dovegreyreader scribbles

The Hare and the Moon - A Calendar of Paintings ~ Catherine Hyde

I've admired Catherine Hyde's artwork for years, but without realising it via the cards that come from lovely friends on birthdays, high days and holidays with the beautiful pictures. I do usually look for the artist's name but it takes a while for their style to become familiar enough to be recognised.

And I have my favourites...

Anyone who drives into Cornwall will know the Nearly Home Trees...

Cookworthy Knapp on the A30 near Lifton. A small copse of  beech trees and a proper landmark that we all know and love.

But this could just as easily be us with the woods behind..

 

I had enough of a back-catalogue of memory for Catherine Hyde to recognise her work when I saw this book on a visit to the Elementum Gallery in Sherborne last autumn.

The Hare and the Moon, and as I saw it on the table my first thought was hares, because of that Paul Durcan poem about his father's spirit returning unexpectedly as a hare...

'I saw that his soul was a hare which was poised
In the long grass of his body, ears pricked.
It sprang toward me and halted and I wondered if it
Could hear me breathing...

I stood up to walk around his bed
Only to catch sight again of the hare of his soul
Springing out of the wood into the beach cove of sunlight
And I thought : Yes, that's how it is going to be from now on.
The hare of his soul always there, when I least expect it;
Popping up out of nowhere, sitting still.

The poem is included in the Candlestick Press pamphlet In Memoriam . They sent a copy to me after my dad died and I now try and send a copy to anyone I know who has been bereaved.

So with my resolve already weakening at the sight of a hare, as I opened The Hare and the Moon my next thought was ' If I see a barn owl I'm buying this'.

Well of course I saw a barn owl, they are one of Catherine Hyde's specialities...

But then I have the book and will it just sit on the coffee table for the occasional glance or does it have a greater purpose. The clue is in the title because this is a calendar, so I sat it on a bookstand on January 1st and decided to open the pages through the month, and each successive month through the year, because the book works like an almanac.

The names of the moons, a flower, tree and bird for every month, and a hare leaping across the page throughout the year...

"Waking from the winter solstice a hare begins her journey. Through the landscape and its changing seasons, moving in harmony with the moon. Atmospheric and gorgeous paintings show the hare running in January, watching in February, leaping in March until it comes full circle, sleeping in December. Twelve textless double-page paintings of the hare’s journey are accompanied by three full pages of art showing a tree, a flower and a bird for each month. This rich celebration of flora and fauna includes hawthorn and cowslips, swallows, blackbirds, buzzards and owls, harebells, holly, olive, Rowan, poppies and much more. Titbits of text – folklore, fairytale, myth and legend complimenting the art."

Who could know that 2020 would be the year it has...

When we saw in the new decade last New year's Eve did any of us imagine this...

We still step back occasionally and look at 2020 and ourselves with some incredulity...

At how we've adapted and accepted, and what a turning point this is, a first in our lifetime.

And then we all just get on with it...masks, being careful, following the rules, not putting anyone at risk, lending a helping hand where needed, being there for each other, and looking with such pleasure on The Hare and the Moon every time I walk in the room, and thinking could there have been a better year for such a book. Few words, but meaningful; enough to give me a thought for the day and ground me in the immutable, the things that won't change.

For October, The Hunters Moon, The Wild Moon, The Frosty Moon, The Thunder Moon, the Magpie, the Pomegranate and the myth of Demeter and Persephone. We’ve travelled through snowdrops and primroses, swallows and barn owls, a touchstone for all the things of permanence and year-on-year constancy. I’m looking forward to starting all over again in January.

 

I'm thinking there must be more books that would work in this way so all suggestions very welcome, but meanwhile this would be a fine addition to any wish-list for a forthcoming season of gifts (which I couldn't possibly name). But you know what we always say... give them a long enough lead-in time or you only have yourself to blame if you end up with the celebratory biography of the year.

 

Masks...

I’d put it off and put if off but to no avail, I’ve had to sit down and make some masks.

The Kayaker had sent me patterns and must have been on his tenth request for a mask, made with the fabric he had brought back from Africa in early March, before I capitulated.

Does that return from Africa seem like half a lifetime ago now...yes it does.

’Hold your breath when you land in Brussels,’ I had said...

‘ Why?’

I hadn’t liked to bother him with the finer details of what was heading our way, and after that initial visit on arriving back on March 6th we didn't see him for another twelve weeks.

For years he kayaked the White Nile in Uganda and had made many lifelong friends along the way. The village by the river is his second home, the people know and trust him, he knows and trusts them, all of which puts him in an ideal position to give something back and to know what might help them most. He’d been in Uganda for two months rolling out the project he’d been single-handedly raising money for over the last year. The Sleepwell Project had been a resounding success in the Acholi Quarters in Kampala and it really didn’t seem fair to taint the moment.

Here's the family that we supported by contributing a mattress, blanket and mosquito net. 

Reality soon hit home after landing at Heathrow, and I’m pleased to say the Kayaker took it very seriously and played by all the rules from his shared house in Plymouth, whilst raising more money to buy food for the people he'd just said goodbye to.and who were now in lockdown.  Lockdown in Uganda means something very different to lockdown here, and without work families simply can’t earn money to buy food. They have no savings, no back up, no NHS, no safety net. Watching this project unfold has given us a much-needed sense of perspective over the last few months.

The Kayaker also raised funds to pay one of the village seamstresses to make masks and they were beautiful.

Honestly, just look at them all...

Anyway, I pulled myself together and set to, and it's true, African fabric makes beautiful cheerful colourful masks and I could feel my spirits life as I matched the patterns and stitched.

Did anyone see Nicole’s incredible flamenco skirt on The Great British Sewing Bee a while back?

Wasn't it the most joyous and celebratory thing you have ever seen. I recognised the vibrant African waxed fabric designs instantly.

I was trying to think where this mask aversion might have originated, apart from the recent events that make them a necessity in certain places and situations now,  and I’ve traced it back to theatres as a student nurse. 

I did a theatre placement as a student nurse at Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital in Hackney and apart from the mask-wearing I loved it. It was smaller than Gt Ormond Street and more intimate. One surgeon and lots of opportunities to scrub for some really interesting operations. We would do on call which involved sleeping in a chintzy little bedroom next to the theatres and would be woken up at 3am to prepare for a baby in need of emergency surgery. We all knew our General Set of instruments by heart and would fire up the autoclave and have everything sterilised and ready, and it was all actually very exciting, but oh oh oh how we hated the masks.

I’m trying to think were they disposable or fabric tied on back in the 1970s?

I know just about everything in theatres was fabric and reusable, from our dresses and gowns to all the cloths used in surgery. Scrubs, as in trousers, were for surgeons not us and I'm sure we were all bare-legged because didn't tights risk a static spark...or have I made that up.

Whatever, the masks were awful, gave us spotty chins and we suffered. Why I then eventually decided to do my last three months at GOS in the main theatres, after qualifying as a staff nurse, remains an unfathomable mystery to this day. After a week, and having a top ENT surgeon throw a set of tonsils at me (my fault too slow), I bailed out and transferred to a ward, the metabolic unit, proper uniform, no masks, patients who were awake and the happiest few weeks of my hospital life.

The summer of 1976 and remember that tap dancing song Lullaby of Broadway?

It would start playing on the ward radio and we’d all grab a child and dance with them.

So anyway, that's me and masks and I'm just going to have to embrace it like everyone else.

Are you all masked up and ready too...

And what about The Great British Sewing Bee...

Hasn’t it been a cheery weekly feast for the eyes, and for me a very worthy winner took the trophy.

 

Cyanotype Sunday (and Monday)

Goodness me, June already. Didn't that predicted twelve weeks seem half a lifetime away when this all began in early March, and yet here we are. Summer has been upon us for weeks in the UK and what a blessing it has been. The garden is looking wild and very lovely, I'll take you on a walk round soon.

Last year I had a magnificent summer of indigo dyeing. So much so that I still haven’t used up all the fabric that resulted, but it’s a well known fact that blue is my favourite colour, so when the Kayaker sent me everything I would need to try cyanotype I couldn’t wait to have a go.

The process of exposing treated paper to sunlight dates from 1842, just three years after the first daguerreotype processes were described. It involves a bit of alchemy in the form of two chemicals which when mixed and applied to paper (or fabric) can then be used to create an image.

I did the mixing and painted some paper and fabrics and then read the next bit which involved allowing everything to dry in a dark place to stop it changing colour. Had I read that properly beforehand I would then not have been panicking and had to put it all in the larder. Once dry you expose the paper to the sun with whatever you wish to ‘take a picture of’ resting on top.

The paper instantly turns from lime green to grey and then a deep bronze colour and the magic starts to happen until eventually, after washing, the end result is the most perfect shade of Prussian Blue.

I quite like the in-between stages too so I need to experiment with exposure times.

There’s no arguing with Prussian Blue is there, really there can be no better colour and it deserves to be in capitals. 

I then got fairly ambitious. This is called running before you can walk, and not helped by sitting to watch the SpaceX dock with the International Space Station and forgetting all about my cluttered masterpiece roasting away in the sun. 

We had watched the SpaceX launch the day before with great excitement, all a wonderful reminder of that childhood Apollo addiction, so it had seemed only right to see Dragon crew safely there. By this time I was using a piece of glass on top of the cyanotype to hold everything in place, and this was all fair done to a crisp by the time I remembered it  

 
The Before Washing (below) was actually quite interesting too, so I really need to experiment some more...

As luck would have it, earlier in the week I had spent a day clearing out my potting shed and now realised it would make the perfect ‘dark room’, so I have painted up another batch of fabric, now drying in said 'dark room', because of course there's a quilt begging to be made (along with the others shouting to be finished). I'm thinking leaves and plants from around the garden...ivy, honesty, lady's mantle, so many lovely shapes to choose from, so that's me sorted for this week.

Update : I’ve had another day of experimenting...some metal stencils and leaves various...

 

But how about you...

Setting aside the things we all miss, have you also found yourself adapting...

Have any new crafts or hobbies jumped up and bitten you with a bout of enthusiasm...

Or have you sensibly done what I said I would do (but haven't) and completed the Great Unfinished...

 

 

 

 

 

The Knot Garden

Happy Stir-Up Sunday everyone. We're all supposed to be making C*******s puddings, though the day got its name from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer Collect for the Day, the last Sunday before Advent,  "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people". Yes and that too, but happy stirring.

On other fronts, whilst things haven't been frenetically productive in the completer-finisher aspects of the needlework department, I have been slowly making progress with my quilt group's 2019 Block of the Month project. This is as much about having 'things' for next year's exhibition as sharing a project, but the sharing bit has been lovely as once or twice a month we all sit around and stitch and natter and admire each other's efforts. I expect the exhibition to be spectacular because there are a fine crop of Knot Garden wall hangings in progress, every one different according to the maker's choice of fabrics and embellishments. The idea is that each piece provides an opportunity to try a different method of patchwork and quilting so in effect creating a sampler. For those that are new to the whole thing it's a challenge, for those that are old hands it's still a challenge....as you'll see.

My first decision was not to buy any new fabrics but to make from stash. There's the obvious thrifty sensible upside to that, matched by the poorly planned downside which means I've made just about every bit of this twice as I kept changing my mind about colours and overall effect. It's quite hard to visualise an endpoint and things kept looking generally wrong, or out of place until I got into my stride with the right palette. But no worries because I have listened to audio books various, mostly the first book of Lord of the Rings which I loved, and Wolf Hall for some revision before The Mirror & the Light next March. The latter is proving to be a revelation all over again, and I'm noticing all sorts of detail that I feel sure will be relevant in the final book, because Hilary Mantel is a writer who lays down a fleeting glance that pops its head up again, and perhaps this is even more noticeable in the audio version, superbly read by Simon Slater. He makes each voice instantly recognisable and the whole thing a pleasure to listen to whilst I stitch.

Anyway here are the Knot Garden components to date...

I messed about a lot for a while before eventually deciding to start with a whole piece of fabric (18" square, beige patterned) for the centre panel (green borders added) and applique my bits direct, rather than follow the instructions for four separate pieces that would then need to be joined around the paths and that centre circle. I know me and joining circular bits of fabric, we have history.

I appliqued the paths on twice because I didn't like my first choice of pseudo-gravel patterned fabric.

Then I appliqued green bias for my hedges which looked dreadful but didn't really announce its dreadfulness until I stuck the whole thing on my 'fleece' design wall and stepped back. So I unpicked it all and started again with the flowery fabric which I love.

The Cathedral Window corner was a joy to do, that's when the colours worked and I was on track and the sleeping fox crept in and settled down..

I have just unpicked and re-done the hexagon corner because I'd chosen something far to insipid and suddenly all these rich colours were appearing and felt right...

The Suffolk puffs have nearly driven me insane, I'm still sewing them on and I'm never doing them again...

And having battled to the death for a long evening with the clamshells it boiled down to me or them. I won and retreated to cheating with gathered circles that almost look like clamshells once they are overlapped. There's the fox again and maybe you can find the pheasant...

The centre piece according to the pattern is folded Somerset patchwork and that defeated me too. Well truth be told, it wasn't my thing, but I already had a centrepiece that I had made thirty or so years ago when I thought I'd make a Mariner's Compass quilt (>>>> wallhanging>>>> cushion>>> nothing). This fitted like it was meant to be, so I stitched it in place. Well could I get to to lay flat...no I couldn't, so I unpicked it (again), bound the circle with the bias, spray-starched the living daylights of out it and then appliqued the whole thing down and that has worked. 

Incidentally, my best discovery for piecing and applique thread has involved going to the dark side and using grey polyester Bottom Line. It doesn't melt under the iron and is almost invisible. 

Now for the surrounding border, the outer reaches of the Knot Garden. If you can imagine there will be an 'L' shaped piece on each corner and a different rectangular block at points north, south, east and west that's where I am now.

The foundation pieced Log Cabin diamond was a joy to make and I shall do more...

The Celtic block tripped along nicely too

It was just a shame about the Seminole which went every type of wrong and will have to be remade. Where did those gaps on the edge come from, and my quarter inch is far from accurate which definitely matters with this 8" x 4" piece.

And we haven't been given the fourth block yet but it looks a bit like a maze and might be cut and sew applique.

So there you have it. For all the mistakes and re-sewing I am really enjoying the process and the challenges and sharing that with others. We have to finish them by September 2020 so plenty of time (tell me that in August). 

Now over to you, any crafty activities going on...

Work in progress...

 

A 'Pleasing' Stitch-Up

It's the only way I could think to describe this week's dovegreyretreat / hibernation with thread, needles, audiobooks and fire-lit.

Bookhound was off on his pre-festive season travels across country to visit The Olds for a few days which left me home alone. Honestly, I try not to look excited at the prospect because I know there could come a time in life when being home alone becomes a reality for one or other of us, and that won't be exciting, but for now...well let's just say I treat it like a bit of a hunker down and a retreat from the world, especially in winter. I can be silent and focused and give way to extended episodes of flow without being conscious of everything else I really should be doing. Bookhound would argue I do that anyway, even when he's around (and he's right, I do), but somehow, when it's just me I can surrender to it completely.

I have to walk dogs and things, but even that becomes a mindful excursion up to our valley vantage point at the woods where I just stand and stare at a view that can hardly have changed in centuries....

Coming back down, the view on this frosty morning seemed so Month-in-the-Country it took my breath away...

And bless the man for leaving me a full log basket and a new batch of torches. It's proper dark here so we keep a torch by every door, but also to hand just in case the power goes off. It's rare but if its going to do it you can bet it will be when I'm here on my own. In the end I was pleased because BBC weatherman Ben Rich (Tavistock lad) pronounced a frost in the south west, so I was out in the greenhouse by torchlight covering up my cuttings and seedlings.

Anyway I lit the fire and went into semi-silent retreat for three days. I sometimes feel as if I talk far too much as it is, a few days of being quiet does me no harm at all.

With too many projects on the boil as usual I set about a few unfinished journal quilts. This has been a Pleasing I have relished this year; moments captured quickly  eventually in an A4 quilted piece.

