Schwarm Workshop for Guild Certificate Course

In May Carol Stacey took a Workshop on Schwalm, a technique I have never tried. While the monthly Certificate. Course workshops are for those enrolled in the course, any Guild member is allowed to attend. They run from 9.30am to 2.30pm on the last Saturday of the month, though time after lunch is often used to help individual students with general certificate course work. I don’t always go. I really like the chance to learn in this engaged group. It's my tribe. I don’t however, want to end up with more unfinished work. I’m not good at living with unfinished work, so I pick workshops for things I think I can finish.

I was curious about Schwalm and Carol is a good teacher - one who really encourages the application of technique rather than replication. While she had a number of precut templates for us to use, she also had sheets of template plastic and encouraged us to make our own shapes.

I took up this option, and attempted to design a flannel flower. We were working on roughly A4 pieces of linen so I made the template in one piece, about 8" high. I was aiming to give myself several areas to work in different stitches, naively thinking each flower petal could be different.

Once I had used the template to trace an outline on the linen, I began the lengthy process of working coral knots all around the outline. I didn't get far in the workshop. I was soon having trouble with both my eyes and my back. The Guild chairs are  not built for sitting at length for close work. I gave up, and left at lunchtime . I managed to score a copy of Christine Bishop's 1999 book on Schwalm - a really useful  primer of stitches in the context of shapes.

It was over a month before I got back to it. It took quite a few hours to complete the coral knot outline. I needed to work in a hoop to keep tension, which largely means stabbing rather than scooping. I used coton-a-broder 25 in ecru.

When I finished I took it out of the hoop to work the inner row of chain stitch.That was much faster, and surprisingly, was OK on my hands.

The hardest part was the removal of threads to create a stitching grid. I began with the easiest bit - the centre of the flower. I now know why Carol's templates were all simple, regular shapes.

I used a green coton-a-broder 16 to work the centre, using the Algerian Eye stitch filling from page 22 of Christine's book. Using colour is not part of the tradition, but the temptation to add the characteristic green centre of the flannel flower was too great for me to resist, especially since I had the perfect colour in my coton-a-broder collection.

I had realised by now that trying to work different stitches in each petal was a bad idea. The spaces were hardly big enough and I could see no way of dealing neatly with the intersections.

Removing threads from the flannel flower was tedious and slow. I needed to remove them from the whole flower in order to ensure consistency. It took patience, magnification, very sharp scissors and lost of clipping. I decided to use the single feather stitch motif on page 28 of the book. It proved a bit tricky but did allow me to keep  a few long lines moving.

It is a long way from perfect, but I'm OK with it. It does give a sense of consistency and texture.

Originally, the centre was the only part I planned for green, but I now got bold, and used the honeycomb stitch from p21 for the remaining leaves. I also added a touch of green to the stems, a single line of chain stitch. 

I'm pretty pleased with the result. here it is straight out of the hoop

Today I ironed it and found linen to back it and a cotton batik to line a bag of roughly the same dimensions as the Glazig bags.  I considered a cushion, or even hanging in a hoop, but thought it might get used as a bag.

I had been thinking of a silk lining, but didn't have any green, which I thought was needed to show through the gaps. Did I need to stitch with green thread? I stand by that decision.

The back linen is a bit darker than the embroidered piece, but I think that's OK. The zip is white. Ecru would have been better, but with different shades of linen, no colour would have been perfect. 

As it is, I'm happy with the result. It is a sampler of a kind, I've learnt a bit about Schwalm, and had a go. 

And there's a decent bag to show for it. My idea of success.

Another bag trio

This week I returned to embroidering a couple of flowers on Ink and Spindle Black Cockatoo linen that I had set aside while working on a couple of major gift projects. The linen was already cut for a bag, and I had begun embroidering a couple of the flowers using bullion knots in perle 5 cotton to add a touch of dimension. I finished the two bullion knot flowers and added one in straight stitch. The back of the bag uses the same fabric but is left without embroidery.

I had another two panels in the flannel flower print, already embroidered and awaiting construction into a tote, as well as another length of fabric set aside with a Nicola Jarvis bird I had embroidered several years ago, so I spent a few hours ironing and cutting out lining, sides and bases to make up the three bags.  

The two sets for embroidered totes made up fairly easily over a couple of days once I put my mind and machine to it.

The grevillea print was trickier. I try to work with the shape and orientation of the fabric and this piece suggested a horizontal orientation, so I worked on a folio-style bag with a zip along the opening. 

As usual, I was working it out as I went along, and intending to attach a shoulder strap across the top, but realised, after I had stitched the zip to the outer layer, that it would need handles in the centre as well, so they had to be added. This also meant it would be better if the shoulder strap could be kept inside the bag until needed, but that could only work with the bag unzipped.  

The shoulder strap was, at this point, in two pieces, waiting to be joined. 

It occurred to me that if the shoulder strap clipped together in the centre, the two pieces could be tucked down their respective sides of the bag, so I made a trip to Spotlight for a clip to join the two ends, rather than stitch them together as I originally intended. 

At the tab end of the zip, the strap can be tucked in the open bag. 

At the other end I made a gusset, so the strap is tucked between the lining and the outer layer. It’s a somewhat strange solution I admit.

In addition, the bag is not entirely symmetrical - an unintended consequence of my work-it-out-as-I-go approach. It is 41cm wide and 30cm high in the centre, but with a 2cm discrepancy at the side edges.

It is, however, sturdy and will hold a fair bit - certainly a towel and beach equipment, artist equipment, or even overnight travel needs. It was fun to experiment. As I learned while doing Barbara Mullan’s Design Online Course, I fall into the design-as-you-go rather than design-it-in-advance group and that's OK.

These three add to my growing pile of tote gift bags - and I have fabric for more. I now have the zipped bag, seven embroidered linen tote bags and three printed tote bags awaiting homes. I have linen for at least another six, probably more. Better, I think, give tote bags a rest for a while.

Flannel Flower Tote in Fennel & Saltbush

 

This is the second colour way I bought of the Ink and Spindle Flannel Flower line. This is a mid-weight linen, a little lighter than the Spice but still sturdy.

I picked perle 5 threads in greens, cream, yellow and blue, trying to capture the colour of the actual flannel flower.  It's illusive. The overall sense, in my memory, is of slightly misty green.

This time I worked two centres on each side, mainly because the flowers on this print were more evenly distributed, and I thought two provided better balance.

I tried different combinations and stitching order on each one. At the moment this is an exercise in experimentation.

In the top left, I began with a yellow centre in each of the printed bluey circles, then worked out using a green thread with a fair amount of blue, adding in cream and another green to fill gaps. In the lower right I used much the same threads, but worked yellow and cream first, then added in green and a little blue. 

The other two used two shades of green more on the yellow end. I don't have a preference, and I suspect that Flannel Flowers probably vary as much as my experiments!

I made this one up using a cream linen, very close to the colour of the petals for the sides, base and lining.

Again, I used the square size, almost 40cm square. It's a good size to work with, and   means I can cut four bags from the piece of fabric I ordered, as long as I use a plain fabric for sides and base.

This is not as bold as the first bag in Spice, but it does have a calming feel and a quiet charm - a bit like a Flannel Flower!

And yes, it looks as if there will be a few more to come, with a bit of variation. I have a charity event in mind, as well as gifts - and maybe the Guild SALA Exhibition. As well as enjoyment in the making.