though as it goes so fast....

More soon, I hope!=)

Contemporary shadow work (aka textile collage)

Finally got another C&G sample done. This is #10 and it was called 'shadow work', but is nothing like the traditional closed herringbone stitch style. This is really a textile collage with bondaweb, worked between 2 sheets of sheer fabric. I'm going to post the photos in a line straight down the page as I'm finding that the line spacing varies so much from screen to screen that a posting I do on my widescreen laptop looks really over-spaced on the PC, whereas a PC spaced one looks all clumped up on the laptop. As I want everyone to see it looking decent, this is the only way I can think to do it!!

So, you can see here the usual piece of artwork taken from a digital image/photo, but this time re-worked in tissue paper collage, then translated into fabric. The white lines in the collage and stitched piece are meant to represent glasshouse window edges. The idea was that it was to be as if seen through a conservatory window. It worked out better for those students who had a 'further away' type of picture and could get a good window structure in, but mine doesn't look too good. Also, for some reason the white fabric seemed to get some dirt on it, seemingly whilst I was machining it. I don't much like collage, but I can tolerate it for the time being. There are a LOT of them in the module we're going on to do - texture. Ugh! I can't say I'm over-enamoured of machine work either, but that's partly as I'm not used to it and partly as my mum's machine doesn't go very slowly at all! It's either fast or super fast.=(

Dyeing to stitch

We had a go at Procion dyeing in class this Thursday. I didn't have much in the way of interesting fabric to hand and wasn't really in the frame of mind (or body!!!) for anything adventurous, so I just did some random space dyeing with ultramarine, turquoise and a green mixed from ultramarine and lemon yellow. I thought they would be useful for sky and greenery backgrounds and I should be able to use one or two of them in my samples soon.




The weather has been so grey here that it's barely been light enough to take photos, but trusty Photoshop has enabled me to correct the colour casts and show where I am with the band sampler and cross stitch pieces, both of which you can see here.


Jane of Craft Therapy has kindly nominated me in the latest 'Kreativ Blogger' awards, which I've added to the rest of the accolades down the sidebar!! Jane's blog is quite varied, although her main interest to date has been a number of papercrafts. She's done some pretty scrapbooking layouts, greetings cards and ATCs and is planning on branching out into more artwork - drawing and painting.

Thank goodness for cross stitch!

I've come to the conclusion (yet again!!!) that I'm sometimes quite nuts when it comes to my stitchery. For instance, if I want to stitch something, but I have outstanding City & Guilds work to do, unless I'm going to get on with that work, I don't stitch, I do something else instead. Now that's mad as, often, my college works needs a lot of thought and even energy as I'm doing new stuff almost all the time, certainly always using my own designs and it takes a lot more than just relaxing with the 2 counted thread projects I have on the go at the mo. So, I decided that, esp. whilst I'm still recovering from the 'flu-like thing I've had, I can be a bit more sensible and get on with some of the others. After all, the whole thing is meant to be fun, not another thing in life where 'I ought to....' Man!

So, above you can see that I've added another 3 rows to the top of the band sampler last touched about 4 weeks ago and to the right here you can see a good half of the second bird added to the 'Goldfinches' cross stitch that I last worked on in late July! If I'm feeling up to it, I'll get on with C&G samples tomorrow and so on, but if not, I'm not going to fret about it anymore. Also, if I don't quite get my work done in time for the assessment session on the last Thursday before the winter break, I'm still going to take the full winter break and not work on college stuff over that fortnight. So there!!

Thanks for the well wishes, by the way. Susan, you're welcome to go stash shopping for me. Are you paying too???=)LOL!

Latest acquisitions and so on

Just saw a post by Sharon B over at Pin Tangle in which she expresses her amazement that December is already here. Well, it may still be November for another couple of hours in my part of the world, (she's in Aus and I'm in the UK), but I can't help but share her sentiments when it comes to the 'where has the year gone to?' stuff! I counted up earlier and realised, to my horror, that I've only done 3 decent scale stitching projects this year! They were the 'Branches' card, the 'Ornamental Pool' and the most recent hardanger cushion. Other than that I've done 2 small pieces - a ribbon work piece that ended up in a card and a goldwork dragonfly that I've yet to think of something to do with - finished off an almost competed cross stitch of some bluetits and sewn up a cushion cover. Unless you want to count in 6 completed C&G course samples and another 4 in progress, that adds up to a great deal less than previous years. I confess to being rather disappointed, especially when you compare it to the amount of pieces that Grace puts out.... Oh well, let's hope next year works out a bit better on the productivity front!

I went to the big Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate last Friday and was quite controlled when it came to stash enlargement activities. Actually, if I'm completely honest, I've got so much (and looking through my kit box the night before helped me to remember that) and I've seen most of what's available countless times, that I really didn't want to buy much. I just settled for 10 pieces of various silks. There are 3 fat quarters here and the others are all 10/11"x11/12" sizes. There are some with patterns on as well, which I'd never really seriously considered using, but experimenting stitching on some patterned fabrics for my C&G has helped me to be more adventurous. I want some 2 or 3 of the pieces here for something I have in mind for my final assessment pieces - a rather natty idea for a jewelry box, but I won't say more just yet, so all will have to possess their souls in patience until I get to that stage.=)LOL!

