Catch up on projects since April

 The last time I posted here was after Di Kirshner's workshop in April. I have continued to post weekly to my England2020 blog. I am continuing that blog until we emerge from Covid. I had not imagined that would take more than a year! For the moment I continue but hope that one day I can return to this as my main or only blog. 

This is a summary of my projects since April.

The other reason for posting here now is to inform those of you who have an email subscription to this blog, that Feedburner, the service that sends the emails out automatically after posting, is being discontinued in August 2021, with no replacement. I have downloaded the email addresses of all those who have subscriptions and have created an email group. I intend to manually send an email to the group each time I post, using bcc so email addresses are not shared. If you do not want to continue receiving notification, please let me know, or unsubscribe to emails before the end of July. I will check the list of subscribers again on 31 July and adjust my list accordingly.

The top photo is a panel on the Aesop Frame. At the moment that project is on hold. The second photo is a sample I worked up to show how the 16th Century Icelandic couching style of narrative embroidery could be applied to a modern narrative.

I constructed this bag from some pinwale corduroy left over from a smocked dress I made some 15 years ago. The design is the result of a Certificate Course workshop on layered fabric. 

I also finished the blanket I was working from the pack of Sheepjes tiny sample yarns - a cotton/acrylic mix. It is very cosy and soft.

This is a bag for a friend's birthday - honeyeaters appliqued to an Ink and Spindle linen with Indigenous Spirit Figures on the side for protection.

And this panel, also Ink and Spindle,  has gone into another bag with a little bit of embroidery on the circles.

I did another Fisherton-de-la-Mere 2-day class with Christine Bishop. A few years ago I did this class and made a green version. I keep jewellery  in it and like it a lot. I also made the needle book.

I had bought a couple of bundles of remnants from Ink and Spindle, amongst them were two of bag size. and a a distinctive repetitive pattern. I've been embroidering around the pattern. 

One has made its way into a bag and the other one is still in the making.

I also worked a shawl using 10 ply Noro Ito wool and Nightshift pattern. I enjoyed and liked it so much that I bought enough wool to make 2 more, one for my other daughter and one for myself.

I'm working on the second one now.

Last weekend I attended the first day of a two-day course on Melissa Walker's Madagascan Moon Moth. I'm hoping to have the embroidery done by the second day of the course in a month's time, when we will work on construction. I'm making good progress because we are currently in lockdown triggered by a Covid Delta outbreak.

The other thing I did a few days ago was to make a photographic record of my unfinished projects, and unstarted kits. There are far more of the latter than the former.  I have included the composite photos at the end of this post.

I will do a trial run of another post in August, to test the manual email notification.  I hope to show progress on the Madagascan Moon moth, the next shawl, and another bag. Don't expect progress on the projects below!

Fisherton-de-la-mere

On the last weekend in April, I did a two-day course in Fisherton-de-la-Mere embroidery with Christine Bishop at the Embroiderers' Guild of SA. It was terrific.                                                   I used a piece of Permin linen that I had bought as a remnant at the end of 2014 at The Crewel Gobelin while on a visit to Sydney. It proved to be a great buy.

The main embroidery was done using ecru cotton a broder. I lost count of threads in the centre of the pattern. As I only realised this after completing the basic squares and beginning the bullions, I stuck with the error and adapted the rest of the design.

As always with Christine's classes, this was a well-designed project. The number of stitches, the size of the piece and the challenge fitted the two-day class. The stitches included pulled stitch, wrapped bullions, a pulled edge, buttonhole and needle lace.

The stitches new to me were the wrapped bullions and the picots on the needlelace edge. The wrapped bullions were terrific - a real advance for me over the usual needle wrapped version.

The challenge was the picots on the needlelace. I am comfortable with needlelace per se, but the picots challenged me. I undid quite a few before getting some I was prepared to live with. I achieved them - but crudely. I need to keep working on them.

I used a large, fat pincushion to support the needlelace.

We had the option of making our piece into a mat or a pouch. I chose the pouch and decided to line it with a piece of raw silk left from a past dressmaking project.

I really like the way this turned out. There are errors - which act as a prompt to check and double check my thread counting - but it is harmonious and elegant.








Many thanks to Christine and my fellow students for a really pleasant day, some new skills and a most pleasing little pouch.