Author Archives: Jane

Hand-stitched Indian doodles

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I’ve been working on Indian designs lately so I thought I’d show some work in progress. The inspiration for this is some of the densely stitched metal thread work that I saw in India. At the moment each piece is a separate motif stitched on a square or rectangle of dyed felt, and they’ll eventually be joined together with some freer stitching wandering over the whole piece to unite them. I’m doing the stitching in a combination of silver kid, silver metal thread (purls and pearls) silver jap, embroidery thread and beads. The sizes and shapes of the squares and rectangles are based on the Fibronacci sequence, so the measurement of each piece is either 1,2,3,5,8,13 or 21cm. Once I’ve found an arrangement that works, they’ll all be pieced together and mounted together, possibly surrounded by something silver.

Here’s an initial arrangement done in coloured card (apologies for the strange colours and photo quality!) The idea is that I can juggle with the actual arrangement as I go along and the combination of shapes and sizes should balance each other. That’s the theory anyway – we’ll see if it works! It’s abit of an experiment as I normally have a clear idea of the overall design of a piece before I start stitching it – sometimes to the extent that maybe I ‘over-design’ it. It feels quite ‘free’ to just start each bit with whatever comes into my mind at the time – a very different way to approach it all.

Once they’re all in place, I plan to add some hand-stitching that will be freer in the way it wanders, to break up the rather rigid blocks of colour. I’ll post more images as it develops.

Deomlition

Oops

There used to be a front garden here

There’s been quite a gap since my last post here, but a few photos may show you why. We’re in week 4 of a 2 week building project, which turned out to be a much bigger project than we or the builders realised. The hall, stairs and landing are covered in dust-sheets, tools, plasterboard etc., and the front garden is full of rubble.

The builders are lovely, but I wasn’t planning on having them in the house all day Christmas Eve! It’s very lucky this wasn’t happening last year, when we had a house full of visitors all week. This year relatives are coming to us for Christmas lunch, but they’re all local so they don’t need to stay overnight. We’ll clear a path free of tools and rubble for Roger’s mother’s wheely-walker, and I’ve managed to get the living room relatively dust-free.

Buying a Christmas tree was delayed because of the building works, but I finally rushed out and bought one yesterday, a lop-sided B&Q left-over. Once I’d got that decorated, it did finally begin to feel like Christmas, so things are looking up. With the state of the world as it is, it seems churlish to grumble about abit of dust. Let’s just be thankful that we’re warm, dry, safe and have food to eat and people around us. Just as long as I don’t accidentally mix plaster-dust in the gravy!

Here’s wishing everyone a very happy, relaxing and peaceful Christmas and a creative New Year.

 

 

 

 

Indian Fabric Heaven

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My mother used to say that her vision of entering heaven would go like this: The Pearly gates roll back. St Peter emerges carrying a tool box. After serving tea, gin and tonic or whisky (depending on the time of day) St Peter asks ‘are there any little jobs you want doing Mrs R?’ Well, my version of entering heaven goes like this. The Pearly gates roll back, to reveal the entrance to Jayalakshmi Silk Shop in Cochin. I am greeted by a whole department store stacked from floor to ceiling with silks of every colour, hue and texture beyond my wildest imaginings. Not one, not two, but a hundred shades of each colour. Floaty gossamer chiffons, dense shimmering satins and textured hand-weaves. And even better, there’s a remnant corner where an area the size of a medium-sized planet is packed with ends-of-rolls at crazy give-away prices.

This isn’t the time to be all English in your shopping style. It’s no good in India saying ‘Thank you, I’m just browsing’. In India that is interpreted as ‘I need more help to find what I want’. In my experience, this usually leads to all the contents of the shop spread out on the floor, more coffee drunk than I normally have in a week, and some random thing bought just so I can get out of the shop. Instead, in Jayalakshmi Silks it’s best to enjoy the help and advice of the most delightful sales assistants in the world, and to accept the offers of iced water and a coffee-break when needed. There’s even an air-conditioned ‘waiting room’ with iced water and ginger coffee served to the waiting men-folk before they lose the will to live. Apparently it’s not unknown for groups of women to spend three days there when they’re buying the fabrics for a big wedding. You can see the men nervously fingering their wallets!

My previous attempts at fabric buying earlier in the trip weren’t a great success. On my last trip to India (Rajasthan and Gujerat) it was really easy buying fabric from small shops and stalls, but for some reason it was harder in Kerala. Some of the markets and shops I located on Google before the trip were in fact huge stores for wholesale only, and others were selling synthetic tat. I did manage to find a great bazaar in Madurai in Tamil Nadu which had lots of stalls selling silks. ‘Great’, I thought to myself. ‘This is the place’.  Most of the fabric stalls sell fabric that they give to tailors who make made-to-measure clothes that are stitched up immaculately there and then. (Apologies for the fuzzy focus in this photo, but I was using the phone not the camera). It was a lovely time-warp experience to see the old singer treadle sewing machines like my granny’s.

