Stitch Archives - Catherine Gowthorpe

I’ve been…..

Tuesday 27 June 2017 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

I’ve been…. doing a number of things. Lots of work, for one, but I’ve managed to keep going with stitching too. I’m currently working on a large sample piece, exploring squares (yet again). Here’s a photo of where I’m up to with it:

I’m fairly sure I’ve blogged about the importance of constraints in the past. At the moment I’m constrained by what I’ve got available because most of my stitching materials are in storage. So, when I was planning this rather large sample piece, I was making do with the range of colours and materials I have available. Regular readers of this blog will recognise the square, pretty much my favourite shape, but in this case I’ve added in a few circles as well. This piece comprises 9 x 9 x 2 inch squares, so its overall size is 18″ x 18″. It’s made mostly out of squares of cotton, and a few squares of silk, left over from other things. The cotton is dress fabrics, batiks and a bit of quilting cotton in plain colours. It all goes together quite well, although it’s a bit bulky in places because I’ve left relatively large seam allowances. This is to take account of the silk, which tends to fray. But it’s quite easy to sew through.

You can’t see from this photo, but there is an attempt at a coherent design in this. I haven’t just stuck the colours together at random. If I get it finished (will I, won’t I? Don’t know) I’ll try to get it all into one photograph.

I’ve been posting regular updates on Instagram, and will continue to do this. So, if you don’t see any more on the blog about this, have a look on Instagram. I know I’ve said it before, but I’m enjoying Instagram.

Filed Under: Colour, Instagram, Quilting, Samples, Stitch

Stitching activity of late

Monday 5 June 2017 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

Having flogged and left the house (see last blogpost) in early March, we then went up to the Scottish borders for a few days, then pushed off to France for about three weeks. Many months ago, when I first found out about it, I had booked to go on a Matthew Harris mentoring workshop in April. And I was quite determined not to miss it. And I’m really glad I didn’t.

If you’re interested in stitching, and if you’ve read my blog previously, you will have heard of Matthew Harris. Here’s a link to his website. I have previously attended one of his mentoring workshops at Bobby Britnell’s in Shropshire and very helpful it was too. However, I was keen to also go to one of his workshops on his own premises in Stroud, because the number of students was even smaller than at Bobby’s. There were six of us altogether, three per studio and each of us had a large space of our own in which to work. I found it very useful to discuss my work and where I’m up to. Matthew is very good at encouraging ideas and suggesting possible directions to explore. For example, he suggested I have a look at the work of Shirley Craven, a textile designer of the 1960s. Very pertinent, very helpful. (Look her up on Google Images and you’ll get the idea).

What I specifically discussed during the two day workshop was the possibility of working on paper. I wrote a brief blog post towards the end of March on the subject, and I’d been doing a bit of work on it (although not much because of the house move and toxic quantities of income-generating work).

I did some sketchbook work, developing a basic shape which I then used in several permutations. Here’s an image that made it as far as being painted and then stitched:

And here’s how I developed it at the mentoring workshop in Stroud:

I cut out a template of my basic shape, and then experimented with overlaying it in various ways. I do like the effect.

I cut a similar design (gouache and coloured pencil on paper) into strips and rearranged them:

I like this one, too, and I can see some scope for scaling it up. However, I’m going to have to wait for a while before I can engage on such activities. In the house we’re moving to (provided all goes well), there is quite a large studio at the bottom of the garden. It was a stable but was converted into an artist’s studio. Imagine how happy I am about that! It’s properly insulated and has a stove so I will be able to work there all year round. It’s well lit from above, and there is plenty of space in it for working on a fairly large scale. So, this red and white piece could be a candidate for the first large piece I make in my new studio…..

Filed Under: Colour, Materiality, Samples, Stitch

More linen on paper

Tuesday 28 March 2017 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

Frankly, I don’t have a lot to show for the last few weeks. Since I last posted here I have both moved house and had an impossible quantity of work to do. This is a uniquely toxic combination in my experience. I couldn’t recommend it and will do my best to avoid it in future.

