Windermere Deanery Mothers' Union quilted banner project

It has been a long time since I attended to this blog but I have been involved in a lovely project which took over my spare time for a while.  I want to show you how the project  progressed in this posting but first let me explain what it was.  If you do not live in Cumbria you may not have heard of one of our treasures, it is Cartmel Priory.  A beautiful place which I have visited in the past on my frequent cycle rides when I used to live in Levens where it was a superb afternoon ride there and back to my house.

Anyway, I was asked if I would make a new quilted banner to be hung in Cartmel Priory but which would be used at the various churches in the Windermere Deanery Mothers' Union.  The design had already been sketched out by the time I was asked to become involved.  So it was just a simple matter then to make the quilt, or was it?



Original sketch showing the Saints heraldry of the churches

I must admit when I saw the complexity of the design my first reaction was how on earth was I to do the heraldry?  Well came the answer from my brain, how about machine embroidery?  Of course that is what I do best, so it was easy then......So what about all that lettering in such a confined space?  Hmm, I pondered it and realised that my desktop publishing skills would be needed there and if I could design the letters on paper then they could be tried and tested before being made out of fabric.  So it was beginning to form in my head, but what about the Langdale Pikes and Windermere?  Easy peasy said my brain.

So here is the design process.

Firstly I spent a lot of time studying images of the Langdale Pikes whenever I felt I needed inspiration.  This is from an old postcard and gives a good idea of what I was looking for.  Clear shapes had to be used for the Pikes to be recognisable. I knew that I would not be able to put in too much detail but I also wanted to make the outline of the hills very sharp against the sky. I also started 'sky watching' anyone out walking with me would have been amused as I looked up at all the combinations of sky I could. I asked my arty friend and the reply was 'don't attempt to do clouds', but I had to do something I thought, so one day I laid out my Egyptian cotton and carefully set to work with my silk paints.  I was quite pleased with the result and decided to start on the lettering, and then I played with the various fonts until I found one which worked.

Spindly lettering did not work but the top font had potential

I also decided that I would need to break the quilt up into chunks to make it easier to design and then sew it together at the end, this meant I could isolate problems and work them to a satisfactory finish before attempting the next stage, a useful tactic which saved me from becoming distracted.  But I did work on some pieces at the same time so as I was designing the sky and lettering I was also starting on the heraldry.

Paper and card mock ups of some of the Saint's heraldry and the MU logo

I designed some of these on my computer and used a drawing from my DH of a medieval sword. I also researched St. Cuthbert's coat of arms.  I had seen his pectoral cross at Durham Cathedral when I went to see the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition in the summer of 2013.

 

I also spent time looking at banners as used by the Mothers' Union because I wanted to see how they were constructed and took a few photos of banners in Churches I visited.  This all helped to keep the project current in my brain.


Carefully lining up the letters and checking the spacing.

The banner was starting to grow.  So I decided on the main grey fabric for the lake next and then applied pieces of printed paper scenery and auditioned each piece to see if it would work

Playing with cut outs and making decisions



An island for the lake was essential but what colour to use?

It was slow going at times but I was enjoying this bit.  Popping a tree here and there.



A rocky escarpment above the lake was given some leafy plants.

I was not sure what to place along the bottom of the scene so decided to make it look a bit like a rocky ledge with boulders and bits of May flowering plants such as rhododendrons and fox gloves and placed more dark pieces on the lake to make it look like large dark gusts of wind sweeping across the surface.





Nearly there.

The bottom of the quilt was filling up now and the shields had all been placed on three inch squares of green fabric which became lighter as they reached the outside edges, a little touch which made them more jewel like. The background fabric for the shields was chosen to match the top of the rocky ledge which had become important to the design. All of the shields had been embroidered too and they really worked well together.  From the left, St. Mary, the single lily; St. Michael, the cross; St. James, the shells of pilgrimage; St. Paul, the sword and book; MU logo; Holy Trinity, three fishes; St. Cuthbert, his pectoral cross; St. John the Baptist, Maltese cross; and lastly, St. Anne, the lilies.




The scenery design waiting to be embroidered.

Next the exciting bit; I turned on my trusty Bernina, oiled and cleaned her, dropped the feed dogs, and did a trial on my little embroidery frame to check the tension; all good.  I had now to really concentrate and did the sewing in small chunks of about two hours each.  Anymore, and I risked making a costly mistake because tired eyes are no good when you need to be precise.  No photos were taken as the sewing progressed because I was so engrossed and distractions were the last thing I wanted,  no this was full on sewing.