There’s a story behind why I look so hot and bothered in this photo taken in the bazaar. Firstly, I was too hot. A hot Jane is a dangerous thing, according to my husband. Secondly, I discovered afterwards that my guide had told the stall-holder that I was a big buyer from England who wanted to buy hundreds of yards of silk. I think something got lost in the translation – no wonder the seller was eager! Thirdly, I hate haggling and have no idea how to do it (anyone remember the Monty Python haggling scene, when the buyer talks himself up and up in price?) My version of haggling goes like this. Me: ‘How much is it?’ Seller: ‘X rupees’. Me: ‘OK’. Not how it’s done! And the final problem was that when I converted rupees to pounds I got totally confused with the number of zeros (I blame the heat). That left me thinking I didn’t have enough cash on me, and putting most of the silks I’d carefully chosen back on the shelf and buying just a couple of apologetic half-metres. I cut this photo in half to post it here- the other half has a rather thunderous-looking stall-holder standing next to me. Ah well, you live and learn! And Jayalakshmi Silk Shop made up for it.

There’s been a long gap since my previous blog post and there’s so much to catch up on. I’ll try to keep abit more up-to-date and to catch up on my trip to Kerala and some of the wonderful colours and designs (not too many holiday snaps, I promise!) And also an update on what I’m working on at the moment, and a wonderful course I’ve just been on with Ruth Issett at Art Vango. Where do I start? But I think the sun’s under the yard-arm so I’m signing off for now.

 

 

 

Pacific islands palm-leaf weaving, part 2

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DSCN0742I promised in my last post that I would add some more about how the palm-leaf weaving is used. Apologies for the long gap since the last post – I’ve just been ridiculously busy (nothing exciting, just things like house chaos for new boiler installation etc.)

I’ll start with a coarser form of palm-weaving that is used to make houses. The palm-leaves below are drying in the sun. They have been plaited while still attached to their branch rather than cut off to make strands for finer weaving, because they’re going to be used for making houses. These have been plaited while they’re still supple, so they hold their shape when dry.

The woven Palm-leaf branches are used to make the walls and roofs of houses. They are wonderful to sleep in, because the breeze wafts in from the sea, keeping the air cool and the mosquitoes away. Here’s a little house, called a fale (pronounced fallay) that we stayed in on one of the Vava’u islands before the kayak trip, firstly looking from the outside. You can see some un-woven palm branches that have been laid over the top of the house, and you can see the woven palm fronds that make up the wall, tied to a wooden frame.

Looking up into the roof you can see the woven branches in the roof, laid over each other and secured, and then covered with a layer of looser palm branches.

Later in the trip we went on a village home-stay with a family up in the mountains in Fiji (we stayed in the green and pink house below). My brother and his son had stayed there some years ago and were made really welcome, so we asked if we could stay with the same family.

The palm-leaf weaving techniques in Fiji are similar to Tonga, although with local variations. The woven matting is used as floor-covering, and also doubles as something to sit on and also to sleep on. Here are four generations of our host family inside their house. 

It’s a far cry from the ‘tourist cocoon’ way of travelling. It was beyond our normal comfort zone, and was a totally eye-opening and happy experience. Communicating with no shared language was interesting (and possible!) and the children seemed to find us a very strange novelty! One thing was a real eye-opener. Having slept in the family’s house, shared their meals, drunk kava at village ceremonies and been invited for tea in neighbouring houses, we began to feel we kind of belonged. We understood who was who, and how the village worked. After a few days a bunch of white western European tourists came to the village and wandered around. They looked so fearful and suspicious, clutching their bags close to them as if someone was about to mug them. One of the young men who spoke English commented very sadly to us that they looked at him and his village as if they hated them. This is incomprehensible to a Fijian way of thinking, as strangers are all future friends. Meeting Tongan and Fijian people has completely changed my attitude to talking to strangers wherever I am.

But back to the palm-leaf weaving. Here are some finer pieces of weaving, where the pattern has been added by weaving in a darker strand. The patterns are different between Tonga and Fiji, and a local expert can identify each pattern as coming from a specific village. Decorative weaving is used to make a long rectangular strip that is worn by men and boys on formal occasions such as Church or village meetings, wrapped around the waist and hips, tied off with a piece of cloth. They look quite stiff and uncomfortable to wear, which kind of adds to the the formal posture and the ‘gravitas’ of the occasion.

I’ll finish with a little tale. We were fully immersed in the village, enjoying learning about the traditional way of life. A life with no TV, computers, electricity or other mod cons, where everything is based on tradition. A young lad acted as our guide one day to go up the local mountain.  He told us that he would become the village Chief later on in life. I asked if that meant that all the girls wanted to marry him. His answer was yes (with no hint of false modesty) but he added that he already knew who he was going to marry. I imagined that he would have been betrothed at a young age to a young girl selected as ‘suitable for a future Chief’s wife’, like generations before him. Then it became clear that his future wife was from a village on a completely separate island, and I couldn’t understand how they had met. It soon made sense… they met on Facebook! Coming from a Chief’s family, they had the only generator in the village so he was able to charge his mobile phone. The reason he was so keen to guide us up the mountain was that the top of the mountain is the only place he could get a mobile signal to get onto Facebook. Ha, that caught me out!