I thought Armistice 100 was incredibly moving this year; watching the annual Festival of Remembrance from the Albert Hall, seeing the tide reclaim those sand pictures of the soldiers. We went to the Service of Remembrance in the town square in the morning and listened to the half-muffled peal afterwards, and then across to the village church (in the picture above) that evening. We all gathered to hear Last Post played from the top of St Mary's church tower (by a very brave villager, well done Pete if you are reading this) followed by a wonderful half hour of bell ringing. There are some pictures on the Instagram feed over here <<<<<< and some film footage too, in case you missed it and are interested, but the moment needed to be stitched into fabric too, as well as etched in my memory...

What did Edward Thomas write in his poem of 1915...

'The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle
In the naked frosty blue...'

There was a waxing crescent moon that evening, with Saturn clearly visible just below it in the night sky, so they were stitched on along with some stars. I sensibly looked up the right notes for Last Post before stitching them along the bottom, and added lots of berries to the yew trees in the churchyard because it has been a prolific year for them. 'Mast Year' were Robert Macfarlane's Words of the Day a few weeks ago...a year when across the country, trees are laden with nuts and berries, we've certainly just experienced one of those. I'm always in danger of over-gilding the lily with these things, so I stopped.

Talking of Robert Macfarlane, next up, while we all eagerly await his new book Underland (May 2019) I had an unfinished book jacket entry in the journal quilts. I am slowly adding in some of my favourites. I was fortunate enough to interview Rob at Port Eliot Festival about The Old Ways in 2012 and gave him a quilted map of one of the journeys in the book as a thank you.

The Old Ways was a favourite book then and it's become a treasured one now. I've read it and listened to it countless times and have copies various including battered old charity shop copy for my rucksack having given Offspringette my original rucksack copy full of under-linings, marginalia and quotes from elsewhere. Along with a copy of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd I thought it would be nice for her to add her own walking thoughts to it in New Zealand. 

 

I've taken a large slice of quilter's license with the cover design but, like The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, The Old Ways was a cover asking to be done.

That finished I turned my undivided attention to Cass by Rita Angus (signing herself as Rita Cook on this occasion). This was a painting I fell in love with in the Christchurch Art Gallery and went back to see it countless times...

Then visited Cass Station itself up on Arthur's Pass...

While I was in New Zealand I read a biography of Rita Angus borrowed from Christchurch Library, went and said goodbye to the painting and have been meaning to do a journal quilt of it ever since. A year on and I've at least made a start...

and within a day (and listening to The Distant Echo by Val McDermid) I have made good progress. I sort of make the stitches up as I go along but I need to be a bit more adventurous I think...

When I wasn't dog-walking or stitching I was knitting, but that's probably another whole episode in the story of the spontaneous dovegreyretreat which I can highly recommend for insurance against the winter doldrums. I could feel all that flow-related serotonin stacking up and emerged feeling as if I'd had a little holiday...one very great big Pleasing. Bookhound returned safely, there was a casserole in the oven and I was very pleased to see him.

Now how about your Pleasings... I hope there are good, nice things happening...

 

Clothkits is 50...

I’m sorry I just HAVE to inflict one more bout of nostalgia on  you before I cease and desist this self-indulgent behaviour (for a while) because how could I let the fiftieth birthday of the inimitable Clothkits pass by without mentioning it. The DIY clothes company where the pattern pieces were pre-printed onto the fabric and all you had to do was cut and sew.

Founded, I now discover, at a kitchen table in Lewes in Sussex in 1968 by Anne Kennedy, though really not a big part of my life until the 1980s. I suspect that decade might have been the company’s heyday and I certainly did my bit to aid their profits. The colour catalogue would arrive and there would always be something irresistible and completely reliable when you cut it out and stitched it together. Seams would match, patterns would match, the cotton would match, the buttons were their own, the instructions were crystal clear and the finished garment would fit, no messing. I was a devotee of their dungarees for grown-ups but the piece de resistance (or pieces) were the three padded jackets (farm and jungle designs as I recall) I made for three very delighted children; the ones with matching stuffed animals that fitted into specially designed pockets, and in our case attached by long ribbons.

There nestling in the pattern box I inherited from my mum were all the originals...

Now might be the moment to confess too that I made 'one or two' paper patterns from the Clothkits kits, but then I made patterns from everything from Mothercare and M&S too. A heinous practice and probably now a retrospectively imprisonable offence, but times were hard, interest rates on a mortgage were running at 17% and this was the era when childcare was sparse; none of the women in my circle of friends returned to work for several years after having babies. We were stay-at-home mums, careers forcibly on hold and existing on one salary. I'm hoping I can be forgiven. 

Bought out by Freeman’s catalogue in 1990, the Clothkits brand lay dormant until a revival in 2008 and I gather it is now up and running again and as strong as ever.

Go on then, I can't be the only one who loved them...

Happy Birthday Clothkits.

 

 

Petal Power : Floral Fashion and Women Designers at The Silver Studio 1910-1940

One of my favourite stopping-to-stare places when I am wandering around the Penlee House Museum and Gallery in Penzance is the display of Cryséde fabrics...

Designed in St Ives in the 1920s and 30s the fabrics seem suddenly timeless, and perhaps the inspiration for much of what I covet in clothing from Seasalt,  the Cornish-based company who are very much in the ascendant right now. I'm not sure I could face a winter without my Plant Hunter coat, whilst I have lived in my stripeys and skirts or my Coach House linen day dress this summer, and my Challah pinafore is already doing good service now the cooler weather is here. One piece per season is my treat and I take my time choosing it.

So with my interest in textiles and design always simmering I ordered a copy of this little book published by MODA (Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture), Petal Power : Floral Fashion and Women Designers at The Silver Studio 1910-1940, as the result of an Instagram post from Florence Knapp (aka flossieteacakes). Never let it be said social media doesn't have a place in book sales because, having spent some time on the trail of designers like Enid Marx this year, I would never have heard about this one otherwise. I am intrigued about the lives of other lesser known women using their artistic skills in the first half of the twentieth century.

Established in 1880 in Hammersmith, West London by Arthur Silver and taken over in 1901 by his son Rex, the Silver Studio employed many women as textile and wallpaper designers for clients who included Liberty & Co and Selfridges. The designers worked anonymously receiving no credit for their work and for very low wages, working for a stickler of a boss who certainly didn't mince his words when it came to demands, criticism or rejection of submitted designs.

It was fascinating to read that, at a time of limited career options for women, here was another route into work for those of artistic ability left unmarried or unsupported after the First World War. Whilst the male designers worked in the studio, the women had to work from home and were often sent a complex design brief but with no assurance of wages. Nor did the copyright belong to the artist or even the studio but to the buyer, who could then decide whether to put the design into production or not.

As Keren Protheroe elaborates, the work was very labour-intensive but not beyond the skills of the women, many of whom had received art school training and with it a sound foundation in drawing. With skills that were readily transferable to other mediums such as advertising and ceramics as well as calligraphy the women's versatility ensured ongoing work.

I was intrigued by the process of working in miniature before scaling up to a full-sized design all of which had to take into account colouring, re-colouring and pattern repeats, and the fact that scaling up could lose some of the 'prettiness' that Rex Silver was looking for. 

The book is just forty pages long but nicely illustrated with designs that evoke the era perfectly, and I saw plenty of iconic designs that I recognised. Women designers were assumed to be more in touch with the fabrics most likely to attract the female consumer and, as buyers for the large stores, were considered to have a commercial advantage over men in this respect.

Books about shops and shopping came to mind, Ladies Paradise by Emile Zola and High Wages by Dorothy Whipple,

' Shopping in department stores was central to the experience of fashionable modernity, whether it involved window shopping or actually purchasing. Swathes of fabric draped colourful shop-floor displays, and floral fabric could be bought by the yard for making up at home...Ready-to-wear clothing was readily available by the 1920s but wealthier women continued to employ designers and dressmakers.'

Mention of the department store and I wonder if you agree that you and I may be living through the era of its slow and tortuous demise. Long may John Lewis thrive, but both Plymouth and Exeter are to lose their House of Fraser stores (always known as Dingles) and Debenhams would seem to be on the ropes too. The hours my mum and I would spend in Grants and Allders in Croydon choosing fabric.

Does anyone remember Rose & Hubble in the early 1970s. I made plenty of these dresses and blouses with their floral designs...

Meanwhile Persephone Books have single-handedly increased our awareness of so many textile designs with their end papers, I even recognised this one in a tiny museum in Geraldine in New Zealand for goodness' sake...

So when I turned the page in Petal Power and saw this it immediately sent me to my shelves...

I'm not going to say which book features this design for a dress silk by Mrs McPherson, someone will know, but it was created in 1928 in the spirit of the French couturier and artistic-decorator Paul Poiret's Atelier Martine.and I recognised it as a Persephone end paper fabric instantly. And as Keren Protheroe says of these women...

'They represent the first generation of female designers to work directly with industry for large-scale textile production. Their careers helped pave the way for greater female influence in fabric design. Artistic sensibility, skilled draughtsmanship, and eye for the popular market allowed women to forge careers in the modern commercial world and become textile designers in their own right.'

And given that until now I had never heard of the Silver Studio, there was a timely coincidence as I sat down to write this...

The latest Biannually arrived from Persephone Books with news of their latest books and included the free bookmark. Mine was of the end paper for National Provincial by Lettice Cooper, of an early 1930's design for a woven cloth by John Churton for the Silver Studio.

 

 

Handywoman ~ Kate Davies

Firstly thank you to those of you out there who suggested that I must read Handywoman by Kate Davies. I have been following Kate Davies for several years, saw all the pre-publication publicity but had wondered whether I really wanted to read it. Well of course I did, I have and am filled to the brim with admiration and much-to-think-about since I turned the final page.

Now the non-knitters amongst you, and even the knitters amongst you who don’t move in online knitting circles like Ravelry might be wondering who Kate Davies is. 

In fact some of you might now be wondering what on earth Ravelry is...

To explain. Ravelry is a splendid online knitting community inhabited by many of us as a source of patterns and advice on all things woolly, and by gazillions more for camaraderie and a shared love of knitting. If you haven’t discovered it you might want to check it out; thousands of free or paid for patterns to download. You'll find me on there as Tamarsocks.

Kate Davies is an academic with a PhD in 18th century history which adds depth and insight to all of her writing. The knitting pattern books she has published come with thoughtful essays on things like lighthouses, and landscape, and the history of a garment and I always find them fascinating and informative. It was whilst walking to catch a train in Edinburgh seven years ago, that Kate felt the gun go off in her head before collapsing and finding her left side paralysed. After a traumatic misdiagnosis of stress-induced paralysis, Kate was eventually found to have suffered a stroke and spent the next six months in hospital re-learning much that she had previously taken for granted. There will be loss and grief, humility and elation, despair and exhaustion, revelation and determination, perception and discovery as Kate battles and confronts the demons of her post-stroke life, but she writes about it all with a narrative that both engaged and challenged me. 

Not least as a retired (thankfully) health professional and how disturbed I was to read of the differing attitudes of the staff and others involved when it was finally discovered that Kate's paralysis was not 'psychological' in origin, but a manifestation of an acute and life-threatening cerebral bleed caused by an un-diagnosed hole in her heart through which rogue clots had passed en route to her brain. Brusqueness and off hand irritation became attentive sympathetic caring. 

'Yesterday...I had been an over-achieving, attention-seeking hysteric. But today I was a tragic 36-year-old stroke victim... the right kind of patient.'

I can think back to situations I have been in as a nurse when those challenges have arisen. Working with mothers with post-natal depression was a big part of my working day and how well I remember one farming family who paid for a private brain scan for their daughter-in-law in the hope of finding that she had a brain tumour rather than a mental illness. Attitudes remain seriously entrenched and judgemental and Kate dissects and analyses her own experience with candour.

We say 'suffered a stroke', the words acknowledging the degree of seriousness, but I wonder how carefully anyone thinks about this sort of thing unless they, or someone they know has experienced it. It's a bit like us (but ultimately nothing like) and the recent Broken Leg experience. It took all our combined ingenuity and support to sort out the day-to-day needs of the Gamekeeper and his immobility. Kate and those around her had to figure out how best to support her in her recovery, and shining like a beacon throughout the book is her husband Tom. Patient, loving and supportive, and let's not forget Bruce the labrador...those of you who have followed Kate's blog will feel as if you already know them.

In the aftermath of this experience and the salvation and recovery that knitting facilitated, Kate has established a hugely successful knitting design business, published a selection of highly sought-after books and patterns and is now venturing into supplying wool and knitted garments. She has forged strong links within the knitting community who she praises to the hilt for their support and encouragement in recent years. 

Handywoman is a multi-faceted book with a useful guide at the beginning directing readers to chapters that they may find of most relevance depending on their interests and reasons for reading. Me, I've just read it cover to cover and been both humbled and amazed, neither of which, I suspect Kate will be impressed by given her claim that she has no wish to be 'an inspiration to others'. It is inevitable, like any book published and sent on its way into the world, that reader reactions are safely out of her hands, and we can all be inspired as much as we like, and I was.

Inspired to make the most of what I have been given...

Inspired to understand and work with limitations rather than fight them...

Inspired to be sheer bloody-minded should the need arise...

Inspired to reign in fear when it feels overwhelming...

Oh and so much more...

But above all inspired to get that flippin' Rams and Yowes blanket out of mothballs, overcome the Terror of the Steek and finish it. It's five years since I cast on the flock, it's almost at the halfway point, this whole unfinished thing is a disgrace and I must sort it...

 

I feel I have barely touched the sides of Handywoman (the book has a dedicated website here) and the depths it fathoms in this blog post, but I can commend it to the house unreservedly. There is wisdom, learning and encouragement herein and I for one will be dipping back into it on a regular basis.

Meanwhile...do you think it would an unforgivable sin of commission if I were to turn the Rams & Yowes into a really lovely cushion...

I mean just look, it's about the right size isn't it...

Wouldn't it look lovely...

Somehow I think I know what you're all going to say.

 

 

 

The 1718 Coverlet

 All this talk of vintage quilts with the papers intact had me ordering a new book I have just heard about ( An American Quilt - Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery by Rachel May, more of which soon) and sent me rummaging in the basement to revisit this post written three years ago. I’ve trimmed it down and updated it a bit....

The 1718 coverlet was bought at auction by The Quilter's Guild in 2000 having been 'in the possession of the Brown family of Aldbourne in Wiltshire until the time of its sale.' The Guild immediately embarked on a two year research and conservation project, the detailed results of which are recounted in a series of papers in the Quilt Studies Journal Issue 4/5 2002/3.

I didn't realise I had all that background available until the book arrived so it has been good marrying up and reading the two.

Susan Briscoe's book is a British 'Dear Jane' equivalent which is why I bought it, with patterns for the blocks arranged in a similar mosaic formation. 

The coverlet is the earliest known British pieced quilt with a date worked into the piece, and as well as detailed analysis of provenance, design, construction, fabrics, silks, cottons, dyes, stitching and the papers, there has been the intricate conservation project too. At 66 x 73 inches (169 cm x 185 cms) the coverlet is smaller than you might think given the intricacy of the 182 blocks from 69 designs (click on the picture to enlarge) 



The quilt was surface-cleaned with a low-powered vacuum, creased areas were re-shaped and relaxed and the entire surface was covered with a very fine mesh stitched into place around existing stitch lines.. imagine following in the stitches of the original maker. The 1718 Coverlet is now stored on a roll with a layer of acid-free tissue paper and kept in carefully monitored conditions.

Apparently conservationists estimate the amount of light an object like this can be exposed to annually at 150,000 lux hours (amount of light x time of exposure) and then carefully calibrate the time that is used up in photography and exhibiting. Clever stuff of which I knew nothing.

Quilts can be notoriously hard to date because we aren't the only people who have stashed fabrics for years before using them, or have cut up some old paper to use for the piecing, so there can be no assumptions. This 1718 quilt comes signed with the initials E H and is dated, along with papers still in place though sadly the name of the maker also remains elusive despite much combing of available local records.

More recent research dates the papers as a published speech on the subject of the Union of Scotland with England delivered to Parliament in 1707 ( Quilt Studies Journal Issue 9 - 2008) The social context of that alone is fascinating given recent referendums on Scottish Independence, but also that England, with a population of six million most of whom lived in rural areas, was recovering from the aftermath of the Civil War, the beheading of a king and the abolition of the Divine Right of Kings to rule.

