Day 133 - Embroidery

The recession has hit the snipsnaphappy household.

We thought we were safe with me working for a charity and hubby in healthcare, but nope. Hubby is being made redundant and everything has been thrown up in the air and is currently fluttering down our ears in little pieces whilst we try to make any sense out of it all.

On the day we found out I had decided to try embroidery for the first time ever. I bought a hoop from Hobbycraft for under £2, I used some cheap fabric I had from Ikea which I generally use for lining, and I found some threads that I used to use for making friendship bracelets. I poured some wine, I stuck the telly on, I referred to an old 1970s book on crafts, and I had a go.

I ignored pretty much all the warnings about not anchoring the thread with a knot, not using unravelled thread, and I worked freehand without any kind of design. Ahem.

First I tried some flowers.

For these I used satin-stitch for the leaf, lazy-daisy-stitch for the petals, rhodes-stitch for the centre of the flowers, and stem-stitch for..well..for the stems.

I then decided to try some letters. I sketched an L lightly in biro (it was all I had to hand) and then used satin-stich to make the letter. I then employed the same techniques I had tried with the flowers to entwine some small blooms onto my L.

The satin stitch is, as the picture shows, a little wonky, but I was quite pleased with it as a first attempt. I used stem-stitich on the most narrow bits of the L. Looking at it I now think I should have done this in a very intricate stain-stitch, but I am quite fussy.

I would love to do my daughter's name in her favourite colour (pink!) covered in little flowers, then frame it for her room.

I still have a lot to learn on this. But I really enjoy it and it is keeping me sane. Trust me anything that keeps me sane at the moment can only be a good thing.

Day 114 - Sewing

One hundred and fourteen days? Doesn't time fly!

It has busy of late, the hubby's birthday followed by my gorgeous little girl turning three, then my mum's birthday, Easter and, this weekend, my birthday too. I will be a stone heavier by the end of April because of all the cake.

I have two mosaics outstanding (not to be confused with outstanding mosaics) that a lack of time, space and materials have prevented me from completing. My butterfly picture and my abstract flowers mirror remain unfinished, which is frustrating. However I have begun to sew, which is something I find I can do in front of the telly and without the same level of mess that mosaics make.

I am not the first crafty mum who has had to choose between sleep and hoovering every night! I like nothing better than to sit and mosaic, but I cannot maintain a daily hoovering schedule in order to save my family's feet from being shredded by the stray shards. I have a small (but perfectly formed) little cottage and no workspace of my own. The table we use for breakfast, lunch and dinner is also used for mosaic work, painting, playdough, cutting material, working and studying, it also often doubles as a workbench for my husband! Thank goodness we chose a solid wood table, I am sure it will be sanded back and re-varnished/waxed many times over the years as our life goes on around and over it.

I have no photos of my work to show beyond the bag below. My camera is proving difficult. I have a fairly cheap olympus 830 and for the life of me I cannot get it to take a decent picture of my work. It seems to have two settings - over-exposed or blurred. If this blog is to be any kind of record of what I do then I need to address the camera issue for sure.

So for now, so as not to leave this entry unadorned, a picture of my darling girl chasing her daddy through a garden on her 3rd birthday:

Sewing

I am rather pleased with myself!

I have even been to Ikea for more fabric -I think I know what most of my friends will be getting for Christmas!

I have found sewing extremely satisfying. It is fiddly enough to absorb me nicely and the results are really pleasing. It helps that is also a very forgiving craft, depending on what you are making of course! This bag though was very simple thanks to the really good pattern from tiny-happy.

Losing track of the days

I must count what day I am on in my year of creativity, I am losing track.

Still, no matter what day we're at the snipsnaphappy household has been a hive of creativity over the last week. The spring equinox arrived on Friday and with it some fantastic fresh and sunny weather.

We emerged blinking into the back garden after a long dark winter and starting cutting back weeds, reclaiming the lawn and repotting plants. We reaquainted ourselves with our neighbours over the garden fence and we got mud under our fingernails. Our little girl has been itching to put the ornamental butterflies we found at a local fair onto the shed, so at last we did.

Hubby has repainted walls, put up shelves and finished off cupboards and bits around the house. Whilst I have been sewing! Sewing is something I always assumed, thanks to my awful school and terible teachers, that I was no good at whatsoever. Turns out this may not be the case. I am hope I am not speaking too soon and that I don't now meet with an untimely end related to a sewing machine accident..

I bought some cheap but quality striped fabric from Ikea and found a bag pattern on t'internet. I nicked my mum's old Elna sewing machine, she gave me a quick lesson, and I was away and stitiching! The bag is far from finished so I will keep some suspense and post pictures later.

It's great to be throwing myself into all these crafts. I don't have much time for it, I work four days a week and I am a mum 24/7. Today was mother's day so hubby took over the bulk of the day-to-day stuff so I could have a me-day.

The more I read blogs and look at pictures on flickr, and find patterns and look for inspiration, the more I realise I am part of an enormous group of creative artistic people who need no excuse for making something, it's just...what they do. For years I thought that being creative and artistic was just a luxury, now I realise it's ok to create something for the sake of it, and that it is ok to give it priority.

I never expected this year to be such a big journey.

Fabric from Ebay!

I just can't resist an Ebay bargain and these fat-quarters were just crying out for a good home!

Pink and kitsch for me:


Cute owls for our little girl:

Retro 1970s print for all of us!:

I have cushions, dolls and bags in mind. I must steal my mother's sewing machine next time she's not looking!