But it was worth it I think.

It was a windy day over the Langdale Pikes.



Dark patches moved across the surface of Windermere.



I signed the quilt off on the back with a feeling of relief and sorrow because it was over.



The date and maker label and the MU Logo on the back.

I liked the calm simplicity of the back of the quilt which contrasted with the front.

A simple, bold set of tabs and no frills border worked well.

There comes a time when you have to part with something you have made and give it to the owners and I felt quite attached to it really.  But I did go to the dedication ceremony on Tuesday (Lady Day) and we had a lovely time at St. John the Baptist's Church, Flookburgh with a lovely service followed by a superb afternoon tea.  So thank you, and well done ladies and special thanks to Gail Swanson for giving me the commission and the lunch too!  I hope you enjoy the banner for years to come.



Keswick Embroiderers' Exhibition - 6th July 2012

Hi everyone, I type this under severe pressure with no first letter the key does not work..........so I commence with b if you see my point.....It is going to be difficult but I must try.

Our exhibition went down very well with the public, so I intend to show you some of our work.

Only eleven of us could turn up for it but we enjoyed ourselves.

So I offer snippets below with terse comments without the letter before the B ........

Cushions

Felt work

Close up shot

Still life

3D effect

Needle LAce

 Got one to work there but only coz it's fiddled............

Mixed MediA

Add caption - don't know the medium/technique - sorry

Top two silk pAper

A huge diversity shown here

Stumpwork? or something including goldwork?

A snil - remember I've keybord problems.....

Embroidery on Mini Quilts

Big Quilt  - no embroidery here

Red Squirrel

Mixed MediA

Silk PAper purses

Boxes MAde esy using zig zg stitch

Well I did it; just. If you ever feel like trying it yourself, my only comment is it's blinking difficult....

Now for my next trick I need to get my keybord fixed pronto, coz it's driving me md.

Mug Rug

Patchwork weave on the left, silk machine embroidery on the right

 Just a quick update for those of you who were wondering how the mug rug was coming along.  Well I quite enjoyed making it in the end and as I chose woven patchwork for the left side you can actually slip things under some of the weave, like the odd stray pencil or pins.  Also the heart is on a green pocket so you can slip bits in there too or of course it can hold your biscuit!

Colour is showing much lighter coz taken at night with artificial lights

Self explanatory really, I did some guesswork on the stitches and came up with these which look ok. Stem stitch and fly stitch with some long stitches and soft shading on the little red flowers. So it's coming on and I will keep you posted as I progress, but I do need to turn my attention to something else tomorrow as I have another little item to make which I need for Wednesday all being well. I am a busy little bee at the moment but deadlines have to be fulfilled and then there is the little matter of finding suitable presents for DD across the pond.......

Quaker squares and how to turn a blunder into an asset!

Ok, I have some photos of the finished squares for the Friends Meeting House in Keswick which was devastated by floods in November 2010. So hopefully these will be going up on the wall in the room we hire off them and another 10 sets of four squares from some of the other ladies too, all in different colours of the rainbow...............



Crazy patchwork with goldwork

So first up is one I was still working when I took the photo last night. I layed some sticky backed stabiliser down and just applied the fabric in sections until I was pleased with the result. The orangy coloured piece is actually some ribbon and then there was a piece of velvet and some brocade and silk with gold embellishments added. I worked a bit of free machine embroidery here and there and lastly of all you see my needle and gold thread as I attach a gold edge which I am carefully twisting with some Linton Tweed thread.



Machine embroidered flower with beadwork

This one was a lot of fun to do. I started with a background fabric which was beige so I overlaid it with a piece of brown gauze from an old scarf. It immediately turned the black flower design underneath to chocolate,  hmm just what I wanted.  I then picked out the central motif and did my silver thread machine embroidery on the top after I had placed the whole thing in a really tight embroidery hoop so I could drop the feed dogs.  I was after a passion flower look and wanted it kept simple. So I beaded the centre with yellow and red beads and then radiated out with silver long beads; then finally added the pinky red beads around the flower. I added the edge which was Linton Tweed thread again and stitched it down with the same silver thread I had used on the flower it's by Madeira and called Jewel.