By the time this quilt was dated George I was on the throne, Robert Walpole was the first Prime Minister, Parliament and democracy were finding their first feet, and an era of prosperity and stability was beckoning. The Industrial Revolution was sixty years away and life still centred on the village with its cluster of surrounding farms, and where travel was restricted by poor roads. Interestingly 1718 also the year that Britain decided on the transportation of criminals as an alternative to the death penalty.

It's not hard to look out of the window here in the Tamar Valley and begin to imagine the life.

How often must the researchers have wished the 1718 coverlet could talk...imagine the stories and the history stitched into this, but how well they have done to extract and piece together historically accurate details and possibilities. It all gives credence to the growth of quilt scholarship worldwide and in particular the history surrounding both the making and the textile production at a time of impending change.

The conclusions are that the coverlet was competently made by someone with the time and the ability to draft, cut and stitch, and with the inclination and the moderate wealth to do so, using silks, damasks and brocades as well as papers, all valuable and expensive commodities. Research reveals design marks, folding of paper to create shapes, numbering of the pieces and with the inclusion of some larger blocks there must have been careful pre-planning of the lay-out (been there, done it, found it doesn't fit) . Fabrics have been deciphered and analysed in the minutest detail, the dyes too. It is thought the blue could from locally grown woad given the lightness of shade, and remembering my indigo ramblings a while back that it is blue which will hold its colour best with age



Given the limited amount of time that this quilt can be handled and exhibited it was a canny move by the Quilter's Guild to create a replica that would reflect the original colours, and it is the results of that project that are available in this book.

Patterns for sixty-nine blocks numbered, drafted and ready to use, with helpful hints about fabric choices and construction methods whilst a modern technique sits alongside instructions for the original method.

It is all a huge achievement and this book an incredibly informative and useful addition to my shelves,

If you were lucky enough to see the 1718 coverlet at the recent Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, or have ever seen it, and before it heads into deep storage for ten years, I would love to know your impressions...

That and this...

Firstly a huge thank you for all the good wishes for the Gamekeeper and his broken leg (and us...me feeling like an emotional mother with a wounded chick and Bookhound walking eight gun dogs twice a day). You are always so generous with consolation and good advice. The surgery is done, the plaster stage by-passed for an air cast boot for the next eight weeks or so, and they are hoping to slowly increase the weight-bearing in that time.

Meanwhile I was delighted to manage a day out on Dartmoor with my Walking Friend last week. After ten days of Broken Leg I was up for some fresh air and space. We had opted for a gentle stroll out to Nun’s Cross Farm after considering and dismissing  the Staple Tors because neither of us fancied hills. We are supposed to be in ‘training’ for the annual walk out to Cranmere Pool next week, but at least we were moving.

Out we trekked, sat and had our snack at the farm and put the world to rights as usual, but on the way my mobile phone must have come into signal and it bleeped. I have it all set up with different sounds for different updates (text messages, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the ways various this family keeps in touch with each other around the world) but I can never remember which sound means what. Anyway it was a text message from Bookhound.

Now I’m sure Bookhound would be the first to admit that smartphone mobile phone technology is not really his thing, he yearns for an old Nokia and I have no doubt will revert to one soon.  ‘OK’ is about the limit of any reply to anything I send him, and a text message from him to me is about as rare as hen’s teeth, so of course when one arrives I’m immediately thinking ‘oh dear’. And then thinking there has been Another Disaster of some description, or a relapse in the one that has already happened, so it was with some trepidation that I stopped, rummaged in my rucksack for my glasses and opened the message.

Here it is...

 

 By a country mile it has to be the longest text message he’s ever sent.

He was full of it when I got home because, poor man, he’s heard of nothing else for weeks here, so to know that others are enthusing and addicted in equal measure helps no end. 

For those who might not know what fussy cutting is...well it's all about wasting vast amounts of fabric  cutting the same patterned section from the fabric for each piece to create another pattern, like this...

The variations are endless and quite exciting, and indeed Naomi Clarke was talking to Jenni Murray about the #fussycuttingsewalong that she had started on Instagram some time ago. I had already found it and was watching with huge interest, whilst marvelling at the power of social media to join up the seams and bring people together. When I think of the unimaginable trajectory of the internet since the early days of starting dovegreyreader in 2006, and how it feels more  important than ever to have calm oases of respite from the relentless nasty stuff that is out there, so my Instagram patchwork and quilting connections have become a daily source of inspiration.

All this talk of fussy cutting took me right back to the vintage quilt that Bookhound found in Tavistock Market back in the 1980s and bought for £10, so I’ve had a close look at it yet again this week.

We have no idea of the date or the provenance, but someone with the time, the paper and the fabric has worked incredibly hard on this and with the patience of Job. Each piece is ‘fussy cut’ which is an extremely extravagant use of precious fabric so they had access to plenty.

The papers are still in place and reveal intriguing copperplate writing practice and accounts...

The dilemma with a ‘possession’ like this is whether to hang it on the wall or keep it stored away because I somehow feel as though I am its current curator and have a duty of care towards it. It has done both, though currently stored in the blanket box. I was intrigued to hear that the 1718 coverlet, on display at Festival of Quilts and the oldest known English Paper pieced quilt in existence, is now going into deep storage for ten years to protect it from light. 

It has certainly been good to get my vintage hexagons out again and have yet another closer look, at the fabrics, the stitches, the papers, the design, because as if you couldn’t guess, of course I have made a start on the 'Moncarapacho' millefiori quilt that has been calling to me..

In the end I caved and translated a bit of eBay selling good fortune into a complete set of the pre-cut papers and templates from the US.

My first rosette is pieced with its fussy cut middle and I have a few more ready to go...

It’s addictive and it needs to be if I'm to achieve this...

Baltimore Beauties and Beyond...

Since the day I first set eyes on Ellie Sienkiewicz's book, Baltimore Beauties and Beyond, I have been at one with Baltimore quilts. The trouble is every one I have started has ended up as a wall-hanging, gifts or cushions so I still have nothing remotely quilt-sized to show for the love.

But we have been in quilting clover down here in the south west in recent weeks, culminating in a stunning exhibition of Baltimore quilts at Cowslip Workshops over the last ten days which ended with a very special day on Saturday. American quilter Pat Cox, had loaned her quilts for the exhibition along with others, and the Quilter's Guild held a day of celebration for Pat's outstanding contribution to quilting. Pat, now in her eighties, is a regular trans-Atlantic traveller having taught classes and workshops here in the UK for the last twenty years, and many of the quilts made by those who had been taught be her were also exhibited. There was so much love and gratitude for Pat in the exhibition barn at Cowslip...it was all very emotional for many.

The quilts were breathtaking, little wonder that Bookhound and I visited the exhibition twice to get a really close look, and then a closer look, especially at this...

Pat Cox's tribute to Quaker quilt maker Mary Brown. Here some details about the original..

Often the impact of a quilt from a distance can be greater than up close, but not in this case. I'm not sure I have ever seen such hand-stitched perfection...

Pat also gave a demonstration of her needle-turned applique technique which was sensibly projected onto a screen so we could all see...

There was a lovely moment at the end when Pat, and her good friend UK quilter Barbara Chainey, stood by her quilt for photographs...'Point at a flower,' someone said to Pat...

There was another lovely moment for me too because during our first visit Bookhound and I had spotted this quilt...

It was so striking we took a closer look...beautifully pieced and hand-quilted, as was so much else in this exhibition.

As many of you will remember the Tinker (my dad) was on the Arctic Convoys, so I was delighted to meet Kathleen on Saturday and had a fascinating chat with her. Sadly her husband, an Anglican priest, didn't live long enough to receive his Arctic Convoy medals, but he and Kathleen did travel to Russia in the 1980s where they were formally thanked by the Russian government and people.

Kathleen showed me the label on the back of her quilt (quilt labels are so important) and with the No Touch rule, as at all quilt exhibitions, it is something I would otherwise have missed. Such a wonderful tribute to her husband and to all who served.

I come home from events like this with my Inspiration Batteries topped up and raring to go, so, following a couple more bookish posts this week it will be a bit quiet for books etc on here through August  I'll save them for September when you are all back from your summer holidays and expect September to be busy on here too...

The Village Show (8th) 

The Goosey Quilter's Exhibition in Tavistock Town Hall ( 13th - 15th)

And I will be posting from the Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival (19th-23rd) who have a splendid and very exciting line up this year including a workshop with Hilary Mantel.

So expect the occasional gallimaufry with pictures of Works in Progress etc. This from she who says she is absolutely not going to start anything new, and is absolutely going to finish off all the unfinished projects by the end of the year....

To that end I have already been working on this..

And please talk me out of even thinking about embarking on an English paper-pieced Millefiori wall-hanging because I have fallen hopelessly in love with Willyne Hammerstein's book and I'm on the brink I tell you...right on the edge... peak tipping point...

 

 

 

 

 

A Postcard to Myself...

There was a small story behind this...

It was several months ago that the quilt group announced this year's Summer Challenge, to Make a Postcard, and I knew instantly where I was going to look for my fabrics and what I wanted to do...

When I take the lid off the Liberty box (that Bookhound found in a charity shop), it's all a bit of a muddle and a mess. No tidily folded pieces in here, I dive in and out on a whim and always find the right thing because that's Tana Lawn for you...

And I knew exactly what I wanted to make.... 

In 1988 or so I bailed out of the NHS for a few years when the children were small. My emotional teflon coating was far too permeable. I had been Paediatric Liaison Health Visitor for Plymouth Hospitals, keeping the health visitors in the community informed about the children in hospital, providing support to parents during admission, liaising with the various medical teams and facilitating discharge home if it was complicated (you have no idea what was involved in getting a baby home on oxygen in 1988). Having left I had to think of something to do in the meantime...

Bookhound was busy with the interior design business and had lovely premises in Church Lane in Tavistock and there was this really nice room upstairs...

'I think I'll open a quilt shop' I declared one day, with the courage and bravado that it would work and anything was better than the NHS at that time in my life, so we set about decorating and stocking The Quilt Loft, advertising beginners and intermediate patchwork classes that I would teach alongside the friend who is now my Walking Friend, and off we went on this incredible frolic of fabric, notions and stitching joy.

Quilting was just beginning to go mainstream, but it was early pre-internet days and sourcing books and fabrics was still a challenge, so we bought a great deal direct from the US. An American friend opened an account for us at G Street Fabrics in Maryland and would buy us short runs of beautiful fabrics not available elsewhere in the UK. I also had a wonderful rapport with 'That Patchwork Place' who published some of the best quilting books back in the early days and huge boxes would arrive from the US. We soon had sixty people a week coming to classes with a goodly percentage of them NHS friends in need of a relaxing hobby and a bit of respite, and for a few years it was a wonderful adventure before I felt ready to pick up the reins of my career again.

I'd drop children off at school and nursery, open the shop, put my board out on the lane and we'd be off...

One of the highlights of The Quilt Loft was the Liberty of London account. These were not handed out readily so it was an interview with the rep first before approval, and then the bolts of Tana Lawn arrived.

Can you imagine what this was like..

Surely I wouldn't have to sell these...couldn't I keep them.

In the end I did keep odds and ends of those first fabrics, and it is those I decided to use in the Make a Postcard challenge. Making that little piece has been like sending a postcard to myself from a previous life; each fabric design etched in my memory along with memories of busy contentment and very happy times.

For the quilty-techs among you I used 1/2 inch hexagons pieced over pre-cut hexaform shapes from Devon-based Ashmead Designs . I bought some to try and love them, especially for the fact that you leave them in place. Whilst the finished result is slightly stiffer than papers they do stitch very easily and very exactly. Not right for every project but perfect for this one.

But who sends a postcard to themselves, and so, as is the life of these things, a friend saw this under construction on my table and I thought she quite liked it...so in the end the Postcard to Myself became a Birthday Card For a Friend, and it found a new forever home because I think there is as much pleasure as giving these things as there is in the making of them.

And for anyone coming to Tavistock now, if you sit upstairs in Cafe Liaison at 3 Church Lane, don't forget that a lot of very beautiful quilts were made up there, and I have an amazing Long-Arm-Of-Coincidence story about one of them coming up soon.

 

 

English Paper Piecing ~ Florence Knapp

It is a long time since I fell in love with English paper piecing, indeed for a long time I thought it was the only form of patchwork in existence. Hand stitch the fabrics over papers, stitch the papers together, five years later a cot quilt still isn't ready for the baby who is now about to start school and dare I say, this one still isn't finished for the baby who is now thirty-five....

But I have at least finished this tiny postcard-sized piece (each hexagon not much bigger than a 5p piece) which has gone to a lovely friend for her birthday today.

It is rare that I write about a patchwork book here. I have hundreds of them, accumulated over years of stitching and the years of running a quilt shop, when Bookhound suggested I keep one copy of every book we stocked. Surprisingly (for me) I couldn’t see the point at the time, but I did keep them and how grateful I am for the idea, because I now have a wonderful archive of patterns and inspiration from the 1980s when patchwork and quilting was finding its place in people’s hearts again after an extended sojourn out on the margins.

I buy very few patchwork books now (apart from those by Di Ford, Yoko Saito ) so it was a lovely surprise when an advanced copy of English Paper Piecing by Florence Knapp (who blogs as Flossie Teacakes) arrived. It had actually been sent to the Kayaker because he had given permission for one of his images to be used; this one of Tracy Chevalier during our conversation at Port Eliot Festival a few years ago.

Needless to say the book rapidly found its way into the right hands...mine.

To my knowledge, books on English paper piecing have been in the minority, though a few have surfaced in recent years thanks to a resurgence in what many have always considered a bit of a time-consuming route to a quilt when you can knock one up on a sewing machine in a day. But Florence Knapp’s book is in the minority in other ways too. English Paper Piecing is not just a ‘How-to’ book, it is something far better than that, it is an intelligent, fully referenced, evidence-based examination of the benefits of mindful sewing. It is a ‘Why-to’ book too and one I have read and re-read, cover-to-cover, several times already.

Now, those of us that do it are fully aware of the benefits. We’ve known it since the day we started sewing. That it is calming and soothing, that we can disappear into a project for hours, forget the world and emerge blinking into the daylight, hours later, barely remembering what day it is, but it it is still fascinating to discover that research now backs up those experiences.

Florence Knapp, in a series of essays, presents and examines the evidence cogently and convincingly.  I was fascinated by the research on Flow. This is the total involvement in a project that leaves few if any of the brain’s resources free to worry about other things,  Evidence shows that hand sewing, of all the crafts, reduces blood pressure and heart rate and increases serotonin levels the most. Flow can be the key to human happiness, creating order in chaos and providing comfort at difficult times. And an interesting quote from psychologist Loretta Breuning resonated...

’We are hard-wired to care about the legacy we leave and that doing so increases our happiness.’

I have summarised briefly, but Florence offers deeper insights in her series of essays, as well as addressing, in some detail, the struggles, the self-criticism, finding motivation and embracing imperfections that many of us may have faced up to in our stitching lives. There are essays on Fine Cell Work, Tracy Chevalier, Lucy Boston (remembering my trip to meet Diana Boston at Hemingford Grey) along with interviews with a series of quilters, before the ‘How to’ section of the book which I walked into feeling calm and ready to learn. The fact that I have been English paper piecing all my sewing life made no difference, there are always new things to discover and I had immediately ordered the recommended Clover Dome Needle Case, which you load with ten needles, ready-threaded for stitching on the move (don't ask me how it works but it does) and which seems like a genius invention to me. 

Safe storage of needles, making what Florence calls the 'inherent portability' of English paper piecing a much easier prospect. I can't be the only one who has tried to thread a needle in a moving car/train and given up.

I have also been delighted with the Straw (Milliner's) needles recommended for EPP, and then there’s the polyester thread...

POLYESTER THREAD!! ME??

How can this be...

Where did my aversion for it come from?

Was cotton an entrenched state of mind, something about being an old-fashioned purist...

Weren’t dire warnings issued about polyester thread making mincemeat of the fabric over the course of time...

About never using it in your sewing machine because the machine would die a slow, tortuous and painful death and be irretrievably damaged...

Didn’t it used to dissolve at the mere sight of a hot iron for pressing...

