My first Coptic bound book

I'm so excited to have finally got my stitches together to try Coptic binding, inspired in no uncertain terms, by Iz of
Threadnoodle  making a couple of little books & making me say to myself RIGHT! , also helped by the wonderful embroidered book I bought last week (see last weeks post for links). Iz makes a wonderful variety of things, have a look around & she's had me rolling on the floor with her hysterical sense of humour (maybe not this week tho, some awful people might be building in front of them, one of my biggest nightmares - we could try making her laugh instead.... ;(

This is made from the covers I showed a couple of weeks ago, it was going to be a concertina book ;)

I admit to being pretty slow on the uptake of written instructions & even tho my arty buddy Janet-her new website promised to show me how to do the coptic stitch, I did venture round utube where these kind people have spent hours videoing themselves stitching books & I had a delightful time binding with my thread, pausing the videos willy nilly. I'll take my little books for constructive critisism to Janet next week...

When I came to write this post I was momentarily taken aback as I saw a pile of stunning books on my blogroll & was a tiny bit dishearteded. I'm sure Carol wouldn't want me to be, tho.  Look at these here ! I will get there, how I'd love to take that workshop tho!

I'm delighted with my efforts, the DH was worried he'd be insulting me if he told me they were actually quite classy. I don't mind being classy occaisonally! If Janet passes the second one, it will go into my Etsy shop.

I was wanting to make a mothers day card & 'just grabbed a selection of fabric & paper'  clearing up my desk, as you do, Linda is right! I made a couple of cards extra & thought the piece above would suit a book. Hope she likes the one I sent her ;)

I had a go at making some tomato & bean soup & decided to put the red onion skins in with some of the shopping list paper & a paper towel. Quite surprised at the yellow color, but it was certainly a better effort that the tiny pink mark on the cloth below - looked a lovely pink in the bowl. Now I'm no dye-er....one day, but why different for paper & fabric? Interesting!

I also found time to repair some trendily ripped jeans the Youngest bought. Of course the whole leg nearly came thru so I added some cloth behind with bondaweb & struggled with some machine stitching. The smaller piece had to be by hand as I didn't have access with the machine.  Altho I don't like fake wearing of denim I was reminded of all the lovely Boro out there, do google it.

I don't know where the time has gone, I'd planned to make a few more books this week, I will when the fingers have recovered & I've had time to learn some different swear words ;) Can't believe it's Easter in a few weeks & the season starts propper, , I'm terrified!

A day out at the Creative Stitches show

 I haven't done much making this week, but lots of writing, stitching samples & more writing.

I think this will be my first post with only one photo - the slr camera is just too heavy for a show so this will be full of delicious links ;) A light camera for the handbag is on the long list!)

So, I went on a little trip out to Glasgow to visit the Creative Stitches show at the SECC. The DH decided to come as we had a few things to get from Ikea for the new B&B room. It was also an opportunity to see the Middlest with his GF & the Elest & my DIL  to be, who are only an hour on the train away from Glasgow so we met for a cheap & cheerful meal in a place chosen by the Middlest. There was someone thrown out of a 2nd floor window recently but that didn't phase him - we had an uneventful evening on that score, luckily! Stayed in a perfectly fine Travelodge where there seemed to be a loud meeting in the hallway till 3am, but never mind!

I got a  couple of hours on the first day of the show to do some of the shopping on my list & sound out things to do the next day. I'd have had a longer day but we got a late B&B booking  for the 2 nights previous which I'm very glad about as it financed the shopping ;)

This is what I got -

 The first afternoon I went to a talk by Isobel Hall, very interesting, talking mainly about her new book 'Textile Adventures' & the techniques in it, using membrane from the garden for one & moulding paste. So I got some of that but as I am in a book phase I got her Embroidered Books, so difficult to choose! Can't see her own website.