I also finally capitulated and bought some acrylic paints. They seem to be on the equipment list quite a lot for my course and, as I hadn't any and didn't really want to get any more art stuff, (by which I mean not start any new types of stuff, so don't wait for me to get oils, 'cos it won't happen!), and I knew that these paints needed different brushes from my watercolour ones, but I see I'm not going to be able to use my cheapo Taiwanese gouache all the time, so I got this starter kit yesterday and I didn't think it was bad for £10. It's not professional quality, but I really don't need that at this level. I plan on borrowing a beginners' book from the art library sometime this week to help me know what to do with it!! I also got some more pastel pencils and here are some of the lot that I got recently. I love this type of medium and usually plump for it when there's a choice. I was rather annoyed to find I'd duplicated one shade though.....=( Silly me!

Recently I collected some old things from my mum's place (she's been clearing out her attic pretty thoroughly) and managed to bag an old jigsaw that I remember being given many years ago, (about 25 years, I should think), and made it up again the other weekend. I did enjoy that! There was one edge piece missing at the top, so I cut one to shape, coloured it in and shoved it in. Can you see it??=)

Photo explosion!

I haven't really been doing that much stitching of late, but I have been doing a lot of design work for the C&G and mounting of the line module etc, so have taken some pix to show you.

This is the box I presented my work in. It's just an ordinary purple box file, (with the internal clip affair removed by DH and his trusty drill!), covered with white mulberry paper, then trimmed up with the wrapping samples.

I didn't bother doing lots of pix of the mounted stuff as you've mostly seen it, but here's the beading one as an example, and probably the most interesting one that's all on one piece of A4 card. I also haven't got the eternal peacock feather done as it's very boring and long-winded, but our teacher was OK about that and said to make sure and show it to her when done. Here's what it looks like so far - like a cartoon kid with spiky hair!!!

We had to do a resolved design piece and this is what I came up with, although it's rather lacking in real design element and is concentrating mostly on various linear things. I did it in a little home made folder, which ties up with ribbon, and you can see here.

We've now moved on to the 'Colour' module and the theme is flowers and gardens. We'd to get a photo of some sort to work from and I got one from good old Google Images. We'd then to do a piece of artwork in acrylics. Well, I've bought more than enough stuff for this course, so used my gouache instead (a kind of opaque watercolour paint) and came up with this baby. Not brilliant, but it grew on me as the day went on. (Will post that later as I can't find the photo I just took on the computer.....)

Next stage was a bit of silk painting of the background fabric for the sample, then we'd to start on the stitching. She showed us stem and fly stitches, and bullion and French knots (both a bit different from my own, I think). Nothing new for me there, of course. I didn't get time to get on to the actual stitching, but here's the painted background with the threads I plan to use.

Last week sometime (I think! It's been such an age since I last posted!) I did a couple more rows on the band sampler. The middle of them couldn't exactly be called 'done' as I could only do 2 rows of cross stitches before the beading section, which is all being left until the end. So, here's what that looks like at the mo.

Hope to get some work in on all 3 current projects over the weekend and have more to show next week.

Samples 3, 5 & 6 complete

Thanks for the compliments on Sid the Snake (not Wily, Susan!!!), I rather enjoyed working on him from start to finish. Only sample number 2 to get finished now, the long overdue peacock feather. In the meantime:

Here's the finished, 'distressed' version of the tiger skin piece. Not very impressive is it? Wasn't anything special to start with, but now it looks a real mess!!!

This is the small, simple sample we did in class yesterday and I think many of us will use our wrapped cords to decorate the boxes we'll be submitting our 'Line' modules in. When I look at several of my samples etc, I really do fail to see any real, concentrated linear work in them, but I'll try and bring some of that out more when mounting the pieces etc. I picked my favourite pink and purple colours to use here and it was good to get some more of my Pearl #5s into use.

This is sample #3. It's meant to be of appliqué and layering, but whilst there are certain areas that have about 6 layers of sheer fabric, I think the peacock feather (#2) will answer this technique as well. It's supposed to be a butterfly near some buddleia, but the plant is really not well done and I know the butterfly is rather over-simple. Lack of time and umph, I suppose. When you're not really happy with a sample, you don't much feel like putting loads more work into it!! The leaves are much nicer colours in the real thing. Light was poor when I took the pix. This is the drawing, (done with Inktense pencils and black felt tip pen) that I took it from. I confess to having traced this from the source photograph rather than waste loads of time trying to get the shape right.

