Illuminated Floral Stumpwork Panel – 6

This photo has come out a little bit more realistically than previous ones (my camera doesn’t like taking photos of black silk). The thread colours are really jewel-like, and this image gives a hint of that.

This week, I’ve been working on filling in the scroll on the left of the panel by Alison Cole. The outline is couched in gold Elizabethan Twist, using Gutermann thread. The ’points’ work out more successfully if they are done as two separate lengths, as, even with tweezers to pinch the tip, it is hard to get a sharp point simply by turning the gold thread back on itself. It is better to take the thread to the back, and re-emerge a short distance away before continuing. To colour in the scroll with the silk thread, Alison suggests working a couple of rows of stem stitch filling in from each of the sides, then filling in the centre gap last (rather than working from one side to the other), which I found to work very well.

Before stitching the scroll, I worked the stems for the currants and blackberries – both of these have gold kid leather leaves, like the forget-me-nots did.  I really enjoyed making the redcurrants – they are made using a largish red bead, which is then wrapped carefully with one strand of red thread, and just before finishing off the thread, a tuft of black and gold threads together are secured in the top end of the berry. Leaving a tail of red thread enables you to attach the currants to the fabric. The blackberries were also great fun to make. I was very pleased with these! They need a tiny layer of black felt for padding, then little iridescent purple and blue-black beads are sewn all over the black felt, creating the berry. The sepals were a pain, though! They are really tiny needlelace picots, and they are each only about a quarter of an inch long, made after the berries (so there’s hardly any room to manoevre the needle). They look great now they’re finished….but I’m so pleased they’re finished! They are a bit ‘loose’, and not very tidily-woven, but they are lucky to be there at all, and not in the ort heap! This image below shows how ‘raised’ the berries are, and how much they catch the light:

Illuminated Floral Stumpwork Panel – 5

I’ve been getting on with this Illuminated Floral stumpwork panel by Alison Cole, and it’s really starting to look good, now.

The stems of the star flowers (on the far left) have been stitched in chain stitch – the pansy stems (centre) in split back stitch, and also the forget-me-not stems (on the far right). All stems have one side couched with gold thread alongside them, as a highlight. I was a bit bemused by the forget-me-nots (which I have always thought were BLUE flowers), being stitched with PINK thread. Maybe in Australia they’re pink… Anyway, the forget-me-not leaves are partly stem stitch filling, and partly gold kid leather applique pieces. These have to be absolutely tiny – I kept trimming more and more off the leather, but they still looked huge. I still think they’re a bit too big, but they’ll have to do now.

The instructions said to just fix them at the base of each leaf, but when I tried that, the gold leaf on the kid started to lift off, so I had to add another tacking stitch at the tip of the leaf, to hold it all down.

The pansy buds are worked with two layers of felt padding, long and short stitch filling in lilac silk on top, and then the sepals are a blend of green silk and gold thread in the needle together, making tiny chain stitches. As I’ve mentioned before, my camera is having trouble taking photos of black silk, so these are coming out looking a bit ‘washed out’ – really, this is a very vibrant piece of embroidery!

I think I’m in love….

I’ve found a lovely new hobby. Well, not exactly new. I’ve decided I want to do some patchwork, which I haven’t done since I was 15 (shockingly, I realised that’s 35 years ago). Back then, there were no such things as rotary cutters and self-healing mats. So, the quilt I made for my bed during one winter was all hand cut, hand pieced, hand quilted…it took me six months, and by the time it was finished, I was sick of the sight of it, so I gave it away!

But recently, I was drawn in to the ‘modern’ way of quiltmaking, and I’m desperate to have a go, now! I’d been Googling websites to do with the Amish way of life – from there, I came across images of their quilts (which use plain colours, mainly dark blues/purples/browns). Then I found American Civil War quilt designs, using reproduction fabrics in muted shades, and small scale patterns.

