Japanese kimono for Catherine

This is probably my most favourite textile book. I bought it in Kyoto and can’t tell what its title is but here it is incase you can get it translated.

Hope this gives you some inspiration for your own kimono design Catherine.

Paint and stitch

A side-step to using warmer colours. Decided to try to show the strong waves of movement with paint and inks, then adding stitch in bronze threads.

Adding bronze thread to the wax surface above and then placing it onto a painted surface below.

Digitising the stitch

Having a play with this scanned section of my stitching.

Sunday sunshine stitching .

After doing some early morning stitching with my little assistant, thought I’d take another look at it against the window. The shadow of the creeping clematis adds tonal qualities to it that have given me food for thought.

Yesterday I waxed a small piece of tissutex and attached some scrim and fragments of map to the reverse in the ironing process. More perforated lines of machine zigzag ‘stitching’, intending to take heed of Meg’s suggestion to use fly stitch instead of straight stitch. This stitch formation still didn’t work but I then tried stitching across the parallel lines of perforations in simple loose stitches. They are a bit pale in this photo below but I hope you can see them. The darker thread I’m using in the vellum piece above is quickly running out – its a dark grey stranded cotton. I took the skein with me to town yesterday to match it up. The shop was closed and when I got home, found I’d lost the skein I’d taken with me! Perhaps this is telling me something? Colour perhaps?

Just got back from the village war memorial – a huge crowd, a wonderful trumpet solo and brilliant sunshine. Left with a feeling of its good to be alive and back to some more stitching and a lovely stint in the garden.

Stitch progress

A walk towards the River Parrett to the bird hide to do some bird watching and drawing.

 

A lovely peaceful place with benches to sit on as you view through the opened wooden ‘windows’.

I think I would have seen more birds in my garden but I did see a few, but enjoyed drawing the long grasses that bordered the pond more. Must take graphite stick with me next time as the thin drawing pen was too – thin.

I’ve started stitching into the perforated vellum – adding a few stitches per day, but enjoying the lack of a rush to finish something for an exhibition deadline.

I added a piece of ‘map’ to the back and machined more lines of perforations. Might rip this off again … or not.

autumn colour

Most people seemed to be taking photographs pointing upwards at the beautiful trees, at Stourhead yesterday, but couldn’t resist taking this one, looking downwards.

Just look at those stitches between the leaves!

Stitch inspirations

This awesome sight can be seen at this time of year on the Somerset Levels at dusk. This year the spectacle is particularly wonderful – just like a mass of moving stitches across the sky.

During autumn, dark clouds begin to form in the sky above fields, woodlands and reed beds. But these are no ordinary clouds. They are one of the UK's most incredible wildlife spectacles.

Throughout the autumn and winter months, hundreds of thousands of starlings turn the sky black around the UK. The birds come together in huge clouds, wheeling, turning and swooping in unison.

This jaw-dropping wildlife spectacle, known as a 'murmuration' is my inspiration for a doodling stitching activity that I have challenged myself to do everyday and post on the Distant Stitch Facebook forum.

First stage was to make the stitching ground – a piece of vellum that was ‘stitched into’ with a threadless machine needle. Next stage – look out for tomorrow on Facebook www.facebook.com and search for ‘Distant Stitch’. This is a closed group, just for Distant Stitch students but anyone can take a look but not join in the conversation.