The view from my studio

 One of the views from my studio is of the vast tiled roof of a 14th C. tithe barn. There is moss growing between every tile and lichen growing everywhere. I am very fond of the moss as it looks like little islands especially when it flowers.Making lichen in stumpwork is a bit of a challenge, not least because it is black underneath and raises up when wet then flattens out when dry. I went for the wet version and took a tip from the 17thC. ladies and coloured the underside with conte pastel.  This piece, together with the dead leaves, will be on show in a couple of places soon ( 'will update this post with details).

Some Shape of Beauty

 Somehow I forgot to mention this one.....

black satin corset , eyes and feathers. 2011

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 !

A glimpse through the trees

'just a little update , the house in the forest now has the trees !

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.

Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense

I made this piece in 2008 but lost all the pictures in the great computer crash !!! As you can see it is a black satin late Victorian style corset , fully steel boned with silver 'beading'. Except it's not beading.......

  I spent a long time going to charity shops and bric-a-brac shops to find old tins of pins. They had to have a large head and it seems that only old pins have this.I lost count of how many I used and how long it took to insert them all. The pattern I made was of large peonies, leaves, snails and  Death's Head hawk moths.
  The base was made to hold the corset as if it were on a dress stand but so that you can see inside and view all the pin shafts. They form a wondrous fur-like texture in some areas.I wanted them to rust into position but they seem to be too good a quality for that !

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.

 

West Dean

I have just come back from teaching raised embroidery at West Dean college which was an absolute joy. There is so much to inspire me there and I have come back with lots of interesting leaves for stumpwork projects and others !

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.