Gathering and Gathering small things.

12-30 March. Imagination in Detail: Small Stories.

I have been gathering my small works together so I can figure out which small ones will be best to hang at Lady Sew and Sew next week.

Wow, I didn't realise I had so many.

Well, I knew about each set, but I haven't got them all out together before...en masse, as it were.

Dragons to suit the weather -

Tudors - or part of that family

Maps - though I think I will hold these as 'just in case'

My experiments to teach myself Free Motion embroidery

maybe, but I need to have something for samples for the classes I am teaching.

So, anyway, plenty of decisions to make.

Juniper Tree - 3

Here is the Juniper Tree with the stitching finished and the water soluble washed out.

I decided to let it dry with lumps and bumps...and wow! I am quite impressed with the way that makes it realistic!

After a bit of using the photo for reference, I went with making the colours work. There is A LOT of thread in this!

Tree of Life - 4

And here is the Tree of Life after it is dry.

This looks rather blurry, but it is the line shadow!

The tree came out slightly wider than the background. But as most of the others will reach over the top or bottom, I will allow this to reach over the sides.
And now that I am not 'officially' doing the journal quilts, I don't have to worry about suiting rules. Hey, that's a positive!

Juniper Tree - 2

Working the darker areas first.

The little clump shapes really didn't happen in practice.

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In order to give my self a break or in pain management speak, pace things...
I have opted out of the Journal Quilt project with CQ. I just couldn't get all this done, take the gown to Henley, and so on. So, I will carry on with the trees without the pressure side of it. Journal Quilts as I usually use them; a theme and something to learn over the year.
This will be a big help when things like my dad's 80th birthday and Festival of Quilts and all the new big and wonderful possibilities that are opening up seem to come one right after the other.

And just so you and I know that I really do hope to begin the pacing things bit...I have taken 2 possible deadline things off of the 'This is what I would like to aim for' wardrobe door. I feel positively giddy!

Ha. Till I did all the washing today and washed the sheets and re-made the bed and actually finished the Juniper and so on. Still, lets not knock this. I am pacing the photos! Then I won't feel pressured to sew longer than I can cope with just in order to do blog posts.

So, bear with me on the one bit at a time thing while I finish catching up on myself somewhat.

Or go to Henley over the Bank Holiday and see the Heat and the Flame in person during Henley Art Trail. It is at Lady Sew and Sew.

Tree of Life - 3

Here is the Tree of Life fresh from washing out the soluble fabric. It worked!

A bit of fiddling with some of the flower ends, but the structure has held together. Since there is still some of the solution (from the soluble fabric getting wet) left in the threads with this method, it will help it to retain enough stiffness to work with it when it is dry.

There are a few places where threads need trimming, but I am pretty happy with this.

Juniper Tree - 1

While delaying the washing out part of the Tree of Life. I started on a Juniper Tree.

These were also grown in the Lebanon.

There are Biblical references in the book by the Prophet Isaiah about how Sennacherib, King of Assyria, boasted of cutting the great forests down... the tallest cedars and the choicest junipers. But also that he would have his downfall and the forests would gloat (over him) now that no one came to cut them down. The distant forests would be quiet, birdsong and not battle cry heard, safe for a time from the axes.

Trying several threads to get the silvery bark effect.

Tree of life - 2

More work on the stylised Tree of Life.

This type of work is more concentrated on one line of stitch gone over in different ways, so I think if this one does turn out okay, I might use 2 layers for any future open thread tracing. There is a tendency for the fabric to pull away or the stitching to get pulled or pushed into the bobbin area.

Now finished, I have pinned it to the foam core board.

Usually I wash out the water soluble first and then block. But I am concerned this will just go all floppy and get tangled. I will trim the excess away (should have thought of that earlier!) and then will run water over the board in the sink.

