Delphiniums scrap collage on netting

This week I finally finished my Merill Comeau inspired piece, which has taken about 6 weeks to complete but I really enjoyed every part of it and love the end result. It is called 'Safe in my garden where the delphiniums grow'. The challenge was to take scraps of fabric, collage a background onto netting, then add a flower or plant on top which represents how you are feeling during lockdown. I am not a sentimental person and don't really subscribe to the idea that flowers have 'meaning'. Instead I looked to my garden and was inspired by the delphiniums that I have watched grow from a few inches high at the start of lockdown to full bloom. Their colours are amazing - the blue is almost luminous and their shape distinctive enough to attempt in fabric. I found out that they are called delphinium after the Greek for 'dolphin' as the unopened buds look a bit like a dolphin leaping - see second photo below.

I started on the background. The guidance Merill had given was simple and obvious, but really helpful - use brown tones at the bottom, green in the middle and blue/white/grey for the sky area at the top. She suggested leaving scraps in the shapes they are as they come out of your stash, which I tried to do. This was all pinned down on a piece of net curtain, which I sprayed with starch. I knew that the background had to be taller than wider - it came out 49cm x 36cm.

Laying out the scraps was really fun. I left some areas that just have netting and no other fabric in the sky and used quite a few pieces of organza. I also used the wrong side of some fabrics to tone down their colours. I ended up with this:

I didn't want to start stitching it down until I had laid the flowers and leaves over the top in case they didn't stand out on a fairly busy background. So I then had to work out a layout and cut out all the other pieces. I went for 3 stems of delphinium so I could show the different colours of blue.

To make the flowers I literally drew round a flower and made a card template. I had some hand-dyed blue fabric that had all three blue colours in it (this was a very lucky find in my stash) and cut round the template. I used Inktense pencils to add some additional colour variation and details before gathering it up with needle and thread to give a 3D shape. I cut a trefoil shape out of some cream cotton and sewed that to the centre, along with a scrap of beige scrim. Finally I added a blob of yellow Intense to the middle. I was pleased with how this came out so I repeated the process using different card templates to make all the other flowers. 

To get the unopened flowers right I used a reference line drawing off the internet and made a 2-part template for the partially opened flowers. A major characteristic of the delphinium, also known as Larkspur, is the spur at the back of each flower so I wanted a few flowers that showed this, side-on. I used some silk carrier rods that had been dyed with the main fabric for these. I have never used these before and found them to be the perfect shape but quite unstable - they de-laminated very easily so lots of PVA needed!

Making the leaves was similar - I drew round a real leaf to make a template, cut it out from an old duvet cover and added details with Intense pencils. These were very very fiddly so only 3 were made. I ended up with the following layout:

The non-descript leaves at the bottom were cut out from some curtain fabric and just fill in the gaps. I wanted to add Camellia leaves to the bottom left so again drew round a real leaf but this time cut them out of shot taffeta to mimic their glossiness. I overlayed these with half-leaves of organza to represent how they catch the light and cut a stem from a row of chunky brown corduroy!

Finally I added a couple of stems of a climbing pink summer Jasmine that is in front of the delphiniums in my garden. I made the leaves in the same way as the delphinium ones and hand-painted the pink flowers with Inktense pencils. I made a complete muddy hash of the first one I did but started again, with a much more delicate touch and amazed myself how realistically these came out.

Composition complete, I now needed to stitch it down.To remove the flowers and leaves from the background I covered the front with a piece of card and flipped it over and then covered it again and flipped it back. At this point I couldn't see how I was going to finish the piece without it puckering up too much and being unmanageable. I remembered I had a rectangular embroidery frame for a previous piece and by a huge stroke of luck it was just about the right size for this. I was glad that I hadn't cut off the excess netting so could use drawing pins to keep it taught on the frame.

Stitching down the background was easy and fun - no right or wrong, just lots of random straight stitches. Stitching into it with the netting on the back made it very easy and lightweight to handle.

Then I started stitching down the flowers and leaves. I started with the delphinium stems using my photos above as a positioning guide. The stems were cut from T-shirt fabric, which wants to curl naturally and I liked the 3D shape so I couched down string and floss to provide support underneath. Then ran an ordinary glue stick down the top to keep the stem fabric in place whilst I stab stitched it in place.

I added the delphinium, jasmine and other leaves at the bottom with backstitch. The jasmine stems are 6 stranded floss, couched down with a dark pink spiralling stitch. The camellia stem was attached with stab stitch and the centre of the leaves with backstitch. However, for the veins on the camellia leaves I used long straight stitches, bent into shape with a small retaining stab stitch - a technique taught to us by artist Emily Tull. I liked the effect this made, almost looks like the camellia leaves are quilted.

