more Chapter 9 - stitching it up and rubbing it out

These are my formal and informal stitching patterns.  I used wheatear stitch connected and detached.  The formal patterns are at the top with the corresponding informal example underneath.  They were great fun to do and a chance to sit still for a while and listen to some opera!

You can probably see the chorus, the soloists, the rhythmical and arrythmical melodies!

It took a while to get any decent rubbings.  Chalk smudged, markal tore the tissue, candle made amorphous blobs. I finally got some half decent ones with a white neocolour crayon.

more snow!

It snowed again so I was out with my trusty little camera getting snap-happy again.  Not having a very tidy garden has its advantages - this red bucket under the twigs looks gives fire in the snow in the early morning sun - hope you enjoy the piccies.

Chapter 8 - Fabric Translations

1. top right - I made a background of cream cotton topped with fine nylon curtaining sewn  with fine twin needle tucks. The leaves were made from a cotton-look linen lightly quilted with disposable nappy liners with a feathery top stitch and satin stitched edges.  I used the nappy liner because I thought it might curl interestingly when I applied heat.  The sample didn't - it just went hard and flat - so I left well alone!

bottom right -  silk organza over cream cotton. The organza has fine corded tucks with a heavy silk thread. The sheer leaves from the organza lightly gathered and leaving the gathering ends - it's much softer and more fragile-looking than in the photo.

2. top right - I trapped layered shapes of heavy vilene between coarse light grey net. I put two layers on top to create more shadow.

bottom right - I used a permanently creased shiny white polyester curtaining with very thick polyester wadding and used heavy machining to create the shadows.  There is actually quite high relief which looks a lot flatter in the photo.

3. top right - I used three layers of creamy organza - the bottom is heavily corded with 4mm twin needles and a thick wool yarn, middle with uncorded fin tucking and top just stitched.

bottom right - the creased curtaining again tucked every which way.

4. top right - grey net stitched all over with lines and tiny circles to give slight gathering and create shadows. the old man's beard with finely split wadding gathered on to a thread or a fluffy yarn.

bottom right - background silk stitched with an automatic spiral pattern bent round to create high spots and low spots. Heavy vilene cut into feathered shapes and held under tulle with long stitches holding the vilene in place.

Chapter 9 stitch experiments

These are the stitches I practised. Some are new to me, some variations on a well- loved stitch .

Straight line stitches - thorn, seed, ermine, star, sprat's head 

Looped stitches - cretan, detached wheatear, tete de boef, long-tailed daisy, crown, looped stem stitch, 

Knotted stitches - long-tailed french knot, portuguese knotted stem stitch, danish knot stitch

Composite stitches - sham hemstitch, raised chain band, whipped chain, torocko and a stitch I invented from seeing the back of bonnet stitch - two parallel lines of running stitch with   longer spaces between the stitches  than the stitch itself , then threading through making short and long zig zags.

Chapter 7 Texture and Relief Sampler

The sampler was great fun to do and I closed my eyes and randomised the little samples first to see if I could tell just by feel what processes I had done.  Then I arranged them so that the low , medium and high heights were not together. The textures I tried for were -   sharp, angular, soft, padded, yielding, firm, stiff, wobbly, furry, rough, smooth, furrowed, holey, floppy, hard and crunchy. Each square did contrast with the next with my eyes closed.

In rows from top left:-

1. darted to the middle from each side and each corner then the middle pushed up for stability.

2. Tucks stuffed with halved cocktail sticks and rolled with pointy ends up - ouch!

3. layered knife pleats

4. Square with circle gathering, softly stuffed with sheep fleece and bubble edged to another square.

5. Silk corded with heavy wool

6. Cross gathered to make little soft bubbles

7. Coarse grey net gathered  into a square with rough ends up

8. Shaped quilting with washers edged with coarse woollen yarn

9. Heavy linen sewn as single tucks and layered in log cabin fashion

10. Nylon organza tucked from each corner and base sewn to stabilise and produce hollows.

11. Fine tucks standing up like little furrows

12. Cotton scrim gathered over pipe cleaner and gently manipulated to produce soft folds.

13. Nylon organza corded with heavy woollen yarn and high tucked alternately to make a base with insubstantial floppy tucks.

