Crewel Twist

We are definitely into the new century now, March 2001 to be precise, and it was time for another new experience.

Jane-Beth had joined the American Needlepoint Guild and had taken part in a couple of their Workshops by Mail and Cyber Workshops. She pointed this one out to me and suggested that if I too joined ANG I could take part in the Cyber Workshop. When it comes to embroidery, Jane-Beth is my number one enabler and cheerleader.
I had already tried Jacobean Crewel Work and it did not take much persuasion as 'Jacobean Fast Forward' was stitched on Congress Cloth and used a number of threads I'd never even heard of.

'Jacobean Fast Forward' is a Barbara Jackson design using wool, silk and metallic threads. The introduction to the Cyber workshop began "Take a 17th Century design and then fast forward it to the 21st Century for your fibres."

The workshop was held entirely by e-mail and on the internet. Because everything was on line it was easy to go back and forth to earlier parts of the class when I needed a reminder of how to make a stitch or how many strands of whatever fibre to use. There were diagrams and photographs of each part of the design as it was taught. I think it's a great way to learn at your own pace.
I learned a 'wheen' of new stitches and was introduced to a number of new (to me) fibres and how they worked. The whole experience was great fun, even when the stitching didn't go well, and I met, virtually, many new friends. It also inspired me to attend the ANG Seminar in Washington DC that year, where I not only had the chance to meet Barbara, but to sample the wide variety of threads and other materials available in America, and to attend classes with some of the best Needlepoint teachers in the USA.

For sure, from my first visit I fell in love with US embroidery shops.

World Domination By Teddy-Bears

Deadlines! Don't you love them?

"We need these sewn up and stuffed, ready to go, by a week on Wednesday."
'These' were thirty knitted teddy-bears. They needed their seams sewn, stuffed, faces added and scarves fixed in place in two weeks.
It wasn't quite drop everything else to get it done, but it was a close run thing.

Jane-Beth knits the bears for Craft Tea for Charity, I get the 'fun' of sewing them up and finishing them, then they go off to various refugee camps.

At least that's the story I'm being told!

Personally, seeing Mr. G. Bear addressing his 'troops', I think he's planning World Domination By Teddy-Bears.

This is the second cohort he has sent out into the world and no doubt there will be more, then one day, at a given signal, they will all rise up and take over. The best advice I can give you in the event of Teddy-Bear Insurrection is that you keep hunny and smackerils handy to placate them.

Something Different

Shortly before the Millennium, Jane-Beth graduated as a teacher of Traditional Japanese Embroidery (Nuido)  through the Japanese Embroidery Centre in Atlanta. This is, in my opinion, her masterpiece.

It is called Sake Boxes and is based on one of the 17th Century Konbin No Fukusa. Fukusa are highly decorative gift covers which are placed over the gift before it is presented.
It's a large piece , two feet high, and a bit over a foot wide. Everything you see is hand stitched in the traditional style using flat silk threads and gold.
And yes, that fabric behind the embroidery is silk woven with gold.

Photo. by permission of Jane-Beth, Design © Japanese Embroidery Center, Atlanta

When she graduated, and this is how I remember it, I made a comment that if she was going to teach Japanese Embroidery then she should find a numpty (translation; idiot, not clever, know nothing, ham fisted - any or all of the above) to practice on. Again as I recall it, her reply was 'I have your first phase piece ready for you'.
Ooops!

To be honest, I was quite keen to try it. This is the result, my Japanese Embroidery Phase One, "Nejiri-Bana" (Twisting Flower).

Design © Japanese Embroidery Center, Atlanta

In Phase One I learned how to mount the silk fabric on the frame. The fabric is stretched through and around split dowel rods until it is drum tight, then it has to be laced onto the side bars of the frame and the lacing pulled as tight as you can get it, to stretch both the warp and weave. The weave has to be kept at right angles to the side of the frame.

The basic thread for Japanese Embroidery is flat silk. You learn very quickly to treat it with respect. If you don't, it can become quite obstreperous.

Sometimes the silk is worked flat, sometimes you need to use a twisted silk, in which case you have to twist your own. In Phase One I learned how to lay flat silk using a Tekobari (Tr. Stroking Needle), and how to twist multiple strands into a perle-like thread. This involves gripping one end of tightly twisted silk in your teeth (I'm not aware of a better way to hold it taut) while you twist the next part. Don't let it go loose, is the big lesson. If you let it go it springs back into a knotty coil and you have to start again.
I also learned that you have to be patient, disciplined and focused. Let your mind wander and you lose rhythm and your stitches go anywhere but where they should.
In Phase One you learn how to stitch the basic flowers used in Japanese Embroidery. Working clockwise from the top they are; Chrysanthemum, Maple leaves, Cherry Blossom, Plum Blossom and Pine Trees.