Truthfully, polyester thread was the spawn of the devil, but times and attitudes, and the thread itself, have changed. I can still hardly believe that I have crossed to the dark side and bought a reel of grey Superior Threads ‘Bottom Line’ for hand-Piecing because Florence said to.

I’ve had my moments with it I can tell you. I’ve had to adjust the way I hold thread in tension because it cuts into my little finger, and I was grateful for Florence’s nifty idea about knotting it at the eye of the needle to stop it slipping and un-threading. But I have to confess that it sews like a dream...small stitches that sink invisibly into the seam and it never ever knots, and these John James straw (milliners) needles, just slightly longer than the average are a revelation.

Is anyone else still doing English paper piecing...

Does the theory of Flow resonate with you...

Has anyone else still not finished something thirty-five years later...

 

 

'Dartmoor a Wild & Wondrous Region' ~ RAMM, Exeter & I buy a book....

I think it's time we went to another art exhibition, you can't get enough of them at this time of year.

The word on the street was that Waterstones, Exeter was much improved and worth a visit, so Bookhound and I set off one rainy day to take in the exhibition 'Dartmoor a Wild and Wondrous Region' at the RAMM (Royal Albert Memorial Museum) and a sojourn in Waterstones while we were in the city.

Plymouth Art Gallery and Museum is currently closed for two years whilst undergoing major refurbishment and expansion and we are missing it, though a revamp (especially the cafe and shop) is long overdue. It's a place full of lovely memories of life in Plymouth when we moved there to live in 1976, and ever thereafter we have nipped in for a wander when nearby. Bookhound was at art college next door, I was doing my heath visitor training over the road at the (then) Polytechnic, and he would go into the art gallery and museum and sketch.

To this day, every time we drive or walk past one of us will start the conversation we had one day back then, and the other will finish it...

Me : 'Shall we go in the museum?'

Bookhound (in all innocence) : 'No, there's nothing new in there...' 

Ah, that's forty -two years of married life for you.

We have often looked fondly on the increasingly moth-eaten stuffed squirrel climbing a tree in its glass case. Bookhound did a watercolour painting of it which we had framed back in the day, I'll be upset if it's been pensioned off when the place re-opens. And it's always good to have a gaze at Scott's Antarctic skis and just imagine, or take in the sheer size of  A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach by Stanhope Forbes. The latter on 'holiday' down at the Penlee Gallery in Penzance last we saw it, and who knows where the skis are. 

Anyway we did the exhibition in Exeter and it was grand.

As brooding and atmospheric as we had hoped, and as the place can be at any time of year..

 

Moorland Scene ~ FJ Widgery (1861-1942) c. RAMM, Exeter

 

We walked out to Nun's Cross Farm last week; in my mind's eye the colour palette seemed to mirror the exhibition we had seen...

It was dark and grey and threatening snow so we took a safe trail that wouldn't land us in trouble...

It was interesting to compare the walks we do now, with maps, compass, flasks, food and good walking kit plus safety gear, with those vistas portrayed in the pictures. The limited definitive locations of the 18th and early 19th century a clue to the inaccessibility of Dartmoor for artists with no access to any of the luxuries of today. Lustleigh Cleave and Lydford Gorge prevailed, but plenty of generic Dartmoor scenes to engage the senses too..

Lydford Waterfall ~ Richard Wilson (c1771)

There was some newer work alongside, and I was completely smitten by this painting by an artist who is new to me but who I must now investigate...

Dartmoor 1974 - Edward Burra (1905-1976)

And this, from 1913, caught my eye...

Clayhidon ~ Charles Ginner (1878-1952) Oil on canvas 1913 (c. RAMM Exeter)

 

If you are heading west the Exeter exhibition is on until 1 April, entrance is free and I can recommend the museum cafe.

I can also recommend the new-look Exeter Waterstones (there are two, this is the one near John Lewis) and feel that we finally have a bookshop approaching my personal acceptable norm for stock selection and comfort. This is not to neglect our smaller independents which I support too, but sometimes I need space and choice.

I sauntered in while Bookhound did his antique shop run. Find me in an hour or too I said...

I had a single book in mind, and as I walked into the shop there were just two signed copies left on the table, where clearly there had been many more. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to invest in this much-hyped book or not, but if I don't read it I can't have an opinion, so my plan had been to tuck myself away in a corner and read the first chapter or two. Before I could blink one copy had gone so I grabbed the last one and settled down. Waterstones, Exeter seem to be encouraging this now; signs suggesting I could take my cup of tea and potential purchases and sit in the new and up-sized cafe, or at one of the many tables sited around the shop. I don't really need permission but it's nice to have it.

By the time Bookhound found me I was fifty pages in and had already bought the book because people were starting to stare at it covetously. If the money hadn't been running out on the parking I might still have been sat there, and the next three days were completely consumed by it.

Watch this space...

Preserving the memories...the Christmas gift

Though I didn't visit Lake Hawea on this recent trip to New Zealand, it is a place that holds many memories of a special day on my last trip in 2016.

Four days of wilderness camping and we trundled into a cabin at Lake Hawea for a bath and to do our washing. I had discovered that actually my hair dries perfectly well without a hair dryer which was a bit of a revelation, but the love hadn't died, I was still pleased to see one again. We swam in the lake, in water so blue I will never forget it  and also because I keep this picture as my screen saver. I dive in here every day.

When I arrived home in 2016 I made a wall-hanging using a template from Euro-JapanLinks, called it Lake Hawea, and quilted all the memories into it.

Well I arrive home from my second trip at the end of October 2017 and we are well along with November before I am the right way up again and think to ask Offspringette what she would like for Christmas. An Organised Person would have asked this in July and taken it all out with her. Thinking it will be something useful (as in useful = easy) I am ambushed by something much better...

'Well, Mum...do you know what I'd really like... a wall-hanging of a place we've been to together...'

'What, like this one...' I said as I turned the camera on Lake Hawea.

Cue raptures in New Zealand, cue panic in Devon as I envisage the last posting date just two weeks away. 

I decided to use some of my own Shibori-dyed fabric for the sky, and now I look at it I can see the potential for braided rivers too. More haste, less speed, I cut one whole lot of mountains wrong and had to ditch them (memo to self: always check you are ironing freezer paper on top for the hand-applique and not bondaweb) and start over. That would normally have had me weeping with much gnashing of teeth...no time...get over it and crack on.

The sky utilises Arashi Shibori. A tube of fabric is wedged and scrunched down tightly around a length of drainpipe before being immersed in the dye vat and the effect was one of my favourites.

Look at that green turning indigo when it hits the air...

And can you believe the perfectly lovely gorgeousness of the finished colour and the patterning . Proper job and seeing that again inspires me to get my indigo vat going again in the spring...

The sky was a dream to quilt with those flowing lines to follow. I used some multi-coloured (blue and white) Japanese Sashiko thread (thicker than normal thread) which worked itself into the whole beautifully...

I added a little cabin by the lake, because my goodness were we pleased to see it that day, and quilted walking trails and all sorts of little extras all over the mountains.

The little ceramic house button came from Injabulo though I haven't seen them in stock there for a while now.

And I used some vintage Japanese kimono fabric for the backing.

There was a lot of midnight and early morning oil burned in the making of this I can tell you, and then you hold your breath waiting for the parcel to arrive safely. We watched Lake Hawea  being opened at 9pm on our Christmas Eve (their Christmas morning) in its new forever home. It was a happy teary moment and with memories of special days.

 

 

 

 

Making Winter - A Creative Guide for Surviving the Winter Months ~ Emma Mitchell

After two long-haul flights and those wonderfully uplifting visits to stay with Offspringette in New Zealand, one of many things I have learned is that no matter how much I love home, the saying goodbye, the long journey and the settling back down again needs careful thought and preparation. It takes me about a month to feel the right way up again.

Last year I had experienced high summer and came back to England for February. It was dark, cold and the prolonged impact of the jet-lag took me by surprise. I was felled by a stinking cough and cold and didn’t feel right for weeks. Luckily I had booked some craft courses for late spring (indigo dyeing at Cowslip Workshops and appliqué pictures with Janet Bolton) so I had things to look forward to, but it was hard, really hard and I wasn’t quite as prepared as I could have been, so this time I thought this aspect through more carefully.

This visit I enjoyed spring. The light and the colour and especially the blossom. I haven't taken you around the Botanic Gardens yet, I'm saving it for deepest darkest January (for us N.Hemisphere souls)

..and I planned the flights so that I would be coming back into daylight rather than darkness from Singapore leaving at 9am rather than midnight, hence the wonderful views over Afghanistan...

I knew that the jet-lag would descend so I had knitting and audio books at the ready and my thanks to Philip Pullman for The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage.

I had excursions and meet-ups with friends in the diary...

I had plans in my head for the garden and getting it ready for winter...

And plans in my head for my January craft projects because making has always been my method for getting through those months when all my family bereavements have happened and it only takes the colour and heft of the skies to remind me.

And to assist with all of this I had Emma Mitchell’s new book Making Winter - A Creative Guide for Surviving the Winter Months on pre-order and waiting for me when I arrived home.

If you don’t already know of Emma Mitchell then I urge you to seek her out. As Silver Pebble Emma has created a huge online following with her exquisite nature diary photographs on Instagram and her lively and honest voice on Twitter. Emma also makes this intriguing and very beautiful jewellery from silver clay...

’Silver clay is an astonishing substance, made from the finely ground silver recovered from the printed circuit boards within broken electrical devices.’

I had never heard of it until I started  following Emma’s work but I am smitten by this alchemy and can’t wait to try it out. Pressing leaves into the clay and some firing (I’ve left out a few stages along the way, but it seems very doable at home and without a kiln) plunge the object into water and polish it off and the transformation begins to reveal a unique and special piece of silver jewellery.

Making Winter is a cornucopia of sage advice and inspiration. With referenced pieces on the proven benefits of craft activities on serotonin levels I have been really impressed with the solid theory behind the book. This isn’t just another book of recipes and things to make that are nice, it’s a book as therapy  and should be available on prescription. I was a Nurse Prescriber, I'd have ditched the entire British National Formulary and dished out Making Winter  prn (as necessary) instead and saved the NHS a fortune.

I had always wanted to start a knitting or quilting group for mums with post-natal depression back in my health visitor days. I’d already had my time out of the NHS teaching patchwork and quilting when the children were small (anyone remember The Quilt Loft in Tavistock...it was a moment in my life) and run classes teeming with working people who were desperate for some distractions from the stresses of their jobs (and a lot from the NHS including a surgeon whose stitches were the tiniest I had ever seen) so I knew the benefits. But trying to do anything innovative in a cash-strapped NHS without the foundation of a strong evidence-base was impossible so it never happened. But the evidence is there now and Emma quotes it and uses it wisely in her book.

‘There is evidence that the sight of yellow and red trigger mood-boosting changes in our neuro-transmitters, so it is little wonder that many people experience less join de vivre in the winter months...’

This might be why I unwittingly bought the Knit Angel some dazzling red and yellow wool back from New Zealand for her late October birthday and can you believe she had crocheted it into the most elegant wrap within days.

I love Emma’s idea that a visit to the wool shop, with its beautiful skeins and dazzling array of colours can become ‘the vivid flowering meadow of winter’ akin to a ‘walk around a sun-drenched garden in full bloom in summer’ and with the helpful bursts of neurotransmitters to accompany.

We just knew it didn’t we, but now we have the evidence to prove it. Woolshops are good for you.

I haven’t told you yet about my whistle-stop turn around the Ashford Spinning Shop in New Zealand. Home of the famous Ashford Wheel. The shop had just closed for the day but they took pity and let us in for a dash around

Like many of us Emma is now discovering that her anecdotal findings are being backed up by scientific research..

‘It seems that yarncraft can lead to a relaxation or meditation-like response similar to the induced by yoga, and one study has shown that meditation increases the levels of dopamine, Another neuro-transmitter that is associated with elevated mood.’

And didn’t I just know it but couldn’t prove it...

’Knitting leads to improved feelings of well-being and this effect is markedly increased when it takes place within a group of people.’

I’m sure the same could be said for quilting.

Making Winter is chock-full of ideas and inspiration and crochet...

And of course crochet is my downfall because I’ve never mastered it...yet.

Yes, I know...go to Attic 24 and learn for goodness’ sake woman. I will.

But meanwhile there is preserving leaves in glycerine to be done and Blackberry and Almond Streusel Cake to be baked and feathers to be drawn and nature walks to do with collecting along the way.

I’ve already tried the 5-minute Chocolate Fondant in a Mug (8/10 for my effort, no double cream in the house for the gooey bit in the middle) and made a Winter Woodland Wreath from some gatherings on one of my walks along with making  a big pile of autumn out on the lane one day...

 The Teasels are picked and adorning the storm porch...

Pending the crochet eureka moment the knitting is on the go because having been allowed into the Ashford Spinning Shop, even though it had just closed, it seemed incumbent on me to buy some wool and this hand-spun, hand-dyed skein leapt into my arms and onto the needles.

In my sights the Hedgerow Bird Snacks and the Apple and Caramel Chelsea Buns.

Apart from the fact that Making Winter is a book to have on my own shelf, it also feels like a book that fulfils Robert Macfarlane’s idea of the book as gift in his little book The Gifts of Reading...

'that the gift can be transformative and that the act of giving encourages the onward circulation of generosity.'

Making Winter is book to give to a friend who might be challenged by the Winter grey or in need of distraction from something else, or in need of soothing through difficult times, or even the book to give yourself. I’ve turned to it over and again in recent weeks, and each time I think I don’t really want to to walk up to the woods on that grey dull gloomy day I take myself off out there and always within five minutes I am singing and the sky seems much brighter..

‘Suddenly the walk is transformed into something pleasantly medicinal, shifting your neurotransmitter dial towards joy.’

But now I'm interested and I'm sure you all have plenty more ideas for your own ways of  Making Winter too, so please do share them...

What sees you through the shorter darker days... 

 

 

 

You are allowed...

...just the one guess...

Oh alright then here's another clue ... 

 

Stanhope Forbes : Father of the Newlyn School

Our summer is racing away with us so Bookhound and I need to get a wriggle on and see everything we want to see before the rest of the world arrives for some well-earned rest and respite from the rest of the world. To that end we headed off to the Penlee House Gallery in Penzance for their latest exhibition, Stanhope Forbes : Father of the Newlyn School (on until 9 September 2017). On a good day it takes us about ninety minutes to reach Penzance, on a mid-summer tourist day we would turn round and come home again before we'd reached Launceston.

In keeping with our new rule we take a packed lunch and spend the lunch money on the catalogue...good economic strategy eh... though we did allow ourselves coffee and cake because there have to be some treats in life.

Born in Dublin in 1857, Stanhope Forbes arrived in Newlyn in 1884 intent on setting up an artistic community. Like many creatives of the day he had studied in Paris, settling for a while in Brittany but ,having decided that French subjects weren't going to sell well, Stanhope Forbes set off for Cornwall in search of an ideal location. Falmouth, Helston, Portleven, Penzance and thence to Newlyn where he found rooms and a studio for fifteen shillings a week, plenty of attractive models and ideal locations down the narrow cobbled streets, along the quayside and, with the fishing industry as a backdrop, many of his most iconic paintings emerged.

We have loved Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach for as long as we have lived down here, the picture for many years prominently displayed in Plymouth Museum and now on extended loan to Penlee House so it was no surprise to see it at this exhibition...

We tend to say 'ahh there it is,' whenever we see Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach, as if it's ours, just unhooked from the sitting room wall and generously loaned by us for everyone else to enjoy. That sense of ownership feels like one of the hidden glories of our art galleries and museums, especially those we revisit frequently. This one of the first pictures that Stanhope Forbes painted on his arrival in Newlyn...

' Anything more beautiful than this beach at low water I never saw and I can only paint figures against such a background as this shining mirror-like shore makes, the result should be effective...got blown about and rained upon, my model fainted...'

Welcome to the South West Stanhope.

However in amongst the familiar were the new; pictures generously loaned from private collections that we had never seen before, and as the years progressed how fascinating it was to see the colours lift, the hem lines shrinking, life changing..

The Pond, 1930 Newport Museum & Art Gallery

...as the exhibition traced Stanhope Forbes painting out of the Victorian era, into the Edwardian and thence into the early years of the Second World War. I'm not sure I had really appreciated the vast time span of his creative career before.

