Wisteria Wednesday

Eight weeks into Lockdown. I miss some of my usual activities, but we are all finding ways to live with the restrictions.
I'm missing my visits to my Dad, and I'm missing getting out into his garden and getting some good healthy exercise. When they lift the Lockdown I may have to hire a flock of sheep to eat their way across the lawns. We speak on the 'phone, but it's not a substitute for physical presence and I'm looking forward to being allowed to travel again.

How am I surviving without going stir-crazy? Well I've always been crazy, so I'm a natural for surviving this period of confinement, but I do get taken out for a walk round the industrial estate across the road. It's quiet, with plenty of space for 'social distancing' should we happen to meet anyone else.
Jane-Beth christened it "Wisteria Wednesday" because one of the things we like to do is walk past the side of the Ferrier Pumps Ltd building. They have a beautiful garden along the front and side of the building and on a Wednesday we like to take a walk along the road to see how the Wisteria is coming along. Thus, Wisteria Wednesday.
We are really impressed that Ferrier have created this little haven of beauty. Why not drop into the 'News' section of their website, https://www.ferrierpumps.co.uk/news and scroll down to the entry about the garden. Kudos to Ferrier for their garden and their community sponsorship.

My photograph, their Wisteria

And where does embroidery get a look in? I don't know yet, but maybe I'll break one of my own rules and design something based on their garden.

I have of course been doing lots of stitching. Every Monday morning and Thursday evening our craft group gets together for an hour or so by Zoom (thanks to Bethany Christian Trust and Inspiring Leith) and I work on my Inspiring Leith piece.

I have reached the background! I have decided that to keep the weight down so that it can be a hanging or a banner, the background will be a diagonal skip stitch in two directions. The finished embroidery will measure 15½ by 17½ inches.
At this rate I shall have it finished by the time the Lockdown restrictions are lifted to a stage where Jane-Beth feels it is safe for me to go out alone.
So, Christmas then.

How many sleeps 'till Christmas?

In this case, -2334.

I stitched "Santa" and "Mrs Santa" in 2013 for the American Needlepoint Guild Auction of that year. All funds from the auction go to the Education Fund. This funds projects to make the public more aware of Needlepoint, to encourage them to try it, and to raise its profile as an art.

These were painted canvases, without a stitch guide, so although I had to pretty much follow the general colours indicated, I was able to choose my own stitches.

I have to admit now that I enjoyed stitching these little fellows so much that I forgot to record just about everything about them. I do recall that I mostly used DMC Medici, and the background is Soie d'Alger. I made their bags from some Christmas material I had on hand, and filled them with small sewing items. Each had a pair of scissors, some threads, not all of them visible in my pictures, and a roll of 'something to stitch on'.

Sometimes it's fun not to think about time and just let your needle run with your imagination.

Auspicious Quilts

We now slip back in time to the last months of 2012.

Late in the year, my brother announced that one of his daughters was expecting a baby. Well, that family thing kicked in and I said I would make a cot quilt for the latest addition to the burgeoning mob that is his family. About a week later, one of my team asked to see me privately and advised me that she was going to have a baby. Office tradition required some recognition of the event.
Two cot quilts then.

Not that there was any hurry, the big event was still some months away and you can't give something like a cot quilt until the mother is, as they used to say, 'safely delivered of a child'.

Not that I designed two different quilts. There is a limit!
I decided to go with an oriental design using the stylized bat stencils I cut for "Batique Out of Hell".
In Japanese and Chinese mythology, bats and the numbers 3 and 5 are considered auspicious, with 3x5 being especially lucky. The design shows three columns of five bats.

Auspicious I

Auspicious II

 Both central panels were created using English Piecing, basting each piece to a paper template, then stitching them together by hand. The papers were then removed and the bats appliqued to the top of the quilt. The wadding and backing were basted to the front and then quilted together.
Heavy, close quilting can make a quilt quite stiff and hard. As these were cot quilts, I did only a minimum of quilting. I quilted the outline of each bat 'in the ditch' and expanded the lines to create an inner border, probably best seen in Auspicious II so that there was a wide band of softer, unquilted fabric round the edges, before binding it with soft satin bias binding.

The quilts were presented only after the births, with a wish that the child have a Long life, Good luck and Happiness.

Auspicious I and II were worked together and took 140 hours.
And I still have the templates.