Pacific Islands palm-leaf weaving, part 1

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I promised to share some photos here of palm-leaf weaving in Tonga and Fiji. I was there the summer before last, on the trip of a lifetime based around a kayak-camping trip between some far remote Tongan islands. Memories of this were re-kindled a couple of weeks ago when I went on a twining course with Mary Crabb.

Pacific island culture is unbelievably friendly, more than anywhere else I’ve ever been to. That makes it very easy to get chatting to people about their crafts, despite limited common language. It’s amazing how much you can communicate with signs and gestures, and before you know it you’re having a lesson. I had a lesson in palm-leaf braiding with this lovely lady, in her home on the island of Eua. She has prepared the palm-leaf fronds, firstly by drying them out in the sun for a couple of days. Then the wide fronds are ‘sliced’ down into narrower strands, by running a sharp piece of tin-can along the length of them. The fronds are quite tough and so they’re pretty hard on the hands, but they make very strong items once they’re woven. For the purposes of teaching, I was shown how to make a four-ply braid. The same principle is used for weaving bigger things, and all sorts of decorative details are added.

Life in Tonga moves at a much gentler pace than here in the UK. Weaving mats is a chance to sit and gossip with friends. I heard the most heavenly singing coming from this Church hall, and wandered in to find these women sitting weaving. They welcomed me in to sit with them while they worked and sang.

And in case you wondered how we got around in Tonga, here’s how. That’s my brother and husband in one of the kayaks, loaded with tents, water, cooking pot and frying pan.

The little speck on the horizon is the next day’s destination. And in the meantime there’s the taxing question of which exact spot in heaven to set up camp…

I’ll dig out some photos of how the woven items are used in daily life. Unfortunately for now time has run out, so I’ll include those in a later post. I do feel nostalgic for the experience of ‘timelessness’ in the Pacific. I don’t expect that people on the islands often say ‘I didn’t have time’. There always is time, if not today then tomorrow.

Twining with Mary Crabb

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I’ve just finished two samples of twining, which I learned on a course with Mary Crabb at Worthing Museum and Art Gallery last weekend. Mary brought an enormous selection of threads and yarns – including some ‘special’ ones which she shared very generously with students. It was a sunny day so we had the door into the Museum garden open, and there was a calypso band playing outside for a private view for a new exhibition in the Studio Gallery. Lovely. The starting point for our work was looking at some of the antique fans in the Museum, in particular their colours and shapes. Twining is a technique that’s kind of a mixture between weaving, plaiting and braiding. Rather than one strand running to and fro like weaving, two strands are worked at the same time, with a crossover twist round each of the uprights.

This one was worked over willow, which gives a firm foundation. As the shape fans out, extra rolled paper uprights are added in between them so that the woven strands don’t have to span too much distance between them.

This one was woven on uprights made of rolled paper so it is slightly more flexible (depending on how tightly you weave it).

The picture below is students work in progress during the day.

During the day we were chatting about different kinds of weaving / twining / basket-making / braiding / plaiting, and it brought back memories of learning how to weave with palm fronds last year when I was travelling in the Pacific. I’ll dig out some photos of palm frond weaving, and how they are used in Pacific island houses. I need abit more time to find those, so it will have to be ‘part two’ of this post.

Mary’s work takes twining into a more experimental dimension, including sculptural forms made out of wire. You can see some of these on her website www.marycrabb.co.uk

 

 

 

 

I am granted permission to exist, and eat humble pie

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Apologies for the rant in the last post. I’m pleased to report that Facebook did accept the paper-trail that proved that Stephanie Jane Robinson is actually the same person as Jane Robinson. By gracious permission of Facebook, I exist! A miracle occurreth! It was only the extreme good fortune of never having bothered to correct my accidental ‘dual’ registration with City and Guilds, which meant that I have certificates in both names, and a newspaper photo of me in the name of Jane which they could compare to my passport photo as Stephanie.

So I am reinstated on Facebook, hopefully before anyone realised I had disappeared (which I realise would have been of world-wide significance to all). This is the photo I used for my Facebook page. Someone commented that it looks like something from the 18th century. Another century is probably where I really belong anyway, in a world before technology and electronics, and where you cannot accidentally delete yourself in one click.

Thank you, oh Facebook God. I promise that in gratitude for Your gracious mercy I will commit no more crimes. I will not do the following ever again: Think mean thoughts. Do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Puff up the chocolate packet to look like I haven’t secretly eaten more. Open the bedroom curtains and go back to bed, so people outside think I’ve got up. Rant (no, delete that one, without ranting I would explode).

Now let’s get back to planting some plants and doing some art!

Failed attempt to join the 21st century

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No images for this post because I’m too fed up.