Another good talk was by Kim Thittichai, very funny, she describes herself as a techniques teacher, not a product teacher, otherwise we get stuck on one thing & don't grow. Newspaper chenille is her thing at the moment, sounds fabulous! She's teaching in Australia in April I think - her w/s & shows schedule would have you in a spin, I'm telling you! I got some of her solufleece...

Wendy Cotterill gave a wonderful talk with demonstration, bravely printing text on white cotton using a stand alone printer. The best tip was to cut a little bit off of the leading corners of the paper/fabric. Her thing is transparent fabric & she'd dyed & ironed on bondaweb - paint is obviously opaque, a bit of glitter, printed with a painted stamp, added accent beads & dyed net over a bit of that. A lovely layered collage effect.

I was late for a 15 min taster w/s with Rachel Powell on using a drop spindle, but she very kindly showed me anyway. I've felted wool found on barbed wire that'sbeen torn off sheep before & now I can give it a go to spin it & couch it down. Somewhere I read you can spin paper.... So I got the drop spindle on the left of the pic & the Jan Beany & Jean Littlejohn book on the right on couching. I'll have a little squiz first, but I might give it away as a special thank you...



Saw Helen McKenna's stand, new to me, with fabulously embelleshed bits & pieces, especially shoes! Didn't know coz I didn't look at the program properly but I could have asked for a demo. I think she was the only one who had a sketchbook with lots of frilly bits in it on her table. I love a good flick thru those ;)

Wendy Dolan was there, but I'd seen her last year & there wasn't time (or energy!) for everything, sadly.


Went into the Hobbycraft Hall, boy! A little daunting & all very white. I went round very methodically & got those dry glue things - in the middle of pic; I find pritt stick a little gloopy these days. & the 3 permanent ink stamp pads I've been after for ages. Back in the Stitches bit I found a huge roll of gold foil & a special glue pen, no ironing & bondaweb needed, just rubbing. I had to walk past a chocolate stall - why is there a chocolate stall in a stitch show? to get a bigger pot of special tacky glue, an oil stick, cheap brush & a big metallic reel of gold thread :)

Saw some beautiful lace & someone demonstrating tatting, facinating! See the blue corners in the pic? 3 little cushion blanks from Ikea to encourage me to make some covers. We'll see ;)

My real luxury book is From Print to Stitch by Janet Edmonds of Embroidered boxes fame. Looks great & again, so many to choose from for my collecton! I had to have a coffe cup wrap (off the floor!) for my favorite kind of printing & stirrers, so useful. I forgot to pic the straw from I won't tell you where ;)

Hope you enjoy some of these links!

Workshop on the Web & an honour

First, I've got to say a belated thank you to Jackie at Stitchworks for giving me the Leibster award absolutely ages ago, how rude of me not to do it earlier! I was kucky enough to get another one the following month, the Vesatile Blogger Award,  from Suzy at Rustic Vintage Country  & the same one again from Kim at Numinosity Beads last month! Now don't get me wrong, I'm really pleased, but I couldn't POSSibly choose who to give the award on to & there'd be at least 35 I'd have to choose! So, I choose you all, you're all wonderful! ;)

As promised I made some painted papers using those rather loud curtains as inspiration. I made a notebook but I'll be honest, there's nothing in it yet ;) When there is I'll put it in my Etsy shop. Talking of that, remember I said I couldn't 'put' my Etsy mini gallery onto my blog? Well, once, while pootling around, it was there, hiding under open comments. Needles to say it wasn't there the next time I looked!

 Forgot to take a pic of the whole ground but you get the idea (look at my last post, first pic!)

 I made these stamps from cut up mount board & pva glue.

& some handmade art cards, blank inside. Can I call them art cards? I know people do; better than 'greeting cards' I think.


So I think I've finally finished making samples from Maggie Grey's book  Stitches Straps & Layers. It's been great fun & I'm so grateful to Lesley for lending it to me!

