Invest in Your Work

This booklet made me smile.

It was a booklet as you can see printed in 1937,

with all the fashionable embroidery stitches of the time in it.

Stitches that I often teach on a daily bases.

A lovely little booklet and on the back page

an advert which could be relevant for today,

'Invest your work with beauty that lasts'.

Teaching Creative Classes I inspire my students to 

play, explore techniques and really enjoy their creativity.

This shows in the results they get and what they share with others.

Enjoy and celebrate your creativity.

Batiks and Beads

I also loved the stall of Maryke Philips at Chilford.

She has a wonderful range of dyed silks, batiks and

patterns to make unusual wall hangings and bags.

Above, is a picture of her stitch book which

I just loved and she allowed us to turn and devour the pages

with our eyes!

I have a sample stitch book/ file that I made

when I did my City and Guilds. I would like

to make one like this though with all the lovely

threads and fabrics which are around now.

This week I took it along on 'Textile Tuesday',

to show the groups and it reminded me of

what I had learnt and still use.

See Maryke site and see her work

www.batiksnbeads.co.uk

Apple a Day

I have had a really busy week, finishing off pieces and continuing work for exhibitions and teaching. This apple was to practice the stitches before I try them out on ordinary fabric not even weave with easyto follow holes!

Visit http://www.art2inspire.co.uk/ to see more stitch pictures.

My Favourite Stitch

As you can see it is The French Knot!

Visit http://www.art2inspire.co.uk/

to see the detail of the stitches and other stitch pictures under the headings on the right.

Happy viewing.

Seaweed Stitching

This morning Stewart and I went and cleared a section of the woods, near where we live. The trees had come down across the walkway. We loaded up the trailer and spent most of the morning chopping and adding to the wood pile. So this afternoon I needed to sit and sew. I added some more ribbon stitches to 'Seaweed' burnt round the edges of the open weave fabric (when doing this be careful of smoke and have water near by!). I then added a base of made fibre paper.

Chain Braid Stitch Page

At the moment I am participating in a crazywork round robin, so I was revisiting different embroidery stitches. This has inspired me to form a book of stitches. Making the pages interesting to look at in the future. This page was inspired by Beryl Taylors Book, Mixed Media Exploratons.
Beryl Taylors website is http://www.beryltaylor.com/

Chain Braid Stitch Sample

Chain Braid Stitch 2

Now you can see that the thread is twisted around the bottom of the needle and it has already in the chain loop.

Chain Braid Stitch 1

It is always good to learn new things and come out of your comfort zone!
So today I leant a new stitch.Ooh you might say but I enjoyed the researching and threads!
I belong to http://www.stitchinfingers.ning.com/ which is a wonderful site for sharing and being inspired.

On this site there are different groups one being "Take a Stitch on Tuesday", I know it's Friday but I've had a busy week.
Sharon Bloggon organises the stitch and kindly demonstrates it on her website
http://www.pintangle.com/

This weeks stitch is 'Chain Braid Stitch' not as easy as it looks and you can end up with knots!

I found that making the loop before I got the needle involved! far easier. The thread as you can see is twisted in a loop behind. Important otherwise you just get a knot after knot!(I speak from experience).

Beading

I decided to do some more beading on the scrim and velvet I started before Christmas.Jenn had caused way to much fun this morning with her new friend! I thought I had better bring some creative normality around here!
Visit Jenn's blog for more revelations! http://www.jenniferroseclark.blogspot.com/

Visit my website for the new additions. http://www.art2inspire.co.uk/

I managed to put a counter on my site today with some help!