Inspiring Leith, The Final Stitch

Early last year we started a self-help craft group, Leith Friendly Crafters, at Leith Library under the auspices of Inspiring Leith. The group was advertised as being for all skill levels and none. The idea was that local people who wanted to learn to knit, crochet, quilt or embroider could come along and someone in the group would teach them the basics.

In June last year my friend Hannah suggested that it would be a good idea if there was something people could try at Leith Festival, and could I design something?
Well, yes.
That was the start of "Inspiring Leith".

This is Hannah, at Leith Festival, hiding from the rain. The framed canvas has the basic design drawn on it, waiting for anyone to show an interest. It poured wet all day, but Leithers are hardy folk. Rain, snow, hail, thunder, they will still go to the Festival.

I started this with no real colour plan or stitch guide, only a book of stitches and a box of different colours and types of thread - wools, perle, variegated and self coloured. The point was to encourage and enthuse, and I felt that giving them the choice people would feel more part of the project.

To further encourage them, I made a note of the given names of everyone who chose a colour, stitch and letter and promised that they would all get a mention when the hanging was completed.

After the festival, our group continued to meet in Leith Library and I continued to invite passers-by to have a shot, choose a colour and stitch a little.

As you can see, it brought out some interesting colour combinations, and surprisingly little white and green, the colours of Hibernian, the local football (soccer) team. Once the letters and the tower were completed I had to decide how it was to be finished.

As it was to be a hanging, and frequently moved, I didn't want it to be too heavy and bulky, so I decided that a skip stitch in a neutral shade was the best option. Luckily, I had in hand a good deal of a fawn Appletons Crewel wool which, on testing, took nothing away from the lettering or the tower.

I finished it with a colourful bias binding.

I was impressed by some of the stitch choices, and though I thought some of them might not be that appropriate to the letter, I went with them, showing them how to do the stitch and giving advice where it was needed. Here are some close-ups of the chosen stitches.

I had promised that everyone who worked on this would have their name recorded, so I wrote them on a large sheet of paper, pinned and tacked it to a piece of calico and stitched through it using back-stitch, then I attached it to the back and put on the binding and hanging loops.

So there you are, Angela, Louisa, Georgia, Gordon, Anna-Maria, Christine, Hannah, Muhammed, James, Eva, Eshal, Alice and Sanya. When you see Inspiring Leith hanging, you can point to it and say "I did some of that," and if anyone doubts you, your name is on the back.

Next week I shall be handing this to Hannah, and I believe that its first outing will be at the Inspiring Leith stall at the old police box at Shrubhill (Leith Walk) on Saturday 27th June (11.00 am to 2.00 pm).

I didn't count how many hours this took as it was a community project, but it was great fun and I met some lovely people. It was, incidentally, a great way to use up part of my 'Stash'.
So why not boogie down to your local library and see if they have any craft groups, and if they don't, start one.
I certainly intend to be back at Leith Library when Lockdown is lifted and Jane-Beth lets me out again.

Daffodils

As "The Doctor" might say, it's a timey-wimey thing.
Somewhere in the Covid Lockdown I have lost a season. There I was, tending my Dad's garden through the winter, watching the first snowdrops and daffodils poking their green stems above the ground, and suddenly we're fewer than three weeks away from the longest day.
So I missed the mass of daffodils, golden or otherwise, that seem to erupt from every part of his garden.

Not that I've been idle during Lockdown, there's a whole big bit of stitching to be completed by 2021, and I'm working on 'Inspiring Leith'. I want to finish it in the next two weeks.

Maybe it was my mother's love of daffodils that inspired me to take "Daffodil Hill" by Lois Kershner at the 2013 ANG Seminar in Philadelphia.

As I'm sure I've stated previously in this blog, I don't do 'realistic' designs, by which I mean I don't design landscapes or figures. Maybe I'm afraid to try, or maybe its because when I get an idea and start to scribble, the outcome tends to be a little towards the abstract. Of course that might be down to my inability to draw a straight line with a ruler.
But I do like to have a go at other designers' landscapes.