Then it will be a tense moment while I wait to see if the tree can be used in one piece. I tried to attach branches a bit at the ends to keep it from all turning to a dried up Daucus carota or Wild Carrot/Queen Anne's Lace at the end. Well, that could be an option if it does!

Tree of Life - 1

Today was the Offcuts sewing group meeting for April. Being a bear of very little brain today, I thought it would be easier to work on a tree. (for my journal quilt tree series. The fact that I need to have 4 posted by the end of April if I am to 'officially' continue, may or may not have had something to do with it!) But so I didn't stress about making a tree to look like a tree and so on, I decided to do a stylised one.

Inspired by various Tree of Life depictions over the centuries...millenniums even... Actually, I think these depictions are stylised depictions of something like an Espaliered tree. A wood craft where trees are trained against garden walls.

So, I sketched a simple one. Straight up with cross pieces and then a bit sticking up at the end of each cross piece. But then I wasn't sure about how to do the top, and looked in my book which I have mentioned before. (written by a forester about trees mentioned in the Bible, ancient historical lands and/or which grow in the Middle East now.)

A tree in the palace of King Ashernasirpal

Ah, a bit more style needed. So, simple became more complex. But still it was a break for my brain from pattern drafting, which I find I am unable to do when I am chatting to friends about sewing!

And with a few stops and starts about things, this is how far I have got.

As you can see, I abandoned the overly complicated bit at the top!

I chose a variegated thread someone recently was getting rid of. I figured if I am going stylised, I may as well play with colour, too. At first I was worried the thread was too strange...it has pinks and blues in it. But when you look from a distance it works. I also have a green thread in the bobbin, so when I wash out the water soluble, that will add to the colour.

Cedar of Lebanon - 4

The water soluble fabric is washed out.

and now I am blocking it. This has more areas where things weren't joined so well or extra threads on edges. But I expected it because of the way the trunk and boughs were sewn. I will join things together when I stitch them to a backing after I have trimmed random threads.

Cedar of Lebanon - 3

On Saturday at the Offcuts meeting I finished the stitching on the Cedar of Lebanon. Now it needs to have the soluble stabiliser washed out.

I am pretty happy with this!

Cedar of Lebanon - 2

Now I am 'colouring in' the branches.

Some stitches at angles from the horizontal stitching. These will be covered with stitch, but will help hold the other stitches in place.

one main branch done

I am quite happy with how this looks! I will do the whole thing and then see if it needs any touching up.

Cedar of Lebanon - 1

The bad head is gone today! Phew.

Time for a new tree. I haven't decided backgrounds yet. Wait till I have a few and see what they look like.

Starting a Cedar of Lebanon.
The kind we mostly see here in the UK are big and sprawling old trees. But if they grow in a stand of trees, they grow straight and tall.
Which is why they were much sought after in trade with the country of Lebanon in the times of the Ancients. They were used for building houses, palaces, ships and are especially mentioned as being collected by King David of Israel to be used by his son Solomon when he became King to build the Temple in Jerusalem.

We have a book written by a forester about trees mentioned in the Bible and/or which grow in the Middle East. I am enjoying it for the forestry part (I never thought about a forester's viewpoint of ancient manuscripts!) as much as for the images of trees and what they have been used for.

So, here is the quick outline based on the trees in the photo.

It reminds me a bit of the Sequoias and Redwood Trees in the way the branches grow. We have a few Wellingtonia trees around here that look similar.

And here I have done the work on the trunk. Some areas are 'coloured in' outside the line into the branches part.

I will draw the branches over top those sections. It gives some depth. but is mainly functional so that when the water soluble fabric is dissolved, the tree doesn't come apart at the joining of the different sections.

JQ 2015 - Cypress 5 and some fitting

Other things going on lately. Also, I am not sure about the backgrounds for these trees.

Here is the thinking...
-I want to work on this free machining on water soluble, looking at a different tree for each one.
-I don't really want to get bogged down trying to create the 'perfect' background. For instance, the type of terrain in which you would find such a tree.
-I may consider putting them all together at the end.