Well, after a long time not getting around to joining Facebook I finally decided it was time to do it, partly because I realised that I was missing out on so much sharing of images and information in the textile world. So I spent more time than I care to admit setting it all up, opening my account, setting up an Artists page, linking to other pages, sending friend requests, looking at videos of cute cats etc. I submitted a couple of pictures of my work to ‘Textile Arts’ on Facebook and received 400 Likes in 24 hours and many lovely comments. People started linking from my Facebook page to my website. ‘Great’ I thought. ‘I’ve cracked social media. Piece of cake’. But then it all went horribly wrong. Through the post I’d put on the Textile Artist page I received friend requests from people I didn’t know. I didn’t want to offend anyone by declining, so I sent them messages inviting them to ‘follow’ my Artists page instead. Therein lies the problem. By sending the same cut-and-paste messages to people not on my friends list in quick succession, I triggered a security alert on my account and found myself locked out and my page closed down.

I received a computerised message which I interpret as saying that they don’t think that I am me. OMG, then I suddenly realised what the problem is. Very few people know that I was christened Stephanie Jane, because since before I can remember I have always and only been called Jane. It just never occurred to me that opening a Facebook page as ‘Jane’ might be seen as fraud, because Jane is who I am! I identify so little with ‘Stephanie’ that I’ve sat in waiting rooms wondering why the Stephanie who is being called isn’t responding. I’ve always been so careful at work to make sure that things like professional registration and DBS checks are all coordinated with my legal documents and to link the name I’m known by and my legal identity. I’ve always signed things like Court reports as ‘S Jane’. But I just didn’t think of it for Facebook. I received an automated message asking me to submit identification – but everything on their list is in the name of Stephanie, not Jane. How on earth do I prove that I am Jane??? As far as I’m concerned, Stephanie is the one I don’t identify with and she’s the one who can produce all the apple-pie documents. In the end I’ve submitted a copy of my C&G Medal for Excellence as ‘S Jane Robinson’, a C&G Medal for Excellence from Bucks CC as ‘Jane Robinson’, and a newspaper feature of me receiving the medal as ‘Jane Robinson’. This was the only way I could think of to link both Stephanie Robinson and Jane Robinson with a photo of yours truly that is publicly identified as Jane and can be compared to that other Stephanie woman in the passport. I really don’t know if that will do it.

If not, having just invited all my friends and family to be ‘friends’ and put myself about on the Textile Arts page with 10,000 or so textile people, anyone who tries to follow links to me will find that I’ve been deleted, leaving me looking and feeling very stupid. If it makes me feel like they have deleted me along with the Facebook page, then that probably illustrates why I held out for so long against joining it. Apologies to anyone who tries to contact me through Facebook only to find I’ve disappeared off the face of the earth. Please believe me that I do still exist, in real life, as a real person (who answers to Jane and not Stephanie) . I am still available for phone calls, emails, getting together in person, having real conversations  and ‘doing stuff’. How quaint! How last-century!

Now for some alcohol. Herrumph. So the Luddites were right all along.

Stitching in the air

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I’ve been trying out some of the experiments that I mentioned in my previous blog post. Last time I wrote about making lampshades using batik-dyed fabric. This week I’ve been playing with tea-lights, using a cut-away technique. I’ve used a ‘kit’ from Needcraft for the structure. This provides you with a top and bottom ring and a plastic stick-on backing that you apply the fabric to before assembling it all. My experiment was to see whether the backing plastic could be cut away and stitched into in the same way as pelmet vilene. It’s a lovely technique which gives you a lacy effect over the holes. It’s quite strange to stitch off the edge of the hole with no fabric or soluble fabric, and just carry on stitching ‘in the air’ until you reach the other side.

DSCN5447 - CopyThe fabric is space-dyed cotton. Yes, it was deliberate to leave the crinkles in (in fact I scrunched it while it was wet to make it more pronounced). The reason for that is that later on I will highlight the scrunches, either with metallic foil or with treasure-gold highlighter.

I stuck the fabric and the plastic backing together, and drew the motifs on the plastic and cut it away with a sharp blade before cutting the fabric away leaving the hole to stitch over. A zigzag stitch round the edge neatens it and catches the lines of stitching in place.

I was using a thread with two strands to it, one metallic and one viscose, which is usually quite good-tempered. The main problem I found is that the thread keeps snagging on the edge of the hole in the plastic, unlike stitching on pelmet vilene. Each time it snags, the metallic strand snaps which means re-threading.  To try to avoid this I have to stitch really slowly and there’s alot of re-threading of the needle, so progress is slow.

I’m not happy with the quality of the stitching, which is abit ragged compared to the purple and green sample here that was done on pelment vilene. I think it would be better to use a more slippery thread. Another improvement would be to do the stitching in the fabric first, before sticking it to the backing, and just cut the holes in the plastic wider than the holes in the fabric so that the plastic edges are concealed behind the zigzag edging. I’ll add some photos later on when it’s finished, but thought I’d add it now as ‘work in progress’ in case anyone has any suggestions of a better way to do it.

 

Quick and easy lampshades

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I’ve just been on a workshop on making quick and easy lampshades. Years ago my mother taught me how to make lampshades the traditional way, by wrapping bias binding round the frame and then hand-stitching the fabric to the bias binding, whilst with the third hand trying to keep the tension on the fabric in several directions at once. Since then, I’ve gone for the ‘quick dash into Ikea’ approach to lampshades, often ending up with something fairly neutral that I would then spot everywhere else I went. The joy of these lampshade kits is that you can use any fabric you want, and can produce a professional-looking shade without hours of tugging, tweaking and hand-stitching. Magic! The kits come from Needcraft and the workshop was at Sew In Brighton. Here’s a collection of shades by different students on the workshop – all came out looking good, and all so different.