However, I did get another little sample done using linen thread on paper, and here it is:

This uses the only bright colour (and it isn’t all that bright) in my linen thread collection. Either I buy more linen thread, or I mix in some cottons, and I’m inclined to go for the latter, as I like mixing materials.

The stitch here is wrapped chain stitch, which produces a nice effect, but takes ages. (Pleasing effects often do take ages, I’ve observed with some chagrin). What I like about the embroidery in paper is that it seems to sit on the surface, producing a distinctive texture.

So, will I do more? Answer: yes, probably. However, I think it might be a good idea if I spent a bit of time on more focused efforts to design, so I think I shall get cracking on some sketchbook work.

In the meantime, my need to be stitching something is satisfied by the production of more little pincushions. Pictures will probably follow.

By the by, my cochineal series did get exhibited at Ramster’s. Dee Thomas, another Prism member, was stewarding and kindly sent me a photo. They looked good, set out in a horizontal line, at what looked to be eye level.

Filed Under: Prism, Samples, Stitch

Ramsters

Sunday 12 February 2017 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

The next Ramster exhibition is from 10th March to 26th March 2017. I’ve been aware of it for years, but have not previously applied to exhibit here. By the time I did so in 2016, applications were closed, but Miranda Gunn kindly put me on a waiting list. And, woo hoo, someone has dropped out so I have the opportunity to send some work in. Sending the work in doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be selected for exhibition, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this.

I was hoping to include the rather nice poster for the exhibition, but I can’t currently work out how to import the pdf into WordPress. There’s usually a way of doing these things, but I’ve had a few goes and can’t just get it sorted out at the moment. Anyway, click here to go to the Ramster events website where you can find out more about the exhibition. It’s in Chiddingfold in Surrey, so rather a long way from where I live. I’d love to go, but there are various events going on in my life at the moment which could make it difficult to get away.

I’ll report back if I do get to have my work exhibited here. I’m also planning to send some unframed pieces and some cards, so if you’re there and in the shop, please do look out for my work.

Filed Under: Stitch Tagged With: Ramsters

Embroidery on a bike

Tuesday 17 May 2016 By Catherine Gowthorpe 2 Comments

Well, it’s not actually embroidery on a bike – that would be silly. To be more precise, this is about carrying the materials for embroidery on a bike. Husband and I have recently completed a very long bike ride indeed, from Worcester in England to Prades near Perpignan in the South of France where we often go on holiday. This was a mad enterprise, really, especially for a person like myself unused to great feats of physical exertion. I didn’t tell very many people about it before we left, because I was by no means certain that I would finish it, or even get very far. But, much to my surprise, I did finish it. Woo hoo.

I was riding a hybrid bike (hybrid, that is, between road bike and mountain bike) which is useful if you’re covering varied types of terrain as we were. It’s not the lightest bike on earth and nor is it a particularly expensive bike. I was carrying two Ortlieb pannier bags attached to a rear pannier rack. These had to contain everything I’d need for four to six weeks cycling. We were staying in chambres d’hotes and bed and breakfast places along the way so didn’t need to carry camping equipment as some brave long-distance cyclists do. But the bags did have to contain useful stuff like spare tyres, inner tubes, pump and basic toolkit as well as clothing sufficient to cover a range of scenarios (keeping the rain off, keeping us warm, having something halfway decent to wear for dinner, spare cycling clothes, maps, iPad, chargers etc). This was all carefully thought out and planned for before the trip, to try to keep the weight down to a minimum.

Some stats – we covered just short of 2,000 kilometres in 31 days. This included a couple of days off, so our average rate of progress per day was around 67km, with some wide variations (the longest distance covered in a day was 97km). The weather was very poor for much of the trip. The English section was made very difficult by strong winds which were almost always against us. And it was perishing cold for much of the trip in both England and France. I’d taken my three season cycling gloves along because I supposed there would be a few days when I might need them; in the event I used them almost every day.

