I'm Getting a Pony and Trap

Hello again – at last. If you are puzzled about the title of this blog, read on. Life has been a little tricky lately as I have been rather frantically catching up with the wordy bit of the forthcoming book on cutting techniques. There has been a lot of early morning keyboard bashing – one morning, I wrote two thousand words before breakfast. 

One reason for the rush and panic is that we have decided to take a stand at the Festival of Quilts in August and it is always good to have a new book on offer. The book, Cut, Shape, Stitch is co-written with Sam Packer, features editor of Workshop on the Web, and Paula Watkins – many of you will know her for her wonderful mixed media work (and her stitching is pretty nifty, too). The book is based on all kinds of cutting machines, from simple punches through basic die cutters (these can be purchased quite cheaply second hand, I’ve discovered) to computer and scanner-linked machines. I have to say that I love using the cutters and for a long time had only two dies. I really got very hooked on the shapes that remain after cutting and there is an entire book section on that. The pic below shows Sam using a die called Artful Dwellings by Sizzix. The little houses she has made are great – all finished now – the pic below was a stage in their production.

I have almost caught up now and yesterday we went to Michael Wicks's for the photoshoot. It was a gloriously mad day – all three of us rushing around with armfuls of work, painting, cutting and stitching for the step-by-step photos and generally getting excited. I was hobbling rather than rushing as my poorly knee was protesting.  I am officially on the waiting list for a new one but don’t think it will happen any time soon.

We put the Brother Scan’n'Cut machine through its paces for Michael – he was very impressed. I must admit that I haven’t tried any of the computer linked cutters (I’d welcome feedback from anyone who has one) but I am impressed with the way the Brother machine translates a scan into a cut shape. I wish my scanner that links to my PC was half as accurate.

I have to say that I haven’t been this excited for ages and think this will really have a big influence on my work for years to come. I keep thinking about how much my late and still much missed friend, Val Campbell-Harding, would have loved it. My preferred material is Craft Vilene, which cuts very cleanly and Paula has introduced me to Derwent Coloursoft  pencils, which she has used to beautiful effect on the Vilene. I have also been amazed at how well the machine cuts metal. Apparently it will cut wood veneers, too – the wood-working son-in-law pricked up his ears when he heard that. DD: yes, the Vilene is an interfacing.  It is thick, doesn't fray and is good to stitch into. I get through rolls of it,

These fish that I showed you last time are having a little shower of colour – then I shall 'do a Paula' and use the Coloursoft pencils. Excited about that.

We did take time out to take a stand at the Brockenhurst Needlework Fiesta. I was demo-ing the simple hand punch machines so had lots of material to use for the book, as well. Granddaughter Sophie took to this demo-ing lark as though she had been doing it for years – stitching on water-soluble film, which can be tricky. Sadly, one of water-soluble bracelets in the foreground of this pic disappeared soon after. One of my favourites, too. My fault – I had it pinned down but unpinned it to show something and didn’t get around to putting it back.

It is so lovely to have stitchy granddaughters. My other girly, Lauren, knitted me this ballet dancing cat. Don’t you love the tail. I’m not sure that I can knit as well as she does.

Another reason that we were a little behind with the book was the fact that we had an accident in the car recently. We weren’t hurt at all but the poor car was not so lucky and nor were all the people who were waiting to hear a talk at the Woking Evening Branch of the Guild. We were less than a mile away from the venue but you can hardly ask the guy loading you onto the tow truck to hang on for an hour or so. The ladies were so nice about it and I know it put them on the spot – we have rebooked for another time.

It has taken hours of time to get it all sorted out and we are still waiting for the car. The repair shop ordered the parts two weeks ago and they are still waiting for a battery lead to arrive. They have all been great though and we have had a hire car and, now, a courtesy car from the garage. The time spent on paperwork and the hours on the phone have all added up and we did feel very woozy for a day or two.

I am really off travel in any form. Yesterday, coming home from the photo thing, we were about to take an exit onto the M25 when the matrix sign flashed up, ‘M25 long delays. Junction 4 to 31'!!! That’s most of the M25, isn’t it? We came home a roundabout way and it took us an extra two hours! I think I shall stay home and play with the Scan'n'Cut instead.

Scanning and Cutting

Woe is me, it has been nearly a month since I last hung out here. Here are my excuses:

• Very behind with my next book - the one on cutting
• Quite behind on Workshop on the Web
• Too laid back about the Brockenhurst show where I am exhibiting on Saturday

However, (woo-hoo) I am back on track and I have this lovely toy to play with - the Brother Scan n Cut.