Finally on to the flowers. I used tiny stab stitches for the jasmine flowers. For the delphiniums I attached the open and side on ones with small stab stitches but backstitched the buds. The buds were quite fragile by now so I first stuck them on with a bit of glue stick to give them support. The last step was to backstitch in the stems joining the flowers to the main stem. I had to be careful to do this neatly on the areas with just net in the background, running the end of the thread back through my stitching on the back to the stem before jumping down to the next flower. Here are some close ups of the final piece:

To display this piece I can thread a wire or stick through the channel at the top and possibly hang it in a window. Both the delphiniums and jasmine have finished flowering in my garden but I can gaze on them all year round when I look at this!

Stitched containers and bleach printing

I have joined the new Stitch Club being organised by TextileArtist.org  https://www.textileartist.org/. The first workshop was led by Debbie Lyddon and the challenge was to make a container for a meaningful object that reflects what is inside. We were encouraged to include a grommet in the container to reveal a glimpse of what was inside.

I made 2 responses to this challenge - a practical container for some gardening snips and a book cover to hold my Mom's school exercise book from her sewing class that I have inherited.

I started by finding some firm fabrics - navy-blue cotton drill and some denim cut off the bottom of a pairs of jeans from my Mom's old fabric stash. I experimented with decorating them by printing with bleach and painting freehand with bleach.

I used ordinary thick household bleach painted on leaves pressed down with a plastic box. I wore gloves and glasses and laid the fabric on an old board covered with a bin liner.

This worked really well and I was amazed by the detail you could get on the leaf structure just using this crude method.

I loved this but it didn't reflect anything about the contents of the sewing book so I decided to try printing with sewing objects out of an old inherited sewing basket.

The ends of cotton reels worked quite well as did thick needles and bodkins. Overall I thought it might not be very impactful so I also printed some objects with acrylic paint. The larger scissors in the picture were a cardboard template I made from drawing round my small Fiskars scissors. I hoped that the thin card would absorb the bleach and then print a good image when held against the fabric. This didn't really work out.

Having had this useful trial run I then printed my final fabric. The exercise book has a round logo on the front so that seemed perfect for the grommet element to reveal. I cut this out first and then printed the fabric. I wanted to use the hem of the jeans as the top of the cover.

The bleach printed scissors on the front didn't turn out quite this well so I touched them up with the paint brush but all the other things worked fairly well.

I particularly liked the buttons with bleach and acrylic.

Yes - the jeans really are this dirty. My Mom could be quite impulsive and must have chopped the bottoms off to make shorts before they made it to the wash basket!

To practice sewing the grommets I started on the smaller container. First I created a pattern - see above. I used jewellery wire to make the small grommet to make a hole to hang the pouch up in the greenhouse. I used 3 rounds of wire - it was thicker than recommended but was fairly easy to sew. I used some old cotton thread found in the inherited sewing basket, which was maybe not thick enough but was all I had. It seemed to sew ok with a big needle.

I then assembled the pouch using the sewing machine to attach the front and back before cutting off the dip on the front to show the snips when in use.

I then strengthened the top edge with a similar technique but this time using kitchen string.

This was more difficult and I had to solve a number of problems like what to do about the seam allowance inside and should the string sit on the front edge or the back?

You can see from the photo that I tied the string together with a bit of thread to ensure it kept its shape. In addition, a tip we were given for these grommets was to always cut the hole in the fabric smaller than the finished size as the hole stretches as you stitch it.

Overall it came out fine and feels quite strong.

Having practised both methods I decided to use thinner garden wire to make the grommet on the book cover as it was important that it made a strong round shape. Sewing this in went ok - you need a lot more thread than you think! We were advised to sew in the grommet before making up the container.

I then had to decide how to finish it off. I didn't want to lose the character of the jeans so I decided to sew the bottom hem on the machine and then finish the right hand side with satin stitch in orange thread to match the top-stitching on the jeans. Finally I added some press studs to close off the side and retain the original fell and lap seam of the jeans.

Getting the hole and the logo to line up was difficult and I had to undo the bottom seam a couple of times to get it right but overall I am pleased with it.

Here is one of the pages from inside the book - when you read this you realise how hard it is to write instructions for what we do instinctively. (She didn't always get an 'A'!)

Folk Art Challenge

This piece of textile art was inspired by a stitch challenge set via TextileArtist.org by Anne Kelly. The challenge was to cut out flowers, stems and a vase from existing fabrics, arrange them in a typical folk art arrangement and then either handstitch the background in Kantha style or machine stitch all over in a type of netting pattern.

I had originally planned to use vintage linen and traditional style fabrics but when I went hunting for fabrics I found the black and white sprigged flower background, a couple of really bright vintage handkerchiefs and old child's sundress with modern flowers. These inspired the colour scheme and modern vibe.