14. Strips of cotton scrim finger corded and coiled.

15. Parrot peas in net pouch - has sound too!

16. Heavy linen tucked, tucks slit and scrubbed to make a furry surface.

Chapter 6 Gathering - (ye rose buds while ye may?)

a. simple gathering

1. cotton scrim ruffle zig zagged on to a kebab stick

2. hand gathered nylon organza

3. machine gathered polycotton

4. Cotton scrim gathered by pulling threads.

5. cotton lawn ruffled with three rows of shirring

b. tucks and gathers

1. heavy cotton with regular tucks across the width and then shirred along the length. The heavier material from the tucks reduced the gathering of the shirring.

2. Fine linen look cotton tucked, gathered and then the tucks stitched to each other to form little pockets.

3. fine old cotton sheeting with large and small tucks gathered

c. more complex gathering

1. polycotton shirred in wavy lines across the width and along the length - showing the reverse side to see the little pockets formed.

2. cotton scrim with threads pulled from around the perimeter of the material

3. fine cotton sheeting close gathered in two directions

4. fine cotton sheeting shirred in two directions

d.  flights of fancy

1. tucked, shirred, rolled and frayed

2. nylon organza gathered on to cocktail sticks by using the sticks as the gathering thread

3. parrot peas circular-stitched into nylon organza

4. fine cotton sheeting folded and snipped into fringes then shirred

5. lines of circular stitching to make a soft mound.

Chapter 6 tucking, pleating gathering and generally messing about

Samples of tucking and pleating:

a. knife pleats, box pleats and single pleats held with a line of stitching and allowed to flow below.

b. Tucking from left to right - plain tuck, centred tuck, high tuck, pin tuck, overcast pin tuck, satin stitched tuck, twin needle tucks, corded twin needle tucks

c. stuffed tucks from top to bottom -  small and large straws, bobbly yarn, plastic bag, thick soft acrylic yarn,  heavy coarse wool, corded with fine polyester yarn, corded with shiny rayon cord.

d. 1 -left to right  snipped and stuffed with painted kebab stick, length of cotton fringing from a towel, bubble wrap, sparkly acrylic knitting. Fancy stiching on some edges making high tucks.

2. snipped tucks and slit tucks scrubbed to fray edges.

e. varied widths crossed tucks

f.1. tucks machined in different directions to make wave pattern

2.alternate corded tucks with my new 4mm twin and high tucks on nylon organza

3. alternating corded and uncorded twin needle tucks horizontally and vertically

g. corded tucks and tapered tucks held in fan shape

h. short tapered tucks from opposite edges making a 3d sample - its floppy in cotton scrim - would be sturdy in a stiff material.

i. tucks gathered on to a kebab stick and two sizes of straws

j. corded and twin needle tucks cut apart  joined together

k. short, long, curved and corded tucks put in from the back and the front to make a little wooded scene.

Chapter 5 Quilting experiments

Wadded quilting

1.  Top layer of fine cream cotton with crystal organza frill under heavily stitched medium  non-woven interfacing. Quilted  with polyester wadding.

2. Coarse cotton bubble weave over silver paper and bubble-wrap with centre double-stitched and cut away to show silver and bubbles.

3. Linen-look cotton top layer over polyester wadding with ivy leaf design in relief from heavy stitching in various cream and dark cream threads.

4. Shiny silk top layer over tinner polyester wadding with design stitched in heavy cream cotton.

5. Fine cotton top layer over polyester wadding and tied to form squares.

6. I knitted a heavy rib piece with triple double knitting yarn on 12mm needles to use as stuffing.

Top layer of fine, old  cotton sheeting and channels formed with single knotted cross stitches.