Finished lampshades

For my particular shade I used some batik fabric that I made a long time ago, which has been sitting in a cupboard for a long long time. It is cotton lawn, coloured with a batik process using the trusty potato-masher. The first stage was to paint on some fairly pale Procion dye in pinks and turquoises. Then the hot wax was applied with the potato-masher, and finally the fabric was re-painted with more concentrated, darker Procion dye.

A kit is a far cry from the traditional hand-stitched approach – but the net result is very professional looking. I would like to try using whole range of original art-textiles and making them into shades – batik, printing, marbling spring to mind. And of course stitching. I’m pondering using the technique of cutting away parts of the fabric and machine stitching over the holes – probably by bonding the fabric to the stiff backing PVC first, and then cutting through both and stitching both at the same time. Like this cut-away image below – maybe even the same design (which came from a repeat-pattern that I developed from a collage). But instead of the green backing there would be a hole that lets light through. I sense some experiments looming!

Machine embroidered cut-away design on dyed pelmet-vilene.

Machine embroidered cut-away design on dyed pelmet-vilene.

 

 

Creative Waves, Art on the Pier at Worthing

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I’m really pleased that five of my pieces have been chosen to feature in a ‘community art’ project on Worthing Pier. The Creative Waves project has been going for several years now. It features the work of artists from the Worthing and Adur area, on panels along the pier.  The images are printed onto specially treated vinyl which is resistant to UV damage, and they are mounted between glass panels that run down the centre of the pier. They stay there for a year and they seem to stand up to all the wind, salt, rain and blazing sun that comes their way.  The west side will feature one piece each from 50 artists, and the east side will feature five pieces each from ten artists.  The images on each side are mounted ‘back to back’ so that other panels can still looked through as windows. I like the very broad interpretation they give to ‘art’ – as well as paintings and drawings, they also feature silver-smithing, sculpture, embroidery, felting, printing and photography, amongst others. They also include lots of images from local children. Wow, if I’m pleased to have my work there, just imagine how exciting it would be if you were a young child! You can read more about the project here. I’ve just received the proofs (see below) of the images that were chosen (if you’ve looked at the Gallery pages here then you may recognise them). Worthing pier is a short stroll from my house and it will be quite surreal to see my own work there when we go down for an afternoon tea or an evening drink. How exciting!

Fossil bark, mono-print and dye

Flower Stem, wrapped wire and stitching on soluble fabric

Jane Robinson Bark cloth.

Fossil rock, gold-work on dyed and manipulated fabric

Turkish tulip flower-light, stitched on soluble fabric and wire

 

 

 

 

Behind a guarded door

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I have finally been to see the Marian Hangings at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk. I’ve wanted to see them for a long time, as they’re such an important part of English embroidery history. They are a collection of canvas-work panels stitched by Mary Queen of Scots during her years of captivity. They are based on contemporary drawings from natural history books; some are wierd and wonderful creatures that are part real and part mythical, and others are recognisable creatures. I like this one, A Frogge,  (that’s my pencil drawing of him next to it). The main motifs were probably originally stitched as individual items such as cushion covers, and were later placed together onto huge velvet backing panels. The techniques involved are quite restricted, but the painstaking work is amazing. DSCN5315

Oxburgh Hall is a beautiful place. As we wandered round in the spring sunshine, eating National Trust cakes and taking photos, it was is hard to picture it as a place of captivity. There is no doubt that Mary used embroidery as a subtle form of political expression. Historians debate how far the imagery should be taken as allegorical. For example one piece shows a lily on one side (symbolising France) and a rose on the other side (symbolising England.) A thistle, representing Scotland, lies on its side at the bottom of the picture, looking squashed and lacking space to grow freely. Another bears the motto ‘Virtue flourishes by wounding’ together with the thistle of Scotland. This was probably about as politically overt as Mary could be given the vulnerability of her position. It is hard to imagine the hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks, years and years, when Mary just waited. Waited, and embroidered. How amazing to think that she had the weight of history on her shoulders while she sat and stitched.  If she could be a fly on the wall now, how bizarre it would be to see her work studied by earnest National Trust ladies in sensible shoes, peering at the stitches and then heading off to the tea-shop. Who remembers ‘Fotheringhay’, that haunting 70’s song by Fairport Convention, written about the later period when Mary was moved to Fotheringhay Castle waiting for execution ‘To live such fruitless years behind a guarded door’.