So, with those thoughts in mind, here are some possibilities.

The same background for each or 2 backgrounds but alternating for each.

And here are 2 fabrics I am looking at.

The tree is just laid on the fabric folded up to approximate size.

I am leaning toward the plaid because not all of the trees will be of colours that would go with the stripe as well as this tree does.

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So, while I have been considering this, I have been altering A Certain Young Man's shirts. He does weight training and so now has to buy shirts in a larger size...which of course are designed for the larger man to have a beer belly or a few spare tyres including the lower back. Whereas A Certain Young Man has a six pack, but a slim lower back. I guess you'd think swimmer's shoulders and torso. So there are wadges of fabric to tuck in, especially in the back.
Of course each shirt was designed different, so they needed different solutions. I think I have managed to do them to suit his high standards. But no photos. He wasn't too keen on the idea of back darts. (sometimes called fisheye or double-ended darts) But I showed him how the fabric would hang from his shoulders and that if you took it all in at the side (about 7cm on each side!), it pulls it all out of shape. So, we went with that on one of them...actually 7cm was far too much to take out, especially on a stripe fabric. So, I had to actually make 2 of those darts on each side at the back. I divided the amount between them.
The reason they had to be fisheye/double-ended darts is that, unlike your swimmer type, he also has built up gluteal muscles. So, he needed a good amount of the width of the shirt below the tucked in area.
So, he is off to some event in London for uni tomorrow and Sunday, and I should get some feedback after that.

JQ 2015 - Cypress 4

Here is the Cypress trimmed...

and here it is with the soluble dissolved. The stray threads need trimming. It is laying on a scrap of old towel which I used to blot the water from it.

The barely noticeable difference is that the trunk is ever-so-slightly wider. (Which is okay in an artistic way. If I were being more of a forestry expert, I would trim the trunk to be narrower.)

So, the laid down threads with the loose zigzags over it worked in a similar way to what you do when you stitch seams on knits with a zigzag stitch...it means that the fabric can still be stretched when it needs to be. In this case, the zigzags have allowed the first layer of threads to relax rather than stay tightly together.

This may seem like tedious over thinking. But it helps me to write it down because then I think about what happened. And so, I can reproduce it again in the future if needed. Or if I do something where I don't want this result, I can think about how I would do it differently.

Looking back at the last photo, the faded patterns from the old towel are interesting in that they give a hint of a landscape. I had been wondering how to approach the actual quilt part; but this gives me ideas!
Another thing I like is that the tree has retained a bit of texture from being rolled and squished in the towel. I didn't block it, just left it to dry that way because I forgot the blocking part when I went off to do something else. Somehow it gives a more lifelike effect. So, I think I will keep it that way rather than pressing it flat.

JQ 2015 - Cypress 3

I finally got back to the Cypress.
I needed to do the trunk. After I attached a bit more of the water soluble fabric so I could hold it in the hoop, I started stitching with 2 threads on top, initially going up and down. There was a rust coloured cotton thread in the bottom.

I was a bit confused when at first the threads looked like they were being couched down. This is a technique which you can intentionally do by playing with the tensions, but this was not intended.

As far as I could tell, the tensions were fine. Ahh but look...

Only one of the threads was going through the first thread guide - which does aid the tension. So, I decided to carry on with a layer of threads and build up the texture of the threads in stages.

After the threads were 'couched down'. I put that free thread back into the thread guide. One thing I was concerned about for this trunk was that it might fall apart when the soluble fabric was dissolved. So on one edge, I tried a subtle amount of zigging back and forth...still free machining on the straight stitch setting.

I thought it worked and didn't upset the look of a properly grown trunk. So I carried on. I was able to go over some of the grey areas of the thread so it didn't look striped. I was using another thread from Thread Studio, but it only has a number, not a name on it.
I 'scribbled' a bit overlapping the place where the trunk met the top part. I didn't want to have the two separate after all the effort of keeping them together.
And here is the completed trunk.

