something lighthearted...

this summer light-hearted stitching has been the genre of choice

since last week's post the smoke blew away for a day and a half. and came back Thursday evening with a vengeance... thick, choking, make your eyes burn, catch in your throat, awful smoke

the whole summer has been like that, weeks and weeks and weeks of it and no end in sight

(you know it's bad when they  suddenly decide to station 100 firefighters in the middle of your town)

staying inside as much as possible is the right thing to do 

a friend in the UK just had a birthday and I had wanted to make her something special

a few years ago, at Christmas, I sent her a small table runner of generic buildings with snowy roofs, and a dark star-filled sky

she liked it so much she kept it on her table year-round and when I learned of that I resolved to make her a summertime version

 this time though, I wanted to depict buildings of significance in her small village

we were fortunate to have been able to visit her and her husband a few years ago whilst on an England holiday and we fell in love with their tiny village in the Peak District

thinking about their life there, I scoured Instagram and Google Earth to find photos of the buildings I wanted to depict:

their house, with it's beautiful purple door

the church where we went for a music concert

the library where she worked

the bed and breakfast where we stayed, conveniently across the street from their house

and the gate to the Bluebell Wood which has appeared on her Instagram feed, both in photography and paint

the technique is one I devised for a class I was teaching back in 2013 or so... a pieced runner of same-sized rectangles, changing the colour/print where necessary to depict sky and buildings, the foreground done in one narrow strip at each end

the details of the buildings are then appliquéd in place

(I've seen patterns using this kind of technique since then but at the time there were none; I came up with it to make the appliqué portion of the class easier for my students)

if you click on the photos with your mouse they will enlarge further and you can get a better look at the stitched details

below is Millie's Tea Room and B & B, the gate to the Bluebell Wood and the house

I expected the writing on the windows to be fiddly to the 10th degree but it was surprisingly quick and easy despite my trepidation

I had found two photos of the library (building on the left below), one with a light door, in the other it was dark

at first I made it light but after more and more detail was added to both ends of the runner I felt one end had far more dark values than the other so I switched out the library door to the darker version - it turns out that was the recipient's favourite version so all's well that ends well

in debating what time to stitch on the clock other than the obvious "Timex" 10 minutes to 2, I chose the time difference between Western Canada and the UK

I could have gone on for months adding more and more of the building details but time was not on my side so I chose what I thought were the most relevant and worked from there

the tumbled floral at each end is an homage to England being the prettiest, most full of beautiful flowers everywhere, country than I know

choosing the fabrics is one of my favourite things to do when embarking on a new project - the stacks and piles come out on the floor and in minutes I'm surrounded... riffling through greys to find those that look like stone, blues for that typical soft English sky, lavender fabric for the heather, green for the hills, the narrow strips of light brown on the sides are the path we walked up into the hills... and on it goes

I rarely quilt anymore so this was a treat to do and has inspired me to work on some unfinished quilts that have been languishing a bit too long

but first it's back to the brushes and watercolour for a while

I've been looking through books by British painter Ann Blockley who has a lovely style of painting flowers

this is my version of one from her "Experimental Flowers" book

next up is book-binding...

record-keeping

I have made cards of my own design over the past two or three decades, many cards I have either sold or gifted

many of them I have wanted to make again 

the trouble is I was never very good at recording what I was doing along the way; at best I might find a scribbled diagram or drawing of sorts tucked away, but I pretty much start from scratch when it comes to choosing thread colours etc.

last year I took an online watercolour painting course and the instructor showed her technique for making "recipe cards" for her designs

I thought it was a brilliant idea so I adapted it for my embroidered and appliquéd cards

these are my first efforts...

I'm using watercolour paper for the card itself so that as my painting skills improve I can do a quick and simple painting of the design in order to have a handy visual reference without clogging up my iPhoto library

the tabs are scraps of watercolour paper that I paint with any left-over mixed paint from other painting activities - that way I have a steady supply at hand and just have to choose one to go with the fabric 

 a thread wrap of the colours I used is a great visual reference, and if I have more than one colour way I'll make a separate thread wrap for all, putting the optional ones on the back of the recipe card

 swatches of any fabrics used as well as base fabric choices if I found any that worked particularly well

drawings of design elements are also included - using a dark felt marker to make tracing easier

I also reference the size of card the stitched design piece is mounted on as well as measurements for the base fabric and any others used

stitch reference books are always noted

on the back of the card I record which thread to use for each design element, how many strands, stitch combinations and how many wraps for French knots

all of this information will help me make the card again in the exact same way or function as a springboard to changing things without having to start from the very beginning

if I think of something that would be interesting to try next time I'll make a note of that too

it does take a little while to do these up but I've streamlined the process by having several watercolour paper cards cut, scraps of fabric and painted paper ready for tabs as well as cut strips of heavy card with double-sided tape already stuck to the reverse for the thread wraps - I don't mind recording things when everything I need is handy

pretty to look at, handy to have, and interesting enough to put together when I have a little time 

win, win, win

there's another one brewing...