Village Rendezvous, Copperhouse Creek 1938 ( Plymouth City Council) 

Frank Johns, the little boy in the blue shirt who sat for this painting, remembers Stanhope Forbes 'paying the children 6d, provided that they turn up again the following week for a second sitting.'

There were too many new favourites to mention them all...

The Harbour Window (1910) (Royal Academy of Arts, London) 

This is Annie Blewett, painted in the upstairs window of The Ship Inn, Mousehole (say Mowzell if you want to be proper job Cornish) and is Stanhope Forbes's diploma painting that would gain him Associate Membership of the Royal Academy in 1911.

 

Causewayhead, Penzance 1943 (Private Collection)

An idyllic summer street scene in a Cornish town carefully punctuated by reminders that this is wartime.

There was sadness too. Stanhope Forbes had been devastated first by the death of his wife, Canadian artist Elizabeth (Armstrong) in 1912 who he had meet soon after his arrival in Newlyn; this one of her most well-known pictures and perhaps familiar to some of you...

School is Out  1889 ~ Elizabeth Forbes (Penlee Gallery)

...and then by the loss of the couple's only son Alec in September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme.

A Portrait of My Son Alec in Uniform, 1916  (The Stephenson Family )

The portrait is full of poignancy, added to by the exhibition notes which reveal that Alec had sat for the painting during a visit home the previous Christmas...letters to and from the Front reveal that his father was working on the painting and was very pleased with it. 

I have just turned the final page of Where the Poppies Blow The British Soldier, Nature, The Great War by John Lewis- Stempel and the book has really surprised me. I was beginning to think I might have read all I wanted to about the First World War and then along comes a book like this which offers a completely new perspective. I can't recommend it highly enough and I'm so pleased that someone reminded me of that incredible nationwide event on the anniversary of the Somme on July 1st last year. The one that was kept a huge secret, did anyone else see and hear the ghost soldiers...

As always, at exhibitions like this a new favourite painting emerges and this one might be new to everyone.

Christmas Eve 1897 (on the right in this catalogue picture)

In the ownership of the Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton and Hove, Christmas Eve 1897 was seriously damaged whilst in storage in Brighton's aquarium during the Second World War (I'm thinking damp might have been an issue). Both Penlee House and the Royal Pavilion & Museums have funded its conservation especially for this exhibition; this the first time the painting has been displayed in over seventy years so a real privilege to see it.

I could go on and on, so much to see, so much to think about and the catalogue well worth forgoing bought-lunch for because we took our picnic to the cliffs at nearby Lamorna Cove and marvelled at what we'd just seen, what we were looking at this minute and how right the Cornish artists got it all and then I could come home and read all about it.

If you are heading west this summer then don't miss Stanhope Forbes at the Penlee Gallery, though hand-on-heart I'm not sure what the steep and narrow hill down to Lamorna Cove might be like on a busy day (two-way traffic not catered for) but meanwhile...

Do you have that feeling about a particular painting in a gallery...

One that you know so well and enjoy so much that actually it's yours...

 

 

The Tentmakers of Cairo

Just in case that Thursday with Di Ford wasn't colour-full enough I topped up my inner palette in the evening with a talk by Barbara Chainey on The Tentmakers of Cairo. Barbara Chainey is well-known around the quilting circuit, a name I know from her books on quilting, so I was particularly looking forward to this event...

Barbara’s particular speciality is traditional hand quilting & quilting design.  She has been teaching, writing, designing for more than 25 years, during which time she has encouraged & inspired quilters of all skill levels through her workshops, demonstrations & lectures.  Her first book “The Essential Quilter” (1993) is an established classic reference for hand quilters and her third book “Quilt It” (1999) is a standard reference for all quilters.  Barbara has six signature fabric collections to her credit and many of her quilting designs are available as stencils from Quilting Creations/Stensource International.

Interested too because though I had heard of the Tentmakers of Cairo, even saw them at my last trip to The Festival of Quilts, I hadn't really been paying attention.

I was certainly paying attention now...

Barbara explained that this was a craft that had been in existence for 4000 years; the tentmakers, men who, having been apprenticed since boyhood, hand stitching onto canvas the huge appliqued hangings that would decorate the inside of the nomadic tents then rolled up and transported on the camels to the next destination. Surely this was the golden age of the Ottoman Empire and the Silk Road so as soon as I got home I was looking at Peter Frankopan's book for any references. Nothing direct but maybe Mansa Musa, King of Kings of the Malian Empire, who passed through the city in the fourteenth century on his way to Mecca on pilgrimage, bought one or two...

'...accompanied by an enormous retinue and carrying huge amounts of gold... so much was spent in the markets during his visit to the city that a mini-depression is supposed to have been triggered across the Mediterranean basin and in the Middle Eat as the price of bullion apparently plummeted under the pressure of the huge inflow of new capital.'

Now, sadly, the craft apparently goes largely unrecognised and is unsupported by the Egyptian government; it is a dying art and making a living from it is becoming increasingly difficult. That said, judging by the stunning collection that Barbara showed us, and the way that she spoke of the tent makers as friends who she had come to know thanks to her regular visits and purchases, it is clear she has done more than her bit to support the local economy.

I was astounded and awash with the skill, the colours and the designs, to say nothing of the quantity of pieces that Barbara showed us...these just a few of them...

And how about this one...my favourite. Hand-stitched...

You can read more about the history of The Tent Makers of Cairo here...this from the website written by Dr Sam Bowker...

"Their work combines sophisticated skills with craft techniques that have been refined over many generations. Using only a needle, thimble, and large pair of tailor’s scissors, these skilled artisans flip, fold and stitch fabric with virtuoso precision. Khayamiya originates from architecture, but resembles the historic development of quilts.

The Tentmakers use a vast array of colours in their work. The careful use of colour combinations is one of the most important elements of their designs. During the Khedival period (1867-1914), the Tentmakers used cottons dyed by hand in shades of red, white and blue, as well as recycled fabrics. Their designs have changed dramatically over the last two centuries, drawing from a wide range of sources across the history of Islamic visual culture."

I'm sure some of you will know more about this than I do, so please do share your thoughts in comments...

And I wonder what those who may be new to this think about it...

Do the designs and colours appeal...

Maybe some of you have actually visited Sharia Khayamiya, the Street of the Tent Makers in Cairo. Lined with studios and located under the last remaining covered street in the city...well it sounds like my sort of place.

Maybe you have even made a purchase or two...

If so here's the place to confess.

For those who 'do' Pinterest Barbara Chainey has created a splendid space there too, take a look.

All in all an inspiring end to an amazing day, I'm sure I dreamt in colour that night. 

Oh yes, and the cat...must not forget the cat..

 

 

In which Di Ford Hall sorts out my ailing points and stems...

I spent that day at Cowslip Workshops last week on a course with Di Ford. You might remember I left you with an exhibition of her quilts on here over Easter and then 'confessed' to buying another of Di's books when I had barely started the quilt from the first one. The plan had been to enjoy some slow and deliberate stitching, no rush, just love doing it, but I'd had trouble with unpointy points and all sorts of things, winter set in and I lost heart a bit.

Well, Di was lovely. She really is the best of teachers; warm and friendly, self-effacing and very unassuming, making time for everyone and by her own admission as prone to making mistakes as the rest of us. 

By the end of the day we had sorted out my points, my stems, my needle-turn applique, my broderie perse the lot.

It's not as if I can't do applique because in my Ellie Sienkiewicz- Baltimore quilting heyday (sadly lot of cushions and wall-hangings but no quilt)  I had eaten complicated projects for breakfast, but that was almost thirty years ago and it was obvious I had forgotten some of the basics and needed a refresher.

Use at least Size 10/11/12 sharps applique needle for example. And there was me with an 8/9 who-knows-what.

Maximum 1/8th of an inch turn under. Well there was me cramming in a generous quarter inch, no wonder it looked a mess.

And maybe it's an age thing but my stitches were way too far apart. It really is about creeping along in tiny stitch-steps.

The technique for points was one I hand't seen before and I will have to practise. It involves a sort of mitre with the needle (not fingers) which is then twisted in a certain way and hey presto.

And stems...well I had never done them by folding the bias right sides out, doing a running stitch along the raw edge to fix the stem in place on the block, and then just easing over and stitching the other (folded) edge down. It's hard to explain but here is my day's work (yes WHOLE day) and all you really need to know is that Di Ford herself stitched one of these (the neatest one) in place...

Di also uses the finest of threads and in short lengths....none of my mile-long stuff to save me having to thread the needle too often. Aurifil who have been my thread-makers of choice for a while are now marketing an 80wt thread that makes my reel of 50wt look like I am trying to thread rope. Apparently it is only just making its way into the UK and whilst silk thread is equally fine the Aurifil 80wt is the business. I have managed to source a reel so I will let you know, but I used some on the day and it was heavenly to stitch with and of course the needle was much easier to thread.

An exhibition of Di's latest quilts from the new book Primarily Quilts 2 - It's All About the Fabric, along with those of her great quilting friend Petra Prins, had been set up in the barn at Cowslip during the day so I nipped in to have a look before heading home...

More inspiration (as if I needed it)...

It was a nice surprise on the day to meet Jane from Surrey who has been following dovegreyreader scribbles for two years and was also doing Di's class. We had a quick yarn and commiserated over our UFOs (UnFinishedObjects).

And just in case my quilt and colour batteries might not last until I get to the Festival of Quilts in August I was back at Cowslip on Saturday to hear Di and Petra talk about their friendship, their work and with a show-and-tell of Petra's collection of vintage quilts. More about that soon...I don't want you to get fed up with all this colour and loveliness though, just say if you've had enough.

Confessions...

As has been my custom since I started writing dovegreyreader scribbles, I give you all a bit of peace and quiet on here over Easter. It stems from never being allowed out to play on Good Friday, and though I'm a bit lapsed and non-observant these days, old habits and traditions do die hard, so I thought it might be nice to leave you with a quilt show for the next few days.

Those who have been reading here for a few years might remember Sunday Confessions. It usually involved me owning up to buying more books than was good for me and then you all owned up too. Well I haven't confessed for a while but I had such a transgression last week that Easter seemed like a good week to offload the burden.

Last year Bookhound and I went to a really inspiring quilt exhibition at Cowslip Workshops. It was the quilts of Di Ford and Petra Prins who were both teaching classes there at the time. Di is from Australia, Petra from Holland and the two have collaborated on quilts and teaching for some years as well as both creating superb ranges of fabrics for patchwork.

It was the colours and the fabrics and the designs...oh darn it, it was everything about these quilts, I loved them.

This quilt in particular, made by Di Ford, gave me a way ahead with my hand-pieced hexagons...

...though I rapidly talked myself out of surrounding each rosette with yet more hexagons, to say nothing of the several hundred plain ones in between, so I compromised by machine appliqueing (thank you Bernina and your blanket stitch) each rosette to a plain square of calico, joining them up and creating a coverlet rather than a quilt. 

I've finished one which unintentionally segued itself into winter colours and I have another ready to do which is by chance summer colours. That fifty yard roll of fabric I bought for £5 from the shop in town that was closing down has worked like a dream for the backing, so I have at least achieved something.

Anyway, while we were at the exhibition Bookhound bought me Di Ford's book Primarily Quilts because in there was a quilt I really, really wanted to make, the Anniversary Quilt... 

I suddenly felt the need to work to a set design rather than go off piste with my own as I usually do. There were clear instructions and templates for every block and the plan would be to hand piece slowly and enjoy the process. It wouldn't matter how long it took, though it would work nicely as a block every month or so. Bookhound helped me choose some fabrics to get started and I was off...sort of.

There would be some new techniques for me. For example I have never done Broderie Perse before, where the flower is cut from the fabric and appliqued down, but I had a go and really enjoyed it...

But oh dear...my points. Disaster, no amount of tweaking could get them pointy like Di's. I even went back to the exhibition to take a closer look...see if I could find Di Ford's un-pointy points and feel better. Nope utterly pointy, every single one.

You can have no idea of the multiple horrors that exist beneath those red circles on each point of the star. Di Ford didn't need them, her points were perfection, I had to add them to mine to conceal the mess. I made a couple more blocks but nothing really came up to standard, winter set in, my sewing room was glacial and suddenly my enthusiasm had gone into hibernation and all I could do was await its return, which it has because it always does. So the first thing I did was book onto a class at Cowslip with Di Ford when she is next over here in May, and I'm going to take all this along and get some advice/ counselling / encouragement / support and help with those flippin' points and the rest of it, so watch this space. I think the difference is that for the first time, maybe ever, I am following a very specific quilt pattern...I need to relax the self-imposed rules a bit.

The next thing I did was to book a trip to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham in August. I went two years ago and came away inspired and enthused, clearly my quilting batteries had run low and I needed to recharge them.

Possibly the ultimate transgression occurred on a visit to Cowslip last week where I spotted Di's new book, Primarily Quilts 2.

I mean, why even pick it up when I'm barely off the starting blocks with book one...

And half of it's in French for goodness' sake, why buy it...

When am I going to have time to make any more...this one's going to take me a century at least...

But you know how it is, these things happen.

In my defence I have to say that I do read quilting books cover to cover, my mind hoovers up the designs and the patterns, and Di's book is full of helpful tips and advice including this..

' When I cut the border for the fabric I found that I had made an error in my original calculations and didn't have enough fabric, so instead of getting all upset and throwing a bit of a hissy fit, this lead to a slight design change...I never worry if I make a mistake, and I must say it happens quite often. It has led to some wonderful design variations.'

Of course, that's what I'm doing...design variations. I'm up and stitching again.

So here's wishing all of you a happy and peaceful Easter weekend, you know what I'll be doing, how about you...

 

Pleasings...

So many I don't know where to start, but here's a good one...

This might not look very exciting but believe me it is.

For the last five years (at least) Bookhound has been meaning to paint the wall behind the espaliered Cox's Orange Pippin. It was planted twenty years ago in memory of my mum and it thrives and fruits and grows. There is the tiniest window of painting opportunity in the spring...before the leaves emerge and when the weather is dry and warm enough, and that chance is gone by the end of March so it was all systems go when we had a few fine days earlier in the month. 

The wall had to be pressure-washed before the tree was then undone from its wires and bent forward branch by branch and now it's all back in place, the wall is dazzling and apparently no harm done because we have leaves. Phew.

Talking of leaves. Remember the hydrangea that had done this in the vase...

Well I left it in the vase of water (I'd like to say intentionally but in fact I just never got around to the potting of) until a couple of weeks ago when I noticed this...

Roots...

I removed excess leafage and potted on, and so far so alive, so green fingers crossed everyone, the Augusta Roddis Hydrangea might be on its way.

And I have been sewing again.

I'm not sure where my stitching vibes went this winter but they are back so I have been working on some stained glass patchwork mostly inspired by Alice Oswald's poetry.

It's the thing about poetry which is becoming much clearer, and which I appreciating more as I get older; the way that it sets down layers of understanding in my mind. I think it might be all about being less rushed and having more time to absorb it all...I wonder what any of you think

Early readings seem like a skim (let's call it an undercoat given there has been painting going on) creating a very fine layer, almost gossamer thin. My mind often skates across the surface and it can take a while for me to plumb the depths. It almost makes a mockery of those exam situations of old...the dreaded unseen poem for analysis.

Second, third, fourth, fifth and subsequent reads, even though they may be months apart but slowly something much more substantial settles into place with a feeling of permanence and inspiration. It was whilst reading Alice Oswald's latest collection Falling Awake recently, followed by Woods etc, that all this dawned on me. One collection recent, one deeply embedded for quite a few years, and all of a sudden I just had to make something, thanks to Woods etc with woodland in it. I went for this tried and trusted fail safe option...

Hopefully you can get the gist of how this works.

Paper design, cut the fabric pieces like a puzzle (I trace the design onto freezer paper, iron it to the top of the fabric and then cut out my shapes) and then fix them (I'm tacking this time) onto the design drawn onto the fabric backing...

It's exactly like a jigsaw and each piece will be outlined with a narrow bias-strip stitched in place along the edge to replicate the lead of the stained glass. I now cheat and use the iron-on bias strip maker, thank goodness for new inventions.