The next step is trimming and dissolving the soluble fabric.

JQ 2015 - Cypress 2

The top of the Cypress is done.

I may have to attach a bit of the water soluble trimmings from the last tree to the bottom of this so I can work the trunk. I thought I would do the whole tree in one, but didn't think about fitting the whole into the hoop.

You can see that there is a bit of buckling from being in the hoop. I haven't tried to press it. I thought of it and then realised...oh. Steam = water. Not a good idea.

The water soluble I am using this time is the one from Art Van Go. I need to look it up on their site, but to be honest, I think it is also the same as from the other 2 vendors. No noticeable difference in the sewing anyway. Now to get the mathematical gentlemen in my house to tell me which is the best price. Without having worked it out, I am drawn to getting it from Empress Mills just because it is sold as yardage on a roll.

I love the texture in this one. I fiddled with my machine a bit and got it to run 3 threads at a time. That way you can give a more realistic colour because you are using three shades. and in this case, one of the threads was variegated, so that helped even more to keep from having the tree look flat. When you look at trees in real life, the are never all one colour. There are highlights and shadows as well as variations in greens depending on new or old leaves.

My previous Pfaff had two horizontal thread holders and on optional vertical holder. This has one horizontal and one vertical. But I put two threads on a thread stand. Here is a photo of the thread stand I took some time back.

I created an extra thread guide by putting the thread through the slot on this disk and slipping it onto the horizontal holder.

I tried it with a thread on the holder and this set up, but there were problems with the thread twisting round the stick bit between the reel and this disk.
I was very pleased that there were only one or two times that a thread shredded.

JQ 2015 - Cypress 1

Starting a new tree. I am going for a pillar shaped Cyprus tree this time.

I am doing little scribbles all over like I do when I doodle a tree in a meeting or something.

December days - 16 and all of the 2014 Journal Quilts

Here is the whole set of 12 Journal Quilts for 2014

Added to these...

This is the original set which made up part of the collective Contemporary Quilt entry "Rule Britannia" for the Celebrating Diversity in Europe exhibition at the British Quilt Museum.

These 6 pieces have already been gifted to my son. As I mentioned previously, their size was 20x20cm which is very close to 8x8in - the size of this year's journal quilts.

So, wherever The Certain Young Man settles, he won't have to worry about the walls! I tried to make work which could be hung individually or in groupings.

Who knows, I might find an opportunity to make 2 more (for which I already have ideas!) and then the set can be complete at 20. But that will have to wait for a long while!

December days - 12 and finished 'Goal!'

I was able to complete the football for the December journal quilt. This is the last one of the year...and...I still have over 1/2 a month left. It does feel good to be finished with time to spare!

I figured the best title would be 'Goal!'

I am really glad how the techniques worked as I hoped. and then to finish the quilting in the green section, I echo quilted which adds a feel of movement and force (as in physics).

If you want to see the other British Sports I depicted for these pieces, you can go to this link.

I am already thinking of what theme or technique to focus on for next year's journal quilts with the Contemporary Quilt group. I have a few ideas, but it will depend on what size they choose.

December days - 11 and more of the December journal

Yesterday I had a migraine most of the day, so only got to work on this from the late afternoon.

However, I was really pleased at how the cut back technique worked for the part of the net which is in the background.

This was before I picked it up and most of the bits came off. Then it really was a jigsaw!

And with the football all fused down.

and eventually with the foreground part of the net.

I fused sheer fabric to a waxy paper that had texture. When I had cut out the spaces, I used a cocktail stick and little by little put bits of Pritt stick glue behind the 'joins' of the lines in the net to stick it in place.

Hopefully today I can get the foreground net stitched in place which will make it just a bit more solid.

And if time, I will layer, quilt and bind it.