Making things and (very) wet weather.

(Note: I began this post last week and didn’t get time to publish it.)

This morning sees us trying to prepare for a trip to Barmouth on the West coast of Wales. The rain is coming down in torrents and, according to the weather forecast, is likely to be doing it all day. So, the bedding, etc. Is like to remain upstairs until tomorrow morning.

More about this trip after we get back in a few days.

Since I feel determined not to have a last-minute rush to get what I want to do for Christmas done, I have made a list, have a space for keeping track of what I have managed to do in relation to the date and made a start on finding presents - or at least begun thinking about them. 

I have always enjoyed Christmas - all aspects of it - since I was quite young. From the Christmas present ‘box of treats’ my mother’s sister used to give me each year for a long time, to the playing of Carols on my Recorder on Christmas morning outside my Mum and Dad’s room (I never did discover what they thought of this but it did include tea in bed); I have some fond memories. Even if my Dad did opt to work over the period (I don’t think he particularly enjoyed Christmas), my Mum and I always got invited somewhere or went to relatives. Only in later years did it degenerate into a mad rush to get what I wanted to do finished, some years seeing me finish decorating my cake on Christmas Eve or even one year, Christmas morning - as my family will testify...(partly due, in my own defence, to how close to Christmas the school I worked in broke up for the holiday - well that’s my excuse, anyway!!).

Since I wrote my last post, I have managed to finish a wall-hanging for the bedroom, made some progress with some cushions for the same room, worked a bit more embroidered post-card, attended a workshop about making fabric books and called a halt to a not very successful, knitted, silk shawl.

The wall hanging is made up of a piece of circular weaving I did earlier in the year (or last - can’t remember) and didn’t know what to do with. I’ve mounted it on half of an embroidery hoop and stitched in some cream pearl, clear and gold seed beads at random. The tendrils hanging down are pieces of yarn that resulted from me undoing some knitting; it’s man-made fibre not handspun. It’s all meant to allude to sea and sand....

The cushions are likewise being made from ‘something else’. I was knitting a caplet and ran out of yarn to finish it. Have searched for a long time, without success, for something the same or similar enough to make it work to my satisfaction I gave up and decided to do something else with the squares. The colour is, once again, sympathetic to the room, like the hanging, so, cushions it would be. I am discovering how hard it is though, to attach a piece of knitting to a backing for a cushion cover, especially when only the front is knitted. I have brought feather pads and am making up a cover using a piece of lining fabric (under the knitting and using a pieces of shawl, doubled, for the back. The shawl is a kind of Muslin and very thin but I have managed to inset one zip and am about to insert another, at the moment. I am hand stitching the whole thing as it seems to need a lot of control that I feel I would lose using a machine.

The star-shaped buttons are made of shell. Originally, I found some round ones at the Redditch Needle Museum but decided to use those elsewhere.

I am also (slowly) working on an embroidered postcard to send to Australia. I have already sent one to New Zealand as part of a swap organised by the local Embroiderer’s Guild. This one, I am using with a piece of fabric to embroider over the design printed on it.

In September, I joined a day workshop in order to make a Nuno scarf. It was a very enjoyable day, lead by the International Felters Guild area co-ordinator. I haven’t done much Nuno felting but learned that I prefer smaller motifs to larger ones because of the effect on the drape of such fine fabric. I was reasonably pleased with the outcome, though.

Lastly, I attended another workshop, recently, about making fabric books. I think I was somewhat flummoxed to begin with because we were expected to use Indian Muslin and I found this very difficult to handle, possibly because I am more used to denser, heavier fabrics. Consequently, I got off to a very slow and confused start and never really caught up, although over lunchtime, I began having ideas as to what I could do with my rather unpromising-looking book. I began trying some of these but ran out of time, so I haven’t got very far with it. However....at least I have a few more ideas, so I suppose that is progress. I don’t think this kind of book is for me, though; I would prefer thicker fabric or felt to use as pages.

My idea, when I get time to return to this project, is to create pockets in the front and back covers and  then smock the some of the rest of the inside covers (where drawn up, above). The edges are supposed to be frayed and the ‘pages’ are stitched in across the width of the spine of the cover. The pages are made up of two pieces of Muslin stitched together twice, so that the decoration on each page is hidden within the layers of Muslin. The pages can be decorated and stitched into in whatever way and with whatever one likes; I haven’t decided yet.

That’s all the making I can publish for now (Christmas is coming and I can’t show pressies!). My next post will be about our short visit to Wales.