AND THEN, I found a couple of websites where people were selling design packs for making mini quilts in these Civil War type designs. That’s when I got hooked. They’re small, you see, and I love all things small.  And as they’re small, they don’t take up much room when they’re finished. This last bit is vital, as my house is already full, so anything else that I make has to be small to be squeezed in 

All these websites that I found, by the way, are in America. I tried to find something suitable in the UK, but quilting and patchwork in the UK has gone off at a tangent – the designs are cutesy, often using hot pastels or 1950′s retro fabrics, and with many designs being for children. Not my kind of thing at all.

So, once I found what I wanted, I had to get things shipped to the UK – not an easy (or cheap) task – some US websites won’t ship outside America, which is very frustrating. But I did find a few really good websites to help me get started, with shipping at a reasonable cost.

This is the pattern pack I have bought – each mini quilt only uses four fabrics

The first website with gorgeous small patterns was From my Heart to Your Hands, run by Lori Smith. I bought a pattern pack for 9 quilt designs, each measuring 16 x 20 inches when finished, for $12 plus very affordable shipping of $4 (other US website owners please take note – international airmail shipping doesn’t HAVE to start at $16!!!).

Lori has also written a book, which has many of her small designs in:

A pack of fat quarters from The Fat Quarter Shop

I ordered some fat quarters from The Fat Quarter Shop. This website is enormous, and I could have bought dozens of their fat quarter packs, which are really well displayed, with mouth-watering colour selections…just yummy!

This is the Pincushion Stars pattern for a tiny quilt 12 x 14 inches from Primitive Gatherings

Then I was tempted to get another pattern from Primitive Gatherings, even though I suspect this one will be a killer to do, as the triangles are tiny (the finished quilt is only 12 x 14 inches).

My wishlist on Amazon has grown hugely in the past few weeks, as I add books on quilting and patchwork as if they are going out of fashion (which they probably are). This one looks really good:

So, expect to see my attempt at quilting and patchwork soon.

Illuminated Floral Stumpwork Panel – 4

As I’m getting more into the stitching of this stumpwork panel, I am able to use more of the colours, which is always good! I’m not one for designs with limited colour palettes, and red is my favourite colour, so I’m a happier bunny now that the design is ‘livening up’ with some detail 

I’ve now stitched the trellis in gold over the sepals and buds of the pinks (using just one strand of Madeira #3). The emerging petals from the buds are tiny detached chain stitches, and the ‘base petals’ of the pinks are worked in long and short stitch filling. The detached petals will be fixed half covering these detached parts, to give a 3D look to the whole flower. 

Next, I moved on to stitching the strawberries in the bottom right hand corner of the panel. These were made as the buds were – using two layers of felt first for padding, then covering with the red silk. Stitching straight on to the black fabric, rather than through the gold painted fabric, was a real relief  - much nicer to stitch on.

I did feel that the ‘seeds’ on the strawberries turned out a bit too minimalist for me – they were worked in one strand of Madeira #3, and I think they sunk into the red stitches a bit too much, so that they  hardly show now. I might go over them again.

I got my wallhanging back…for a while!

In 2010, I wrote on this blog about a large wallhanging with a Zen Buddhist saying on it which I’d stitched for a Unitarian Chapel that I used to attend – the blog post is here . In that post, I explained in detail how it had taken almost a year to make.

The wallhanging measures about three feet by four, and is stitched on linen with Appleton’s crewel wool for the floral areas, and Anchor stranded cotton for the lettering

Even when I wrote the original blog post, I had already stopped being Unitarian, and my dilemma at that time was that the Chapel still had the wallhanging. Recently, though, I heard that the Chapel is probably due to close, as there is now no regular Minister and the congregation has dropped to just one person! And he’s 82 years old. So, I contacted ‘the congregation’ and asked him if it would be possible for me to have the wallhanging back. I really didn’t like the idea of the wallhanging languishing in a damp building for ages, not being seen at all. Surely, I’d be able to find somewhere better for it?

