In which I work some Carrickmacross Lace

Mr P and I visited Helmsley recently, and I picked up a copy of White Work Embroidery by Barbara Dawson (Batsford) in a charity shop. Yes, I know I don't need any more craft books, but it was a Batsford book for £2.50!  And I didn't know anything about white work, so how else could I learn?!

Anyway.  It's a very good book, a sort of A-Z on white work.  I rather liked the look of Carrickmacross lace, and thought I'd have a bash at it.  You applique muslin on to net, couching it down, and then cut away the muslin that isn't part of the design.  So I doodled a design of some birds holding a key, and over the weekend I made this:

 It's on a blue background to show off the white work.  I'm rather pleased with it as a first attempt!  I also used little buttonhole eyelets in the design, they were fun to embroider.

In which I embroider something terrifying

It was Mr P's birthday at the weekend.  He's a good man.  He encourages my creativity and likes the stuff I make.  So I thought I'd reward him by giving him the most sinister thing I could make.

Well, not really.  Mr P loves outsider and weird music, and who's weirder than Tiny Tim?!

The portrait of Tim is a 2 colour linocut.  Instead of doing a reduction linocut, I cut two different bits of lino with the relevent colours.  So I can make more portraits of Tim as public demand allows!

The tulips are made of felt, and I appliqued them on with just a few stab stitches in a metalic thread, which I also used to highlight the ukelele strings and for a little back-stitch border. 

Mr P likes his present, although we've agreed it makes Tiny Tim look even more sinister than usual.  Result! 

In which I make some little shoes

I made some booties for some friends' baby - the first pair are crocheted from a pattern by ChezPlum on Etsy, and the Japanese style slippers are my own pattern based on loads of things I've seen on t'internet.  I used a gorgeous Japanese fabric for these - it has little turtles on!  I bought this years ago at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate, it's been waiting for a project as cute as this.

In which I reveal the silliest embroidery ever

I embroidered Twilight Sparkle, the main character of the animated tv series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

I've never watched this - I don't know if it's even on air in the UK.  But I was taking part in a swap on the Ship of Fools and my swap partner had said in a thread long ago that he loved My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.  I grew up in the 1980s and loved My Little Ponies, so I thought I'd embroider Twilight Sparkle for him!

My swap partner has now posted to say he's received it (and loved it I think!) so I can post the picture now.  The hoop is probably 4 inches in diameter, I used long and short stitch for the body, stem stitch for the mane and tail and satin stitch for the eyes and horn. 

For the record, Applejack is the best My Little Pony ever.  Fact!

In which I am excited about tiny leaveses

I went to the allotment yesterday to check up on the flax and do some weeding.  There were a few horses' tails/ mares' tails/ bastards (whatever you call them) but the main weed culprit was grass.

My flax is starting to peep through the earth!  There were patches of little green leaves, little pairs of leaves, all over the place!  They didn't seem to have been munched on, so fingers crossed the Fort Knox arrangements around the bed are helping.  Here are my babies!

In which I reiterate a point made better by a better blogger

I was recently rootling through Penny Nickels’ blog, Donkeywolf.  If you’re not aware of the work of Penny Nickels, you really should be.  She’s a kick-ass embroiderer, lace maker, printmaker and all-round creative bomb. 

Back in 2010 (I’m really on the ball here) she posted an article on “The Pattern is Dead, Long Live the Pattern”,  in which she said,

“At the risk of pissing off a large portion of the needlework community, I'm going to go ahead and speak my mind.  Commercial patterns = Paint by Numbers.”

“I guess my point is, needlework takes a tremendous amount of time. Do we want to spend that kind of effort on a pattern that everyone else is doing? And if we're not going to do our own work, why don't we pick something unusual?”

Big fat YES.  Sorry if you love your commercial patterns, but I just can’t be doing with them.  I used them when I was learning to cross stitch as a teenager – I’d buy those little packs with the embroidery floss colours already chosen for you to sew your country cottage or hedgerow flowers or whatever.  But I got bored of those pretty quickly, and started to make my own patterns from illustrations.  There’s some pics of these teenage cross-stitches here – I was an odd teenager.

In her post, Penny asks why we don’t use brilliant illustrations and art to create patterns – I love her embroideries of Haeckel drawings.  They’re not cute, conventional or dull.  They’re extraordinary, and the fact they’re rendered into stitch gives an extra dimension to the design. 

Making your own patterns – whether it’s from your own art or someone else’s - is more creatively fulfilling than following a commercial pattern!  At the end of her post, Penny challenges us not to embroider cute kitties, but to take on Louis Wain’s cats.  I did this a couple of years ago, for Mr P.  He loves Louis Wain, and introduced me to his art.  I couldn’t afford to buy him an original painting so I decided to embroider a couple of cats.  Here’s my cat with a violin and cat with a banjo (both done chiefly in satin stitch).  They were great fun to embroider, and I love the finished pieces.  

In which I draw pastoral scenes

Sort of.  I did a drawing of a tree and a wall, with watercolours and pen, and a pen sketch of a tree.  And a goat.  Here they are!