25 - 7 - '25 . . . and another bird

For us
25 - 7
is a special day :
our first grandchild was born !
And today that moment is 24 years ago, how time flies !

*

Though
Stitch Club had a fun but "dark"workshop these last two weeks
by Ruth Norbury
I kept working on a new bird-piece
(for which I started the background during a zoom session of SC)
The bird I chose this time was the song thrush

Nowadays, finding a good photo of the animal you want to portray
isn't very difficult : so many lovely pictures on the net !

I liked this one especially 
because in our small front garden there is a rowan tree
which is visited by many birds when the berries (right now !) are ripe.
 

It starts with building up the bird with tiny scraps.

Stitching in the garden in summer is such FUN !

Though I don't do that always,
I backed these very small berry-bits with "vliesofix"
to stop fraying.

VERY fiddly leaves to stitch onto the background

The last step will be folding the excess bits on the side
so it fits on a 30 x 30 cm (painted) canvas

*

(and now it is time for Ruth Norbury )

:-)

tiny owl

Last month I've added one more to my considerable list of bird-pieces.
This time I pieced together a tiny owl
The tiniest of all owls,
not much bigger than a blackbird !

I made my first bird, a robin,
in the Stitch Club workshop by Many Pattullo
in December 2020.

She often re-uses pieces of old quilts
as a background in her work, but I piece mine together
with varies pieces and leftovers in the colours that I need
that I baste to a slightly bigger cotton background.
For the bird I start to look at many photographs
and then make a sketch of the position I like best,
to have a template to build up the bird with snippets of fabric.

Then comes the job of stitching all these tiny pieces together
(hmmmm, fiddly business)

When and eyes, beak, feet and some "feather-stitches" are added
I just have to make some extra stitches in the background.

The last task is painting a 20 x 20 cm canvas
and stitch the finished piece onto it !
(ohh, that last bit still has to be done !)

balls

Early May we had the Stitch Club workshop by (the Dutch)
Mirjam Gielen
making a six-segment object.

I chose some purples from my stash
and special fabric I bought last year on a textile fair.

Then came the fun part to decorate them.
On the turquoise one I started with woven picots
(always so much fun to make)
and then I added seed beads in the colours of the hexagons.

For number two I decided on stacked running stitch.

Of course a running stitch is easy BUT
if you want them really close together a lot more is asked.
And you can only do a few rounds with one length of thread . . .
so filling this ball took "ages" !!!
The different reds go nicely with the purple.

More than halfway down I changed the pattern
into small dots.

After this workshop we had some "quiet time"
and, to be honest I liked that very much.
As a Stitch Club member from the very start
I'm amazed in how many workshop I participated !
(and to be even more honest : not everything is finished,

there are still quite a few WIPs to be considered   :-/  )

This last week we had something new and fun though :
zoom sessions with a lot of SC members from all over the world

and it was so much FUN to see each other and stitch a bit together !
Those were wonderful events
a fantastic STITCH COMMUNITY !

little Venus

For the Stitch Club workshop by
Christi Johnson
(making a soft sculpture talisman)
I re-made the Venus of Willendorf.

The little statuette of this a woman was excavated in Austria in 1908.
Between 25.000 and 30.00 years old, with her lovely hairdo, big boobs and belly

we can only guess and speculate what purpose she had,
but many think she might have been a symbol of fertility.

With her size of a good 11 cm,
my Venus is almost the same size as the original one.
That one was made of oolitic limestone,
a kind of rock that was traced back to northern Italy.
In the rock are many tiny particles even of shells,
so I thought my little seed stitches were perfect for that !
Similar looking figurines are mostly made of ivory (mammoth tusk)

Making the first stitches

After making the front and back I could sew them together
leaving a small opening for stuffing.

The original Venus was coloured with the sacred red ochre
but mine is much more colourful
just like the "look-a-like" Nana's
Niki de Saint Phalle made so many years ago ! 

faces (2) and community stitching

After a quiet birthday,
with some very sweet presents,
there was time for more faces for Emma Cassi 's workshop.
Sometimes things go smoothly "with no effort at all"
sometimes you struggle with even the smallest decisions.

My third "mask/face" brooch was the latter.
Up until I found the translucent shell shape sequins
in a very cheap box in my stash . . .
after that it all went well, so funny !

I called it a "Fire Keeper"

(though many SC-members said it reminded them of a fish !!)
Hmmmm at least a fish with an attitude
that's for sure !

And because they are rather small
(and I had more choice in beads and sequins)
there even came a fourth one.

