Clive Grey BA

Hooray, Clive has passed his last Open University exam and has now finished the course, only two points short of a distinction. He started it to keep his mind active, before he knew how much activity I had planned for him. It has been a struggle keeping it going and I do admire him for sticking at it. He started off with Art History but the course was so politically correct that it missed out most of the major art movements unless they featured women. However, with the OU, it is a pic'n'mix so he did some interesting stuff ranging from sustainable energy to creative writing.

Vicki - on the subject of PC we found another one today. I bought some Christmas cards and inside the greeting was 'Winter Wishes'. How do you wish someone a winter?

The 'no arguments' clause was a first for us, Julie. We hardly ever fall out, but the Christmas Tree does it for us every time. Must be turning into old softies.

While I was getting ready for my weekend class I found two lovely boards of Val's. We had a project where we both had to prepare a design based on our names. Then we swapped over to work on them. I worked a design in PSP on Mags. It is top, left on the board below.

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Val took my Mags design and put it through a pixelation filter to make it suitable for beadwork. She then produced two super boards with letters from the design. You can see the M below - worked on a bead loom.

And here is the G.

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Wonderful beaded chains. I've never got very into beading - too regular for me but Val did make me learn how to do chains. I like them better when they have been dunked in the Melting Pot.

Just been to the smallest grandchild's Christmas play. It was lovely, but a tad overlong and two hours of sitting on mini chairs is very hard on the bum.

I shall be off to Urchfont tomorrow - talk to you on Monday and hope to have pics of the course.

Ding Dong and Stuff

The Christmas visit to the chunky guy in red went off well, in spite of Jake telling him that no-one had been good this year. They still got a lovely present and the train ride was even longer this year. Nice to have a visit from a granddaughter on the blog. Glad you enjoyed the visit Lauren, and managed not to fall out of the carriage this year!

The youngest granddaughter (6) changed schools a couple of months ago and I asked her how she liked the new class, which is rather more politically correct than the last one. She said 'It's OK, but we did nothing for Halloween, didn't even dress up.' This evidently was a serious business as she then heaved a great sigh and said 'It was the worst day of my life'. I'm still chuckling about it.

Anna - I'd heard from Hazel that the course was good. Janet is an excellent teacher. Val would be so pleased.

Carole - we must get you blogging. It is such fun. I'm typing away here all on my own and imagining you all out there. It is so lovely to get comments, too.

Aussie Jo - what a long holiday - no excuse for you.

Arti - I forgot the camera - how daft is that!

Today I was supposed to be getting ready for Urchfont but was overtaken by displacement activities in the form of:

a) the need to eat and therefore to shop
b) having to get the proofs to Batsford
c) lovely sunny day for a walk
d) Christmas decorations

As I'm not home from Urchfont until late Sunday afternoon we will have to go straight to the local Candlelit Carols and one needs to come home to a Christmassy house and have mince pies. It's a lovely service and the church is lit only with candles (which actually means you can't see the hymn sheet and you have to wear old clothes as you come out covered in red candle wax) and another of our traditions. So we decided to do the decs today.


Result

Broken baubles one
Falls from ladder none
Arguments about how to put up the tree none
Non shining fairy lights none

Probably our best result in 24 years.

The wood-working son-in-law (TWWSIL) made me a new mantlepiece this year. It is made from pearwood (not sapient, I'm glad to say) and it looks lovely with a garland on it. I know it should be real but our house is hot and they don't last five minutes.

I had a blue theme in the little sitting room.




The closest I've come to a textile today is to gaze at these two lovely silk paper pieces from Val at Silk Sacks. Maybe tomorrow.

Quiltwow, Books and Father Christmas

Well, Quilwow is launched and seems to be going down very well. I'm particularly pleased with the pics which, thanks to my new way of reducing them for the web, look good and clear. Do let me know what you think of it.

I think you need to get a blog, Carole, so we can see your UTEE experiments. Or have you got one tucked away somewhere? Have you tried the stuff they sell to colour the UTEE - I think it is called To Dye For, but I may be getting muddled. Jane Wild got good results from it. If I get time this week I will have a go.

I am teaching an embellisher course at Urchfont College next weekend so I must get ready for that. I don't usually do residentials but this was one that Val was booked to teach and they asked me so nicely that I couldn't refuse. I know I will enjoy it, but I also know that I will put on even more weight. The food is so good there. All these Christmas lunches have me feeling as stuffed as the turkey.