It is slow and steady work that allows me to listen to audio books, and my final pleasing (because that really is quite enough from me for one day) is that I have finished the last in Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie detective series. Started Early, Took my Dog was as good as the previous three, Case Histories, When Will There Be Good News and One Good Turn. These are books that work well on audio and I can't recommend them highly enough. I love the way Kate Atkinson allows for the unconventional and the unexpected to be permissible in order to sustain people's lives rather than destroy them.

Oh sorry, one more Pleasing ...a new series of Line of Duty which is rescuing us from an unhealthy addiction to Homeland (we are now up to series four) though we still can't quite kick the Designated Survivor habit over on Netflix.

So now over to you, your turn for some Pleasings...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opus Anglicanum

One of the many highlights of my recent trip to London was a morning at the Opus Anglicanum exhibition at the V&A. Masterpieces of Medieval Embroidery, Opus Anglicanum translates as 'English work' and I'll tell you what, if that's the case it makes you proud to be English.

I was slightly overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of the exhibits, and on reflection that is not so much about how many pieces there were, more about how much there was to see and take in with each one, and that was after I had recovered from the seemingly obvious realisation that so much of it was done so long ago and had survived for me to see.

The pieces that have survived from the twelfth century onwards were mostly ecclesiastical garments which I am guessing would have received less wear and been treated with huge respect when not in use. To my knowledge the Church of England still uses the services of a Sacristan, whose role is partly to care for the vestments, and it was clear that those we looked at must have been handled with extreme delicacy and kept in remarkable condition.

The copes were astonishing, these the semi-circular vestments worn by the bishops on processional and ceremonial occasions, the Jesse cope, made between 1310  and 1325 just one example...



This one has been reconstructed, it is thought that at some time it may have been cut up for an altar frontal, this information from the V&A website...

"Embroidered with silver-gilt and silver thread and coloured silks in underside couching and split stitch, with laid and couched work, on silk twill reinforced with linen"

Ah yes, now then 'underside couching' and 'split stitch'...we were a bit mystified. I had half an idea and was so mesmerised by the demonstration video that I watched it twice.

The actual makers are unknown, but it is known that both men and women worked on these vestments and mostly in the London area around St Paul's Cathedral. Commissions were undertaken for foreign churches and as diplomatic gifts for the papal courts.

The Toledo Cope interested me for several reasons, not least the beauty of the whole thing, as superb and intact as the day it was finished in about 1330, and the fact this is its first return visit to England since the fourteenth century, but also just look at the detail...



If one colour has stood the test of time, and it showed on many exhibits, it is the indigo. Good old unfade-able, unchanging indigo.

But then, looking carefully, the minutest stitches, barely visible to the eye and the detail astounding. This in the days when magnification and good light would have been nigh on impossible. Shades and differing tones of colour giving shape and depth and a three-dimensional perspective to the figures. It all made me realise how dependent much twenty-first century embroidery has become on charts and kits and threads already chosen...stitching by numbers, when all these embroiderers had to hand was an outline and their needle and thread. This was pure painting with thread.

The wooden cope chest...like an enormous slice of an even more enormous wooden pie had clearly done its job. No photography allowed in the exhibition so I have borrowed this one from Wells Cathedral, I think you can get the idea.

But think of all the potential assaults on the fabric down the centuries ...damp, moth, weevils, beetles, mould, the bishop tripping over and ripping the hem, spilling communion wine,  to say nothing of wars and conflict, fires and tempest.

We watched the fire in Exeter with huge sadness last weekend. The Royal Clarence Hotel, just yards from the Cathedral in the heart of the ancient city burned to the ground, and even with hundreds of fireman to hand and thousands of gallons of water being pumped from the River Exe (a long way) to assist the quenching, it still  burned for thirty-six hours. God was on our side because if we had been having a typical south westerly wind the damage would have been unthinkable.

So imagine how vulnerable those medieval vestments must have been down the centuries, their continued existence nothing short of a miracle.

I was very impressed by some Bishops' leg wear dating from the 1100s; stockings belonging to Hubert Walter, one time Archbishop of Canterbury, and a bit like a pair of ecclesiastical padded fabric Ugg boots for want of a better image, until I discovered that he had been buried in them and these had been recovered from his tomb along with his shoes some years later....

Sadly the exhibition catalogue at £35, and weighing in at a good-sized newborn, was a prohibitive purchase so I haven't been able to do my usual thing of reading up on everything I have seen afterwards; a reasonably priced, less-detailed paperback edition would have been very welcome.

And I have to say I think the V&A missed another trick...

I can't have been the only person who went into the shop hoping to find some threads and some linen, all the encouragement I would have needed to eschew all charts and kits, draw something simple and have a go at a tiny piece of Opus Anglicanum of my own, a souvenir of my visit.

If you have been to see Opus Anglicanum I would love to know your thoughts..

And if not, I'd still love to know them anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bedtime Stories Quilt, Edinburgh Museum of Childhood

Do you remember that call to make a quilt block for the Edinburgh Museum of Childhood 'Bedtime Stories' Quilt??

Sorry, it seems like I'm always asking you to do things, but I know some of you made squares so I wanted to share pictures and links to the finished quilt.

It is stitched together and now on display at the museum (click to enlarge)

Isn't it wonderful, a fine example of collaborative distance working for which quilt-making is so eminently suited.

If any of you made a square we'd love to know which one and I think the easiest way might be as per the old game of Battleships.

Let's say alphabet from left to right across the bottom and numbers from bottom to top up the sides...will that work.

Mine in that case is F3, the miniature Liberty quilt on the washing line...



I think I also know who made A5 ...

and E6...

but I will let them identify themselves if they want to... are there any more?

If so I will edit your pictures into this post.

And has anyone been to the exhibition?

I'd love to know more about it, and huge congratulations to Alice Sage for such a wonderful project.

Related articles

Olympic marathon stitching...

Olympic marathon stitching...

Two weeks of madness, no routine, late nights, meals at funny times ...a sort of Staycation and I have to say it was lovely. I've mixed plenty of radio commentary in with TV watching so I did manage to finish my block for the Edinburgh Museum of Childhood Quilt project based on the Land of the Counterpane.

I was desperate to sneak some hand quilting in so eventually I concocted this...

A 6" square miniature Liberty Tana Lawn quilt hanging on a washing line..

And if you life the quilt underneath are some lines from The Dream Quilt by Adele Geras which I thought suited it perfectly..

It's gone off in the post and has arrived safely and I hear that quite a few of you are taking part too. It will be very exciting to see the finished quilt in mid - October.

And I've been doing some machine work on the TexTithe Map too...

In the end I decided to use the Bernina blanket stitch around all the bias-strip hedgerows so just chugged my way around both sides of every single one which rather oddly felt as if I was walking it in my imagination as I did so. I have now added trees along the stream that marks the Parish boundary all of which will need to be blanket-stitched too.

Slow and steady, getting there.

Now what news of projects and makings over your way...

Any future ideas in the pipeline...

I've been looking into Blackwork since seeing this at the embroidery exhibition...


Borrowed a couple of books from the library, was dazzled by it all, solved the mysteries of Aida 14 Point cloth, thought just how much the Tinker would have loved to do this, took the books back... one day maybe.

A Gallimaufry of Welsh Quilts & a Robin

To give us all a break from the splashy/gallopy/wheely/jumpy stuff I thought we'd take some time out and go on a bit of a wander today.

I am really grateful to Kate from Cheshire who very kindly entrusted me with her only copy of a book for which she wrote the Foreword, Muriel Rose - A Modern Crafts Legacy. Kate researched the life and work of London gallery-owner Muriel Rose whose work on behalf of craftspeople in the early twentieth century ensured that their art was seen, properly valued and remunerated, and fully appreciated. Beneficiaries included the quilters of Wales and Durham, their craft, previously unnoticed beyond the bounds of their mining homeland, had never died and would soon find a luxury market. As Kate's thesis reveals (Kate kindly sent a chapter of this too) the Rural Industries Bureau, established by Muriel Rose, had paid out an average of £1750 to each quilter in the first three years of its existence...an enormous sum that must have made a huge difference to working class lives.

I was therefore first out of the starting blocks (topical analogy) for the recent exhibition of Welsh quilts at Cowslip Workshops. Jen Jones had brought a selection of quilts from her collection held at The Welsh Quilt Centre in Lampeter and they were displayed to great effect in the white-walled barn at Cowslip. Wholecloth and pieced, the quilts were captivating for their age and hidden histories, faded fabrics and hand-quilted designs






There were pieced quilts too, all fine examples of the thrift element to which I always aspire but invariably, in the face of a shop full of fabrics and forty-year's worth of stash, never quite achieve.

It was good to see the fabric designs in close up; quilts often made by young girls in service who would use scraps of fabric from their uniforms which were often mauve or purple apparently.




I don't think any of these quilts were of the Rural Industries Bureau ilk, but it is interesting to view them in the context of Kate's assertion that, whilst there was undoubtedly an element of exploitation to the paid work done by the quilters of Wales in the 1930s, there were also huge benefits. In fact the women were earning more than their menfolk but quilting classes were started and quilting bees offered that therapeutic space for women to put the world to rights and offer each other support alongside the quilting itself  which gained an appreciative audience and national recognition. In many ways this must all have helped the craft to survive into the next generation, and who can know how many life events and how much chatter is stitched into quilts like these.

It is largely thanks to collectors like Jen Jones that these more rural quilts have survived for us to see them...legend has it that some of them were found in barns keeping tractors warm.

Meanwhile my little piece of wholecloth quilting, started after that inspirational evening talk by Jenny Brewer, is coming along nicely albeit slowly and mindfully...


It always takes a while to get my even-stitches eye in again but there is nothing like cross-hatching to work at it. This is probably the quilting equivalent of Mo Farah running mile after mile until he gets it right, or maybe not.

Did I mention robins?

Tea and cake is compulsory on a visit to Cowslip and sitting outside enjoying ours we had this incredible view of Launceston and the castle, strangely luminous on a dull and overcast day.

..and this cheeky little chap keeping us company.

 

 

Help make a counterpane...

Interrupting Olympic coverage to bring you something to do while you watch...

I think 'counterpane' is another one of those beloved words, like 'haberdashery' and 'gallimaufry', that I must add to my list of favourites. By definition a bedspread or top covering and a word which, for me, holds vivid memories of Great Ormond Street where every bed or cot was covered with a pink or blue counterpane depicting nursery rhyme characters. Bed-making classes in P.T.S. (Preliminary Training School) involved very strict instructions about always ensuring that the pictures faced the child and woe betide if Sister ever came round and found a counterpane the wrong way up. It was a transgression on a par with throwing dirty flower water down a ward sink... gasp ... pseudomonas aeruginosa , I still can't throw flower water down a sink.

So when I read about a project to make a counterpane for the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh (and my thanks for the heads up to artist Valerie Greeley who sometimes comments here as acornmoon) I contacted Alice Sage to ask if I could make a square, and please could I mention it on here too.

Yes and yes came back the reply, along with a square of fabric for me to transform. I can dye it, sew on it, draw or paint on it, fabric glue or collage...text, images or patterns, whatever I like, even replace it with one I prefer as long as it's the same size. The squares will then be joined to make a big quilt for display in the museum later this year.

One of the poems in mind for the project is this one...

The Land of Counterpane

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a plan in mind for my square and if you fancy creating a square for the Edinburgh counterpane too you can check out the finer details here. Lorna will send you a square and you can get busy because the grand piecing will begin on September 1st.

And having mentioned Valerie and quilts in the same sentence now is a good moment to mention The Dream Quilt, a little book written by Adele Geras, illustrated by Valerie and published by Susan Hill at Long Barn Books. Valerie is an illustrator and textile designer with a special interest in quilting; skills perfectly demonstrated in this book alongside Adele's beautiful lullaby enchantment of words...

'I threaded silk through a silver needle
to make a cover for your bed.Rest your head
Close your eyes.
I'll stitch you dreams and lullabies.'

As the quilt is stitched picture by picture, square by square, the child dreams of the things being sewn... A house, a doll, a teddy bear and my favourite, the ship...

'Up in the sky the small stars glow
wanting the ship to follow their light
into the morning, out of the night.

Follows the stitches
as they are made.
Blue and white.
Light and shade.'

It is an absolute delight of a book for grown-ups and children alike.

 

John Piper Myfanwy Piper - Lives in Art ~ Frances Spalding

It was Rena Gardiner who guided me onto the trail of John and Myfanwy Piper, artists of whom I knew next to nothing beyond their names, but whose biography by Frances Spalding was here somewhere. Frances Spalding wrote an excellent biography of Gwen Raverat which I had read and enjoyed some years ago, so I was hopeful that the Pipers would get the same accessible and readable treatment.

Howard Jacobson would have kittens at my use of the word 'readable'; he deplores its use suggesting it should be made a capital offence with reference to the world of books...but...well, I was deeply immersed for several weeks in 600 pages of the new-to-me lives of the Pipers, emerging with a list of even more reading and places to visit.

Born in 1903 and having suffered the loss of a brother in the Great War, John Piper felt obliged to be articled to his father's law firm rather than pursuing his chosen career as an artist. It was only the death of his father in 1927 that released him from the torture and enabled him to enroll at the Royal College of Art in 1928.

What an an exciting time to be there, the art world on the cusp of change thanks to Gauguin, Kadinsky, Matisse et al, with Picasso in the ascendant too, and all largely unaccepted by the establishment, but John Piper was also there as a critic and had this to say in defence of their work..

'There is no explanation of a work of art of any period...the most a critic can do is to describe the technical method of an artist or write about his own reactions to a work of art, which may be unrepresentative...'

With an early and failed marriage behind him it was John Piper's relationship with, and eventual marriage to Myfanwy Evans in the mid-1930s that would create an artistic partnership that was to endure for the rest of their lives. Setting up home at Fawley Bottom at the foot of the Chilterns, the couple recognised the importance of the moment in the art world and proceeded to embrace and nurture it.

Whilst Myfanwy wrote and edited various art periodicals and established a warm and welcoming home, and this despite the most spartan conditions (for many years no electricity or running water), John, having invested much time and effort in the creation of abstract art, shifted his focus to more recognisable  landscapes, architecture and topography as the determining ingredients of his career. I warmed to John Piper's vision of the countryside as a palimpsest, a document that had been erased and overwritten many times over, a concept he used to imagine and celebrate what lay beneath, so it is no surprise that John Betjeman was among his closest friends and artistic collaborators.

The shift from purely abstract art was a canny one that seemed to leave a few artistic feuds in its wake (did Ben Nicolson and Barbara Hepworth ever forgive him for the desertion?) but John Piper's approach made great sense as I read and absorbed this book...a movement should only be truly recognisable and discovered afterwards for fear of confining and killing the artists in its midst. It was all about freedom of expression and refusing to be railroaded into any particular style.

It would seem to be thanks to this creative decision that we now have the legacy that we do of John Piper's work, because as well as becoming one of the leading war artists at the outbreak of the Second World War, he was also instrumental in the artistic reconstruction afterwards, as well as writing and illustrating the series of Shell Guides to many English counties. Designed to be guides for the ordinary people it had been a time when celebrating England and Englishness peaked, the threat of war somehow focusing the artistic mind on what could be lost, whilst acknowledging the power of the past to return and inform the present.

Myfanwy meanwhile excelled as a librettist working in close collaboration with Sir Benjamin Britten on most of his operas whilst continuing to run the family home and raise children with what was described as 'a high degree of organisational mayhem.'

I hope I'm not making this book sound as dry as dust because trust me it isn't. Frances Spalding does a superb job of making interesting material utterly fascinating, weaving in all the facets of John and Myfanwy's outlook and principles throughout their lives. Understanding their place in that moment in time proved to be a revelation explaining much that was on the edge of my ken but not quite fully fledged. I found myself nodding in agreement with so much, notably the idea that an ancient building should not be too tidy and discovering beauty in 'decrepit glory.' Pleasing decay and leaving a building to live and die has its place in our heritage as much as the preened and pampered stately homes...

'an empty building or ruin can be powerfully redolent of human emotions.'

As a couple the Pipers excelled in hospitality and the warm and friendly welcome, Fawley Bottom becoming a mecca for all the artistic names of the day.