How often she has gazed from castle windows over
And watched the daylight passing within her captive wall
With no-one to heed her call

The evening hour is fading within the dwindling sun
And in a lonely moment those embers will be gone
And the last of all the young birds flown

Her days of precious freedom, forfeited long before
To live such fruitless years behind a guarded door
But those days will last no more

Tomorrow at this hour she will be far away
Much farther than these islands
Or the lonely Fotheringay

I must just show you this photo of the priest-hole in Oxburgh Hall, the hiding-place for Catholic priests who were being hunted down and were hidden in big Catholic houses. That’s my brother going down into it (yes he did get out again – he was a caver for many years!) DSCN5300

Sadly the reason for being in Norfolk was the funeral of a very long-standing friend of my mother’s, who became an ‘Honorary Auntie’ for the three Robinson siblings. Rosemary was always there for words of wisdom and advice, combined with marvellous head-girl cheerfulness that defied anyone to be negative. The funeral was held in the beautiful Church in Worsted village in Norfolk. Rosemary left only one specific instruction for her funeral, which was that it was to open with the congregation singing ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes’! I defy anyone to be solemn and mournful whilst singing ‘She’ll be wearing pink pyjamas when she comes’! I think the whole congregation was crying and laughing at the same time. Rosemary used to end her phone calls or visits by wishing us ‘Much Cherish’. So here’s wishing you all ‘Much Cherish’.

Colour hue and saturation

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I’ve been playing with colour lately, experimenting with changing the levels of colour saturation. I started with this simple print that I did some time ago. The background is khadi paper which firstly had a layer of gesso rolled over one half. It was then coloured with turquoise Procion dye, and some areas had a hint of black added to the turquoise. On top of that is a simple mono-print in turquoise acrylic paint with white or black added, on an orange and turquoise background. What I was experimenting with in this piece was seeing how colours recede or move forward depending on contrasts in their position on the colour wheel and the degree of colour saturation. I’ve often admired the subtlety of other peoples work when they use delicate and complex colours, as I often tend to go for very bright, strongly saturated colour. So what I’m playing with at the moment is changing the level of colour saturation, and the levels of white and black mixed with the pure colour, to see how that changes the overall effect.

 

 

 

 

 

In these experiments, I used Gimp photo editing to alter the colour saturation in two stages, which as far as I can tell has a similar effect to adding both white and black simultaneously to paint or dye. In the pictures below I started with the original turquoise and orange print, but altered the colour balance first so that I could see the same process applied to different colour-ranges.

 

 

 

 

 

It starts to be apparent why the pure saturated colour-range in each of the left-hand photos doesn’t give such subtlety. Some might say vibrant or bold, others might say loud. The highly saturated colours on the left tend to be the ones that I normally choose.

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at the reduced-saturation ones in the middle and right-hand photos, some might say they’re subtle or delicate, others might say bland. Colour is such a personal matter, and it has such an effect on us.

 

 

 

 

 

These experiments with colour are a first stage in thinking about stitched textile work based on Indian designs. The photos don’t look at all Indian, I know, but I plan to use Indian motifs in the stitching and to use contrasts in hue and saturation to create the impact of the piece. The idea at the moment is to use backgrounds that have variations in colour hue and saturation, with stitching that contrasts with those. In theory I may be able to create the effect of stitched areas that recede and advance depending on the background. Watch this space, as they say.

 

 

 

Congratulations to Charlotte Haenlein, C&G Medal for Excellence 2015

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Charlotte Haenlein, C&G Patchwork and Quilting, Missenden Abbey

Charlotte Haenlein, C&G Patchwork and Quilting, Missenden Abbey

Congratulations to Charlotte Haenlein, who has won the C&G Medal for Excellence for Stitched Textiles 2015 after completing her course at Missenden Abbey. She kindly sent me these images of one of her assessed pieces and gave permission to show them here. This photo is a close-up showing details of the stitching, and the following photo shows the overall design. I’ve been trying to guess the inspiration and design sources behind this piece. It reminds me of Ikat and Double-Ikat weaving; a geometric pattern with a strong structure but with the edges softened by the graduations of colour. I’m intrigued by trying to work out how it’s done. Printed? Pieced and patched? I do know that the fabric is shot silk, and I can see that the quilting is done with a toning space-dyed thread. Congratulations Charlotte, and congratulations also to another Missenden Abbey student, Tina Brier, who has won the Medal for Excellence for Floristry.

Charlotte Haenlein, C&G Patchwork and Quilting, Missenden Abbey

Charlotte Haenlein, C&G Patchwork and Quilting, Missenden Abbey

Ceramic tile painting

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Does anyone have experience of painting on ceramic tiles? We recently bought some second-hand fireplace tiles on eBay, a floral design which I thought was going to be highlighted in red. Unfortunately it’s difficult to show colour on a computer screen and in real life the bits I thought were red are actually brown. I like the yellow, and the background is a lovely deep bottle-green. But brown is probably my least-favourite colour. I’m wondering if it would work to use a ceramic paint to highlight the brown bits with a hint of red? They are fireplace tiles so I think the paint could be ‘fixed’ in the oven without cracking the tiles.

The reason I originally liked the tiles is that the ‘tube-lining’ that outlines the areas of colour reminds me of the white lines of a silk-painting, so I have an idea to make a silk painted picture to hang above the fireplace that echoes the flowers in the tiles. It’s a long time since I did silk-painting except to make mottled backgrounds for stitch. I did some last year when I made a silk painting of Jeremy Fisher sitting on his lily-leaf for my God-daughter. Unfortunately when I fixed the silk I must have got it too hot because the gutta outlining came out scorched. Although the scorch-marks could have been incorporated into the design I thought it would weaken the silk in the future, so I abandoned it and did the same design on cotton with fabric paints instead. It would be fun to get back into silk painting as it’s a lovely technique.