I got out some painted papers altho I did stamp with 3D paint on the first one & highlighted with gold. It's basically about putting a selection of things together in a variety of ways...isn't life, really! You can use watercolor paper, gold ink, stitched ribbon, stencilled tissue paper, & carrier rods.  I added a sort of hard scrim that lives on a roll on the left & the right side of the handmade paper I added a gaudy ricrac (but I cut the curves off coz I hated them!) & zigzaged up & down. I made some matching paper beads as instructed using similar paper wrapped round a wire wrapped satay stick but i forgot to pic those. Then I stitched ribbon to painted paper, then stuck strips of overly highlighted with a gold leaf pen ( don't you get pissed when your precious & expensive pen blocks then blobs out everywhere?!) tissue paper, then glued strips of gently gold waxed tussue paper along a sot of monoprint. Just having them there in front of me in my own sample book will give me such inspiration & I'm so glad Maggie has made learning new techniques such a pleasure thru her book. Thank you!

Speaking of Maggie, I feel the need to tell you a little about the quarterly online publication Workshop on the Web  (button up there, top right). I'm sure you all know about it, but it's the mixture of this 'magazine',  Cloth Paper  Scissors & going to quite a few workshops that have enabled me to drag what's inside me, out. Which has been a long, some times tortuous but entirely pleasurable experience! When I first joined WoW, about 6 yrs ago, I barely understood this new to me language but over the years I've learnt it & still am of course! For just £15.50 a year you get,  4 times a year,  7-9 articles/workshops beautifully illustrated by a huge variety of artists - Angie Hughes, Jan Beany, Kim Thittichai, Gina Ferrari, Beryl Taylor, Isobel Hall, Jan Messent, to name but a few &  of course, Maggie Grey herself.  Mixed media, textiles,  bookmaking, 3D vessels, printing & lots of stitch. It's where I enjoyed going when I started this artistic life of mine, where I found such a fabulous variety of things that stimulated my grasshopper mind, accessible projects to keep me happy, a sort of bible, really. So you can imagine my absolute delight when Maggie asked me to write an article for the June publication. It is such an honour & I hope I don't let her down.

I'm back!

I hadn't gone far, we just lost our connection due to a 'stale session' at the BT end fixed in 2 seconds by Scotnet..but not till Monday am...then I went to work.

I hadn't done much, just 'made' some curtains up.

When I say 'made', we were looking in Debenhams, 2 pairs £180. Neutral, lined. They were fine. Of course we 'popped' into a charity shop, knowing we wouldn't find 2 pairs the same, but did. Talk about the absolute opposite to neutral! They were 2 huge pieces of hemmed fabric so I folded them to make them lined & added curtain ruching tape stuff. One long pair & one short pair. ... perfect & a snip at £3 a pair ;) The bathroom floor tiles were a ittle more expensive but a floor is for life not just for Christmas. We've had painted chipboard for 11 yrs & it worked out £10 per year, a bargain & the clever DH & Youngest laid it themselves. So we're almost sorted for the second room B&B. I think they might inspire my next painted background! I haven't done triangles yet ;)

So I'd made a ground from Maggie's Stitches Straps & Layers.  Her samples are delicious, using yarn, tape, sari silk, silk carrier rods, or stitched border patterns cut from felt. I couldn't do them all so I chose a mix of yarn, the knitting tapes Maggie had kindly sent me & some of  the miriad of stuff I've spent my life collecting (this book so justifies my way of life!) It's time consuming laying out the yarns over lightly foiled velvet, needlefelting a bit & stitching down with zig zag & straight stitch in various colors, but worth it. I made a small piece from silk carrier rods & combined the 2 as per Maggies sample. Not sure if you remember that I borrowed this book from a friend & my arty buddy Jo said it was so good for me I should have bought it myself. But I've had amazing fun actually working thru the samples  & I'm so grateful to Lesley for lending it to me...I've so nearly finished!

sample

As we had no internet I was able to catch up & make some cuffs with beads  & cord loops out of the new fabric. The middle one, I think, will go into my Etsy shop soon.




