I don’t like to undertake any trip without something to sew, and I put a lot of thought into this beforehand. Think about it for a moment: what would you take if the weight was a big issue?

And what did I actually take? Well, I took two pieces of lightweight calico, each measuring about 18 inches square. I tacked some other lightweight materials to them in places – little oddments of linen, silk, cotton etc. A 6 inch hoop. A small square of felt with half a dozen needles of different sizes. And then threads. I decided to stick with five main colour groups – yellows and browns, pale greens, greys, whites and pinks, intended to coordinate or contrast with the appliqued materials. I put these thread groups into five small ziplock bags, packaged inside a rather larger ziplock bag. Another larger ziplock bag contained the hoop and appliqued calico, the felt with needles and my small embroidery scissors. And that was it. I weighed it all and it came to less than 1lb (450grams) and I felt that I was prepared and willing to carry this amount of extra weight so as to be sure of having something to stitch when time allowed. Here is the yellow and brown selection in its ziplock bag:

And the photograph below shows the selection of threads laid out on a table:

How much did I do? Well, en route, I was just exhausted for the first week or so and would just fall asleep at the first possible opportunity. However, as the trip went on I did find some spare minutes every now and then, and on the rest days I managed to put in a couple of hours or so. Once we arrived at our destination I had determined that I was going to spend a lot of time stitching, and I did. Was there anything I really wanted that I hadn’t taken with me? Well, actually, no. I’d planned this carefully, and in any case, it’s always helpful to have a few constraints in materials supplies. I’m so pleased I took the materials with me – I wouldn’t have liked to go for almost six weeks in total without having something to stitch.

So, you see, it can be done. If any of you are inclined to take a lengthy cycle ride or any other type of endeavour where your baggage is severely limited, rest assured that you can get some stitching done… Has anyone else done anything like this? Drop me a line or a comment if you have.

Filed Under: Colour, Stitch

Another small piece for sale

Monday 18 April 2016 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

Last time I posted I explained that I was making some small pieces for sale. Here is another one in this mini-series:

I do like to introduce a highlight colour, and I’m finding it interesting that the highlight that often seems most appropriate is red or pink. Most of this little piece (which measures about 8cm X 9 cm) is covered by a piece of sheer black silk organza. At its edge it tends to curl under a bit which has the pleasing effect of creating a line. It looks somewhat like a horizon line, which is why I’ve placed the piece in this orientation.

I’m enjoying making these small pieces very much. I’ve put quite a lot of work into presenting them carefully. I’ve used a mount cutter to cut an appropriately sized aperture into a piece of mountboard, then I’ve used heavy duty double sided tape to position the piece. Then I’ve covered the back of the mountboard with a piece of heavy card, sticking it down with more double sided tape. Finally, I sign the piece then wrap it up in florist’s cellophane. This is all quite a lot of work, but I’m very pleased with the finished pieces. The mountboard sets off the embroidery very well and the cellophane protects the piece from dust and dirt.

Filed Under: Prism, Stitch Tagged With: Paul Klee

Never apologise, never explain

Saturday 2 April 2016 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

Yes, it’s been a while. But I’m not apologising for that. I’ve got a life, like everybody else, and it does get in the way. I’ve found the best way for me, personally, to approach blogging is to treat it as an on-going diary which will be a bit sporadic when I’m otherwise occupied. There’s really no point in creating a burden for myself in the form of self-imposed pressure to write a blog post twice a week. So I’m not going to. I’m not apologising but if I write about what I’ve been up to, it is inevitably, a kind of explanation. Mostly, during the month of March it’s been work, sheer hard graft with several trips away and some long hours put in on keeping the wolf from the door. But I have been doing quite a lot of stitching in the interstices (I love that word) and I’ll show some of it on the blog over the next week or two. In the meantime, here’s a picture of one of my thread boxes. I think I’ve written in the past how useful I find the cheap wooden drawers from IKEA. I keep commercial stranded cotton in small plastic boxes, and my own dyed threads are in the dyed thread drawer. Everything else goes into these sets of wooden drawers, sorted and classified by colour. They are small enough to be manageable, but large enough to contain what I’ve got. When I want threads of a particular colour I can spill the contents of a drawer onto the desk and rummage about to select things. And tidying up them up afterwards doesn’t take very long. It satisfies my orderly accountant’s mind to have things filed away and tidy.