Meanwhile John Piper starts to make a good living from his art. Royal commissions follow along with some national and commemorative projects of which I had been blissfully unaware. It's always the way isn't it...until a name registers it means nothing. The commission from the King and Queen in 1941, a set of watercolours of Windsor Castle before it was likely to be bombed and destroyed, was not a huge success with the Royal gaze.

'You seem to have had very bad luck with your weather Mr Piper,' remarked King George, whilst the Queen's reaction likewise lukewarm, both failing to appreciate at the time John Piper's dark and brooding skies and pervasive melancholy.


I doubt the Royal family regret that commission now, the pictures, apparently displayed to good effect in Clarence House, must be worth a fortune.

As well as the famous Baptistry windows in Coventry Cathedral, and windows in both Chichester and Liverpool Cathedrals (Metropolitan)  there is probably a parish church near you that has John Piper's stained glass...

St Andrew's, Wolverhampton
All Saint's Clifton, Bristol
Tudeley Church, Tonbridge
St Matthew's, Southcote, Reading
St Matthew's, Northampton
St Margaret's, Westminster

And near us too because we had no idea that St Andrew's Minster in Plymouth had such a wonderful array of John Piper windows...

With their characteristic strong reds and deep blues we were awestruck by these on that trip into the city on the Somme centenary day...



The church was decimated during the blitz of 1941 and I can only hope the person who placed a sign saying Resurgam over the door the following day lived to see the glory that arose from these particular ashes.


If you are in Plymouth city centre it is well worth wandering along Royal Parade and into St Andrew's. It took us forty years  and this book to know they were there.

And I wonder if these John Piper murals are still there, has anyone passed these offices in Fulham recently...



And nor did John Piper stop at stained glass. It is thought that by the end of his life he had designed for and mastered every conceivable craft method and outlet turning to pottery, tapestry and gardening in his later years.

Admired for his detachment and tolerance, humour, love of  gossip, inner strength, forbearance, generosity and kindness, John Piper was described by Richard Ingrams of Private Eye thus...

'He's a marvellous person to talk to if you're thinking of committing suicide.'

And if you have ever read John Betjeman's poem Myfanwy and wondered, well wonder no more. It is Myfanwy Piper and for whom it seems the poet had more than a passing attraction...

Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy,
White o’er the playpen the sheen of her dress,
Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery
Soap scented fingers I long to caress.

Were you a prefect and head of your dormit'ry?
Were you a hockey girl, tennis or gym?
Who was your favourite? Who had a crush on you?
Which were the baths where they taught you to swim?

Smooth down the Avenue glitters the bicycle,
Black-stockinged legs under navy blue serge,
Home and Colonial, Star, International,
Balancing bicycle leant on the verge....

(Extract Myfanwy by John Betjeman from "Old Lights for New Chancels" (1940) & "Collected Poems")

What a couple and what a book.

We are now on John Piper alert wherever we go (can you believe I have never seen Coventry Cathedral) so if you can add any more sightings to our list I would be very grateful, but meanwhile don't miss John Piper Myfanwy Piper - Lives in Art by Frances Spalding (Oxford University Press 2009) should be in a library near you and if you have read it, or are a fan of the Pipers I would love to know your thoughts.

I have come to the conclusion that every age needs a John Piper 'the laureate of the picturesque' and am trying to think whether we have one now, in 2016, and if so who it might be.

Any suggestions...

 

Hexagonal thinking...

You must remember these because I think I might have plagued you all with them at the time...

Last winter's labour of hexagonal paper-cutting and fabric stash-busting.

Hand-pieced, mindful, slow and absorbing...



Well, at the recent exhibition of Di Ford's quilts (more about this soon, it was stunning) I saw this which brought my hexagons to mind...

The bit you need to know about Road 66 is that Di Ford hand pieced this, without papers, whilst a passenger (obvs) on a road trip across the US. I was startled and amazed to say the least because, being English and cleaved unto my papers, I can't begin to imagine piecing hexagons any other way (though I have since discovered a method). The quilt was so beautiful that I came home with all sorts of ideas about doing something similar with my hexagons until I sat down and worked out that ahead of me was another round of patterned hexagons (not so bad) but then 400 & something plain hexagons and all those diamonds (terrible).

I knew I would lose the will to live and the novelty would wear off.

I slept on it and felt the same the next day, it was never going to happen, but having started to stitch a few of the rosettes together, well that wasn't going to happen either. All that fussy-cutting joy was lost in a morass (a wonderful morass I have to say) of colour.

I had only ever wanted a coverlet out of this project, no plans to quilt it, so then I hit on the idea of perhaps appliqueing each rosette to a plain calico background square. With my Bernina in post-op recovery, properly convalesced and now in full possession of its original stitches, I did a sample block using the blanket stitch (No 25) and was so pleased that I decided this would be the way to go...

So out came all the papers...



I have sixty-four rosettes so the finished coverlet will be eight blocks by eight, each about ten inches square, and the plan would be to join them with a narrow one inch lattice before backing the coverlet with 'something'. I decided that if I appliqued six a day (six take about an hour, a lot of stopping and rotating) it would be done in no time so clamping a Rebus audiobook over my ears I set to..

And hey presto...

Then I started to join with the lattice strips using a really perfect shade of deep teal that had once been a divan base cover ...

But then I decided I didn't like the formality of it, all those straight lines.

So I had a re-think because the other very strange thing was that I wasn't so fed up with the hexagons or the piecing that I couldn't manage just a few more, so I had another idea. By now forget Plan A and Plan B, I am up to Plan J wherein I will just join the squares sans lattice strips but adding a smaller hexagon at each corner join.

I will need forty-nine of those so it will be a while before this one shows its face on here again looking anything like completed, but 'tis pleased I am with Plan J

But oh oh oh there is one thing I wish I had thought of before I started.

Punch a hole in the centre of each paper hexagon and don't stitch through the paper when you fold the fabric over and sew it around.

When it comes to paper-removal time all you have to do is pop a crochet hook in the hole and ease the paper out while the hexagon remains neatly and permanently tacked on the reverse for all time.

Doh.

Anyone else enjoying paper-piecing at the moment...

Or any other crafty projects for that matter, it's time we caught up with all your makings...

The Gate Quilters' Exhibition 2016

Having re-joined the local quilting group (that I helped to establish thirty years ago) and having also re-joined The Quilter's Guild and South-West Quilters, there is now little chance that I will miss an exhibition when it happens, so it was off down to Cornwall for The Gate Quilters exhibition at Par in Cornwall yesterday. A group of local women who had been working incredibly hard and the results were a joy to see and all very artistically displayed in the Parish Church...


I have set up quilt exhibitions in a church before now and it is incredibly hard. A lot of space to fill and much of it very hard to reach as well as sensitivities to be respected.

I say it all the time, hand-quilting is a rarity these days, especially at the big events, but head into deepest Cornwall and the old traditions live on. I am thinking there may not be a local long-arm machine quilter to take on the completion of those pieced quilt tops, or maybe the quilters of Par and St Blazey eschew the modern and the swift for the old-fashioned and the mindful, but my heart sang when I saw all their hand-quilted work, tiny stitches and beautiful designs.

How about this...



A superb hand-pieced and hand-quilted Double Wedding Ring quilt in Liberty fabric made by Jenefer Varco..

Or this...



Celtic quilting was all the rage back in the 1980s when I had my little quilt shop, we taught a class on it. A how-to book with designs by Philomena Wiechec had been published and this superb example, again in Liberty fabric, made by Sue Mellis was a joy to see. Tana lawn lends itself perfectly to the bias strips that are entwined to create the designs, holding its crease and stitching down readily, and of course nowadays the iron-on bias strip backing makes it much easier too. But this quilt, entirely hand-made in 2000, might pre-date that invention so my admiration is even greater. There would have been pins and all sorts going on here to get this one to such a level of perfection and no stinting on the quilting either. All that cross-hatching takes time and effort to draw up and stich accurately....I know because I'm doing some at the moment too...


A high percentage of the exhibits showed careful attention to such details.

Another quilt that warmed the cockles was this one (sorry, my camera and the lights have beefed up the colour, it was more subtle and muted than this)

Made by Maralyn Mayger, a Gardener's Journal Quilt from a pattern by Anni Downs, was a lovely combination of piecing and embroidery...

Like all exhibitions there was plenty to inspire creativity here...thinking about this quilt in particular and how lovely it would be to create a set of personalised pictures (thank you Bookhound) stitch them into existence and surround them with patches various.

Also on my list of Things to Try is Red Work...



One of the essentials of any rural quilt show visit is the Cakey Tea. Thus fortified Bookhound can continue to function...

And then there are always the delights of the sales table. Group members clearing their stash to make way for more, so fabric pieces for as little as 50p...



And then the hand-mades. I came away with an exquisite pin-cushion. I have scores, I don't need another one, but look, how could I leave it there for £2.50? Someone has worked really hard on this...



And after three goes at 50p a time on the tombola Bookhound finally picked a winning ticket and scored this...



A little fabric pot, perfect to home my thread, needles, scissors and thimble while I am stitching...

We went off to Fowey for a wander in the afternoon, taking in a few of the gift shops revving up for the tourist season and truth be told I was a bit disillusioned by it all. Vastly expensive mass-produced knick-knacks, nothing like the quality that we had just seen on the Gate Quilters' Sales Table and for a fraction of the price.

My thanks and congratulations to the Gate Quilters of Par and St Blazey for a truly lovely exhibition and if you could now just see your way to pulling our ticket out of the drum for the raffle quilt that would be great.

If you are nearby it is the final day of the exhibition today and well worth a visit.

 

Rena Gardiner redux

Having devoured every word and illustration in Julian Francis and Martin Andrews's sumptuous book about the life and work of Rena Gardiner, and engaged in a very un-pretty tog-of-war over it, Bookhound and I immediately set off to visit some of our usual bric-a-brac and second-hand book haunts to see if we might come across any of her books.

Rena published forty-five books in her lifetime and once we had seen the pictures we were kicking ourselves. Racking our brains...had we bought any for the children when we used to visit National Trust properties around us here back in the day because Rena wrote, illustrated, printed and published a series of child-oriented guides to both Cotehele and Lanhydrock locally, and don't ask how many others we have passed over in second hand shops and on market stalls without realising their provenance.

We did quite well on Foray No 1 taking in Topsham and Lyme Regis and coming home with some bargains found at the bottom of boxes and lying forgotten at the back of shelves.

This was good news the books are still out there. Francis and Andrews' book does much to increase Rena Gardiner's profile and I agree with them, she most certainly deserves to be better known, so get out there and get looking everyone, rummage around those bins of old National Trust guidebooks in the charity shops and start to enjoy the exuberance and sheer cleverness of this brilliant artist.

Rena Gardiner cited Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and John Piper as major influences; John Piper also born in her home town of Epsom and with whom it is clear she felt that sense of local and artistic affinity. On leaving school (I still haven't discovered which school but it must have been very near to mine in Cheam) in 1946 Rena attended Kingston School of Art where she studied graphic art on a course which also included book binding and calligraphy, as well as printing and lithographic processes, all skills that would serve her well as she developed into a one-woman cottage industry and producing her own books from start to finish in later life.

A young Rena also met Joan Hassall and an elderly Gwen Raverat at an exhibition given by the Society of Wood Engravers on one of her many youthful excursions to London. Gwen Raverat, the revered woodcut engraver and likewise Joan Hassall, talented and in-demand and Joan the first woman to be admitted to the renowned Art Workers Guild founded by William Morris, later becoming its first female Master. Whilst Rena Gardiner, as her career progressed, had little interest in self-promotion or fame it must have been a meeting for her to savour. Interestingly, I thought... Joan Hassall was a perfectionist, 'often re-cutting blocks that did not entirely please her' (this according to an article I came across by coincidence in an old edition of This England magazine on the Tinker's shelves,) Rena Gardiner though loved and embraced the happy accident.

Looking at her work Bookhound and I have been deeply impressed by Rena's precision and accuracy, especially evident in the lino cuts created in the last years of her life and we saw those and great deal more thanks to a chance conversation followed by a phone call to Rachel Hunt, the House and Collections Manager at Cotehele. The archive was packed up and days away from being moved to the Dorset History Centre but if we wanted to go and look through it and promised to put it all back in the right boxes, we would be most welcome.

We booked a day and were very grateful to Rachel who showed us to an little upstairs room in the old house, introduced us to the boxes and left us to it...

Faced with a phalanx of carefully labelled brown boxes it was a case of where on earth to start, but to open a box and find the original lino cuts was like discovering the map of Rena's amazing life...

Back to the beginning and all the sources of her inspiration... notes, scrap books, albums of photographs, sketches, mock ups of books, calligraphy, it was all here...

Here the sketch for Mullion Cove in Cornwall followed by the lino cut..

Rena revived her interest in lino cutting later in her life and the originals were fine examples of what an artist on our Drawn to the Valley Open Studios adventure last year called 'suicide' plates. A layer printed and then successive parts cut away from the lino, more layers of paint added to the print run and never to be repeated. It's a wonderful (and to my mind brave) technique ensuring and guaranteeing that only a limited number are produced...


We could have stared at them all day and, apart from a brief sojourn in the restaurant for coffee and cake, we did. Box after box of treasures.

Little mock-ups for the books that Rena would eventually draw up, print and bind herself..

If it stops raining (rubbish about that oak before ash thing) we are going to take this book out and do a Rena Gardiner trail around the Cornish coast before the holidaymakers arrive, so hopefully much more about it soon

There were boxes of original prints too and a few for sale.

In the end we couldn't stop ourselves, it seemed right to take home a wonderful reminder of an inspirational discovery, though we were torn between this one of the Cornish engine house...



Or maybe this one of the dovecot at Cotehele...

But settling in the end for this one...

Sycamore Shadows : The South Front (1998 12 x 16 ½ ins) Cotehele on a spring day. It is a place we go to often, this a walk we do each time and one that fills me with that sense of anticipation about the house through the archway and the orchards and gardens beyond.

We skipped back to the car with a spring in our step, the sort that you have after a really special day and with everything we had seen in the Rena Gardiner archive buzzing around in our heads. Who knew that the chance purchase of one book would lead to so much enjoyment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surfeit of Lampreys ~ Ngaio Marsh

It would seem that crime books work best which doesn't bode too well for all that loveliness I am supposed to stitching into my quilting as I listen to my audio book, but never mind.

Next up Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh. Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, I was happy to spot her brass plaque on the literary trail around the city centre...

And also to go up into the Port Hills where Ngaio Marsh lived as a child. The view from the hills across to Lyttleton is stunning. I had been in the country about an hour and looking at this picture now I am smiling at the memory of trying to stay awake on arrival day and being completely overwhelmed just to be there...

Of the Port Hills and writing in her autobiography Black Beech and Honeydew, Ngaio Marsh said this...

'They would be called mountains in England. The tussock that covered them gave them a bloomy appearance as blond hair does to a living body. I was told that a long time ago they had moved gigantically and heaved themselves into their present form and then grown hard, being the overflow of a volcano....'

Ngaio continues...

'The crater of this volcano is now a deep harbour into which a hundred and fifteen years ago, sailed the First Four Ships...bringing the founders of the Canterbury Settlement....they climbed the Port Hills and reached the summit where, with a munificent gesture, their inheritance was suddenly laid out before them...There, as abruptly as if one has looked over a wall, are the Plains, spread out beyond the limit of vision, laced with early mist and great river...

'Whenever I return to New Zealand I like to come home by the hills and still think that an arrival at the pass on a clear dawn is the most astonishing entry one could make into any country.'

It is most definitely the place to stand to get some sense of the scale and beauty of New Zealand

The Lampreys meanwhile were a family taken from real life by Ngaio Marsh for her book, the Rhodes-Plunkets apparently, and who welcomed her into their world as a friend...

'Its doors opened into a life whose scale of values, casual grandeur, cockeyed gaiety and vague friendliness will bewilder and delight me for the rest of my days. If one can be said to fall in love with a family I fell in love with the Lampreys. It has been a lasting affair.'