This one I called "Gilgamesh"
Though he wasn't a very nice person to start with,
I was very fond of the illustrations of Ludmila Zeman
(Czech by birth, now living in Canada)

*

This whole month I have also been busy in ROTTERDAM with a BIG
community stitching project
it is called :

DRADEN  VAN  ONS  NEDERLANDSE  SLAVERNIJVERLEDEN

(I put in the link for our province Zuid-Holland
you can also find the dates and address we are working there !!!)

Other cities where they are working on this HUGE wall hanging are
Delft, Dordrecht, The Hague, Leiden and Gouda.

This is the part for Dordrecht and Rotterdam.

There were other participants, but we could always use more "hands"

for stitching, felting and embroidery, not difficult work but very rewarding !
Together with Gerine I supervise the work there, also with the 
all-over coordinator Caroline Grootenboer
The 7 meters long part for us, has been stretched on a big frame.

The work to cut out a part of the big pattern
and filling it with pieces of fabric, felt of making embroidery stitches
had to be for us to try (and experience difficulties) too !

So : homework !

I think it is very special being able to participate in this project !

more transparent

 The dear Emily Tull came by in Stitch Club again.
I love her work and her workshops !
She is a very talented "thread painter".
This time the subject wasn't (a part of) a portrait
but a fish : a sardine, or any other fish
(or any other subject)
This time I chose a hummingbird because they also
have iridescent colours, much like fish scales.

"Violet crowned Woodnymph"

Amazing these tiny colourful birds, who sadly only live
on the American continent.

Working on water soluble with tiny snippets :
very fiddly !!!
But in the end it was worth it !

*

In the garden the first shift of colours "

the YELLOW aconites, WHITE snowdrops and the LILAC crocuses are gone

 

and the first bits of BLUE arrived !

I LOVE spring !

aconites

I finished the aconites for the
Stitch Club workshop by Vinny Stapley.

A nice memory of early spring
for the winter time when no colour adorns up the garden !

transparant

The new Stitch Club workshop by Vinny Stapley
is with tulle, lace and photo transfers on organdie.
I only have cotton organdie in a very dark purple colour
so that wasn't very useful.
But I do have thin cotton (not as transparant as organdie !)
and I do have very thin silk, so making the transfers
wasn't that big a problem in the end.

I don't have any old photographs
so my garden will have to do for inspiration.
Winter aconites are the very first flowers
that announce that spring is near,
even before the snowdrops are seen !
Last year I also took them as inspiration, so why not again.
Making the transfers went really smooth
and even cutting them out wasn't too difficult.
But then, after a laid out the design came the stitching
(no photo yet)
and that was horrible : like stitching in thin air !
In the end I took the tulle out of the hoop

to stitch around the edges
pfffffft !

To be continued !
(giving my fingers a bit of rest first)

last february day

On this last day of the shortest month
seven planets in the sky
and a new moon.
(sadly at that moment there were clouds here
though much later there was a beautiful clear sky)

A good moment to show the last Stitch Club workshop
by Darren Ball that I finished,
It was meant to be with a vintage photo as inspiration
but I don't have those, so I chose something else :
good "old" Maisy
(by Lucy Cousins)

My collection of old pictures, we used to adorn the little rhymes with
in the poetry booklets little children (girls) used to have.

Some sketches with possible choices, but in the end I decided on Maisy.

Some extra tulle layers and some machine stitching finished it off.
(though I'm not totally happy with the stitching
and working on the machine)

On to the next work !

25 - 1 - 25 , pomegranates and doves

January is nearing the end
but I've been busy stitching on a new Stitch Club piece,
a workshop by Dijanne Cevaal
For many years now I've seen her work,
but never was able to do a workshop with her
(until now !)

The lino printing was fun !
I had all the materials at hand so that was no problem, just finding a design
A book I was reading solved that.

Finished, but not yet mounted on a canvas (30 x 30 cm)

I did a try out of my first prints on tea bags
and that gave me the fun opportunity to flip them over
because the print was on both sides nearly as good.
The piece of fabric I choose was too white so I painted it
with the textile paint I bought last year in Rijswijk.

Hmmmm a bit simple those four separate prints

Then  solution was cutting more prints to make a kind of border,
some of the lino and some of the thicker soft blocks.
The good part of using the blocks is that you can cut out
the shape on the outside as well !
That's handy if you have to make a weak print twice :
because you can place it at exact the same spot.

There was only one rather big problem :
I did the stitching with perlé thread (8) as Dijanne had suggested,
but my hands didn't like the difficult process of pulling
the needle through the fabric . . .

That's why I changed to the thinner perlé 12,
less impact of colour but much easier to work with !

Well, I still had my doubts about the polka dots fabric
until some sweet Stitch Club member told that they reminded her
just of pomegranate seeds !!!!!
Ohhhh . . . YES, why hadn't I thought of that myself !
And the pink colour ? Also pomegranates !