snippets...

raining... a lovely cooling rain has been falling off and on for much of the day

it could rain for a week solid and I wouldn't mind, even two

we've been stuck in the house for weeks anyway, between heat and the smoke-filled air, so being in for the rain is a welcome thing

the only drawback is how dark it is in the house; between the smoke and what must be dark rain clouds up above it, the lights have been all day

embroidery is nearly impossible but there are other things I've found to keep me occupied

I've been recording ink recipes in my book, replete with the blobs and splotches of ink I was wishing for

writing with a dip pen and home made ink is not quite as easy as some make it look - most of my inks turned out just fine but a few have viscosity issues, the cochineal red being the worst so I'm slowly adding gum arabic to thicken it a bit. The indigo ink is actually pretty good though it doesn't look it here - these blobs and irregularities are "operator error", but I'm getting better with practice.

for my birthday this year a very good friend made me a cloth snippet book, a place to attach all sorts of snippets and bits of cloth and thread

I've begun by taking a few fragments I've saved, off-cuts from larger pieces, tiny but precious, and stitching them in small compositions

most of these are very small, a half-inch in width, an inch and half square - hard to do anything with them, but I liked them too much to throw away

it's pleasurable to sit of an evening, with my snippet jar to hand, rooting through it for bits and pieces of pretty

arranging and re-arranging

 and thank you Karen, for both the idea of a "Snippet Jar" and the advice to never throw anything away!

next is a bit of an embroidery - not too much, I don't want to get too carried away with these, but a few stitches just to enhance things a little

a lovely way to while away the hours while the rain gently falls and the forests slowly cool

busy days

I've just had the loveliest of weeks...

and a rainbow of colour has emerged 

we're moving on to pen and paper in the ink-making workshop so I wanted to finish my inks and get them bottled, ready for the dip pen

designing the labels was almost as much fun as making them... almost

I used hot-pressed watercolour paper with brown Kraft cardstock underneath

iron gall ink for the writing

all the coloured threads except the red one on the end were dyed with the inks themselves

the red is made with the addition of tartaric acid and the coloured thread disintegrated in my hands as I rinsed it

who knew?

below are the blacks 

the iron gall "farm" version on the right was made with oak galls I gathered at my sister-in-law's farm in Oregon several years ago

as I gain proficiency with the dip pen my labels will have more information on them but for now it was tricky enough just to get the names and pertinent information

next is to work on my ink-making journal

so far I've made colour swatches for the title page

I've also added samples of the indigo ink-dyed cloth and thread

I don't want this book to turn into a massive "art" project - rather, I want a journal to record processes, recipes and inspiration in

something full of jots and scribbles and ink splodges

it's easy for me to get caught up in neat and tidy with regimented rows of samples and such but that isn't at all what I want

looking at the picture above it seems I'm not off to a roaring start...

time to get some ink on my fingers and turn the page!

the never-ending quest...

since my younger years I have been fascinated by words... an avid reader, it was a natural progression to love writing as well

dictionary games in grade 5 instilled a love for said books, reading my

 "Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged"

version as if it was a novel - all 1854 pages of it!

from there it was a hop, skip and a jump to making my own books as well as studies in calligraphy,  so it should come as no surprise that I have also harboured a long-burning desire to make my own inks

this summer I finally set out on that journey thanks to a course from Tim McLaughlin at Maiwa  called 

"The Ink-Making Workshop"

So far I've made carbon black ink, water soluble as well as a permanent version, cochineal red and cochineal purple, and now indigo

I still have three more to make and then we're on to a module on penwork, working with dip pens

Friday the urge to mess with the inks was too strong to resist so I got out an eyedropper and some fabric I had done a soy milk mordant on as well as a skein of white embroidery thread, and dribbled away

the colours look grey in these photos no matter how much I try to edit them - they're actually a soft denim blue, a very pleasing colour reminiscent of the colour of jeans back in the 1970s

these two remind of a cloudy sky

as ever, I have no specific plans for these dyed pieces except the long narrow one under the thread - that will be the base for my next bookmark... fitting I think

the ink is deep blue-black, full of pigment, a beautiful, velvety colour

fresh off this success I'm going to try colouring a few small pieces with the cochineal inks next

I've already made a small book to record the ink recipes in along with any and all of the other experiments such as fabric and thread swatches, pen-work practices, sketching, painting... 

and on and on it goes

summer fun

summer of '74... my best friend and I decided we would teach ourselves to paint, her with acrylics, myself with oils...