In Ngaio Marsh's fiction, the Lampreys become a family who live in a state of unaffordable luxury second only to that of the Governor of New Zealand himself. Life on a financial wing and a prayer spent lurching from one financial crisis to the next yet seemingly impervious to the worries; jolly japes, in-jokes and pranks with none of them taking any of it particularly seriously. Until that is, having moved to London during a particularly severe cash flow problem, a body is discovered in the elevator to the family's apartment and all must come under suspicion as Inspector Roderick Alleyne investigates.The family duck and dive and weave all manner of intricate webs, not exactly practicing to deceive, more to confuse, but every member of the family comes under suspicion and it soon becomes clear that this is not one of their parlour games.

Surfeit of Lampreys was a great listen and I will certainly listen to more by Ngaio Marsh eventually, it's just that Rankin & Rebus reign supreme at the moment. Now onto number three Tooth and Nail while I work away at this...



The basic idea is from EuroJapan Links, fabrics are my own as are slight variations on the theme. Pieces are needle-turn appliqued onto the background (24" x 18") and then hand quilted and with probably far too many tiny embellishments, but you know me and over-gilding the lily etc. I had these gorgeous embroidery threads and just couldn't stop myself adding some dots of colour...

Just the border to quilt now.

It started off as the Port Hills but it was all change once I had slotted in that fabric for the lake. By the time I had finished I knew it had to be Lake Hawea and now it has wonderful memories of that wild swim stitched in.

I'll do the Port Hills next.

 

In which we discover Rena Gardiner at Cotehele...

Cotehele House, just across on the Cornish side of the Tamar Valley, is one of our go-to spring visits. If the apple blossom is out in our little orchard Devon-side...

...then the orchard at Cotehele will be looking superb, and we weren't wrong.


and there was misteltoe, I'm not sure I've noticed that before, or seen it growing anywhere else...


It was such a lovely day we by-passed a wander through the house and stayed in the grounds before heading in for lunch and the shop. It was quiet and we felt, like Barrington Court, we had a National Trust property to ourselves..

The flowers and the views stunning in equal measure...

Calstock...

I think Bookhound shudders when I go near a National Trust shop, I mean do I really need any more postcards, or recipe books for high tea or soups, or another one of those recycled wool blankets that seem to be a magnet for moulting cats.

In fact Cotehele has a wonderful craft gallery as well.

'I'll just nip upstairs to the gallery,' I whispered as Bookhound headed into the Victorian library which he loves.

I can't usually afford anything in the gallery but it is still nice to look and decide where I'd put the stunningly upholstered chair and foot stool, or that nice piece of Jenny Hale's ceramics.

But something caught my eye on the counter.

It was a pile of books and a cover I recognised, Rena Gardiner Artist and Printmaker by Julian Francis and Martin Andrews. Published by Little Toller in 2015 the book had flown onto my radar and quickly off again. At £25 it would need to be a well-researched purchase, but also I had a problem with the cover. It's not a criticism, more a series of personal observations and preferences...

It seemed wildly abstract and spoke of nothing of interest to me...

The colours were not in my favoured palette...

If it was a place I didn't recognise it...

And the name Rena Gardiner was unknown to me.

Plenty of people would have viewed it differently I am sure (I would be interested to hear your first thoughts) but I hadn't seen a copy to look at properly so now was my chance to confirm that I wouldn't want the book and walk on... until I opened it that is and well, you can guess...

This centre page spread from a son et lumiere programme for Salisbury Cathedral has me thinking swan et lumiere and I love it...

And then Rena Gardiner's connection with Cotehele and Cornwall revealed itself and surely hadn't we just looked across at this very same view...

Needless to say I walked out with a copy of Rena Gardiner Artist and Printmaker 'neath my arm. Bookhound recognised the cover as Durdle Door, a rock feature off the Dorset Coast, in an instant. His school geography trip circa 1969 had been to Lulworth Cove and Swanage, mine circa 1971 had been nowhere near (Bude).

I probably should have bought two because since the book arrived home it has barely been out of our hands; as one puts it down the other picks it up as we soak up the pictures and information about a modest yet prodigiously talented woman. So stand by for a series of posts about Rena Gardiner, because she has gone straight to our hearts and we have made some wonderful discoveries and seen some amazing things since we discovered the book barely ten days ago.

Along with it came the realisation that we had known of some of Rena's work for many years but hadn't been paying attention...

Bookhound loves her for the sheer breadth and depth of her talent, and the precision and technique, to say nothing of the superb vibrancy and quality of the end results, whilst I am enthralled for other reasons besides, not least that Rena Gardiner (1929-1999) was the school art teacher that I'll bet many of you had too. Teaching first at Leamington College for Girls and then Bournemouth Girls School in the 1950s and 60s, when I saw this picture it conjured up an image of just about every teacher I ever had..

The single women in that post-war generation who dedicated themselves to our education, and for which I doubt I for one showed much gratitude. I didn't distinguish myself in the art room at Nonsuch Girls', Cheam it has to be said (not far from Epsom where Rena was born and went to school) and can only pity the poor art teachers who tried, often women of formidable talent but with no other avenue available for their creativity beyond the school remit, except living alone Rena worked tirelessly to nurture hers and to share it. Teaching was not a vocation for Rena and eventually, to the dismay of her friends (also teachers) she took the courageous plunge and became a full-time artist..

"Her principal achievement was some 45 books, all of which she wrote, illustrated and printed herself. No two copies are the same.  Her legacy also includes paintings, pastels and linocut prints.

Rena Gardiner dedicated her life to her art, doing so alone in a thatched cottage in Tarrant Monkton, in the heart of Dorset. 

An unsung heroine of printmaking, uninterested in publicity or fame, she created an artistic legacy that is instantly recognisable for its exuberant use of colour and texture. "

Hence the Dorset significance of the book's cover and if there was ever a portal to venture through and see new (to us) things then that picture of Durdle Door is it and now I get it.

We have been lucky enough to spend a day browsing the Rena Gardiner archive at Cotehele before it leaves this week on permanent loan to the Dorset History Centre and if anyone is interested there is currently an exhibition of Rena Gardiner's work at Mompesson House in Salisbury, we have promised ourselves a day there dreckly.

Much more about Rena Gardiner, the book, her life and her work along with our joyous trawl through the archives (and news of a purchase or two) very soon.

 

 

 

 

Janet Bolton at Cowslip Workshops

Before I went to New Zealand I booked two courses at Cowslip Workshops, something to look forward to when I arrived home. Shibori and indigo dyeing a real inspiration back in March and I knew the second one would be likewise, a two day workshop with textile artist Janet Bolton a few weeks ago.

From Janet's website...

"Janet Bolton composes textile pictures using the simplest of hand sewing techniques. Her inspiration comes from visual experience, memory, imagination – and sometimes from some quality inspired by the material itself. The placement of each element within the composition and the feeling this evokes being the important factor of each piece of work.
Janet has been on the Crafts Council selected index of makers since 1985, her work is in many private collections and in: The British Council Collection, The Crafts Council Permanent Collection and The Embroiderers Guild Museum Collection."

I have long-admired Janet's work in naive folk applique pictures and have all her books..

...along with the set of postcards I bought several years ago and which remain my favourites.

Six cards that I use as bookmarks, occasionally put some in a frame, risk one and glue it on the front of a special notebook. If I am slow-reading any book I hunt down the Janet Bolton snail. It is the only one that will do and becomes a gentle reminder that this reading lark is not a race, no extra points for reading more books this year than last year, slow and steady and enjoy.

Looking back I see it was 2008 when I 'discovered' Janet, contacted her for permission to use her pictures on here and wrote a blog post...

"At first glance these pictures seem a bit naive, slapdash, even a bit, well basic. Except look closely and see just how clever they are in their seeming simplicity. So often for us first-generation rotary cutters patchwork has become a precise, measured, symmetrical and very formal art. One millimetre out and we've thrown the whole project into disarray and we despair. When corners don't quite meet and triangles refuse to align we flip and fret over our mistakes.
Well actually I don't because perfectionism is not a word that sits comfortably with my craft efforts.
But there seems to be something incredibly freeing about Janet's pictures and I have fallen in love with them, nor do I think I could easily re-create them. Janet does workshops over at Cowslip and I shall get there one day because I should imagine they are huge fun."

Well it has only taken me eight years but I made it and it was more than huge fun, it was two days of slow, mindful stitching bliss, painting with fabric and threads. And you meet lovely like-minded people with whom the conversation ebbs and flows throughout the day. To my right a nurse who had just retired and was walking the south west coast path, on my left a lady who had travelled from France to be at the class. While we were there six quilters from the US were emailing to book places on Janet's next course at Cowslip.

How lucky am I to live twenty minutes away.

Janet is a wonderful teacher, engaging and attentive, full of encouragement and ideas whilst ensuring that everyone feels able to find their own voice in their work. I'd be deep in thought and there would be Janet, quietly at my shoulder, resolving an impasse of colour or placement with some suggestions...and I can only apologise that she burnt her hand not once but twice on my tiny little Clover pressing iron.

It is remarkably difficult to work in 'wonky' when your eye is trained in 'straight lines' and truth be told I now discover that I am not one for the overly abstract and was beginning to think I didn't really enjoy applique either. It was inevitable that my workshop piece would morph from chickens just like Janet's, through to dogs just like Janet's, thence to flowers just like Janet's before I eventually settled on trees just like Lynne's and everything suddenly clicked. There was a whole heap of cut up bits and pieces and a lot of unpicking before I realised that I needed to be doing something of my own that blended with the TexTithe project, eventually choosing a representation of the beautiful woods a few fields up behind the house (which I think you all know as well as we do by now).

I am also a terror for over-gilding the lily so I heeded Janet's advice not to be fearful of empty space and stopped at four lines of ploughed furrow and three birds. Incidentally the background fabric was a piece chopped off an enormous sheet of monogrammed antique (may the good Lord forgive me) French Metis (linen cotton mix) bought in Tavistock Market for £12. To add to the carnage I dunked the lily-white fabric in a bowl of nuclear-strength Yorkshire Tea to give it some patina. A tip from Janet...add some milk because the protein helps fix the dye, and I was pleased with the slightly mottled and uneven effect.

And I was right, it isn't as easy as it looks but I think I now have a starter for ten for a series of pictures that might accompany the TexTithe and will combine with the embroidery that I did on Caroline Zoob's workshop last year. So if Janet Bolton is exhibiting or teaching nearby I can recommend both her work and her classes highly, you will have a wonderful time.

 

 

 

 

 

The Poorly Bernina...

It was state of the art when I got it for Christmas 2002 and we still use the empty box for the Christmas deccies.

The Bernina Virtuosa 153 Quilter's Edition with stitches that you could programme in from a computer. It seemed to be all-singing, bells-and-whistles and I have loved it dearly for fourteen years. Except that about ten years ago I reprogrammed the stitches and then last year inadvertently ditched my very first Dell laptop, the only one now compatible with un-programming them. 

And I wanted my blanket stitch back.

After a fruitless evening spent trying to load old software discs onto new computers and unearthing the oldest laptop we could find whilst bemoaning the fact that this whole internet thing is going to implode one day, I finally caved and booked the machine in for a hospital visit to The Bernina Doctor (yes, really).

'When was it last serviced?' he asked.

'Ah well, now here's the thing, doesn't time fly and aren't Bernina's just the most reliable things,old workhorses. Neverhaditserviced.' I said really quickly.

What about oiling it?

'No, I was told not to, Bernina's never need oiling.'

'Hmm, they changed that advice a few years ago now.'

'I do brush out the feed dogs and things,' I pleaded,' And I did take out the shuttle race to clean it once, but I needed to watch a youtube video to put it back together so I haven't tried that again.'

And that dear friends is how I was parted from my machine for ten days and felt bereft.

Who knew that I used it so much, or would feel like there was a gaping hole in my sewing room. Suddenly everything I wanted to make involved a sewing machine and there was Bernina Corner, empty.

It turns out that my machine was very poorly. Much more wrong with it than was right apparently.

'Have you been having trouble threading it,' the doctor asked when, having heard no news, I rang to inquire after the health of the patient.

Now funnily enough I had, from day one and when I rang the dealer on December 27th 2002 to say so they were more than a little brisk with me. It was fine when it left the shop so it must be something I had done, and ever after I have had to coax the thread around the take-up arm rather than just twitch my finger and it would be done.

'And does the thread keep breaking?' 

Now funnily enough it does, but doesn't everyone's.

Apparently not, because not everyone has a crack in the take-up arm which could have been a manufacturing fault given it happened on Day One.

Don't ask this numpty why I never persisted with my complaint, or took up the Bernina five year guarantees.

Anyway by now my Virtuosa 153 Quilter's Edition is seeming vintage. No spare parts to be had so the crack was smoothed out until one turned up and even better I no longer seem to have a chinook helicopter roaring through the room, it's as quiet as a ...as a.... Bernina is supposed to be.

The doctor then phoned to say that the take-up arm replacement had been located and ordered and the surgery could be done as a day case for which I was most grateful. I don't want to upgrade to a newer one, this one does quite enough for my needs and we've had some very happy times together. It would be like getting rid of a friend.

So tell me, do you have your sewing machine serviced every one thousand miles or so...

Do you ever oil it...

Do you feel as attached to it as I am to mine...

Are there some real workhorses out there still going strong...

Can we find the oldest still-in-working-order machine amongst us...

Though I still use the cabinet, I'd love to have my mum's old Singer that went with it. It all reminds me of this wonderful poem by Henry Shukman, included in his collection Archangel , wherein he recounts his Jewish grandfather's deportation from the East End of London in 1917 where he had worked as a tailor. Ostensibly he was to fight on the Eastern Front but caught up in the Revolution it would be four years before he was able to return to his wife and family.

The Singer

The day they got the Singer
my grandmother wouldn't touch it.
The clacking of its single tooth
terrified her, and the way it opened,
tipping over its hinge
so the bobbins, spikes and belts
of the gold and black carapace
almost fell in her lap.
She said it was the quality --
not like her own cross-stithc.
But Israel, my grandfather,
carried it up to the giant table
in the workshop where he'd sat
cross-legged like a buddha
for the past quarter-century,
and soon the others followed,
heaving Fristers, Rossmans
and more Singers up the narrow stairs
until the room clattered like a factory.

And I'm sure they didn't have to go through all this servicing and surgical palaver either.

Anyway the patient came through the take-up arm replacement surgery very well and the verdict seemed to be that the crack could only have happened deliberately and from within the machine (which has never been apart since I've had it) so all is mystery. But never mind, I'm over it now and me and my Bernina are ready for the next thousand miles or so.

 

 

 

 

 

Tex-Tithing...the Method

I can't begin to describe just how much I have enjoyed creating this first map in the Textithe project and while we are on the subject here's my method.

Firstly all the background research and then drawing up my pattern, so from this...


...to this... 

Then I had to think about a means and with apologies to those who Don't Need to Know This, please just scroll on throug

I sat down with a huge pile of fabrics in earth, field and land colours and designs, including quite a few that I had unwittingly collected pending a project like this whilst not knowing what it might be.

This is what a stash is all about.

On the point of tracing, cutting, laying and tacking this jigsaw into place before fixing it to the background with the bias strips I suddenly opted for double-sided, fusible interfacing on the reverse of my fabric pieces. This meant I could then fix each one down more firmly.

This is something else that happens... a change of plan.

Next the bias strip that I planned to use for the hedgerows.

I make my own using a bias strip maker. These come in all sizes and having cut strips of fabric on the bias they then feed through under the iron and hey presto miles of lovely flexible bias that curves like a dream and with neatly folded edges.

Except in the olden days it would all unfold itself again and need hundreds of pins to hold it in place while I stitched.

Bring on the fusible bias tape, and if using 6mm width then I now discover the patience of a saint is required. The packet really should carry a health warning....

'Hold on tight because when you eventually fight your way into this sealed and lethally sharp plastic packaging the whole lot is going to fly out at once'. 

It's a paper tape that has a gossamer-fine, almost invisible fusible backing. Iron onto the reverse of the bias, peel off the paper and then you can iron the bias onto something else. Magic until the whole reel unravels...


But I think you can get the gist...




Honestly, someone's invented something for everything these days, I'm doing a lot of catching up on the latest.

I spent a happy afternoon or two listening to the audio book of Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News (splendid) whilst laying down my hedgerows and the lane and the green lane. It now transpires that one of the best tools I ever bought years and years ago and never really used was this...