Silk or cotton?

When I designed my first embroidery with the intention of mounting it in jewellery I used cotton thread. It was based on a photo I had taken after an Autumn walk at Caldicot Castle:

I used cotton thread as that was all I knew.

I was pleased with the result and went on to work on smaller and smaller designs using cotton thread. However, a rather amazing embroidery artist, Helen M Stevens, suggested I try silk thread to obtain a more detailed result for such small work. I was unsure at first, I had a lovely big box of cotton threads and it would cost a pretty penny to replace them all in silks. After searching the internet I discovered Pipers silks they sent me some samples of different types of silk thread and I bought a starter pack of floss silk thread.
Floss silk is tricky at first, discovering 'Thread heaven' helped but I still struggle in winter when my hands are dry. Keep the length of your thread reasonable short, I use a size 11 sharp needle as I find the thread holds in the eye better but use whatever you find easiest and be prepared for a piece to take twice as long as with cotton. But when you sit back and look as the finished result you can see the difference:

Oof, shiny!

Gwendoline Annie Copping

I have never been satisfied with my photos. I can photograph flowers reasonably well but my pendants have always been a mystery, that is until I was going through some of my Grandma's unfinished watercolours and had the idea to use them as a backdrop for my work.
Born  1911 Gwendoline Annie Copping my Grandma was always fascinated by art, especially watercolours.

Her work was mostly floral, her favourites were white roses (I made sure I had white roses in my wedding bouquet to remember her), she was fascinated by ikebana, most of her work showed displays of various flowers.

Sometimes she would just focus on one bloom:

I love the pencil sketches in this piece, it would have been beautiful if she had finished it:

Other pieces were obviously just for practise:

She became Gwendoline Annie Collins when she married my Grandfather but sadly he died in 1954 of heart failure when my Dad was just young. She found solace in her art and would apparently disappear out all day painting. She married again later in life and became Gwendoline Pope which is why her remaining pieces are all signed GA Pope.

Whilst most of her work was quite traditional she also appreciated more modern art. We have a couple of her more experimental pieces, I love this one entitled 'Thursday's Child':

I like to think that my Grandma would be proud of my work, she was definitely chuffed when I won a flower painting competition in my early teens and had my painting of bindweed published in a calender.  

Long time no blog.

Hello! So sorry I haven't written for awhile, to be honest I have been struggling to balance social media and actually getting to the nitty gritty of making stock. I am a full time Mother first and foremost,  I sew while my daughter is in morning nursery and I sew when my girls have gone to bed which gives me about 2 hours a day (in terms of my work that is probably a couple of petals!).

But enough of that, as many of you know I have been working on new style pendants, I have really been thinking about the message I want my work to send, I want my pieces to feel a part of nature. This means sourcing, as far as possible, from responsible companies and using natural materials.

Setting my spider in a piece of salvaged willow gave me such satisfaction and got me thinking. When I was cutting my poor, deceased lavender down you could probably hear the cogs turning in my head and I ended up creating this little brooch from a piece of the dried wood.

It obviously went down well as it sold on its first trip out in public. What I loved was the faint smell of lavender that accompanied it.

I then turned my attention to my pendants and sourced the wooden frames from a small Etsy company in Europe. My Dad phoned me one Sunday and said that he loved the new frames but questioned whether the silver chains would jar with the natural image (what a fashion guru!), I had been thinking the same thing so we got our thinking caps on and decided that some sort of cord would fit better. After trawling the Internet I found a great hemp company  Hemp Fabric based in Devon and managed to buy the cord from them. Hemp is such a fascinating and useful plant, I recommend visiting their website and having a browse.
The final pieces looked like this:

The boxes have come from The Tiny Box Company and are made of 80% recycled card.

I am so excited by these new pendants and so full of new ideas.

I promise to try and blog more often, in my next piece I may show you a little more of the watercolours that are in the background of my photos and their origins (I wish I could say they are mine!)

How to frame a spider

My last two pieces have been framed in the standard way, and they look great. However, I feel strange handing my work over to someone else to frame, I like a piece to be completely me, start to finish. I also want my embroidery to be touched, putting it behind glass gives it the feel of a museum, nothing wrong with that. Perfectionists may say that touching the piece will dull the fabric but if does so be it.

My parents had a beautiful willow at the end of their garden which sadly died, they now have a great log pile for their burner. I visited last week and while playing 'secret spy club' at the end of the garden with my girls inspiration struck. This is always dangerous, my Dad has always said that when I get an idea nothing stops me (that is why my bedroom walls were covered in paintings when I was a teenager, I didn't have a canvas big enough). I want my work to feel as natural as possible, as if you have found it lying in the woods, or split a log and found art...aha!

