a mingled yarn
The Celtic Swirl is coming along – slowly and wonkily. I’m not sure that it will ever be possible to pull it into square, but as I’ve practically never managed to frame/mount/hang anything I’ve made, I don’t suppose this will matter.
If I carry on at this rate, I’ll probably have it done before Christmas. Tart that I am, I’m probably going back to the linen scrim for the next piece – well I am a woman and I am allowed to change my mind.
Happy stitching…
It was half term for my daughters last week and inevitably my normal routine – in as much as you can call what I generally do a routine – went up the proverbial Swanee River.
There was some stitching of the Celtic Swirl, but as of this morning this is what it looks like…
All the ribbons are done – I’m working on the backgrounds. I’m not a fan of huge areas of plain colours, so I’m experimenting with swirls and shading.
I’ve also given in to temptation and included some sparkly gold thread – although it doesn’t photograph well.
I’ve been stitching this morning in the office/dining room/studio/junk room, because I missed huge chunks of the play on Radio 4 extra on Saturday and was determined to hear it properly on iPlayer. The only way I can do that is on the Mac – I really must see if there’s any way to get a comfy chair in here – it just doesn’t feel right, sewing in the office chair.
In typical English fashion, the moment the children go back to school, the sun comes out, but we had a good week, even managing a trip to London, so can’t complain. Now we have the run up to Christmas to contend with – oh joy.
Happy stitching.
It’s impossible to photograph anything here in natural daylight, as someone/thing has turned off the sun – we haven’t seen anything remotely bright in the sky for days now – and I’m getting moderately fed-up with it, arrrgh!
Okay, rant over – ish.
So anyway, (deep breath), moving on, just to say that there is some progress on the Celtic Swirl tapestry.
Having gone back to the hessian (burlap), for this one, I’m finding that although the stitches cover more quickly than in the last scrim piece, I’m having to stop and start a lot, moving the canvas around in my frame.
I know it’s not the way it’s normally done, but I just don’t like the idea of having the design rolled away so I can’t see it as you would on a traditional frame – I need to be able to see the whole design as I’m working, so I use a large square clip-on plastic frame – great, but it slows me down a little.
(I have considered making a much bigger frame, especially now that I have the floor stand, but I’m not convinced it would suit the ways I like to work, and would probably end up with a saggy middle – never a good thing!).
I treated myself to a handful of balls of knitting cotton last week – mostly Rowan Cotton Glace. I needed to find something that stitches up with a sheen, but without having to buy hundreds of embroidery skeins. The best thing I ever found was Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, but my local retailer has stopped stocking it. I might have to trawl Webland to find some more.
But I’m happy with the Rowan cotton – it stitches well and has a reasonable sheen, it also comes in the shades I wanted – something that’s not always easy to find. I never realised before I got heavily into needlepoint art, how much painters take for granted the ability to be able to go out and choose the colours they want off the shelf and then go home and mix up precisely what they want – we have to hope that we can find the shades we want, in a yarn that suits and at a price we can afford.
Yep, I think the day when I bite the bullet and try dyeing, might not be all that far away…
Anyway, the Celtic Swirl is definitely in progress – just don’t hold your breath.
Happy stitching.
So here it is…
The piece inspired by stained glass – although as I’ve been stitching, I’ve had a decidedly underwater feeling.
I’m not sure that it’s quite so dark in real life, but the pictures taken with flash make it look very odd indeed – almost yellow, which it certainly isn’t. I don’t know, perhaps Father Christmas will put a nice shiny digital camera in my stocking this year?
I’m reasonably pleased with the way it’s turned out. The combination of silks and wools has given it the shimmer I wanted, to convey the way that light works through stained glass.
I could sit for hours in a church where the sunlight is casting rainbows across the stonework. True magic.
Today we start the packing for our trip to the far north of Scotland. Weather permitting, we’ll be away for a few weeks. I’m not taking canvas with me – I did last year and never got it out of the bag. Camping, wind, rain and cold I discovered, don’t lend themselves to happy stitching.
I am however, going to take my sketchbook. This will be a wonderful opportunity to get back to basics and start laying down some new ideas to work up in the autumn.
Happy summer everyone.
I started by stitching in the ‘lead lines’, so that I’d have some structure to work into. I’ve learned from previous pieces, that trying too hard to put a lot of heavy lines doesn’t work well, so I’ve been a little more restrained this time and varied the colour too.
Then I began to fill in the shapes created by the lead lines. This feels a bit like stitching by numbers and is actually very relaxing.
But one of the things I love about old stained glass, is the imperfections in the glass itself, which create wonderful colour textures. I’ve tried to produce this effect in some of the sections.
Of course the other thing which appeals to me about stained glass, is the way that light plays through the glass, making some pieces glow, while others remain dull.
So it seems like the perfect excuse to add perles and silks into the tapestry. They catch the light so differently to wool, adding a tingle of translucency.
I’d say I was about half way now with this piece. With any luck I’ll finish it before we hit the road with our little tents and go on our Scottish Odyssey, timed – rather deliberately – to coincide with the Olympics.