And I finished the second gauntlet. Slightly bigger so less of a gap & cords instead of ribbons. Scuse the flash.

Jo lent me a book about Zandra Rhodes. I had no idea I'd be so interested!

cover, studio

screen printing, sketchbook

pattern, cloths

Sorry there are so many, couldn't resist!
Forgot her wonderful quote!

"I am  tired of good taste. I want to do everything wrong & get a result that is of value & valid as well"
Zandra Rhodes

Some cuffs & brooches

In between the hail showers I took some pics of the cuffs & brooches I've been making this week.

The one on the right is a  request from a customer & I made a couple of bigger ones, one in the same fabric which will hopefully be in my Etsy shop soon & the top one in last weeks gauntlet fabric.

She wanted a couple of different shaped brooches, too.

Those are the 2 at the top, then I made a couple for the studio. I'll stitch the backs on while bonding with my boys (the DH & Youngest) while watching Day & Night. The preview looked silly but fun.....what more do you want in life after a hard day's work?


I decided to start another gauntlet in the sea green Neptune colors, just so Pam has choice. I like to give a bit of choice, just in case.....trying to please everybody all the time... huh. Oh & started another cuff, too.

Here's the finished gauntlet

I had a lovely card from my DH & put my engagement ring on for the day - we found it on February 14th 25 years ago in Portobello Road Market, London. It's wearing thin , the gold bit, so I don't wear it all the time, now. It's done well!  ;) Mine to him is left & he cut the heart shape out for me ;)

Look what I found in my compost bin - look away if you're squeemish!  I've nearly finished transferring one bin to another, exhausting work but it's got the juices flowing & I must start a plan of action in the garden, just a little at a time ;)

I'm on holiday!

Well, just not going to my 'weekend' job this week, which means 2 whole days extra in the studio ;) So of course that made me a day later than usual posting with no threat of a 9am start. I momentarily lost my 'sieze the day' attitude! Well, we did unusually have  B&B guests, great weather for them & very welcome indeed, so there's my excuse.

So, a while ago I got a commission from the landscape artist, Pam Carter - she has a lovely holiday home a few doors down from us - & thought it was about time to stop provaricating (sp?) & get on with it. Thing was she asked for a gauntlet cuff & I haven't done one of those before so lots of thought & procrastination necessary before getting down to it. Glancing at the very gory Sparticus that the boys were watching - the Middlest came up for a visit - I was inspired by the Gladiator's leather gauntlets! Then I couldn't find the measurements, Heaven's sake. That meant picking up each item on my desk & table in the studio, putting it in it's place (& a place for everything!) & about 150 items later, after the Youngest said it would have been clever to have clipped it to the bundle he was holding, but never mind (he's so PATient! The DH came in, took one look & left again!) He went over to a box & I said it would unlikely be in there but wondered if I HAD  been clever enough to actually put it in the box (my tidying off the shared table to give the DH space box) & there it was.

In the first pic I fused purple silky fabric to an old guest towel, the likes of which people of my mothers generation would have put out when they knew guests were coming - my interpretation of batting. Then I laid whispy yarn all over, then I tried to get between the yarn with bits of magenta silky fabric & poked at them with the tip of the iron to fuse them down, then tried to get between all that with little bits of bondaweb that I could stick I mean fuse gold foil onto. I know, a about t but that's how I work;) Otherwise how whould I know what went where? ;) The pic immediately above had a piece of pink organza laid over & I've stitched along the yarn & around the magenta oblongs. I started the piece as one big piece before I found the measurement & would you believe that a guest towel, lightly trimmed each side is the exACT width required for this cuff? (bearing in mind I wanted the stitching to go top to bottom) cool, huh? It's a good thing I made a paper template as I'd no idea a gauntlet would be this shape, surprising how much fabric a 'tube' takes up.