To get the layout right I searched images of traditional fold art and liked the Polish kind. I noticed that many of the designs were in a diamond layout so that inspired me to set the pink handkerchief on the diagonal with the blue and white one inside to provide more of a neutral background.

Then I started carefully cutting out various flowers, stems and other elements to build up the design.

To make the birds I drew a circle on card and then drew the bird inside it. I could then draw round the template and flip it to make a pair of matching birds. I did the same with the wings and tail feathers.

Once I had settled on the design of the central panel I have to fix all the pieces down using Bondaweb. Although this was very fiddly because I effectively had to cut all the pieces out again to cut off the excess glue webbing, I thought it would be the only way to ensure I could do the overstitching on the machine without the pieces shifting around.

I then focused on the background and corner designs and how I might finish the piece off.

I found these triangular sections on some African fabric that I thought would add interest without detracting from the central panel. In the final assembly I added some additional plain fabric behind the triangles in bright colours to make these stand out further from the background.

Finally I found some black crochet edging to frame the central panel. In this photo it is just pinned on to check the effect.

Next came the important decision about how to complete the overstitching. Advice from the stitch community on TextileArtist.org was to make a sample and try out various stitches and colours of thread.

I used scraps of fabrics from the piece to make a sample. This was backed with thick calico as I intended to back my main piece with the same to ensure it did not pucker under so much machine stitching.

First I experimented with various stitches on my machine at the bottom to get the width and length right. I ended up choosing a box stitch in length 2 and width 5.

I tried out white, cream, pale grey, pale blue and pale pink. I decided to use pale pink as a good compromise colour in the central panel and cream on the white corner sections to add bit of warmth.

Once I had assembled the final piece with the calico backing I started the overstitching on the corner sections to get my eye in. My machine started making a loud noise quite soon so I had to dismantle it and clean any lint out. I did this every time I had to wind a new bobbin and didn't have any more problems.

This photo shows the overstitching started on the lower half of the central panel. It was quite hard to sew on the diagonal - you had to look at the previous row of stitching and use the edge of the presser foot as a guide rather than the fabric.

To complete it I added the black crochet lace trim with a narrow pink ribbon threaded through.

Finally I added bead and sequin embellishments in the centre of the flowers, on the butterflies and on the birds, including their legs.

I loved making this piece. I think it was the colour scheme and it just seemed to work from the start.

Paper Picture - Winter Stems

Here is my latest and most complicated collage yet:

It is based on a jug of stems and seed heads cut from my garden, including Witch Hazel, Winter Jasmine, Vibernum, Ivy and seeds heads of Nigella and Japanese Anemone. 

I started this one by creating a pencil drawing to simplify the image. This proved invaluable later when some of the blossoms had faded in the warmth of the house.

Then I painted up sections of lining paper with acrylics in the colours and textures I thought I would need. The paper for the jug was a particular challenge. I painted an off white background and then used a 'comb' cut from old cereal box dipped in black to drag the lines down it. I had kept my scraps from previous collages too so could use some of these. This project really highlighted to me the usefulness of the sections of paper containing the accidental boundaries between the different colours so I was glad that I had lots of these although I wasn't conscious of this when I was doing the painting stage. 

Again I chose a black background, ordinary A4 card, particularly to show off the Witch Hazel flowers. I started with the jug and the stems, arranging them on the background before sticking them down with PVA. Then it was a matter of working my way through the different stems,  starting with the ones at the back and gradually working forwards. 

Some of the leaves are double layered to give an impression of depth, with a lighter colour behind. The same applies to the Nigella seed heads where I cut out the holes and then stuck a dark brown layer behind. 

Another challenge was because I was working in A4 size,  some of the flowers and buds are tiny - fiddly to cut, hold and glue down neatly. It would probably drive most people mad but I could see the result was worth it so I persevered! Decent tweezers were essential. 

Finally I tweaked some of the areas with some Inktense pencils e.g. where the area was too light or not defined enough. I am really pleased with the overall piece.  I was worried that it was too 'painterly' but I think the fairly stylised flowers have just about pulled it back.

Paper Pictures - Camellias

I have a wonderful red camellia in the garden and they are so striking when in full bloom so that inspired my next paper picture.

I was still very much inspired by Clover Robin's version in her book 'Cut Paper Pictures':

I began by painting lining paper with various colours and textures to suit the flowers, stems, leaves and buds. I am just using cheap acrylic paints and tried to mix up colours and leave unpainted parts to give a variety of textures as I have learned that this technique is all about happy accidents. Here are the papers I ended up with.

The final piece is below. I deliberately tried to be more 'graphic' in my approach compared with the snowdrops in my last blog post. I think I achieved this but some parts of the picture are more successful than others. The leaves, for example, are possibly still too 'painterly'. I ended up adding the veins on them with Inktense pencils, rather than cutting out paper, so that may have added to this feeling. This piece is A4 laid on ordinary white card.