Happy creating!
Ever had one of those weeks?
I can’t really complain – but I will anyway.
The thing is, the tree is coming along very slowly, but I can’t say I’m all that happy with it. In my mind, it was going to have more contrast, more texture, more je ne sais quoi.
And it doesn’t.
And although I want to sit and slap some ideas around, I haven’t managed to do that yet – partly I suspect because I’m trying to solve the tree problem and I don’t want to leave it without feeling happier about it.
So, I’m feeling a bit grumpy and a bit out of sorts. And the best thing when I’m in this frame of mind is to get off and moan in private.
I’ll come back when I’ve got my happy face back (as my mother thankfully never said).
Have a good weekend.
A smattering of creative revelations.
How do you respond to the urge to create something? Some art forms lend themselves to a potentially rapid response – drawing & painting mean that you can quickly get into your work, see your ideas in action. Other art forms take longer – music, stone-carving, writing, all these require a long creative process. I see needlepoint in this category – slow art.
But as a slow artist, my creative urges aren’t generally slow. I get impatient with the work I’m making – not generally while I’m doing it, but I often feel impatient to see it in its finished state.
I get seized with ideas for compositions, colours, inspirations – things that I’d like to create in needlepoint, but I know that it will be a long time before I can bring any of these to light in stitch and canvas.
But this week, I had a few little personal revelations.
The first was something that occurred to me while I was working on the piece I’m calling ‘shell’.
Whenever I start a piece, when there are just a few little stitches on a big piece of bare canvas, it can be difficult to ‘get into’ the flow. I feel irritable, it doesn’t draw me in to work at it. But I keep going. Then, at some point, usually about a week or so into the stitching, I suddenly ‘see’ where I’m going. The piece starts to have its own life and then, from that point, I find that I have an urgency to carry on.
I reached this point on ‘shell’ this week.
The second thing that occurred to me this week, was that stepping out of my comfort zone, isn’t a bad thing to do.
The tree piece that I started, hadn’t reached the critical point of seeing where I was going with it – I was struggling.
I’d had a break, but then it kept popping up in my mind. I think my subconscious mind has probably been spending time working on it for me. Anyway, I picked it up again, and now I am beginning to ‘see’ it. It won’t take tent stitch, so I’m having to explore alternative ideas. I need to lay down a structure, which I’m doing now, so that I can then come back over those areas, adding colour and texture.
In my mind now, I can see how this can be created – that’s a very big step forward for me. The piece feels so different in hand, to my usual needlepoint, but at last, I’m beginning to understand it better.
And the third thing that struck me this week, was that just because my chosen medium is a slow one, doesn’t mean that I am restricted to working in that medium. At last (please don’t laugh at the poor old girl’s naivety), I realised that when those pesky creative urges hit, there’s nothing to stop me getting the pencils or the paints out, and getting them down.
That might not seem very radical to you, but to me this was important. I do think that I’m gradually starting to understand how ideas form, how odd snippets of inspiration coalesce, and how you don’t have to be a perfect artist to use those flashes as they come.
The best thing I’ve found, is that when I do get the pens out and just get on with it, I experience a great sense of relief, and then I can pick up the stitching again, with a clearer mind.
Oh, and the very last revelation – I love Prague. (I went there last week – there’s a post on my non-stitchy website, Mostly Motley, if you’re interested. Just the most incredibly beautiful city you could imagine).
We’ve had an emotional few days here. I won’t trouble you with all the details, they wouldn’t really register as a tiny drop in the ocean of many people’s woes, but suffice to say, we’ve had tears aplenty. It’s at times like this, that I find myself sewing, purely for the benefit of the process itself. For me, this really is needlepoint therapy. Somehow, when I pick up my needle and start to fill in the holes in the canvass, a gradual calm comes over me, that can be difficult to find in other ways.
I’ve come to realise that for me this is a kind of meditation. At some point in the process, my mind comes in from the cold and begins to focus. This I find enormously relaxing. The downside is that when I’m in this state of, shall we call it ‘process flow’, I don’t always stick to the design ideas I started out with. This doesn’t bother me at the time that I’m doing it, but sometimes the outcomes aren’t exactly what I’d been expecting.
At the moment, the only really satisfying piece that I’m working on, is the one on the upholstery canvas. I find that the texture – somehow both soft and firm at the same time – is comforting to hold as I work on it, but of course as I knew it would, it bends like crazy. The design is rectangles and lines – a greatly inspired choice I hear you say, for a wonky canvas, but I don’t mind that. The thing is, it’s not really achieving the ‘look’ I’d had in my mind when I started, and I think that’s mainly because I’ve spent more time working on it while I’ve been upset, than perhaps is good for the design.
So, I think I shall make the most of it, by designating this piece my therapy canvas. It won’t matter to me whether or not anybody else likes it, what matters is that by doing it, I’ve been keeping my self together. It’s my self-healing work.
Dreaming In Stitches 