I had thought of solid wood frames before but had to accept that I couldn't afford carpentry tools. However, I am a hoarder and I think this is in my genes, so I remembered that my Dad has hoarded away rusted old carpentry tools in the garage that belonged to my Great Grandfather who owned an ironmongers in London.
After sanding the rust off and oiling this is what I am now the proud owner of:

I love the look, the feel and the history of them.
Albert Eistein once said "The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library". I love this quote, much of my knowledge has been gained from trips to the library. I know I can't become a fully qualified carpenter from just books, but I can learn the basics. So off I went and found a great book on the basics of carpentry, what each tool is used for.

I don't want to overwork the wood, just carve the basic shape and finish.


Initial carving before sanding:

 After sanding:

I want to seal the wood and enhance the colour slightly without staining it. I found several recipes for wax which just contains olive oil and beeswax and I love the idea of only using natural ingredients but would it stain the silk. After a conversation with Mother Eagle she said she was wary of the oil soaking into the silk but the best advice she could give was practice, practice, practice. So, I made up a batch and practiced on some spare willow wood, waxing it then tying silk around and leaving for a few days. Hoorah! no staining.

So here is the piece after waxing:

I then laced the embroidery around thick card and gently stuck it into the wood. I had thought of using brass nails in each corner to hold the work but I felt this would look too man made, and also I may run the risk of the metal tarnishing.

Here is the finished piece, what do you think?

 I really feel that this piece is what Love in Idleness is trying to achieve. A celebration of nature through embroidery.

Spider

I shall start by saying that I am terrified of spiders, can't stand them; their scuttling legs and their habit of dashing across the lounge floor in the middle of Strictly Come Dancing (I would just say that much as I dislike them I don't kill them, I use the glass and paper trick.). However, the garden is a neutral zone, I appreciate that it is their world and they do a good job. Last summer we seemed to have a lot of common garden spiders who liked to string their webs across various places and, when the sun was right, they were really quite beautiful. When I examined them up close I realised that their markings are astounding, this one had a perfect white square on his or her bottom.

I have often looked at this photo and thought how it would make a fabulous embroidery, the flecks in the pattern look like tiny stitches. But it took me a long time to pluck up the courage to sketch it; staring that closely and for that long at it's hairy little legs. However, It's funny how when you study something this closely you loose your fear, it was only when I stood back I got a little shudder.
My original sketch included the web but once I started sewing I felt that it would be impossible to make it that delicate, my floss thread is about as thin as I can go but it still felt it would detract from the actual spider.

I will let the photos tell the story from here:

So, here he/she is, I can't say it has cured my fear but I am fond of this one:

Now, I have an idea for framing that will be slightly different, more to come in the next day or so...

Columbine

Nearly two months ago I tweeted a picture of the sketch of a new project, columbine, tonight I finally unpinned it from my interlocking frame and washed it. It felt like there should be some sort of ceremony, a celebration, but in actual fact I was far too busy doing ten things at once. I did allow myself a quiet 'woohoo'!

This was the first time I have used an interlocking embroidery frame and I was a little worried it wouldn't hold tight, but once I had pinned it I got that nice drum sound when tapped.

I was also concerned about the lines in the fabric created by the drawing pins but these should come out when I wash and stretch it later.

I thought this might take me a couple of weeks but as soon as I started the stem I knew I was in for the long haul.

So, I drew on my direction lines then started with the furthest petal away. With a little guidance from Trish Burr's book on long and short stitch embroidery I ploughed on.

Each stitch is so tiny I can't do it without my magnifying lamp, even with it I have had to start wearing my glasses more often. Does anyone else get crazy shaky eyes when they are tired?

As I said, I finally finished it today, and with this I am launching my own website, my own little domain. Please do visit and if you are able to leave a comment I would love some feedback: www.loveinidlenessart.co.uk

Columbine, Aquilegia vulgaris, a tall, branching plant with large, distinctive flowers, usually blue or violet-blue. It is widespread across Britain although truly wild columbine have become uncommon due to the spread of the garden plant. Wild columbine is a typical cottage garden plant and seeds freely in the right environment.
The petals, when looked at from the base, are said to look like five doves sat in a ring and the name columbine actually derives from 'columba' meaning 'dove'. As such, it was a popular choice to put in church carvings.
In medieval times, columbine was apparently thought to be eaten by lions - rubbing the flower on your hands thus gave you a lion's courage.
Source: http://www.plantlife.org.uk/wild_plants/plant_species/columbine/

Banners and logos

I am so sorry I have neglected you, I have been so focused on sewing the columbine you may have seen on Flickr that I felt I had nothing of interest to write about. 

However, I thought I would write about some ideas I have been playing with. For awhile now I have wanted my own website, I feel so scattered and fragmented, I am in so many different places, Folksy, Etsy, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Madebyhandonline etc that I feel a little bit of a nomad. I want a home of my own.

