Stitching Olympics

The Olympic cycling races came within short cycling distance of my home.


Great colours, and atmosphere, and the peloton passed in a whoosh. I watched the rest on TV, but I had to do some stitching while doing so. The result is this, which will be wrapped around a pebble as a souvenir.





That was really too long to spend in front of a screen with nothing to show for it but a few memories.

Grayson Perry, see the tapestries if you can

So much has been written about these tapestries, I was worried I might be disappointed. Not at all. The sheer scale of these is incredible, and the colour blending is wonderful to see close to. An added bonus is a few of Grayson Perry's pots, that I always find very witty.


This visit included a stimulating discussion with a friend about whether it is important to see the hand of the artist in a final version of a piece of art. This was especially thought-provoking for me, having just been to see the Maggi Hambling "Scallop" sculpture at Aldeburgh. There, and in these tapestries, the technical input of the makers is equally as important as the eye of the artist.


I really enjoyed seeing the marks of the makers in this sculpture.

Is plankton pink?

I have used some of the discharged silk from here, to make my A4 piece for the Contemporary Quilt group for this month, still on the theme of yellow. I'm pleased with this, although in some lights it veers very close to orange rather than yellow due to the sheen on the fabric, I think.



Yellow shot silk, brought back from India about 8years ago by my husband. Plankton shapes cut out of paper and used to make a silkscreen. Discharge paste applied through the silkscreen leaving behind the pale pink shapes. Hand-quilted round the shapes with weft threads drawn out of the sides of the fabric, and then experiments with machine quilted eyelets at various stitch widths. Some strands of threads stitched at the bottom of the eyelets to give a suggestion of small tentacles. Faced binding, which is a new technique for me.

I realised as I was making this piece, that there was a large empty space at top right, so I stitched another plankton shape there, without having the discharged colour within it. Some details below,


Discharged motif


Eyelet detail


Stitched motif


Attempt at showing tufted threads


Back showing faced binding.


This has definitely got my stitching mojo back, and some ideas abut machine trapunto on these motifs are being triggered after reading this book by Hari Walner.

Summer is out there, somewhere……

but not quite yet, so thank goodness for a lovely evening at Plum's, making folded books to remind us of sunnier times

Morley Moons

Last day of term, and I think I am overwhelmed by the number of techniques I have learned this year. I was therefore drawn again to the immediacy and simplicity of indigo resist shibori to make some more strips of moons by using CDs as resists. ! minute and 5 minutes in the indigo bath respectively, with the right hand one dyed with an overall resist before over dyeing with the CD resist.


Some embroidery on previously dyed linen helped with feeling that I was actually doing something constructive while watching the tennis ( Go Andy!).




Stitched with DeHaviland threads, who frustratingly, still don't seem to have a website.

I have brought home some dye pastes and some dyspere dyes to experiment with over the holidays, so there might still be some posting over the next few weeks.

Do visit the Morley Gallery if you ae in Lambeth, where there is a display of work by the Advanced Textiles Group, very inspiring.