Lachrimae Rerum

   This piece is ready to go to the show, finally. It has a leaf missing but after two years making all the different parts I think it needs to get out ! Obviously it didn't literally take two years to make but there have been other things to do and the moths took so long..... It has a lovely dome  to live under now so you can get very close to it and will be at the front of the stand.
 Like most of my work it has its' roots in ideas about transience and fragility. The moths are in a state of evolution from flat lace to full bodied flight whilst the book grows moss along its' spine. One of the pages in another book has embroidered clover with dew and a sycamore key sits with a real but rusting key and escutcheon. Eventually there will be some ivy too....
 Lachrimae rerum translates as 'the tears of things'. I have always been drawn to things in a state of passing or decay be it old books or textiles or autumn leaves and so it seemed appropriate to show my work like this now. It is difficult to give modern textile work context outside of either domestic use or just being in a frame  so I decided to stage my tiny little pieces to give them meaning.I must admit to being secretly pleased when people ask me why I'm just showing some dead leaves!

Sycamore key

Some people aren't happy to have these in their garden but I love them. I used some lovely subtle shades from Weeks Dye Works for this piece, the small changes in shade are perfect for something that was always going to be tricky !! I am still trying to work out how to put veining into stumpwork without it looking heavy so I tried to suggest it with colour and technique. The wings of this seedpod I made in single strand corded brussels stitch so that it was very fine. To give a hint of veining I freestyled a bit with the rows as I went, sometimes starting mid row and then again in mid row so to fan the rows out.

This technique meant that I avoided stripes in the colour of the thread as it moved from one shade to the next and instead gave it natural patches of colour. 

   For the seed pod section I tried hanging the stitches off a pre-buttonholed strand so as to retain a ridge for the vein. It sort of worked!!!

I had to take the work off the cordonnet pad to flip it over and make the pod cases . I used the same stitch but built 'up' and around to make a small cavity for a real seed to fit into ! (this is to scale )

Before I sewed the last row I put the seed in ...

For the second pod I wanted it to look as if the seed had already fired out. I did some tiny ghiordes knots inside and then furred them out with a pin...

and then built up the open pod case as before.

Moth assembly kit

How to make a moth.......

 You will need: 1 undercarriage with wings in needlelace,
                          1 small wing in needlelace,
                          1 furry body in ghiordes knot stitch
                                      ( with feather antennae)
                          6 furry legs.
                       

 Make the furry body with very dense stitches and learn how to tie flies.......

 Spend weeks making a wired segmented undercarriage with patterned wings,

                       Attach everything together and teach him to walk.....

One tame moth.

Release him to join his friends...

'feel pleased with yourself !

This is the last moth (and the largest at 6cm long) for this piece entitled 'Lachrimae Rerum ' ( The Tears of Things) . I'm nearly finished, only  a couple more things to make and add. Every time I think it's done I realise there is some more I can do.

Clover

  My desk has been full of equipment just so that I can see to embroider these clover leaves! I had some lovely embroidery silks which are no longer in production so I wanted them used on something special. I worked on a type of silk fabric called 'paper silk' which is very fine but robust because I wanted to make an embroidered page to slip into one of the books on this piece. After the embroidery I wanted dew on the leaves but it can be a bit tricky with something like this as the scale and shape of the beads can ruin it if they are wrong...I hope I got it right! I used tiny miyuki seed beads and a few of the smallest magatama beads that I could get.

 Here they are off the hoop and ironed (carefully),then trimmed down, a little edge stitching and then pinned into place with black entomology pins. As I put them in place I found that the page I had chosen gave a lovely description by Herman Melville of an elaborate tattoo of leaves.

Art Workers Guild

 This is a picture of the hall at the Art Workers Guild of which I am a member, or brother as we are known to each other !!! Under the busts at the top of the picture runs a name board with everyone's name from the start over one hundred years ago, my name is up there too! (William Morris is the man in the middle). This Friday we are opening our doors to the public as part of London Craft Week and I will be demonstrating...probably part of a big piece that I'm working on at the moment...