7. I layered snippets of coarse grey net under fine tulle and stitched in lines to form a square in one corner which was more heavily layered to change the height.  It doesn't show in the photo, I'm afraid.

Chapter 5 Shaped quilting

1. Buttons in various sizes, some doubled and one tripled for more height. Hand-sewn with running stitch under a fine cotton top layer.

2.  Washers under nylon organza stitched with a dark pewter-grey thread with straight stitches.

3. Plastic straws hand stitched under poly cotton.

4. Plaited art straws held in a triangle by covering ground with wheatsheaf stitch in varying sizes over unbleached cotton scrim.

5. Hand made cord from heavy wool yarn held under 2 layers of net - one coarse grey and one fine white tulle - with heavy running stiched in shiny rayon cord.

Chapter 5 Padded and corded quilting

These samples are experiments in padded and corded quilting:

1.   Top layer - polyester curtaining with diamond shapes outlined in gold and stuffed with sheeps's fleece.

2. Pelmet vilene topped  with cotton scrim and a coarse grey net stuffed with soft fluffy polyester yarn on the corners and strips of cardboard packing in the middle.  The top layers were cut larger and gathered on to the base to provide more height for the stuffing.

3. I made rouleaux stuffed with a heavy wool yarn and then attached from the back, seam side down to a linen- look cotton.

4. Using a twin needle and pin tuck foot I corded 1ply wool, fuzzy yarn and shiny rayon cord to linen look cotton.

5. I stitched a channel with two colours of thread on a cream finely- woven cotton and threaded with a heavy wool yarn.

Chapter 4 Fabric investigations and edges

A selection of white and neutral coloured fabrics were catalogued and fabrics from the categories were investigated to what characteristics they had. A selection of fabrics were manipulated, cut, and melted to form decorative edges.

Chapter 3 Texture and relief in paper

I printed the photos in groups of 4 with two pairs of identical photos in each group. Then I cut the middle out of one of the pair to set in the paper relief.

1. left photo - I used tissue crumpled, squeezed and spread with baking parchment to resemble the background of the photo.

right photo - I used a lot of watered PVA and pressed parts of the tissue so it was very transparent and left other barely adhering to create the low relief of the background.

2. left - gathered and pleated 3 ply tissue for the foreground leaves over 1ply crumpled tissue background

right - I found in my experiments that the fine hand made paper was very feathery at the edges when torn. I exploited this and tore along the embedded fibres to represent the flavour of these lovely old man's beard seed pods.

3. left - the icicle photo was layered and waved in Adobe photoshop - I cut contours from copy paper for the icicles and made the waves from snipped 1 ply tissue.

right - crumpled and smoothed tissue many times and applied to a watery glued background.  It looked more even when wet; dried the places I pressed more were darker.

4. left - a very gluey background - applied tissue and swirled with my finger, then added v shaped swirls on top. The bottom chunky bits were tissue softly folded into humps.

right - more icicles- background with layered 1 ply tissue - icicles of bubble wrap from a padded envelope, keeping the backing to get the shiny bumpy look.

5. left - made a fairly flat background with manipulated tissue on glue so the foreground would show up better. The Queen Anne's lace seed pod was made from a plastic straw finely split.

right - the contours were built with layers of tissue then a piece of crumpled 1 ply tissue was glued over the top and pressed into the hollows.

Chaper 2 Paper manipulations tester

I pleated and ripped a variety of materials to see how they reacted.

1. cartridge paper     2. copy paper     3. copy paper crumpled and smoothed many times

4. tracing paper       5. thick hand made paper     6  shoe box tissue     7. face tissue 1 ply

8. face tissue 3ply     9. handmade paper with fibres     10 toilet tissue 1 ply

11. hand made paper with fibres and spots of colour   12. baking parchment

13. 1ply medical couch tissue     14. kitchen paper     15 planed wood rough side up

16. plastic bag  17. planed wood smooth side up      18. greaseproof paper