It only came last week but I've had loads of fun already. I am making a piece of work called The Butterflies' Revenge. You may remember that I made a piece based on some poor butterflies that wound up as exhibits in a butterfly cabinet. Wouldn't see that now - it was a few centuries ago! Anyway, I have invented a mythology about the 'wood-warriors' (they were the nasty tribe who perpetrated the butterfly killings). You can see some of the drawings of the warriors and their lion leader in the pic below.

The butterflies got their own back by entering into an intensive breeding program. It was hard work, they said, but somebody had to do it. Eventually there were so many of them that they all sat on the wood-warriors and suffocated them. Then they mounted their heads and kept them in a cabinet. I am making the mounted heads - I have scanned them and cut them out on the Brother - easy peasy.

Knocked up a few trees as well to show their habitat. I cut them from Craft Vilene and the cutting very clean.

Some of the warriors were made into stencils and the cut-out areas were too good not to use so I am stitching them onto a background. They have running stitch war-paint.

I will, hopefully, show you the next episode when they are all stitched and mounted.

While I was getting a feel for the machine, I tried some of the built-in patterns. Love these fish (see below) where I have deliberately allowed random overcutting to change the shape. I am colouring them and am going to make a fish bowl. That is near completion and may be used by Brother as a project and this seems a good subject.

The cutting book also shows ideas for simple cutters like the ones below - just punches that produce shapes that you can link together. They look like shoes.

I have cut 'straps', nibbling away at the edges to make good shapes. I plan to stitch these to a background. Detail above.

So, lots of work to be done - back soon with some finished stuff. I hope.

The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring and all that Jazz

Wow, but it is lovely weather. Haven't had the central heating on properly for ages - just a quick blast in the morning and the log fire at night. Good stuff.

Blogger is being very unhelpful and won't show me my comments from last time, so apologies for that.

I went with my stitchy mates on a retreat to the Kingcombe Centrea week or so ago and finished lots of stuff for the cutting book - including all the centres for the garlands.

Since I have been home I have wrapped miles and miles of thread for the poles. It doesn't show much but I know it is there.

I have some fine tuning to do as the flowery bits are pinned to the poles at present but most of it is there.

At the Kingcombe centre (which belongs to the Dorset Wildlife Trust) they have a cabinet containing a 19th century butterfly collection. I hate the idea of the poor things trapped in there (I know they're not really but you know what I mean) and think I might do a piece on 'Beauty Caged'. Quite excited and have borrowed a butterfly cutter from my granddaughter and made a start. Looked at the shapes of some of the exhibits..........

........ and got a bit creative. It turned into an article for the June issue of Workshop on the Web so I shan't show the result yet.

I have already confessed on Facebook that my time at Kingcombe had an ignominious end when, having been on a fairly strict diet and not had sugar for ages, I succumbed to the wonderful cream meringues at the final dinner and was ill all night. Entirely self inflicted! Clive had to come and rescue me. However my splitting headache turned out to be caffeine withdrawal and I was fine after a coffee. I don't drink a lot of coffee but do like it strong and black. Just shows what a powerful drug it is.

 

Home again - briefly

Just back from a great trip to Jersey, courtesy of the Harbour Gallery's Jersey Textile Showcase. I went over to judge some of the competitions and it was a very hard task as the standard was so high.  Here are some of the winners - not great photos because of the reflection but you will see how high the standard was..



Naomi Renouf has written for Workshop on the Web in the past and her work is as good as ever.  Endlessly fascinated by the landscape of her island, she still manages to produce something different every time.








Lisa Bloomer's work was a winner under the Mixed Media category. She screen prints most successfully on everything from silk paper to brown wrapping paper. I love this one which uses minimal stitch but makes that stitch such an important part.

Also - these lively dog studies - the one on silk paper was lovely, but I didn't get a close up - durrr.

This very interesting piece came from Victoria Goddard. When you look at the detail you will see why I chose her for the stitching award.

So many different techniques, skilfully applied so that each piece fitted and the overall effect was not 'bitty'.

After the Gala dinner - an excellent meal and luckily served in the hotel where I was staying as it was a very foggy night - a wonderful sunrise to greet. This was the view from my room.

Then it was off to judge the open competition in a local church. Some of the entries from schools were very good. This entry won the category for imaginative display. We  done L'abbe school.

This one really captured the essence of the theme - Festivals - as it looked at the Rio carnival. I didn't catch the name of the school but will try to come back and correct that.

It was such a lovely couple of days and even the flights were fun. Going over, I sat in the midst of a netball team and they were lovely girls. We had a real laugh. Coming back I bonded over a take-off fruit pastille (it was hard on the ears) with a very glam lady who worked for the teenage cancer trust. She was so committed and told me all the great initiatives they had in progress. Especially building units in hospitals for young cancer patients to avoid them going in the children's ward. If you are looking for a good cause, that is certainly a winner. Must think what we could do on WoW. We had a book challenge once for the tsunami victims - perhaps a sketchbook challenge could work for us.