Martin Cheek Workshop

Last weekend I drove down to Broadstairs to attend Martin Cheek’s advanced weekend workshop.

This was a big deal for me, not least because I am not used to driving long distance on my own – particularly when I hit fog thicker than marshmallows half-way and can’t see beyond my own bumper. But it was also a big deal to be abandoning my hubby and daughter for a whole weekend, not just a night but two whole days as well. Plus I was attending a course with the word advanced in the title so I was already feeling out of my depth before I’d even turned the sat nav on.

Despite the fog, which dispersed fairly quickly, I made it to Broadstairs alive, I found the car-park and the guest house easily and arrived in plenty of time to drop of my bags, go to the loo and have a cup of tea before heading round the corner to Martin Cheek’s Flint House.

Arriving at the same time as a couple of other students I was given a warm welcome and ushered through to the studio at the back of the house overlooking the garden, which in turn overlooked the sea. We chatted a bit and I discovered most of the others had either been on the course before or were actual proper artists already.

Oh gawd.

The first morning started with an introduction from Martin and a kind of mini lecture on the history of smalti and how it is made etc. I found Martin to be a fascinating teacher, some people can just make anything sound interesting and he is one of those few. We were then given a tour of some of the pieces hanging around the house, then we went into the garden for some more absorbing stories about the different kinds of materials and methods and a look at the wonderful mosaics hidden there.

Though some were more obvious than others of course…!

We then had a browse through the second studio at the end of the garden and started to collect together materials for our mosaics. At this point I was feeling totally and utterly overwhelmed. I was surrounded by artists who really knew what they were doing, who were confident and direct and knew what tone and contrast were. I had a dreadful cold and the range of materials was so vast I really didn’t know where to begin.

This is not how I usually feel at the beginning of a day where I can sit and mosaic uninterrupted! Normally I would be full of delight at the prospect, I really don’t know why I was struggling. I think I wanted to impress too much, which of course I shouldn’t have. I should have just chilled out and enjoyed it. Lord knows why I was so uptight. Too many Halls Soothers perhaps?

I selected some lovely tactile glass fusions in all shapes and colours and arranged them to form the butterfly I was mosaicing. I had chosen the picture of the butterfly from the end of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar as my inspiration. My little girl adores butterflies so the finished piece is to hang in her bedroom.

I had never used the glass fusions before and it was odd but fun to be working with an entirely new material. I got quite frustrated at times (internally!) and found myself needing to get up and walk away from it on a few occasions. By the end of the first day I had the main form of the butterfly glued down ready for embellishments and background to be added either the next day or when I got home.

That evening my cold worsened and my throat started to sting quite badly. It was becoming obvious to me that I had a throat infection, which I am prone to, so I tucked myself up in my cosy guesthouse with a lemsip from the landlady and some paper to doodle on. I slept incredibly well – a full nine hours straight – and I woke raring to get on with day two.

I had breakfast in the loveliest setting at my guesthouse along with a couple of my fellow mosaicists.

I arrived back at Flint House bright and early. Martin generously lets students work in his studio before the start time of the actual course. I put my butterfly to one side to start working on another piece; a seascape in smalti. But at this point I got really stuck; I didn’t like what I was doing, I was becoming concerned about the cost of the materials and I felt constrained by time. I realised, after a quick chat with Martin, that I had being trying to do too much. So I decided to finish my butterfly instead.

I am really glad now that I did make that decision. I should have focused on one thing from the outset. I started to fill some of the gaps in the butterfly’s wings with some millefiori, and I glued down some copper wire for antennae. I decided to make my background in different shades of white – some of the expensive stuff, some cheap, some translucent and some iridescent. I outlined the butterfly first and then began on the background. There are proper latin names for the two techniques I used here, but without my course notes to hand I couldn’t tell you!

By 4.30pm my throat was on fire, I was up to my eyeballs in snot and I still had a long lonely drive ahead of me. It was time to call it a day. So I made my farewells, wrapped my mosaic up in my coat to protect it from the rain that was just starting and set off. The drive was painful – pouring with rain but full-on sunny with the light directly in my eyes the whole way home, beaming off the wet roads and blinding me.

I got home in time to read my daughter her bedtime stories and she was so happy to have me home, it was lovely. And she adored her butterfly and was really excited at the prospect of “helping” me finish it.

I went to the doc’s the next day and was diagnosed with a throat infection; something beginning with m and ending in itis for which I was given some pretty strong drugs. It knocked me sideways and I ended up staying home from work on Tuesday. Inspired my the weekend I threw myself into another mosaic and was really please with the results (to be posted later).

I learnt a lot at the weekend, and actually I have learnt a lot about my creative self in the last few days too – I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. But that’s a story for another day…

Off to the Martin Cheek course tomorrow!

All packed! Tomorrow I am off to Broadstairs to go on one of Martin Cheek's courses.

I am both incredibly excited and horribly nervous. I live in Kent so it's a 90 minute drive down to the coast, which isn't too bad but I am not an entirely confident driver so I am slightly nervous at being let loose on the motorway just me, my fiesta and a sat nav.

I am staying the night at a B&B down there as it is a two day course and it wouldn't be worth spending three hours on the road both days. I will miss hubby and my little girl, and of course there's the ol' mother's guilt to throw into the bargain, but I am assured by one and all that some time out for me is well earned and deserved.

I still feel guilty though.

I am however very excited to be learning from a real master and I am keen to see what work of art I come up with by Sunday, watch this space.