BLOG 467

Blog 467

 

On Friday I went on a willow weaving workshop with a friend.  I have had a go at this before and on that occasion I made a hare which still sits indoors on the top of a kitchen cupboard. It is in the same condition as the day I made it. I have always wanted to make a sheep for the garden so I went to a class taught by Caroline Gregson at the Castle Arts Centre in Frodsham. We had a great day and it is testament to the quality of the teaching that everyone left with a different willow animal under their arm! Here is the sequence of stages I had to go through to produce my ‘sheep’! It is a bit of a hybrid but it will look good outdoors on the lawn next spring.

 

 

           Raw materials

 

             Circles

 

            Combined

 

            Sphere

 

 

           Two spheres

 

 

            Three spheres

 

 

             Body

 

 

              Legs

 

 

          Nose

 

          Sheep (Not quite right but it is MY version of not quite right!)

 

 

 

          Cat

 

 

          Chicken

 

              Teacher and Guck

 

This was my friend’s master piece and she couldn’t decide whether it looked like a goose or a duck so she chose the name ‘Guck’ over ‘Doose’!!)

 

               Teacher’s chicken and reference book

 

 

             Fox

 

               Finished ?sheep?

 

 

             Teacher’s dog

 

 

And this workshop prompted me to make a start on another garden sculpture. For Christmas last year, I bought a festive deer which was made out of metal struts and wrapped with a raffia type material. It served its decorative purpose and has been hanging around since because I wanted to try and cover it in moss. Moss is something we have in abundance in the garden so all the raw materials were to hand, especially after the rain we have experienced lately.  It has taken me ten months to get around to it but I have now had a go. This is another project-in-progress as all my projects are and at this stage I don’t know whether it is going to be successful. The moss is held in place with garden twine and the deer will be put somewhere sheltered and damp for a while to see if the moss starts to grow to the frame! This is the sort of thing I like to fiddle with!

 

 

            Moss deer

 

 

As I was taking the picture of the deer, I was reminded that I had made a willow plant hanger a few years ago and this is now inverted over a pot of ivy to support its growth. I also tried unsuccessfully to make a willow animal on my own last year using willow cut from a neighbour’s wood but it wasn’t easy to work with. So I made a large ball and this too supports a pot of ivy. I think I am willowed out now and will be glad to return to the softness of fabric as opposed to the rough and tough manipulation that is willow weaving!!

 

           Willow plant support

 

 

           Willow ball

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLOG 466

Blog 466

I am in my play room most days now; it is a pleasure to be in there with all its newly organised space and cosy warmth. I am just entering my busy creative time but there are some things I need to get out of the way before I start. So I have finished the cushion from last week but instead of binding round the outside edge, I chose to sew the front and the back RS together and then turn it through. To give the appearance of a binding, I sewed a seam ¼” in from the folded edge. I thought it was very effective and will certainly repeat the process, especially if it saves preparing and sewing on a binding strip and hand sewing it down.

 

            Finished cushion

 

 

            Edge detail

 

 

Binding the Poinsettia wall hanging was the next task.  I always use the Clover iron-on bias binding because it is easy to use, effective and saves so much time. It is used to cover the lines of stitching which are holding the fabric pieces in place. It is ironed in place and it stays there until it is sewn by hand or machine. This particular one is the narrowest that they do and it required accuracy of placement. There is a ¼” tape which would have made life easier!

                 Bias binding

 

 

The bias is ironed on and sewn in sequence, with all the underneath lines sewn on first. I ironed the tape on generously, making it slightly longer than I needed to. I sewed it in place and then trimmed it so that the cut edge followed the angle of the line which would cover it. Sometimes I used a straight stitch, sewing on both sides of the binding; other times I used a zigzag stitch across the width. They are equally effective as sewing methods and, from a distance, an untrained eye wouldn’t notice the difference! I should also mention that because I was sewing by machine, I added a layer of wadding underneath to give body to the fabric and to allow me to quilt it at the same time.

             Sewing the bias

 

            Sequence

 

            Overlapped ends

 

 

              Trimmed ends

 

               Covering the ends

 

            Border strips

 

               Completed binding

 

 

All I need to do now is add some decorative stitching before I finish the edges.