While I was working on this Phase Jane-Beth was invited to display and demonstrate Japanese Embroidery under the "Something Different" section of the Lace Guild annual get-together in Scarborough. Guess who got to do the demonstrating?
Well it certainly was "Something Different", a YOUNG MAN in a KILT doing JAPANESE EMBROIDERY. It certainly gathered a crowd.
It was fun, but it was also freezing in the demo area. My hands were so cold I could hardly stitch and at one point I dropped my 'snips' point down onto the silk. They bounced, but only after piercing the fabric.
Disaster!
What do you do when the point of your scissors make an inch long hole in your silk?
Once I stopped panicking and realised that the rip was not getting any longer I came up with a solution. Add a second cord.

It took me a year to complete Nejiri-Bana. It taught me patience, and the importance of being disciplined and accurate in my stitching. I also learned that the best way to start a period of stitching is to sit at the frame and think of nothing for ten minutes. It clears the mind and allows it to focus on your stitching. I apply these lessons to every piece I stitch or design, and I'd be lost without my Tekobari.

Never again

I call this quilt "6 Bears +1".
I know! Three posts back I swore I'd never make another quilt. This is it, or at least one of them.

I started work on this in June 1998 and didn't finish it until June 2000, not that I worked exclusively on it.

"6 Bears +1" was inspired by a series of events. First, we were tidying the family stash and I kept finding fat quarters with 'bear' patterns. They started to shout "use me". Of course, I was so busy tidying that I refused to be distracted. Almost! The bears of course had their own ideas. Somehow they managed to wriggle about until they were in a different pile to the other fabrics. "Use me!" they shouted louder than before.

My first idea was to make a quilt with a series of intersecting bears or bears inside each other like a Russian Doll. (That may still happen.) Then, leafing through a newspaper I saw mention of the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). Flash of inspiration. I thought it would make an interesting 'hidden' motif which could be linked to the bears on the front by the quilting as seen on the back.

Out came the pencils, paper and fabric. And the eraser!

From the start I never had any expectation that this would be anything other than a full sized double bed quilt, so I started with a rectangle slightly smaller than the bed and marked in the stars and connecting lines of the constellation. I wanted the main design to be fully visible when laid on a bed, but I knew it would also need a border. I had already decided on the shape of the bear(s), but not the number, but when I looked at the stars I could see that with a little jiggling they would sit over the noses and eyes of five small bears. (Size being comparative, the small bears are each 20" high.)
The sixth bear seemed to sneak in there as a shadowy outline, linking the other five.

Then I began to allocate fabrics to bears. The blue chequered background is all from the same two pieces of fabric (blame my photography), and each solid bear is created from two fat quarters. The one in outline is all the same fabric. When it came to the border there was no question that it would be "Bear's Claw", and that there should be four claws for each of the bears on the front.

"6 Bears + 1" was entirely hand stitched using English Piecing. The centre of the quilt is worked in 1" squares, the border in larger squares and triangles. The quilting is deliberately open, with a bear set in a circle centred around each star and a metallic thread linking the stars.
I think that was the point, as the last of the quilting went in, that I realised I had made a basic error. The stars on the back would be reversed! As we say in Scotland; "Eedjit!" Some things just can't be fixed. I'll know better next time (maybe).

This was the first piece of work that I ever exhibited seriously and it received an Honourable Mention from the judges. It now resides where it was always intended to, on our bed. Quilts, after all, are for keeping you snug and warm.

On which, I wish you all a happy, snug and warm (or cool and air conditioned) New Year.

Back to School

And back in time.

Do you remember the Chalet School stories by Elinor M Brent-Dyer? I had never heard of them until I met Jane-Beth, who has a large collection. The first book in the series, and there are many, is called "The School at the Chalet". I have not read the book, but I did like the cover. It has a deceptively simple design, with a mellow water-colour feel to it. In fact I liked it so much that I wondered if it would translate into needlepoint.

I worked on this from June 1998 to March 1999 and probably spent as much time creating the chart as stitching. I found the most difficult part to chart was the clothing on the two figures. It took a number of attempts to get the folds and wrinkles in their dresses close to the shading of the original. Selecting threads to maintain the feeling of water-colour was not easy either, particularly on the "white" dress which, after long consideration was really shades of blue.
The canvas is 18 count, the yarn is two strands of Appletons Crewel wool. The picture is worked entirely in tent stitch and measures seven inches by eleven inches.

The Chalet School books have a large following, including embroiderers. Soon after completing this I was fund raising for the National Osteoporosis Society. One of the ways I raised money was to sell charts through the magazine run by Friends of the Chalet School (who also own the copyright to the cover art).