Each letter was outlined in back stitch, padded with stem stitch, then satin stitched across the stem stitch padding

I got it back within days, fortunately. It did seem strange to have it back in my possession, when I’d never thought I would have it (or, possibly, not even see it again). So, then I had the issue of deciding what to do with it. I certainly didn’t want to just roll it up and store it in my loft, as that was as daft as leaving it in a building that no-one uses any more. I tried placing it against the wall of my living room, to see if it would work to hang it there, but it just looked completely out of place – it’s very big (about three feet by four), and was made for a public space – it just looked silly in a living room!

For the flowers, I used stitches such as French knots, coral stitch, buttonhole stitch, stem stitch, seeding, satin stitch and trellis couching

Then I remembered a couple of friends, who are Universal Sufi, the same as me and my husband. They have a large house in Germany, which they run as a khankah (a Sufi house where people come to study, and to dance). They have large ’public rooms’ that I thought might be suitable. So, I emailed them and asked if they’d like it, but also made it clear that if they thought it wouldn’t be suitable, then I wouldn’t be offended – I didn’t want them to have to take it under sufferance! But they said,’Wow!’ when they saw the pictures I emailed them, and so, a few weeks ago, I delivered the wallhanging to them. It now has a new home in a place where it will be really appreciated, and the spiritual phrase on the wallhanging will hopefully inspire lots of people. It might even tempt someone to start embroidery – you never know!

Each letter took about an hour to stitch

Illuminated Floral Stumpwork Panel – 3

After working the leaves in stem stitch filling, I’ve been padding the sepals and buds of the pinks on the gold diamond next on this Illuminated Floral panel by Alison Cole. 

First, two layers of felt (a tiny one, then a larger one) are tacked on, then satin stitch is worked across the sepal or bud, then another layer lengthwise. The next part will be to work very fine gold thread in a trellis pattern diagonally across the padded parts.

From this sideways-on view, you can see how raided these buds and sepals are – the two layers of padding really work well to give interest. Unfortunately, I’ve found that taking photos of black silky fabric is not something that my camera likes to do, so you’ll have to take my word for it that the colours are much brighter than they look!

Illuminated Floral Stumpwork Panel – 2

The first step in stitching this Illuminated Floral design by Alison Cole is to transfer the pattern to the delustered satin. Alison recommends using dressmaker’s carbon, but I prefer to make a tracing of the main design lines onto dressmakers pattern tissue, and then tack through the paper onto the fabric. It’s much more time-consuming, but then there’s no risk of smudges getting onto the fabric from the carbon, and the tacking stitches can be unpicked as I stitch the embroidery if necessary, leaving ’clean’ fabric behind.  The only problem I had with this stage was that the gold diamond wasn’t quite as neatly drawn onto the fabric as the pattern outline given in the instructions, so it was difficult to line the two up. 

Tacking through the tracing paper to transfer the design

The gold diamond is *painted on*, with fabric paint – I had assumed, when I bought the kit, that it would be a separate piece of fabric, and would need to be appliqued on.

This is the fabric after all the tacking had been done. I used a beige/gold polyester cotton for the tacking, which showed up well on the black, but was almost invisible on the gold part – I didn’t really notice this until I tore off the tisse at the end of the tacking. That may cause me problems later, if I can’t quite see where I’m meant to be stitching! I have noticed already that getting the needle to go through the gold paint is a pain - the paint fills all the fabric holes, and makes the fabric really stiff. And I’ve got to do closely-placed satin stitches on this part! Oh dear….

The first stage of the actual embroidery is to couch gold thread around the border, and the edge of the gold diamond. This couching round the diamond helped to even out the wobbly edges of the paint somewhat, so it’s all looking a bit neater now, and I’m pleased with it. The stems of the flowers are chain stitched in Cascade House silk, whipped with gold thread. My whipped stitches aren’t nearly as neat as the ones on the kitfront photo, but I found the gold painted fabric a nuisance to stitch through at all, and to get the stitches neater I would have had to do much smaller chain stitches – and, therefore, many more ‘pushings’ though the fabric with the needle. I tried various other sizes of needle than the ones supplied with the kit, but nothing really helped. I’ve now got a hole in my finger