Next.......

Lady Google

invites you

to a viewing of her collection

at

The Art Workers Guild

6 Queens Square

London WC1N 3AT

on

Monday 27 October 6 - 9 pm

Featuring work by

Celia Ward

with contributions from

Max Alexander   Gwendolen Dupre   Kang Sing Fung 

Deborah Hopson Wolpe   Rachael Matthews   

The McGrath Makers & Sophie Ramsay   Fleur Oakes

Iona Ramsay  Sonia Tuttiett   Charlotte Ward   Sarah Winslow

Lacrimae rerum

...the tears of things.This is still in progress, more moths to come and some other things to make.Essentially a pile of old books with embroidery !

The Algorithm Isles

My pin corset will be in the show at PYF from 20th March-23rd April. There are a lot of pins in it...........

.. I overheard someone at a show once say   " I don't think it's quite finished, all the pins are still in it "

Yes they are.

Moss Book

I wasn't supposed to be making this at all but I sat looking at this old book and decided that it needed moss more than I needed to be getting on with stuff .

Ghiordes knots in four shade of green , two in cotton , two in silk,

 ..stitch density of about one hundred to the square inch ( more than an expensive carpet....which takes my mind to unrealistic notions)

...four big tufts (12 hours) and three tiny ones to fill the spine of this old French-English dictionary. After listening to very inspiring music I decided that this will be part of a  larger piece that I have been working on for a while...the piece I was, in fact, supposed to be doing anyway ( thankyou Sigur Ros).

little lichen

It is time to attempt some 3D,or is it 4D?, stumpwork. I am facinated by hyperbolic crochet and since needlelace and crochet are related I thought it was worth a go. What I actually wanted to make was lichen  and so here is the first part of my new piece. I have found some normal embroidery cotton that has a very subtle change in colour which is perfect for this project.

....now growing here !

The quick and the dead

....that is to say this dead leaf was quicker to make than the others !!! Here it is flat and then as it curls up and is blown away...

 ..finally to come to rest on an old milk bottle

It has now blown here !

O western wind when wilt thou blow

Finally , the third leaf is finished...random colour ,freestyle stitches ,splits and texture changes -it's all there.One of my students showed me some lovely yarn from Habu ,which is made from bamboo and copper, so I used this to make the leaf skeleton tip.

O Rose Thou Art Sick

The second in my stumpwork dead leaves, a decaying rose leaf. This project is to test the possibilities of the technique and here it was random colour.
1 .To avoid a striped effect ( where you add a new colour at either side of the cordonnet and work from left to right) I added blocks of colour ( the brown and some grey brown thread) using the detached buttonhole technique but still attached to the cordonnet  (at random points around the cordonnet I just freestyled a bit!).
2. I also tried putting in a chain stitch in ochre thread ( the chain just lay where it wanted) which I then caught in as I went with the main green thread. This can be seen on the right hand side above.
3. All the random bits of colour where joined together by the single brussels stitch as I followed the rest of the leaf shape in the green thread.
This is all worked in cotton thread with a very fine brass wire cordonnet which was shaped afterwards.

 

blown like a leaf in the wind

 
I have been wanting to attempt the fine work that I see on 17th C. caskets for a while now . I usually use needlelace for my raised 'bits' but I have a new piece of work which requires stumpwork.

First the cordonnet itself. No crochet thread ( needlelace) as it is too bulky. I have used fine brass jewellery wire . This can be shaped around tight corners with the needle as you go.

Then the edges....no buttonhole edging after filling in . Here it is a single brussels stitch and tightly packed stitches (at a rather scary 900 stitches per square inch). As I go I have made sure that the final stitch in each row is wrapped twice around the wire cordonnet. This is to make the final edge to be as accurate to my drawing as possible with no detraction from the look of the leaf.
The result is a very firm little leaf not too much heavier than the original it was copied from. I was going to try and put veins in but that idea rapidly went out the window ! There will be two more each with a different problem to solve.