I am a bit of a technophobe but I have found a host company called Mr Site and their starter package promises to be simple and easy to use.
I want to take my time with my little business, I am the tortoise not the hare in this story (let's hope the story end as well for this tortoise), I have to be a Mum to two small children as my full time job. With my website I want to take my time and come up with a basic, simple site that can be a good starting point.

After a few days of fretting over domain names, someone had already registered the obvious one for me, I have picked my address. I shan't tell you yet as the site is not active.

Next, my logo, what do I want at the top of my page? I love my Etsy banner, I love the vibrant colours, but my work has moved on a little since then. So I have been playing with ideas using my columbine. I need something simple but vibrant and that immediately give an idea of my work, so...

What do you think?

The busy bee...

Have you ever had a 'ting' moment? I have been reading 'The Fairy Doll' to my daughter and every time something makes sense to the child in the book she hears a 'ting' in her head. I had this moment when I was talking about my business with my friend, she said "you obviously want to make jewellery, have you thought of branching out?" TING! The thing is that I don't necessarily want to make jewellery, I want to embroider, and, while I love the pieces I have made, I have found I am thinking more about frames and chains than split stitch and stem stitch.
This doesn't mean I am stopping the jewellery altogether but I want to work on some framed pieces.
Where to start? My favourite photo, taken in my garden last summer. I spent ages trying to photograph the bees on my lavender. The problem with bees is that they are very busy little blighters, they don't stay still for long, so you can imagine my joy when I got this one just right.

Too big for a pendant it is perfect for my first framed piece.
So, start with a sketch: 

I then transferred the sketch onto the silk. I had shied away from wooden hoops as the last time I used one I couldn't stop it slipping, however, I don't like to admit defeat so I tried again. Success!  The silk held beautifully.
I like to think it is a good sign that I still get extremely nervous before I start a new piece, it keeps me alert and focused.
And so I began, random stitches at first to try and give me an idea of direction for the bee's hairy little body.

Slightly more uniformed stitches for his bum (I am sure it has a technical name but 'bum' will suffice), but still trying to keep the hairy appearance. Mostly split stitch.

Then on to the lavender, flowers are my comfort zone but they usually have standard petals and I usually work in satin stitch. Here I have used split stitch and really tried to grade different lavender colours.

I know framed embroidery may not seem like a moment of genius, and there may not be the same demand as there is for jewellery, but I feel as if I am now free to explore and hone my skill as an embroidery artist.

Snake'-head fritillary...shh!

I know I haven't blogged in a little while, I apologise. I have been working on a pendant for my Mum's birthday of a Snake's-head fritillary. I have made two, one for her and one for the shop. However, my Mum has discovered Facebook so I can't share any links on there. Luckily she doesn't like Twitter, only reads blogs when I post mine on FB and has never even heard of Pinterest, so there I am safe.

The first problem I had was that I have never been lucky enough to see a wild Snake's-head fritillary, due to new farming techniques their numbers are declining. So I have had to rely on images from the web and my books for inspiration. Plantlife is a great source of information.

The first sketch

Scale it down a bit

I don't own a light box so I transfer the image onto the silk by waiting for a sunny moment then rushing to the patio doors and tracing it with an HB pencil, technical eh!?

Waiting for the threads

Next problem: most descriptions of the flower describe it as purple but to me they look red/pink with a hint of purple, what do you think? Off to Pipers silks to try and order the right colours. Next hurdle: the silk company had stopped making the colour I ordered so they had to send a similar thread. When the threads turned up they were far too pink so I have tried to use a little artistic license and combine a few colours.

Finished sewing

Creating a chequerboard effect on this scale is eye straining, each stitch is only about 1mm long. I use a combination of stem stitch and long and short stitches.

The finished piece:

To give you an idea of scale

On my trusty old wild flower book

And the back

The Snake’s-head fritillary was first recorded growing in the wild in 1736 although it is unclear if it was introduced by the Romans or is an indigenous flower that went unnoticed. It was once a widespread wild flower across middle and southern England, however, modern agricultural practises such as draining land to grow crops, have led to a sharp decline. In Wiltshire five fritillary meadows have been destroyed since 1992 and the flower has been lost completely in Northamptonshire and 16 other vice-counties.

Source: http://www.plantlife.org.uk/publications/our_vanishing_flora/?cat=56

The Snake’s-head fritillary is the county flower of Oxfordshire and every year at Ducklington church, Oxfordshire, they hold a ‘Fritillary Sunday’ when a nearby wildflower meadow is opened to the public.

Other recorded names include Chequered Lily, Dead Man’s Bell, Leper’s Bells and Oaksey Lily. Fritillary and Fritillaria come from a Latin origin meaning ‘dice-box’. An old country belief is that the wild fritillary followed the path of Romans, springing up wherever their footsteps had fallen.