The other excitement has been proofing the Image to Stitch book. Here is a double page spread that you might recognise. The small piece, left hand page, bottom is one of Val's which I scanned and put through a Displacement Map. The right hand pic shows my gauntlet - remember that? It doesn't look much like one from this angle but I like the way the soldered edges show. It is made from a variety of prints - transfer and ExtravOrganza, plus quite a bit of constructional stitching on Wireform.

They have done such a good job with the book. I tried a new approach when sending it in and made up a file of double page spreads so I could judge the amount of text and the size of pic. Usually I just rabbit on, marking where the pics go, until I have the correct total word count.

I must go as I have an appointment with Father Christmas at the local garden centre. They do a train ride, through a winter wonderland, which seems to be a very long way - due to all the loops and bends. All our grandchildren love it and it is an annual event with drinks and toasted tea cakes afterwards. All for charity, too. Even the fourteen year old is not too cool to accompany us.

Sue - I had the front half, of course. The back is much too antisocial.

Embroidery Machines

Where has this week gone? Haven't even had time to blog.

Jackie - it's very good to meet you. Any relation of Ian and Ruby's is a friend of mine. If it hadn't been for those two, we'd have had great difficulty getting the Val exhibition up to Harrogate. Good to hear that the World of Embroidery mag got you moving. I bet Ruby had a hand in it, too.

Judith - I expect you got caught up in the Fiona telephone kerfuffle - you should have the password by now , I'm sure. Any problems, I'm on maggie@workshopontheweb.com. Must get around to putting that on the blog.

It turned out that Fiona's neighbours had been having trouble with phones earlier in the week, so we think that was why a 'set' of password messages didn't get through. It was while BT were sorting out the earlier problem that they caused the later one!

Actually I am back in love with technology again as the new car has a ipod connection and it worked straightaway. Sounds really good, too. No more taking all those CDs on long trips - just one tiny device with my entire collection, quite amazing, really.

Interesting feedback about software driven embroidery. I do use it quite a lot and have the digitising programs for several machines. Yes, Carole, you can just set it up and it stitches by itself. Best to keep an eye on it in case it has a hissy fit but, in theory, you can go off and leave it.

I did like your husband's comment, Penny. My son is a hydro-geologist in Sydney, so he is very involved in the drought situation. It has to be said that his solution seems to involve him spending a lot of time surveying surfing beaches. However, joking apart, it's a nasty state of affairs and Ian has been writing warning articles for years to try to get someone to take it seriously. Now they are.

Swap you a machine for a pony any day, Penny. I used to own half a horse and would borrow another (very quiet) one and take my daughter out for day rides when she was about four. We'd tie our sandwiches to the D-rings behind the saddle and just take off. Now I'm too scared of breaking a limb to even get on a horse. Do you ride yours?

Back to the embroidery machines, I almost always stitch on felt and cut out the motifs to re-apply them. In its native state, the stitching can be very flat and most of the work I've done on the machines has been in the form of experiments to raise the surface (I keep having to use that phrase, must be a subliminal message to sell the book). The design below used the drop shadow effect in a paint program to mimic raised, cut-out Celtic motifs.

This was then digitised and the background stitched. I then digitised thin strips and stitched them on felt. The cut-out motifs were threaded onto these and 'bunched' to raise them up.

The piece is a collection of three flag shapes and is called 'Fly the Flags for HRT'. I felt so great on HRT that all my work got very colourful but that was before the scare and I had to stop taking it. Then, as Amy Winehouse would say, it was back to black.

The proofs for the Image to Stitch book have arrived and I'm delighted to say that Batsford have done a really good job and it looks great. Now for the proof-reading.

Raising the Surface

What a good title - could be used for a book!

Yesterday was another round of pleasure! Christmas lunch for Wessex Textiles in a lovely restaurant in Wimborne. Great to see everyone and I was able to thank Ruby Lever for setting up and manning the Val exhib at the Harrogate K&S. I saw some pics on Julie's blog and it looked great.

Glad you're all enjoying WoW. I thought it was a goodie and I loved the Linda Westerman article and Ruth Lee's shoes. I hadn't thought of moulding Tyvek and can't wait to have a go. My next book is on mixed media stuff and I am having great fun with it - and I've only got as far as gesso.

Great that Aussie Jo has been found - thought we were going to have to search the outback.

Yes, technology is a pain, Chrissie - and we depend so much on it. We have always had a separate phone line for our fax and decided to keep it (even though we get very few faxes) as a back up in case the main line went down. When this eventually happened both lines disappeared and we discovered that we didn't have two lines - just two numbers and two bills! They swear they have fixed this, hopefully we will never find out. Fiona's phone should be back today. Relief.

