Friday Flowers

A couple of pink flowers I forgot to mention last week, foxgloves and nectaroscordium.  Both beauties with their height and delicate colouring.
Foxgloves seed themselves about quite happily, but I grow a few white ones from saved seed every year to top up the pale colours.  We topped up the nectaroscordium last autumn too and I now have around fifty in my sunniest border.

Wednesday's Workbench

One or two of the blogs I regularly visit post photos of 'what's on their workbench' every Wednesday.  The work always looks so tidy and organized!  Mine, by contrast, is usually in a bit of a muddle, with samples and half-finished projects competing for space.  This is just part of my workspace, but it is the area I use most often.  To the left are small display shelves for recently finished work, to the right storage areas for stuff I might use in my next embroideries. Further down the room, on the opposite wall, under a window and next to the garden door, is a second workbench set aside for heat tools, paints etc.
Now that the rain has returned and my garden is too soggy to work on I may get round to sorting things out, but I seriously doubt I'll ever achieve anything close to tidy and organized!

Floral Friday

My garden goes through phases of colour, at the moment it's mostly the blues and purples of irises and alliums, with spashes of pink from persicaria and dianthus.  Waiting in the wings are the deep, moody reds of rhododendrons, paeonys and poppies.

In other news, I have submitted two pieces for publication in Ink Pantry Publishing's second anthology of work by Open University Creative Writing students.  It will be several weeks before I know if either of them have been accepted!

Stitch Sample



Single Thread Couching

You use just one strand of a six stranded embroidery thread.  Bring your thread up at the beginning of the line you want to work, take it down, and then back up at the end of the section and couch back to where you started.  As you can see I've used four colours, so I worked the sample in four sections.
Simple enough if the line is straight, but to work curves you have to guess how much thread to leave on the top of the fabric when you take your needle down at the end of a section.  Too little and the stitch becomes tight as you run out of 'slack' before you get back along the curve to your starting point.  Too much and your thread becomes too loose as you move back along it.
I learnt this stitch from James Hunting back in April and I've used it a lot since.



Sunny Sunday



Grevillia



Globularia



Soldanella



Sitting in my garden, soaking up the sun and recovering from another week at West Dean.

This time it was a really intense, full week course of Creative Development.  A Textile Workshop with two tutors, one a tapestry weaver and one an experimental embroiderer. The idea was to integrate aspects of the work of both tutors.  I've never tried any sort of weaving before so the learning curve was steep.

We had four days of uninterupted studio time - incredibly concentrated work, but hugely enjoyable.  An opportunity to experiment and debate.  I came away with two 'works in progress' which I'm keen to continue with as they are both looking at ways of adding my hand stitching to an assemblage of warps and wefts. 

Another Sample.



Still on the theme of fields, but going a little more abstract this time.  It's a two layer piece.  Organza loosely embroidered with a single blackwork thread is laid over a charcoal sketch on textured paper.  It's difficult to see from the photo but the threads which lie above the organza make interesting shadows on the paper layer.  I'm pleased with the sample, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to scale it up to a larger piece.

In other news, my end of module assignment for the open university is now completed and ready to send.
There were times when I felt I'd never get this far, but A215 is now done and I've registered for my next module, starting in October.  This time I've chosen EA300, Children's Literature.

Wordless Wednesday