book bag

Last Monday I joined a workshop "Indian Stitching: Embroidered Book Bag" at Hansons Fabrics.
I always enjoy Hansons workshops, they are so well run. All the materials are included in the cost, as are all the refreshments; tea, coffee and biscuits on arrival, a splendid buffet lunch and afternoon tea and cake, all this organised by Sheila. Thank you, Sheila, for looking after us so well!

Our tutor was Tiggy Rawling. Do visit her blog here, to see her fabric dyeing and read about her travels to India.
The object of the workshop was a sample of a cloth book bag. This type of bag is used in Asia to protect precious books.

First of all we traced the embroidery pattern into the fabric, then embroidered the design using chain stitch for the outline and Indian filling stitch ( Romanian stitch) and closed herringbone stitch as a filling stitches, with shishas in the centre of the flowers.

After completing the embroidery, we made up the bag, including the lining.

 

 

my Indian book bag

Another very enjoyable day spent in the company of Tiggy Rawling.

my oldest UFO, finished and stretching

I have bravely changed my header, as snowdrops are coming up all around in our part of the world. It is probably a long way to spring yet, but there is hope.....

My oldest UFO.

Many, many, many years ago I bought my first needlepoint tapestry kit. I wasn't doing much of any stitching at the time and I had no particular interest in needlepoint, I just fell in love with the design.

And so I brought my kit home and started stitching. From the top. First BIG mistake, as I learnt later.

My stitching looked terrible, and I lost heart. My new and exiting project wasn't so exiting any more. It got pushed around various corners, in the end it ended up in a wooden trunk.

Now, to end up in the wooden trunk is the ultimate in our house. It means "unwanted, uncared for, unloved". The trunk gets very rarely inspected, after the trunk it is usually a jumble sale.

Then one day, in the middle of the Somerset countryside, I came across Jolly Red, a shop owned my Kelly Fletcher, a needlepoint heaven. I wrote about Jolly Red in my 31. December post, so I will not repeat.

I rescued my kit from the trunk and in one of Kelly's workshops I learnt how to stitch needlepoint tapestry. Unfortunately, during my initial attempts I wasted some of the cream Anchor wool, used for the background and that shade was no longer in production. I had to use the nearest shade to it, but of course, it does show. Still, it took a long time before the tapestry was finished, as there were new and more exiting projects around, and even after I did finish it, it was stored, rolled up, in my workroom. Until today.

My oldest UFO, my first ever needlepoint embroidery, finished, washed and stretching, waiting to dry.

Cherries

It will probably live out its life as a part of a cushion cover, I have not decided yet, but I will let you know when I'll do!

Have a good weekend!

cross stitch

First of all I would like to let you know that I seem to be having a problem with commenting on some of your blogs, not all, but enough to make me feel frustrated with the blogger the last couple of days.

So, it is not that I don't want to come and visit, I am not able to :(( I hope this will get sorted out soon.

I haven't done much stitching this week, at the moment I am preoccupied with our tax returns.

As most of you in UK would know, 31 January is the last day for submitting tax returns.

If you haven't done it by that date, a big bad wolf will come and eat you. Well, not quite, but he will impose a hefty fine !

At least I wanted to catch up with your blogs, but as I can't, I looked for a subject which would hopefully interest some of you -  cross stitch.

I am not really a crosstitcher myself. I get bored with repeating the same very small stitch over and over. And it is hard on eyes. But -

recently I came across this book.

Quote: "this book is perhaps the first to document all the different motifs by origin used on traditional costumes", meaning Palestinian embroidery.

It is very different from the normal cross stitch kits you buy in the shops.

The book is full of beautiful, colourful designs, enough to make you want to take up cross stitching.

Isn't it beautiful?

I would like to try to use some of the designs on a quilt sometime in the future.

My record on cross stitch embroidery to date is very poor, yet it was probably the first stitch we all learnt.

A few years ago, to try to remedy this fault, and to take a project on holiday, I bought 2 kits, one for me and one for my DD (she is so much better at cross stitch then I am).

This is my one.

I saw these particular kits at a craft show and immediately they caught my eye. Why? Because the designs were so different. They are taken from watercolour paintings of the artist Michael Powell and I just love them. I wish I could afford to buy one of his watercolour paintings. Do have a look at them here .

Sadly, my cross stitch became UFO, but now and then in the summer it sees the light of day and I manage few stitches. A long way to go yet....

Enjoy your weekend!

Jane Hall

I would like to return to my last week's post. Not all the pictures I took at the Exeter show have come out. Sometime I find difficult to take pictures at shows, with the interference of all the other lighting.


One of the pictures missing was the one I took of Jane Hall's small stand. Jane Hall is an embroiderer and a fabric artist with an enormous talent. She studied Design Embroidery and now works from her studio in Dorset.
I had the pleasure to meet this petite young lady at a talk she gave to our embroidery group a couple of years ago. Her work is beautiful. She takes her inspiration from the nature around her and the results are fantastic three dimensional pieces of art, worked mainly in silk, fabric & thread; many varieties of flowers, leaves, moths, butterflies, dragonflies, cobwebs, beetles, lacewings, tree bark; they all form "the cloth of nature", as she calls it.

I bought her book " Reflections of Nature" some time later and I am glad I did, it is a shear pleasure to read and to look at.
This is not "how to" book, there are no projects and no instructions. It is Jane's creative journey, from when she was a little girl, having tea parties with fairies and looking for tree-men in the woods with her grandmother. Her world has probably always been full of magic and this reflects in her work. She is an inspiration to anyone doing or interested in embroidery.
Please have a look at her website here and while you are there, do take a look at her wedding dress.
There is also a short introduction to her DVD:  http://youtu.be/XEMQlw7YNSQ.