I am now packing to go to Kingcombe with Textiles 21 for a relaxing few days of chatting, eating and stitching. Poor Clive will be abandoned again.

Birch Blog Finished

Phew - just about got it finished today. Slaving over a hot needle last night while the wind howled and the rain lashed and the lights flickered. Smudge was sure it was our fault and he kept shouting at us to get it fixed.

I have hung the piece in the porch and, while I am quite pleased with it, I feel it is a little busy but, when I removed some leaves it looked too bare. So there will probably be some tinkering yet.

I may take out some of the leaves and add little trails of flowers - I happen to have just the thing. We will see.

Details of the piece are shown below, from top to bottom. I do feel that blogging every day made me work on a project when I might otherwise not have done. On reflection, it would have probably been better to do it when I had a week clear of other matters an was not trying to put the finishing touches to March WoW and various urgent bits of business. Let me know what you think.

From the top.

Birch Blog Day 5

No, I haven't quite finished it. Yes, that was my intention, but life got in the way and it's been a day full of phone calls and NPW (non-productive work). There is also the fact that the wonderful lady who keeps our house clean came today. She has seven children and a life like a soap opera, so I can't bear to miss the latest instalment. She also never charges for chat time - even though she goes through the house like a human dynamo when we've had our chat.

One other excuse is my feeling that I needed some bigger leaves as they were all a bit samey - an inevitable consequence of using the cutter. I made one a bit bigger by cutting the Vilene and leaving a gap behind the metal so that it formed a border in front - see below. 

That was OK but I cut a few big leaves freehand just to help things along. They are painted and I am now waiting for Clive to light the fire (yes, that is sexist and yes, I can light fires, but he is better at it than me) so that they dry out.

Anyway I finished the top part and am pleased with how it looks and the colour and tonal balance. They have now been stitched to the wrapped wire and are firmly in place.

The metal looks good and I have darkened some of the leaves and used silver wax to wake them up a bit.

The little strip of organza (on extreme right in photo below) with the fringing looked good, which was a bit of a nuisance as I had to make some more and that took ages.

Glad I decided to use the metal but, again, I had to get the cutter out and make some more.

I have been remiss about comments so here are some answers:

Fibrenell - the varnish was called Plasti-coat Krystal Clear, I think he said that B&Q do it but any Plasti-coat stockist would have it. He said that it wasn't completely  mat and it was best to build it in layers of light spray.

On tidy workrooms - I am with Wabbit as I too need the repetition of putting away to soothe me into getting going. Well, it is a good excuse. Adele - I am horrified at your tidiness. Cultivate chaos at once.

Thank you for all the help in choosing the colour scheme and sorry Gill for toning it down a bit. I have made another piece using the leaf die and that is wildly colourful - I will show you tomorrow.

Birch Thing Day4

This morning was a little tedious as it was mostly taken up with wrapping several miles of thread.

The exciting variant here was adding a strand of wire to give 'bendability' when the leaves are suspended.



The other time consuming operation was getting the hanging device to work. Clive is good at this but there was a lot of trial and error involved - his preferred option of mirror fittings were unsuitable on a bumpy surface.

Eyelets took a long time to fix and then we made the top piece of wood all wonky. I hope you are absorbing all these technical terms. Eventually a metal eyelet at the top was agreed so I had to disguise it with yet more wrapped thread. The next task was to paint a few more coloured leaves in case it needed more contrast.

Finally I gathered all my bits and fixed the wrapped wire to the front. An experiment in the form of a strip of organza with a pattern stitch and a fringed edging was added to the mix. You can see it in the front in the pic below. Some little flowers were made from punched shapes in case a frond or two was needed.

Here is the beginning - bending the wire around the slats of wood, the organza is ready to be folded over the cord with the fringe hanging down.

Then the leaves were pinned into place - a mix of metal and gessoed Vilene, with the odd splash of colour. Note the less than elegant hanging device at the top.

A close-up - the leaves look brighter than they really are. I think it needs a few slightly bigger leaves to change the scale a little.

Finally - the story so far. Tomorrow will be a day of leaf making and probably more wrapping. I am still not convinced about the brighter colours but I think the metal and gesso ones look good.


Focal points will need some thought tomorrow, too - it's getting a bit busy.


I am afraid that Smudge has been very boring today It has been lovely and sunny (praise the Lord) so he lay on his back in the conservatory all day. He says he will try to be more Smudge-like tomorrow That's worrying.