I get Crewel

Any visit to a craft show brings shoppertunities. In October 1998 just such an opportunity arose - a Knitting and Stitching Fair. As any good Vogon Space Marine will tell you, "Resistance is Futile". I went, I saw, I purchased.

One of the exhibitors was Phillipa Turnbull of the English Crewel Work Company. (Now The Crewel Work Company.) She had a large frame with a partly worked length of crewel work on it and was inviting people to try. Who could resist? Well me for about two minutes until the devil at my shoulder (or perhaps it was Jane-Beth) urged me on. So I sat down at the frame. That brought some expressions of surprise from a group of 'ladies of age' who were also inspecting the embroidery. I threaded the needle, they murmured doubtfully. I chose my spot. They made a comment about moving away "so as not to embarrass the young man". Now one thing I don't get easily embarrassed about is stitching in public. There followed a shocked silence as I stitched a flower petal. I'm not saying it was perfect, but it left a few mouths gaping. I don't think I'd worked out that 'men don't do embroidery' (same as women don't become motor engineers!?!)

Anyhow, having tried it, I decided I wanted to try more so I purchased a kit with a good variety of stitches and a simple stitch guide and took it off home clutched to my heaving chest.

I think I was actually patient enough to wait until the following weekend to start! At that time I was not counting hours, but I know it took three months. I finished it in January 1999 and made it into a wall hanging.

I learned a whole bucket full of new stitches. Chain Stitch, Satin Stitch, Fly Stitch, Seeding, French Knots, Couching, then there was Stem Stitch, Short and Long Shading and Padding. (Rod for own back, I did select a kit with pretty much all the standard stitches.)

Did I enjoy it? Yes.
Would I do more Crewel Work? Yes

Knocking on a year or so, I was attending a talk given by Phillipa. I'll not say where. Questions were invited and I asked one. I can't remember the question now but I still remember the reaction.
I had barely finished asking the question when a stentorian voice from the far side of the room boomed out "A MAAN?"
For a moment I felt as thought I was in a performance of "The Importance of Being Earnest". Next thing a woman actually walks round the hall and looks at me to see that I really am a man. I really couldn't help laughing.
Perhaps I should have been angry, perhaps I should have said something, perhaps someone from the group should have sought me out and apologised for the sexist behaviour of their member. None of the above happened.
But maybe that evening was the spur I needed to start entering exhibitions, to prove that a man can be the equal of a woman in the needle arts.

First and Last

Back in the late 80's Jane-Beth completed a large hexagon quilt. I mentioned this in an earlier post.
When she finished there were a large number of hexagons and many small pieces of fabric unused. It will come as no surprise that I decided I'd have a go at making a quilt too. My 'how difficult can it be?' mode kicked in.

If you've never made a quilt, it's really not that difficult, it just needs patience and perseverance. I started work on my quilt in October 1989 and did not finish it until September 1990. To give you an idea of scale, it's a double bed and the hexagons are 1" on each side.

This was all cut and stitched by hand using English Piecing.
First I had to cut the paper templates for the hexagons. The cotton fabric then had to be marked. This required a second template slightly larger than the papers. (You can make you own, but templates are available at any quilting supply shop.) Once it was marked the cotton had to be cut and basted over the paper  templates, folding the seams over the paper to give a good straight edge. Lets not say this is mindlessly boring, but with a little practice you can park your brain and catch up on all those TV programmes you've recorded.

This was always meant to be a purely functional quilt so I put the hexagons together in a random fashion. The only 'order' I applied was to avoid having two hexagons of the same fabric together, except along the top where I put in my initials and the dates. The hexagons were joined by hand, another slow and laborious procedure, but needing little enough concentration and providing more opportunities to catch up on the TV, watch videos or hold a conversation. I joined the hexagons in blocks of 8 by 8, then joined the blocks together into larger (16 by 16) sections and so on until the top was complete.

Then came the fun bit of removing the basting and the papers.

When the top was completed I made a sandwich of the top, the wadding and the backing fabric and basted that together. It needs space, but what a good reason for moving back all that furniture and giving the carpet a good clean.

A quilt is not a quilt without quilting. I needed to quilt it and I did not have a quilting frame. My ingenious (?) solution was to hang it over an old wooden gate-leg clothes horse. It worked, except that I had to do most of the quilting standing up. Word of advice, don't try this!

What did this teach me?
Patience for a start. I think only the thought of the wasted time and fabric stopped me giving up, but I learned to persevere too.
Accuracy. As I put the hexagons together I learned that it was vital to double and triple check that the points of all the hexagons meet the points of their neighbours. Even a single out of place point or uneven edge shouts at you from a distance.
Portability. If you make a quilt top in small sections the part you are working on can be quite easily carried about.
That I would never make another quilt. (Don't laugh.)