Module 6 Wallhanging completed

I've had confirmation from Sian that I have now completed Module 6 and the Certificate.  Wow - at last!
Here is a photo of my finished wallhanging.  The theme I chose was conservation of water.

'No Rain Today'

Here is the supporting design work:

And some detail photos:

'Drip, Drop'

'Wavy'

Those of you who were at Summer School last year will recognise a technique learned with Sandra Meech - using printed black and white images and adding colour, then stitch.  I used this to create my quilted background.  Dense machine stitching creates the wavy effect in the reservoir motifs.

What next?  Another challenge:
When adding colour to the background I used masks:

You can see in this photo that I have already removed one mask and another is partly lifted from the background.  This is what happened after:

I immediately linked this back to my Washburn Wild Water design:

So next I shall consider what technique to use to produce this 3D interpretation of wild water ....

I swam the Channel!

Oh, the other reason for lack of postings last year was because I was busy completing the Aspire Channel Swim, fundraising for spinally injured people.

And I swam to France and back - 2832 lengths in my local swimming pool, in ten weeks. Work that out, that's nearly 300 lengths a week - well two weeks I did far less, and other weeks I did far more.

If you would like to make a donation to help rehabilitate people with spinal injuries please visit my JustGiving page - there's a link on the left! Many thanks

Summer Sketchbook

At last I've sorted various technical problems and I am able to update my blog. Here is the final plum sketch from last summer's sketchbook. I went away for the weekend, but took my plums with me.

Day 4 - lines and backgrounds

When preparing backgrounds yesterday I also selected pics of trees - plums grow on trees (and trees play a large part in my life). I chose a fibre tip pen for the first drawing.

Not my favourite drawing. I had picked a leaf from a copper beech tree on Monday so decided to draw this on another page using a second pic of the same tree. I turned my sketchbook round to draw this:

and then turned it round again for my second attempt at drawing the leaf, concentrating on different types of line:

Sketchbook Day 4 - a personal background

I hunted through the few magazines I had here, and found a jumper to illustrate how I felt last week when starting to draw.

Even though I had crumpled the pic, my fine line fibre tip pen slid across the surface - an interesting drawing experience after using pencils so much.

I attempted both Day 3 and Day 4 today. I've found other pics which I will add to my sketchbook before I continue drawing.

BTW I was watching BBC Four "The Art of Cornwall" yesterday and heard Peter Lanyon say, "you throw yourself off the cliff every time you start and you've got to fly, swim, duck or something and come out the other end." So reassuring ......
If you missed the programme it's really worth catching it on IPlayer.

Sketchbook Day 3

After a busy weekend I had to move the plum to a different room, and the light was casting shadow from a slightly different angle. I had placed my plum on a white sheet of A6 paper, and I rotated this to achieve a more complete shadow. So you need to look at this one from a different angle:

Here's the sketchbook page scanned on the straight:

The diagonal line, faintly drawn on LHS, indicates the angle of the page to the edge of my table.

Summer Sketchbook Challenge

I got off to a good start the first weekend, using herb tea and Yorkshire tea to colour the pages of my sketchbook. However, my first drawing day was last Thursday morning. I chose a plum from my bowl of fruit. Unfortunately my camera is not working at the moment, and rather than wait to sort out another camera, I decided to scan the pages of my sketchbook and upload what I have achieved so far.

My son spent some time with me, eating his breakfast at the same table, whilst I was drawing. He has a natural talent for drawing and is very good at explaining techniques. He doesn't understand why I don't have the same knowledge. (I was allowed to choose only one craft/art subject at school so I chose needlework and gave up art lessons at 14 yrs old :-(( ).

I explained to him that picking up a pencil and starting to draw in my sketchbook felt like standing on the edge of a cliff ready to make the first step off when abseiling (yes, I have done that!). He suggested 'working large' and making grid marks to guide my positioning on the page. He then gave me a lesson in which pencils to use when shading, hence this tonal sketch.

Free machine embroidery

A to F: Straight and automatic stitches - even tension.