"Daffodil Hill" was the first of two 'landscape' classes I took at this Seminar. Apparently, Daffodil Hill is a real place, with field after field of different types of daffodil. I'm sure Mr. Wordsworth would have been highly impressed.
What lessons did I take away from this class? Lois showed us how to show depth of field with shades and stitches and I learned how to make different sizes of French Knots to enhance the three dimensional effect. Honestly, I'm beginning to enjoy French Knots. Perhaps I need to see a therapist!

Daffodil Hill measures 7" by 5" and is on 24 count canvas and took 49 hours to stitch.

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.

Inspiring Leith

Back in June last year I was one of the founders of a small stitching group that met on a Thursday afternoon in Leith Library as part of the Inspiring Leith Project. As part of the project I designed "Inspiring Leith".

This was specifically designed to encourage anyone coming into the library to 'have a go'. It was always going to be colourful, and of course size matters. It's much easier for newcomers to needlepoint to start on a larger grid of canvas.

Anyone stitching in public is likely to get a mixture of reactions. Some people will look away, some will not even notice, but there are always a few who will come and have a look.
The lookers are obviously interested and often apologetic for disturbing you, but none of us is ever going to be annoyed by questions if we think we're going to get another person hooked on needlepoint.
The most common reaction I came across was "I could never do that". The open door. "Of course you can. If you can thread a needle you can do needlepoint", at which point I offer them a chance to try. "It won't break and you can't damage it", was part of my mantra.
I gave them the choice of stitching where I was stitching, or choosing a new colour, a new letter and a new stitch. "Choose a colour, any colour, chose a letter, any letter, chose a stitch from the stitch book."
It brought out some unusual colour combinations, but the whole point was to be colourful and noticeable.

After almost a year, this is where we are.

Each letter is a different stitch and the colours clash, but it has been fun persuading people of all ages to add a few stitches.

The current thinking is that it might be the centre piece of a banner, so I'm thinking that I may take out the small amount of background at the top right and do a skip-stitch, so that much of the canvas is left unstitched. It would reduce the weight, and it would allow the wind to pass through, making it easier to control if it is carried in a parade. I'd have to put a backing on each letter, but that's for later.

Maybe by this time next year it will be finished.

You win some, you lose some.

I created this piece, "Boats: After Hokusai" as an entry for the RHASS (Royal Highland Agricultural Society Show) 2013. The class was "Boats, Blackwork". Being me, I started with absolutely no idea what I was doing, so as usual, I winged it.

I started from a Hokusai print of fishermen and a pleasure boat.

It was much more detailed than I wanted, so the first thing I did was to draw it out in rough, removing the figures and some of the smaller details. Having done that, I marked the shading to highlight the darker and lighter areas before transferring the outlines to graph paper.

The next step was to add in the stitching lines. The small amount of cloud at the top was obviously the darkest area, so I decided that it was the best place to begin. I chose to create a 'stitch' based on an octagon with a square in the centre. With that drawn in I could see that the lighter areas could be created using 'partial' version of the same motif.
The boats were obviously lighter in shade than the rest of the picture so I decided that they should be completed in backstitch.

When I started to put needle and thread to linen, I did at least understand that if I had to ensure that I was not drawing threads across the back as they would show through. That was quite tricky in places and I spent a lot of time weaving through the threads on the back.

It took me 90 hours to design and stitch 'Boats'. It is worked on 28 count linen and the stitched area measures 10" by 6½".

And you lose some. It came last! Was I upset? Well, I admit I was a little peeved. It was the only piece in the class that was 'original'. On the other hand, I have to admit that while practically every other piece was the same design of a galleon under full sail, they were mostly much better stitched than my entry.

And you win some. What I won was a much better understanding of blackwork.