Little applique hearts with buttons

Here we have a simple background which was stabilised with sticky stabiliser again and then I added the heart shapes and buttons. I did a bit of machine embroidery around the leaves which were part of the background silk fabric. I cut out some more and added them to balance the effect. Lastly I added the edge trim again using scraps of threads taken from Linton Tweed and stitched with Madeira Jewel in red.






My little trees

This photo won't enlarge unless it is huge so I am having to put up with it.......I really enjoyed making this square and I simply took some velvet and satin stitched the tree designs on. The little red one was part of the giveaway I won last month, I simply detached it from it's background embroidery and re used it...... Then added a gnarled stump from a bit of old jute string and twisted it a bit to look like a tree trunk. I added a few red beads to the first 2 trees so they looked as if they had berries on them and finished off with a lovely satin stitch border. Then I had a snag because the square had pulled out of shape a bit so I had the idea of disguising it with the edge which is taken from Linton Tweed again. Its a wonderful glittery sort of riot of sticky out bits of thread.....Take a closer look and you will see what I mean. This was the 2nd square I made and when I had added the edge I realised that it was a good idea to do the same on all subsequent squares. So that's why I had the idea, to disguise my very non square design,  hmmm.   Where there is a mistake always turn it to your advantage.

I won a giveaway and some recognition for the blog

Scrumptious swag.......

I won this fabulous collection of goodies which includes all my favourite things too, so thank you Sarah at Happiness is a bottomless button box The ideas have started to flow but I need to work this week, so they are put away for now. I also had some other good news but I must leave that until I have a bit more time to do it justice on here. Meanwhile, I am working on the schedule for my summer job as it were. So tomorrow is the deadline for deciding which mountains I will be climbing from April to October and then I have to post them all up on my other blog. So it was back to earth with a bang this week with more to do than I care to think about, also DH has a bit on his plate and as I am the computer guru round here I have labels to print and websites to update.  But the other thing is we have decided to extend the house again, so I am also checking prices of supplies as I tend to be project manager when we do any building. Well when you consider that the garden is in a mess too and the greenhouse needs a good sort, you start to get the picture.......But I like to be useful around the place and I have done with resting over the holidays I think so I may be busy but I don't mind.

We went to see a Planning advisor at the Town Hall this morning and he seemed to like our methods and approach to the extension so all we need now is to finalise our ideas and DH always does the drawings as he went to a really good Art College (the likes of David Hockney taught there) and was trained in drawing properly so can produce building plans and drawings which are really good. Even the planning guy said how good the previous ones were, not like the one's architects produce on Computers.......he he That's one job less for me.

Busy is not the word

Don't know what happened to the 'things to do list' last week, but I know not many were ticked off. I have been struggling a bit with digitising a design for my jacket. As some of you know my other blog is about my job as a Keswick Rambles Mountain Leader.  Well I put my big foot in it when I offered to make a badge for us to wear for publicity purposes. I must say that I don't use Embird enough (embroidery machine software) I  bought it about 5 years ago when I bought my Janome 300e and although at the time I enjoyed it, have found lately that I have been having more fun with quilting and freehand machine embroidery. So the Janome has been on the back boiler and so has Embird digitising software. Well this week it was in at the deep end. I ended up doing 4 designs before one of them looked as if it would do. I am still sure I can do better, but hey with the guided walks starting on 28th March and the programme still to desktop publish and print, I am rather beyond caring.

So I thought I would let you see the struggle I had, as I bet you love to see things going wrong as well as right, am I right? Top left was my abysmal first effort, no good was my verdict. Too fiddly trying to put the boot prints on the top of the lettering too. Bottom right was better but still the lettering did not jump out. So Top right was my 3rd attempt, better I thought and the colour is coming on ok but some of the letters could be improved upon. So Bottom left was my 4th go, not bad but hardly professional.  However, as I said, once on the jacket it probably won't look too bad and I will at least have some sort of an advert on me. So I am going to cut this one out and attach it to my old black jacket, now reduced to gardening coat and see if it will pass muster.

I might do some more and make them larger, I wonder if Bella fancies a couple of badges attached to her coat?

I just wanted to say thanks

It occured to me that I have not put much of my own embroidery onto this blog for a while and I wanted to thank you dear readers for sticking with me whilst I was decorating and broadcasting etc.  So I thought I would show you some of the embroidery I enjoy doing. I know some of you probably can't do this type of embroidery yourselves and so maybe mine will be an inspiration to you this year of 2010!