Projects like this have been on hold for a while. My mother-in-law was desperate to leave hospital, so we found her a place in a care home while bones mended. Sadly the care home wasn’t a great success and there was ‘much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth’ (and that’s just the relatives!) There was a notice board in the entrance with the heading ‘Activities This Week’. The board was always empty. I was tempted to add ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’. My normally positive outlook only just withstood mother-in-law’s cheery reminders of ‘Not long til you’re old and in this state and who’ll look after you’? But I guess if you’re looking over The Edge then you can be forgiven for commenting to other people that it looks like a long way down. Anyway, at the weekend we effected ‘The Great Escape’ from the care home and took mother-in-law back home with a lovely live-in carer, so fingers crossed that things will look up for everyone. Perhaps we’ve left the twin towns of Much Weeping and Much Wailing behind and moved to Little Hoping. Maybe one day we can move on to Great Hoping?

Ah well, if you haven’t got youth, faith or children to protect you, then art provides some kind of hand-rail and fairy-lights along the edge of The Abyss. Art, and also the wonders of nature; moorland streams, secret mossy places, sunlit uplands, flowers, silence. And cuddles. And being connected to people. And old polished wood. And cats sleeping in the sun. And tiled fireplaces!  So if anyone has any experience of ceramic painting then I’d be grateful for your thoughts. Do you think it would work?

Article in ‘Be Inspired’ by Workbox

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Be Inspired by Workbox Article

Be Inspired by Workbox Article

I am really pleased that I have just had an article published in the Workbox Annual Magazine, called ‘Be Inspired’. This is an ‘extra’ annual edition that is longer than the bi-monthly Workbox magazine (130 pages) which they release in time for stocking-fillers for textile addicts. I am delighted by the editing and the graphic design of the article. It’s very strange sending off an article as a text document and some Jpegs, because at that point you lose all editorial control over how it is presented. I opened the magazine quite nervously, wondering what they had done with it, and I was so pleased to see how they had used it. All in all they gave it 8 whole pages (!) including some whole-page photos of my work. I can only include some ‘fuzzy’ images here, because I own copyright of the photos but not the text, so if you would like to read it you’ll need to buy the magazine.

Be Inspired by Workbox Vol 3 Article

Be Inspired by Workbox Vol 3 Article

Be Inspired by Workbox Vol 3 Article

Be Inspired by Workbox Vol 3 Article

Be Inspired by Workbox Vol 3 Article

Workbox Magazine Nov/Dec 2014

Workbox Magazine Nov/Dec 2014

I was asked to write something about ‘My Textile Journey’ after Workbox put a City and Guilds Press Release about me in the Nov/Dec edition of the magazine (forgot to mention that on the blog, but they gave it a whole page which was nice – see left). I wasn’t sure how interested Josephine Public would be in the details of how I learned to sew, so I thought it would be more interesting if I linked it to something more general about re-finding creativity later in life. Over the last year or so I have had so many people commenting, quite sadly I think, that they would love to be creative but they feel something is blocking them from this. Sometimes it’s time, and sometimes it is a lack of confidence in their own creativity. I am always struck by the way children don’t suffer from this – they just jump straight in and use their imagination and creativity in a spontaneous way. It seems so sad that something about modern life means that adults often lose their confidence in creative expression. I firmly believe that if we have it as children then it must still be there as adults, just buried so that it feels out of reach. My article tries to suggest some reasons why that happens, and what people can do to try to get back in touch with the creative freedom enjoyed by children.

Be Inspired by Workbox Vol 3 cover

Be Inspired by Workbox Vol 3 cover

This is what the magazine looks like on the cover. It’s slightly difficult to find in newsagents, but I did see it on sale at a big branch of Smiths although some of the smaller branches don’t seem to have it. It can be ordered online http://www.workboxmag.com/shop/be-inspired-vol-3/

Changing the subject: I’ve been enjoying decorating the new house for Christmas. At times I’ve wondered why I was doing it since it’s been a period of really intense pressure on time for various reasons. However, I think I cling to Christmas rituals in defiance or denial of time pressure. Taking out the Christmas decorations each year is like greeting old friends after an absence. It reminds me of a different era as a child, when there really was time to enjoy it all properly. I don’t think I’m romanticising when I remember time to wander the Devon fields collecting dried grasses to spray gold, making hand-made decorations, and making danglies for the Christmas tree. There are times when this hits me as a sad time-warp (usually in a supermarket, when I hear tinned carols and ask myself where we all went wrong with modern life and why we are under such time pressure and things are so pre-packaged). But at some stage I always enjoy decorating the tree, at which point I am a small child again, gazing up at all the sparkles and pretties. Roger laughs when I keep going in and saying ‘pretty, pretty’ and says that middle-aged Jane has been replaced by three-year-old Jane.

Anyway, many thanks to those of you who reply to posts or who email me separately with comments. It’s great to hear from you. Wishing you a very happy Christmas and New Year one and all.

