I have made this sketchbook from a tea packet and some random sheets of paper. Sketched this gum blossom from a small sprig I have on my ‘nature table’ . The paper it is on is kitchen lunch wrap, not sure where the brownish horizontal lines came from. A bit of watercolour paints over the top. I am going to try and continue on in this random wee sketchbook with more from my collection.
All year I have been following along with Anne from @hannemadebyanne as she gave inspiration for a weekly tag. These have been many and varied, some are based around a stitch, others by a colour and still more by a technique. Some I find I can do very quickly as they are quite basic while others take more thought to get just the right fabric, thread ,embellishments together.
So here are a few of my latest tags.
Map of the place of my magical childhood . Tall pines , red toadstools, gloworms, hedgehogs . Living next to the wild forrest land that bordered the Botanical Gardens in Wellington New Zealand.
Stitched on a beautiful soft linen handkerchief. The map I have drawn of the important places to a young girl are shown. The depth and breadth of my world at the time. From the Forrest , my home, school , church, fish and chip shop, the iconic red cable car and the wharves which we walked around as a family on Sunday afternoons as my Dad loved boats.
I love the way my little world at the time looks like a pocket , a bag, life held safe in the upturned vessel, a concave container. The quote from Shakespeares St Crispan Day speech in his play Henry V, from the King to his men
“from this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”.....
we five , we happy five...
I used some black embroidery thread as well as some hand dyed cotton Wildflowers by Caron in Sticks and Stones Dyelot. I had been saving this beautiful variegated thread , but for why? So using my good ‘stuff’.
In doing a seven day challenge where the 4 th day was repurpose I wanted to think outside the square as most of the pieces I work on lately have been repurposed. So I found this calico half stuffed blob in amongst my fabric. I often see it and it makes me smile as one of my daughters was starting a doll and go5 no further. Every time I see it I smile but don’t have the heart to throw it out. So here it is repurposed for this challenge. I simply stitched fabric onto the body, made a cat face mask that can be removed and added the seven buttons for the seven chakras. She will sit at my work table and be what ever I want her to be. Inspirer , encourager, task master, silent listener, humour adder , pin pillow.....
This is a piece of vintage French, linen bedsheet. I am stitching in blue imagining the line of the weave. The slow repetition, the mind is focused on the needle and thread. The blue changes as the length is finished and a new shade needed. Mindful, slow stitch, reusing as I turn something considered quite ordinary and domestic into something different. As a fragment of its former usefulness , altered.
I am finished
I am not finished
Transformed as a grub to a night moth against a starry sky
Sampling for stitch. Using unbleached very soft calico as a base I stitched in stranded embroidery thread.
Running stitch, overcasting to make a pleat and then more pleats with running stitch going both ways to form a checkered texture.