Not so cool was that when I decided to free motion embroider some little circles here & there, to balance up the linear feel of it, garnet stitch I believe it's called, just before I got down to making some loops out of the magenta 'ribbon' & 'buttons' out of the spare fabric, I dropped the tiny screw that changes the feet of the machine, onto the floor. Well I just wasn't going to go there & came in to talk to you guys, instead. I will find it.

In my clearing up parts of the week I wondered why I had so many plastic bags in a large pile. I realised they were for ironing into 'paper' & figured if I got on & did that the pile would shrink dramatically &  could be stored in the 'paper' drawer. Result ;)

I mentioned to the youngest that life was about moving things from one place to another & he found it a rather depressing thought. I must also mention to him that it's what you do inbetween times is the important thing. I think he knows that. He was cheered up by the rugby - in this house where we're English, Welsh & Irish by blood, live in Scotland,  honeymooned in France & also love anything Italian, we don't really mind who wins ;)

Magggie's Patches & a winner

First, welcome to my new followers. I'd love to visit but I can't see a link, if you comment I'll be able to ;)

Second, I was one of the winners of Maggie's book giveaway! I chose Dale Rollerson's 'Let's play with Sari Ribbon' which is a sweet little booklet giving you ideas of how to use sari ribbon. In with the book, Maggie had very kindly sent some of her own precious flat woollen tapes for me to use on my 'applied yarns' samples, which she was enjoying on my blog. I was delighted, thank you Maggie!

So this week I was struggling with making this....or that, my usual weekly problem ( my list is so long, I know I'm not alone there!) I had already decided the next sample from Maggie's book 'stitches, straps & layers' would be Patches.

such exciting little things! Maggie uses them as borders & edges around her pieces, horizontally or vertically. The basic way to make them is with pelmet Vilene, bondaweb & crumpled tissue painted with walnut ink. You could use card, felt, painted papers or book pages & tea bags for dyeing instead of ink. Anything, really.

I made an A4 ish page & cut into the above strips. This gave me straight edges of course except for the one on the far right, above as I had a small piece of vilene already cut. I like both, but the cut edge means you have to paint or tea bag dye each edge...which is fine, worth it to get rid of the white. You can stitch or burn the edges (I've wanted to get my lighter out for ages!) Then you can use embossed foil, little pieces of painted papers, fabric, beads.

From left to right (top pic) I used a rusted razor blade, sweet foil with stitched raffia, painted paper from my drawer, newspaper on a tiny patch with other found paper edged in metallic paint, & finally, a copper roof tile nail - they don't make them like they used to! with verdigris colored gimp french knots , the extended kind. Couldn't believe it when I thought to myself, bet I haven't got any verdigris colored thread anywhere,  to match that wonderful nail - got these when  Jetta, who I gardened for, had her roof reslated. I was picking up these little beauties for weeks ;) -  & there it was in my ribbon & thread drawer! Kind of a 'gimp' sort of thing I think.

Well, I loved making these & decided to make a little book, inspired by Maggies 'The Little Book of Walnut Ink' which she was using to demonstrate how to use the patches on the cover. Beautiful, I really want to look inside! I found one entry on google, just one delicious page!

This is only about postcard size, with 3 signatures made with brown paper used on the worktop, handmade paper & book pages. (there's lots of work out there using book pages - finally we can use the pages we tore out of reclaimed, altered in some way, books) I bound it using phamphlet stitch, the only one I can do with ease.

Inside front cover - you can't quite see copper & gold highlights. I made the patches on the front cover quite symmetrical, for me & used book pages as well as the painted paper from my stash.

The writing on the back is from the dressmaking tissue paper I used. I'll put this in my Etsy shop next week - I only manage to add heart cards for Valentine's day last week. Well, we need a heart all year, really ;) Oh & did I mention I got my first sale? Thank you....so exciting!!!!

I showed the DH my book & patches, expecting him to say 'what're you going to use them for?' or 'they're a bit hairy' but no, he said it looked like an ancient book, reminded him of the Book of Kells. Well, you can't get better than that!