This is, obviously, the white and cream thread box. It’s somewhat depleted at the moment because I’ve been using neutrals a lot. Those of you who follow this blog may have read my posts in late January and February about whitework. I loved doing so much work around the theme of white but I must say that since then I’ve been enjoying getting back to colour. More on that soon.

Filed Under: Colour, Stitch Tagged With: Whitework

Experimenting with whitework

Wednesday 24 February 2016 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

Last week I was doing some more experimenting with whitework, and this time mostly on the sewing machine. Here’s the result of an experiment in ‘pulled’ work.

I’ve placed it over a patterned gold and black paper for a bit of contrast. I set the machine to zig-zag and then stitched lines down and across the sinamay which is the base material. I’d intended to make a somewhat bigger piece but, frankly, it was a nightmare to work, so I scaled it back. Sinamay is a difficult material to use because of it being so brittle. The thread kept snapping and I had to rethread the machine several times just to produce this small piece. Nice effect, though, and worth a certain amount of trouble, I think. Sometimes it’s just fun to sit down and make something without much forethought, in order to see where it will lead. I’m a big fan of sampling as it gives you scope to be creative in a relatively small timescale, using a minimum of materials. I set out a few small bits and pieces of different materials and just got to work to see what I could make with them. With a piece like this, the effect is produced almost at random, once you’ve made the basic decision about materials. The sinamay distorted in unpredictable directions, so there was no real intent about it.

Filed Under: Samples, Stitch

Resolved piece – whitework on paper

Thursday 11 February 2016 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

Earlier in the week I said I’d write another post about progress on a more resolved piece of whitework on paper. Well, here it is, and somewhat to my surprise it’s actually finished; I got a second wind with it yesterday and managed to complete it.

As with the sample, I drew ovals freehand on a piece of watercolour paper, and then cut them out using a craftknife. Then I used as many different Richlieu and cutwork techniques as I could think of to fill in the cut holes. I think I’ve made a few of them up myself. Some are more successful than others, it has to be said. I’ve used only one thread for all of this – coton à broder which is one of my favourite threads. I bought a very large hank of it in écru, but it’s nearly all gone now.

If I extend this work, it would be interesting to use a more limited range of styles, perhaps using identical repeats. I don’t know – I’ll see. Maybe it’s time for me to draw the whitework to a close and get back to colour. But dipping my toe into whitework again has been a very pleasant interlude. I’ll no doubt return to it someday.

Filed Under: Stitch Tagged With: Whitework

More whitework on paper

Thursday 4 February 2016 By Catherine Gowthorpe Leave a Comment

I’ve been doing some more whitework on paper. I based these images on sketchbook work that I did some time ago, thus reinforcing the view that nothing is really wasted. Having struggled with the thick rayon thread (see previous post earlier this week) on my first resolved piece, I decided to make life a bit easier by using a range of different threads. Some are easier to use than others, but they’re all easier than the rayon. Here’s the first sample I did:

It’s got cotton and silk threads, as well as a bit of rayon. The creamier coloured threads have come out quite yellowy in the photograph, but they look much more neutral than they appear here. I put in lines of backstitch on the verticals but wasn’t completely convinced, once I’d finished, that they were necessary.

So, in the next sample, I left them out and I think it’s more successful:

I’m still very pleased with the technique, overall, and may well do more of this. Perhaps I’ll introduce a bit of colour next time….

Filed Under: Samples, Stitch Tagged With: Whitework

Contemporary Appliqué