Birthday postcards

A recent birthday brought a flood of postcards on my set theme, which was "Anatomy".  This was interpreted in many inventive ways, shown below.  Apologies for the formatting, sometimes I hate computers.

New blog........ " Embrellish"

I've been toying with the idea of moving this blog, or creating another blog to focus on one of the themes appearing here..  I've gone for the latter, not sure if this is a long term move or not, but if you like my embroidery, perhaps have a look at Embrellish.

A tourist in my own city

One of the advantages of doing my course at Morley is that the participants come from parts of London  with which I am not familiar.  They therefore introduce me to areas that I have never visited in all the time I have lived here.  I am almost embarrassed to admit that one of these is Battersea Park.  Yesterday was the day for that visit, particularly as there is an exhibition in The Pumphouse Gallery that includes some work by Janice Gunner.

First, the park, images fixed now, courtesy of Marsedit ( please fix this photo thing Blogger).

Next the exhibition " Beauty is the Only Test".  This is an interesting exploration of the links between maths and craft.   Some lovely pieces of stitching from Janice Gunner, on silk.  

For the completely obsessional, there is a huge piece of work by Lesley Halliwell, made by drawing with Spirograph wheels. 

The building itself is intriguing, over 4 floors ( no lift) with good views on to the park.  The exhibition is small, but free and worth a visit, on until 25th November.

As ever, some interesting textures

Red, white and blue?

Fractals on windows

Lichen and bark

Home at sunset

A break in Devon

So many bloggers show photographs of their work placed in beautiful, natural surroundings, that I was inspired by our accommodation this week to photograph an ongoing project, " Morley Moons" outdoors.



The weather was predictably wet, but where we were staying, had glorious views which enabled me to watch how the sky changed as I was stitching.





Lots of muddy walks, practising map-reading


and finding some great colour studies along the way.


There was even a sunset, but the stars had disappeared by the time we had finished dinner with friends.

Black and white ledger for Halloween

In between helping my elder son prepare a costume for his first Halloween "home alone", I have been continuing to explore the shapes from my first ledger exercise. A fortuitous mistake with the Morley photocopier, led to an interesting juxtaposition of a grid underneath the more biomorphic shapes. The paper is reinforced with iron-on vilene to allow reasonably robust stitching on top.

I also used the copier to experiment with changing scale, inverting the colours of the shapes and multiple repetitions. This is such a revelation to me, that design can be worked at methodically to come up with all sorts of interesting variations. Before doing my recent courses, I had this image that design / art just appeared in makers' minds, fully formed and as a result of some sort of cosmic inspiration force. I now realise that this is not the case.

The left hand side has more stitched inserts


and the right hand side has some stitching in glow-in-the-dark thread. Difficult to photograph, but this gives the idea.


Happy Halloween.

Ledger, loving it, but I'm still on week one

I am absolutely loving this online course, but I am still fixated on the shapes generated during week one. I am applying some of the other techniques we are learning, but by now, I am supposed to she another design source, and a study of lace, with its derivatives. Still, Karen is a generous tutor, and is happy for us to develop our skills as we wish or need, and not to rigidly follow her curriculum. The week's explorations follow.


Overlay page and its inverse. The inverse is a photocopy, as I am using the inverse fabric piece for another ongoing project.


Shibori, indigo dyed polyester acetate, attached using Bondaweb, due to the narrowness of the stems / arms/ branches/ tentacles. FME, with rayon thread, using different patterns of stitching.


This was the page I really didn't like , so I've covered it up with an overlay, but still kept it so it can be seen.


The orange piece is screen printed paper, reinforced with lightweight Vilene, and machine stitched with wool thread. The marking on the magenta page was seeing if I could continue the "quilting" lines on to the overlay.


Top sheet is painted paper backed with very soft Vilene, with embroidered inserts. This overlays an inserted panel of the same paper, ( also reinforced with Vilene) . The background paper is coloured with Inktense blocks, and stamped with lettering from an acrylic blocks set found in a charity shop - some letters missing, so I had to improvise. The paper shapes are the left-overs from cutting the paper stencils for the screen-printing. I like their floppy characteristics, so I stitched them together and included them in the ledger.


Mounted with a piece of paper from an old music book, and lots of ideas spinning in my head from the two stitches added to the music.


Underneath - stitched paper, inserted in to the background paper.

Sketchbook project - can you get there today?

After Morley yesterday, I went to visit The Sketchbook Project , touring to Canada Water library this week.

What a joy. An opportunity to leaf through the 5 x 7 sketchbooks of participants from UK, the rest of Europe and Australia. Also it felt like a truly social event , with no obsessive security measures, great music playing, friendly and helpful staff. Perhaps it is because they are not hidebound by the increasingly ridiculous health and safety elements of many buildings in London these days but it felt like going back in time. Bags left all over the place as people enjoyed what they were looking at, drinks and food being taken alongside the books, no-one concerned about photographs being taken of the books or of other readers, and generally a very relaxed atmosphere.

Books were developed to set themes, but at times, my friends and I were baffled at how the themes had been interpreted by each participant. These pages caught my attention












Today is the last day. If your are in London, it is a short journey from Waterloo on the Jubilee Line. Well worth a visit.