I was going to talk about the cloaks for the Master of the Rolls doll which were a quickish make on the embellisher. I do like combining stitch with embellishing as I find it needs a contrast of surface to stop it being flat.

This motif is one that I've used many times. It came from a floral wall in the Alhambra, Granada, and I flipped and extended it.

I have digitised it and it pops up in quite a lot of my work. Stitched on felt, it can be cut out without fraying. When I'm in my workroom, I often have the sewing machine chugging away, stitching out some of this sort of patterns so that they are stockpiled ready for the time when I need a quick motif.

I left quite a good border of felt and embellished it to a foiled felt background. it made a good surface. The black surround gives the metallic stitch an emphasis it would lack if stitched straight on to the fabric. Of course, this kind of motif could be free machined in satin stitch, so it doesn't have to be auto stitched.

Here's a detail of a bag made in a similar way.

I'm off to have my hair cut and then over to Fiona to help her sort out her backlog of emails. Quiltwow is going mad at the moment, which is great. Won't be long now until the first full issue.

Those Dolls Again

More about yesterday's party. I forgot to mention that we sell tickets and raise money for charity - this year it was a local children's hospice and the Macmillan nurses. It is a very popular event and we are limited by the size of the hall so there is a real scramble for places. We are almost at the stage where they will be selling on ebay. This year we were selling threads and yarns from Val's workshop clearance, so we made pretty little bags and offered a pick'n'mix which raised £250.

I think Val would have been pleased. I turned out to be rubbish at bag-making so I just stuck to the painting of the papers.

The toilet roll dollies seem to have struck a cord. I love the idea of us all making and displaying on Flickr. Here are some more from yesterday.

This one, by Nan Kenyon, is looking cross because she has been forced to sit on a a toilet roll and considers it beneath her dignity. She is made from painted paper and a wooden spoon

This is a clever one from Betty Ruffell illustrating the saying ' inside every large lady there is a thin one trying to get out'!

I love Jane Wild's character - made from brown paper, of course.

This is a rustic angel from Sue Miles - all the leaves have been machine stitched.

Finally, here is Bishop Odo - who has nothing to do with loo rolls, but was made by our speaker Terri Hitchcock. He is the only bishop to have his own carry case (below) - mitre shaped, of course.

It is blowing a gale here and the light keep flickering. My modem also keeps disconnecting; luckily, so far, it has come back again. Sometimes I really hate technology.

Fiona's phone is still down but the blog has proved an effective way of communicating with people wanting to talk to her. Not just an indulgence, after all.

No Phona for Fiona

Before I explain the secret of the plunger I must tell you that Fiona, who deals with all the WoW queries, has lost her phone line. BT are looking into it!!!! If anyone needs to contact us about passwords or anything else on WoW please email me maggie@workshopontheweb.com

The poor girl was away overnight and came home especially early only to find that she can't get at her emails. Clive has been working with her to switch them to us, so hopefully that will happen soon.

While they were struggling I was having a lovely time at the Stanpit Christmas party. Most of us who passed through the City and Guilds course locally did so at the Stanpit Village hall in Christchurch and one of the traditions was the Christmas party. Although, sadly, we have no C&G anymore we have a party with a competition and a speaker. Everyone brings a plate of food and we always have a wonderful spread. The competition theme relates to the speaker and this year we had the fabulous Terri Hitchcock who makes the most amazing dolls. Here is one of her dolls.

The Beyond Stitch group, that I belong to, decided that we would take a creative look at toilet roll dollies (those awful crinolines that used to hide the loo roll, do you remember?)

So now you may have an inkling about the sink plunger. My dolls were based on Clive as the 'Grand Master of the mystic order of the plunger', with me as the Grand Mistress (I'm sure I'd make a grand mistress). Here we are.

I printed our faces out on print ready cotton and then did a lot of stitching. Clive has a red nose because he has a cold. Our cloaks are made from embellished fabric with applied stitching. The sink plungers and loo rolls form the bodies. Tomorrow I'll show more details of the making process. Here is Monica Morgan's doll 'The Devil is in the Detail' which won the prize.

Thermogauze is not too expensive, Pat and I shall be doing more on it next time.

Have we found Aussie Jo yet? Did Carol get her password? (Yes, I sent it to her) Will BT fix Fiona's phone before she goes grey with worry? Tune in tomorrow folks for more fun and games.