G, H and I: straight whip stitch.
J, K, L: zigzag whip stitch

Wild Water designs

There are lots of drawing techniques to explore in this module. This is frottage in oil pastels. I then cut up several of my decorated papers for this design

Module Six - water

I've started work on Module 6 and these are some of my selected photos:

Wild Washburn

and a 'no rain today' sky:

Texture in Landscape Resolved Sample

I've finally reached the end of Module 5. Here is my final piece based on the theme of Woodland, Forests, Bark. My inspiration for this piece came from a photo of the bark of a carob tree. Lots of hand stitching in this one.

I've come a long way ...

I was asked by my branch of Embroiderers Guild to display my City & Guilds Certificate work at our annual exhibition in Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire. My work was shown along side Harrogate College City & Guilds students work. A lot of interest was shown in Distant Stitch. In the photo above you can see my Foundation Module (bottom left); book cover based on Module 1 design work (bottom right); counterchange/interchange Module One (centre); tassels arranged on a spiral stand (Module 3); colour study and abstract design from Summer School 2003 (centre upright against wall); and at the top of the photo my resolved spiral sample for Module 3.

At the left of this photo you can see the stand I designed to display my module 3 samples. At the front of the picture is my Module 5 Texture in Landscape book of samples. Top right you can see my FWD from Module 1 for a book cover. The other books are my Module 2 work. Then moving to the right ...

I displayed my functional 3D item from Module 2 - my fly swatter shoulder bag. I didn't have enough space on one table to display all my work, so across the other side of the room I placed my Module 1 Growth and Disintegration resolved sample; and my Module 4 book with its embroidered panel:

Summer School 2010

Selective Contradiction

Consider not analysing:

However, chewing this over the red roses on the stableyard wall continue the curving diagonal line from the small red fragments through the bold red square, moving up from bottom left to top right. The red bricks of the wall echo the bold red block.

Process
Change
Enhance

Stitch
Snip
Leave

Module 4 completed

See my completed Module 4 at www.stitcherist.wordpress.com.

Exhibition in Cheltenham

Three pieces of our furniture are on show in the Celebration of Craftsmanship and Design Exhibition in Cheltenham until Monday 24 August. The show is open each day 10am - 4pm. David has incorporated some of my textile work in our Entwine table.

There are also some embroidered pictures by Alison Taylor.

Thirlestaine Long Gallery, Cheltenham College, Bath Road, Cheltenham GL53 7LD.

Tangent

Yes, I went off on a tangent after last year's summer school, and pursued my Creative Dialogue with my husband, David. Sian approved this for progressing my Module 4, but I stalled when I had to come up with more technical solutions. However, I have now finished the piece and I thought those who have been to this year's summer school may like to see it. Here it is:

The Creative Dialogue started with David making a three-legged, three-pronged coat stand. The shape of the top of the coat stand inspired me to design a 'bowl' using soluble fabric. This shape then developed into a larger version of the frame shown above, for a table. David made this smaller version so that my design could hang through the centre of the frame. I made a paper pattern for the bowl and I started with stitching a grid (Module 4).

I wanted to create interaction between the three sides of the bowl - creating interesting negative spaces.

Book cover for my diary

I chose the word 'designers' for this module because David and I are often designing together - especially furniture. I embedded string in paper, took some pieces of fabric printed at last year's summer school with Cas Holmes and laid them on a felt background. I then hand stitched crosses on the printed crosses. Laid chiffon on top of whole piece, added running stitches in A and M shapes, stitched a diagonal grid to hold the layers together; cable stitched the blue loopy 'writing', and finished edge with one of my machine stitched cords.

Mock up books

In December I worked on Mock Up books using momigami papers as well as my hand made papers, and recycled items from my media/stationery collection.

This 'M and A' book is machine stitched, using part of a paper shopping bag as the cover. The momigami is made using my daughter's prep notes for her A2 Art exam which she completed last year. She studied fairies, so there are glimpses of her notes on Titania and good and bad fairies in this book. For those of you who are interested her final exam piece can be seen here
Gail made and embroidered 34 ivy leaves for the bodice of this dress.













This M book is hand stitched Japanese stab binding and contains pieces of my hand made paper. I stitched these pages using machine cable stitch.

Momigami book - failed!

This was my first attempt at folding 4 pages and machine stitching. One of the pages wasn't 'caught' by the stitching.

Jute Scrim M paper

Manipulated threads in jute scrim to form A and M. I then separated these letters and added them to sheets of paper.