First up is a little piece I made which is a particular favourite of mine because it seemed to work out so well.

I took some artist's weight canvas and painted it with the blue silk paint you see for a background. then I took some silk paper I had made in shades of green with added pieces of white silk and cut a rectangle out of it. This gave me a framework with a shaggy outside and a good size rectangle for the inside. Onto this I appliquéd some pieces of fabric and some sheer pink organza and lastly I added 3 flowers I had made on my Janome embroidery only machine. I then added some pink fluffy Linton Tweed fibres taken from some material I had left over from them.  This was only the start. Next I placed all of this under my Bernina and started to embroider and it was stiff enough to not have to use any hoops, (the trick is to use strong artist's canvas for the background).  I usually do certain meander type doodles which seem to be my signature if you like and often add a large starburst, which you can see in the top right and bottom left corner in shiny pink. One more in the centre of the 3 flowers seemed to make the piece come together and that was that.

This next piece is much more complex but overall the idea was the same except I made 3 little fish on the Janome machine and cut one of them in two so that I could use the tail and the head to make it look as though more fish were swimming through the weeds.

I simply kept the silk paper loser and tucked the fish inside it here and there to give the illusion of depth. I also made some rather longer weeds down the left hand side by using some appliquéd threads and bits of ribbon.

Here you can see the idea I had about cutting one fish into two, it does mean I could get away with making less fish. I used the same type of machine embroidery techniques I described for the first piece but more densely.

This is the bottom of the piece and you can see I made a starfish and I worked more little scraps of fuzzy Linton Tweed fibres into the silk and teased it open here and there to push pieces inside so it gave the right impression.

Lastly, this is a more contemporary piece but still uses the artist's canvas only painted pale green, and onto it I dribbled some gutta percha in a sort of gold and let this set hard. Then I added sharp looking blocks of embroidered taffeta which I had cut into the shapes I needed after embroidering them. I attached these to the piece using machine embroidery and added a large swathe of  gold see through fabric across the front, as I wanted it to be bold. I embroidered it using my favourite glitzy threads from Madeira. This photo is just a detail of the centre area.

Well I do have more of this type of thing but I think you get the idea. I would add that I sometimes pad out the embroidery from the back before I frame it using quilters wadding and I never frame them  with glass over the top. I know they are more difficult to keep clean, but they do look better and if you just flick a duster carefully over them they seem to tolerate it very well. I love doing machine embroidery and I hope this has given you the confidence to have a go, it really is easier than it looks. You do not need to be an expert, just relax and play and let the needle do the drawing. Start by using appliquéd shapes or something if you feel your stitching does not stand up to close inspection and just couch them down around the edges with little swirls or lots of little circles joined with lines of stitching. Just keep trying and surprise yourself.

Machine embroidery tip

Sometimes you need to stand back from something and view it another way. Two ways of doing this are to 1. leave it a few days and go back with fresh 'eyes' and 2. to take a photo and then have a look at it instead. So given that a piece of machine embroidery I am working on needs accurate colours for water and sky, I decided to take a photo and placed some thread on it so that I could check the colours for suitability. (The piece is for the wall hanging and it is Catbells seen from Derwentwater.) This is the right side of the lake and I need to bring it to life with a bit of a shine so I am using Madeira embroidery thread. The left side has gone towards blue and I want to introduce a bit more green. It is never easy depicting water and the whole idea is that the lake should have movement, like ripples. So I have now 'auditioned' this thread as the Americans say! I know it seems to be a lot of trouble but you can't really unpick machine embroidery and sometimes you just have to go for it.....


The second problem is the sky, which at the moment is just painted on with silk paint, incidentally the fabric is a rough, tough calico. So this second photo should help me decide on the colours for the sky.

I need to bring a bit more tone into the composition too, but that can wait until I add some shading which is missing. So its more work on the Bernina this afternoon.

Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see a couple of photos from the felt making at Threlkeld last week. So here is a shot of some Nuno felt shown to us as an example of what could be achieved.

The photo below shows Marilyn explaining how to start treating the edges of the first felting so that they are straight.


It was a very good workshop but I could not stay to see what happened in the afternoon session, however, I did bump into Joan who said it had been very worthwhile. You can of course do so much with felt, and just to prove it, here is another picture of Marilyn's dog Holly, but this time the felted version. Isn't it cute!