 

And finally for this week, I have darned all I want to do to create my scene. I would do it differently next time … although I know there won’t be a next time! … and use more variegated threads and gentler transitions between colours. I am going to silhouette a tree over the top and make it into one of my labels to cover all the mistakes!!!

 

 

        Darned scene

 

 

 

BLOG 465

Blog 465

I am still waiting for the bias tape to arrive before I can go any further with the Poinsettia wall hanging project but, just for the record, here is the book and project which inspired me. And it is so important to acknowledge where inspiration has come from. I have witnessed many occasions when some of my own patterns or methods has been passed off as someone else’s without any acknowledgement!

 

             Book

 

              Inspiration

 

 

Following the refurbishment of my play room, I decided to go in there and just, well, play! I have a new friend in there in the form a Calor gas stove and I love it! I call it Flash because that’s what happens when it is turned on and it causes me to have many more hot flashes than I normally do! But I am not complaining. Flash and I are all set to have a wonderful autumn and winter in there.

                Flash

 

 

I have a huge glass-topped light box in the room so to start, I brought out my box of sheers and donned my respirator and started to use my soldering iron. I had no particular aim in sight, just a wish to see how I could use sheers to create fabric.

              Sheers

 

                Respirator

 

 

Ideally, cutting with a soldering iron needs to be done against a metal template. I have precious few metal ones apart from an elaborate heart wall decoration so I used a section of it and cut out several strings of flowers in various colours. I just wanted to see what they looked like together and to see what happened when they were over-lapped.

                 Metal template

 

             Flowers

 

Then I wondered if I could free-cut flowers? And the answer turned out to be … not very well! I turned round to pin them on my design wall as I worked on more and that was when I saw the art cushion that I needed to finish. I asked myself ‘what if…?’ and before I knew it I had finished the cushion front. I had intended to silhouette some grasses or cow parsley over the top but shaded flowers worked much better. This was a just-by-chance solution to an unresolved problem! Here is the sequence.

                  

          Free-cut flowers

 

              What if?

 

                 Perhaps

 

               Overlaid design

 

             Completed front

 

 

And finally, someone was explaining recently how she had been on a workshop to learn how to use a darning stitch to create a landscape. I was quite intrigued by this and came straight home to try one small enough to make one of my luggage labels. Here it is in progress. It’s not at all easy but small enough to handle and take with me when I go places to sew. I will complete the background and then silhouette a tree in the foreground to cover all the mistakes! I won’t be doing another one!

              Darning a scene

 

 

BOG 464

Blog 464

And finally, my room is finished! The design wall has been recovered with thick sheets of polystyrene and a flannelette sheet has been stapled over the top. I won’t be bending lots of pins any more as I used to with the old cork wall. And then, like an artist finding it difficult to start on a new canvas, the bare space was suddenly unnerving so I quickly pinned on some work in progress so it wasn’t so threatening!

 

             Design wall

 

                In progress

 

I have had a busy week with one thing or another so progress on the Xmas wall hanging has been slow until today! I pinned the poinsettia fabric to the RS and sewed all around the petals where I wanted this fabric to go. I also mistakenly sewed round one of the under petals which I want to be a darker red. This wasn’t a problem really as it was just a case of taking out the offending stitches!

               Poinsettia fabric

 

 

 

         Defining the petals

 

 

           Defined WS

 

 

            Defined RS

 

             Corrected and trimmed

 

I used the reverse of the chosen fabric for the under petals so that I didn’t introduce another patterned fabric into the design. I chose to use a free motion method rather than a conventional foot for sewing the shapes. This meant that I didn’t have to rotate and unsettle the background fabric at all during sewing.

                Under petals

 

               Reverse of fabric

 

 

 

             Under petals

 

 

Here is the sequence in building up the rest of the picture. I used a sheer fabric with sparkly stars on for the background and another shiny fabric for the centre of the flower. Note also that I sewed along all the extra lines of the pattern where they radiate from the aura of the candle. This is now ready for the black biased binding.

 

              Aura

 

            Ledge

 

            Background

 

 

        Extra lines

 

 

              Completed picture