I spent all of my savings to buy paint, brushes, canvases, linseed oil etc., all the trappings needed to wield a brush and look at the world with new eyes

it's one of my fondest summertime memories, one I've pulled out every so often and thought about, wondering where the impetus came from?

to my recollection neither of us had ever expressed a desire to paint, nor can I remember which one of us threw the idea out, but I do remember that however it struck, we were both all in

when the summer ended we each put our paints away and that was that

over time thoughts of painting again grew; I took a watercolour painting course in the first years of this century and though it was enjoyable and I learned a lot, I didn't stick with it after the classes were finished

I kept the paints though, knowing someday I would pick up a brush again, and over the past four years I have - mostly just playing around, painting what I "need", simple things like holly leaves or rosebuds... now I'm getting a little more serious and am working on developing my sketching skills in addition to painting

I've been making good use of the local library since the early days of the pandemic and taken out a number of painting and sketching books

when I was trying to find interesting subjects to practice on I was stymied - nothing appealed really, and I didn't feel like trying to sketch in the cold so I took to copying some of the sketches in the books I borrowed. Copying is such a great way to learn (many of the Masters developed their skills in this way), and makes it so much easier to just get sketching as opposed to finding and "framing" your subject.

In order to make myself a good learning reference I am adding notes from the books to the page so when I look at these I will remember the lesson, kind of a sketching instruction book tailor made for me!

"water" is something I very much need to work on so these first two pages are water studies, the first is three versions of water and sky

next was waves - well, a wave to be precise

this one was a lot harder and there are tools you can use to give better effect but I was working with what I had

pretty pleased with both of these!

then came rocks

oddly enough, I have discovered I have a thing for large rocks and boulders

there was huge rock pile not far from we lived for most of my childhood - rocks big enough for two or three of us to sit on together, complete with a picnic lunch - I want to try painting it from memory so I am practicing rocks

the thing I love about sketching is how absorbing it is... time stands still, the world falls away and there is nothing in my mind except the soft, swift strokes of the pencil scratching on paper

finally I tried my hand at a landscape; again, a copy, but looks pretty much like anywhere around where I live - mountains, trees and a river is common Canadian view here in BC

so far so good... happy enough with these

still seeing loads of room for improvement, lines I'd change, shading I would do slightly different, but overall, a good beginning

the trick now is get more confident, make bolder lines, and hopefully speed up a little

in the meanwhile, it's good summertime fun

things that happen when you're forgetful and messy...

I have a pink peony growing in my back garden... I love peonies so when the first bloom appeared I had to pick it and bring it inside

sitting on the kitchen table, the scent filling the air, it was a daily delight

as more of the buds bloomed I picked a small jugful and set them on a small table in the backyard whilst I finished my chores... it looked so pretty in the zinc jug against the green of the cedars that I left it thinking I would fetch it in later...

oops!

I forgot all about it and so they sat

fast forward a few days and the peony inside that had slowly been fading finally looked done for... as I pulled it from the glass vase, the petals fell on the table in a shower of pink and white

scooping them up, one that had fallen to the side caught my eye - it was shaped like a heart and looked so pretty... slightly wrinkled, softly coloured, cupping in the centre with the furled edges perfectly so

I gently carried it up to my studio and laid it on the writing table

it's been busy days around here, especially with the heat wave we've been having here in British Columbia and my time in the studio has been pretty much non-existent except for my morning writing, which begins  with the daily ritual of moving papers, books and all manner of creative bits from here to there and back again

the next morning, as I cleared the writing table, I placed the petal on the stack of paper and cloth from last week's blog post, and was struck by how pretty the petal looked on it

possibilities began to flood through a whirring mind and I wished I had kept more of the petals... then, for the first time in five days I thought of the peonies I had cut

racing outside, sure they would be a droopy desiccated mess, I found instead a jug filled with the loveliest dried peonies, their colours beautifully preserved

the water had long since evaporated and in the 39 - 42 degree weather we'd been having, they had dried as they were - I couldn't have achieved such results if I'd tried!

today I began taking one apart - the petals are soft and flexible, not brittle at all, and I can gently rub and smooth them a bit, coaxing their shape, and then experiment with bases to lay them on 

I like the fragments of lace one the best

next I trimmed the lower centre portion of the petal where it attaches to the stem

my plan is to try attaching them to a chosen base and then add French knots for a flower centre, experimenting with various fibres, hoping to achieve something highly textural and somewhat organic in feel

the petals also looked pretty on the paper I made but this might need a more compositional design and I'm just scratching an itch here rather than wanting a full-on piece to be working on for days

still though...

these are the things that happen when you're not just messy and forgetful...

you kind of have to be paying attention as well