More webs and wheels

I've been working on my webs and wheels hoopla on and off for a couple of weeks, and I'm really happy with how it's turning out. I've experimented with quite a few variations, including size, spoke numbers,, thread type, and especially satisfyingly, working both webs and wheels with two strands simultaneously. The two colour wheels are lovely, and the webs look like flowers - I want to work one in reds to look like a rose.

I'm now stitching simple meandering lines of chain stitch over, under and around the wheels, to ground them a bit, and hopefully add to the organic feeling that I'm getting from the embroidery.

Guild are planning to pick a different stitch every month, and I think I'll work my pieces up as hooplas, so that I can display them in my house, and still have samplers to refer to for future work.

Webs and wheels

I started this little piece in our members session about web and wheel stitches yesterday, and I'm pleased with how it's going so far. I plan to shade it through brown into green, filling the hoop with big chunky wheels, scattering delicate ones in between them, and then snaking chain and wheatear stitches through the gaps.

Soldered Stained Glass 'Window' and Presents

I'm having a bit of a catch up on things I've made but not blogged about.

I spent a lovely day at New Year while cat sitting for friends working on some embroideries using techniques I picked up in a workshop with Margaret Beal.

I used the same technique to do both the presents (for a Birmingham Embroiderers' Guild Christmas pennant) and the window piece, except that the window has stitched outlines.

The pieces are worked on a base of acrylic felt, with layers of polyester organza on top. The soldering iron is used to make marks into the layers, both freehand and along a metal ruler. With care, the top layer can also be removed, revealing the colours below, and allowing for further mark making.

The window had an outline square and free-machined lines inside, forming spaces to work within, rather like zentangling.

It was a lovely process, very easy to get 'flow'. The only thing to be aware of is the risk of burning from the soldering iron.

Mushroom, mushroom!

At the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch show at the NEC in March 2012 I was fortunate to be able to go on a silk shading hand embroidery workshop with Katie Pirson, where we started this mushroom. I've now finished it, and taken photos of my process in finishing it as a hoopla too, for future reference.


It was really nice to be able to work on something with silk shading/long and short stitch, as it is a very useful stitch to have in my repertoire. Katie is a brilliant teacher; I agree with her that it should probably be called 'Long and even longer stitch'!


My finished mushrooms:





And here they are on my hoopla wall:





I finish my hoops with a layer of wadding behind the embroidery, which gives a really lovely raised appearance:





I also wrote up a tutorial for finishing hoopla hoops with a layer of wadding and a felt backing, like these, so that next time I don't have to try to remember what I did. it's in this Flickr slideshow, with directions in the captions:

Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch

I'm working on the second embroidery in my elements series, Earth, which is lots of strong lines on a handmade green and brown felt background.

I've been enjoying looking up stitches in my lovely new-to-me 1946 edition of Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches which I bought for £5 in Stratford over Easter. Discovering new stitches is very satisfying.

This evening, I picked out Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch, which takes a bit of thinking, but is very attractive when worked in cotton Perle. It is the green line in the photo, with some square chain stitch above and knotted chain stitch below.

Silk Shaded Mushroom with Katie Pirson

Still having a marvellous time here at the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch show. This afternoon I was lucky enough to be able to take part in a silk shading workshop with Katie Pirson, who I happen to know from my teenage years as a lighting techie, but hadn't seen since.

The workshop was excellent, and Katie is a brilliant teacher, very understanding and gives marvellous explanations.

We had a kit containing lovely linen with a mushroom design drawn on it, Madeira thread and very clear instructions. Katie took us through building up the layers in soft shading, with the very important point that your stitches need to be longer than you think, to allow for later rows of stitches to be fully incorporated.

I'm really looking forward to finishing my mushroom -thanks Katie!

(the picture of the finished mushroom is Katie's one -I'm not that good/speedy)

Hoopla kit packed

My hoopla swap stuff is all packed up, ready to sew during lunch times at work this week.