The bulk of yesterday's work was on the so-called 'resolved piece', design board exercise. I have trouble with this description as it's really just a number of pieces of art based on one or two source photos and, given that we aren't really meant to develop it for stitich - not even to plan it to stitch, I can't see how it's in any way 'resolved'. Sometimes the logic behind the terminology escapes me, so if anyone can clarify this, please do!!=) I didn't get far with it as art is not my string point as yet and I had an accident shortly before leaving the flat yesterday morning. My right little toe had a high speed collision with the edge of the fireplace and would now make a great source for a colour module exercise!!! I can walk better on it today and it should give little trouble by Monday, but I was feeling rather worse for the shock to the system etc yesterday. It's certainly not broken anyway, so there's nothing to worry about and I had my viola lesson sitting down afterwards!!!

We're hoping to go and spend a year in Taiwan from Aug/Sept next year, so I hope that works out. Whilst I'm there, I'll be able to have a go at some of the bead based crafts that are big in that part of the world and also do some research for the C&G Diploma level written work, when you have to produce studies into three countries with strong embroidery traditions. I'm planning on doing China, Norway and Brazil. If funds allow, I'll see about doing C&G level 2 stumpwork during that year away too, but money is always a major factor, so I may well not get to that and just end up taking lots of kits with me to work through and enjoy.

Hoping to get the peacock feather done over the weekend and also a couple of pieces of seahorse-y art done for this design brief business, then I just need to get and cover a suitable box and mount all the work so far. Ooof, there's a lot to do! I've had no chance to do more than a single row on my band sampler!

Sample 4 completed - snakeskin beadweaving

I seem to be catching up on my C&G samples in reverse order just now!! I put Sample 5 (see last post) through the wash this weekend and it is now frayed and, whilst it was never overly impressive, it now looks really rubbish! Just need to trim a few stray threads and press it, but I will try to avoid that kind of thing where possible in future. Really not my scene at all.

Sample number 4 was based on reptiles, so I hunted on-line and found a terrific snake to work from. What do you think of this chap? He's rather cute in his own way, isn't he?

From our source material we had to do some artwork as ever and I just did a section of the last 2½ coils, from which I drew up a beading chart. This kinda taught me how to do charts for things like cross stitch, needlepoint and so on as well, so I think I may well be able to do that after all. Given that cross stitch is about the world's most popular form of embroidery, being able to create charts may even create some income one day?? But I wouldn't hold my breath there!!

Using a beading loom, which you can see here all threaded up and ready for use, the chart was then turned into a piece of beadweaving. I took this photo whilst doing one of the later rows. You string all the needed beads for one row onto the needle, then, from underneath, slot them between the warp threads. After that, you go back through the row with the beading needle and thread, taking care to go over the warp threads this time. Then it's on to the next row.

This is the finished piece, with each bead kind of representing a scale on the original picture and this is the beading needle when I'd finished. It was straight when I started!!! I didn't think I'd like this and most of the ladies in our first year group were saying that they couldn't see themselves doing this again, how it hurt their eyes etc, but I really enjoyed this and didn't find it any bother to my eyes at all. The only hassle was that the beading thread I used, a nylon wire sort of thread, may have been rather thicker than would have been more comfy to use. One of the other teachers who popped in last week to see what we were doing etc said that you had to take the needle back through the whole row at once, but I wasn't able to do that as it got caught and was impossible to pull through. Don't think it made any difference to the finished sample though. I'm hoping to get a nice, little bead loom as I think this type of this has definite potential, as long as you don't mind using lots of beads and remember that the beads are higher than they are wide, so about 2 high would equal 3 wide. Different from the exact squareness of your regular cross stitch!

Lots to catch up on.....

I still haven't finished the feather sample (Sample 2), but have done a little more on it. I'm also well on with Sample 3, which is a butterfly and that should be ready to show off very soon. Sample 4 is of bead-weaving and I've done the artwork and the beading chart for that and am looking to getting stuck in with the beads and the loom. In fact, I've got through so many other tasks recently that things seem nice and peaceful and perfect for getting all caught up soon. So, I'm hoping to make several posts over the next week or so.

The one thing I can show you is the first sample I actually got done in class. It's a stitch and slash technique sample and the original source was to be animal fur. Silly me went and left the photo I planned to work from on the sofa instead of putting it in my college bag, but managed to scrounge this lovely pic (which you can see part of here) to work from. We had to make a felt-tip pen design from it, which is here and is not exactly impressive, I know, but my artwork is never really going to set the Thames on fire, is it??=)


The next stage was pressing then pinning together 3 or 4 fabrics in similar colours to the design, then to machine stitch (ordinary sewing foot and straight stitch) the lines on. After that, the fabric is cut away to reveal layers of the underneath colours. Here's the sample so far, (it's supposed to be put through the washing machine cycle to 'fluff' it up a bit - ie fray and wreck it!!!!), and it does look a bit like tiger skin. I confess, this kind of work is not really my thing - bit too large scale and 'rough' for my tastes.



I got some more fabric and silk paints in the post today, along with 3 bottles of silk paint gutta. Haven't much of a clue how to use it, but we'll be starting that in class in about 3 weeks' time.=) Also got some silk habotai, some green beads needed for my beadweaving sample and some beading thread for that.