To-do lists, cardboard boxes and discomobulation

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People say that moving house is one of the top five stressful life-events, and I think they’re right. Unfortunately, quite soon after the move my 90 year old mother-in-law fell at home and broke two bones. One way and another I’m rather discombobulated so I hope you can forgive the long gap between posts. As an apology, here’s a totally irrelevant photo of something that amused me when I was in Oxford. How bizarre it is that the same world can contain war, poverty, oppression, natural disasters – and a knitted lamp-post cosy in Oxford.

Moving house provides so many opportunities for a control-freak to write endless lists. Things to pack, what to pack with what, what to leave out, what goes where at the other end, who to notify of change of address, even lists of lists. It helps me to feel that life isn’t spinning out of control. It goes something like this:

List                                                                                                                                                             Write List A                                                                                                                                               Write List B                                                                                                                                                 Write List C                                                                                                                                                   Write List of lists…hang on a minute that’s what this one is…if I keep going round this loop then everything is under control…

The balance of order and chaos starts to tip in the wrong direction

Evidence: the disappearing list was there

Evidence: the disappearing list was there

My lists keep the world in orbit and remind the sun to come up in the morning. My in-tray normally has 3 tiers, which are ‘Urgent’, ‘Soon’, and ‘Manyana’. Unfortunately now they’re all muddled up in a heap labelled ‘Oh my God what’s in there?’ Worse, the to-do list went missing. Woe is me! The dark side threatens to engulf the world! How can the forces of chaos be held back without my list? Look, there it was on the desk. And then suddenly there it wasn’t.

There has been an ongoing debate for years as to what all the ‘stuff’ that filled our cupboards actually consists of, and I categorically denied that most of it was mine. However, packing and labelling all our combined worldly goods has officially confirmed that I am a hoarder. I’m not sure what the relative proportions of boxes says about me, except that when I say I’ve got nothing to wear I’m probably making an accurate statement of fact.

Clothes: One wardrobe rail, one box, two suitcases, one box of shoes.                                            Walking, water-sports, travel, camping: 9 boxes                                                                                      Books: 21 boxes                                                                                                                                          Art equipment and textile ‘stuff’: 20 boxes                                                                                        Noo-Noos:  Undisclosed number (classified information).

Ah yes, I’ll tell you about Noo-noos. My brother and his family have a collective name for all those things that have no particular purpose in life except to be put on a shelf and gather dust. They call them Nicky-Nacky-Noo-Noos, or Noo-Noos for short. It came as quite a surprise to see how many boxes of Noo-Noos there were. For example I have a great weakness for ceramics – I love the feel of handling hand-made studio pottery, particularly stone-ware. Then there are all those pretty things, dangly things, brightly coloured things, childhood treasures and things that I’ll keep for ever because I love the person who gave them to me (like the little hand-made pottery fox that my God-mother made for my birthday when I was very small). And since childhood I’ve loved collections of things – coloured glass, little boxes, my mother’s antique porcelain, shells, antique ivory sewing things, old glass lace bobbins, and things that are just – tiny. All the stuff that my husband looks at and asks in a bewildered tone of voice:  ‘What’s it for?’ In a parallel life I am a higher spiritual being who rises above attachment to material things. But in real life I have a hearty disrespect for people who tell you to de-clutter your life, and I love my ‘stuff’. I definitely don’t do ‘minimalism! Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about? Perhaps you’re the kind of person who has wonderful half-empty cupboards with spare space? In which case I admire you but it puzzles me!

My father had a wonderful way of categorising things in his workshop at work. Four drawers in a filing cabinet were labelled in turn: ‘Bits, Bobs, Odds, Sods’. Noo-Noos are decorative, whereas Bits, Bobs, Odds and Sods are more functional. My paperwork on the other hand is filed in boxes labelled ‘Useful Things’, ‘Boring Things’, ‘Nice Things’ and ‘Nasty Things’. The great thing about this system is that I don’t accidentally stumble across a nasty thing like a will while I’m looking for a nice thing like an exhibition brochure. Things can be re-categorised – for example an insurance claim is ‘Nasty’ while it still has a sting to it, but becomes just ‘Boring’ once it is dealt with and forgotten. Roger sometimes says he thinks he’ll find himself neatly folded and filed, and asks whether he’d be classified as ‘Useful’ or ‘Nice’. I reassure him that it definitely wouldn’t be ‘Boring’ or ‘Nasty’! Some of the more urgent ‘Boring’ and ‘Useful’ things are beginning to get organised in the new house, but sadly most of the Noo-noos and books are still packed. I hear them tapping on the boxes with little cries of ‘let us out’ but I have to ignore them for now.

If you were wondering why there’s no art to show you in this post, then this photo may help explain it. I’m looking forward to a time when I can start decorating, get the Noo-noos and books out of boxes, start designing the garden, dig some flower-beds, and get into the boxes of art stuff. Last weekend I had a lovely day with textile friends and we are starting to think about a joint exhibition, probably now in Spring 2016. Some time between now and then I look forward to being reunited with my art and textile stuff and getting back into the creative process. As a child I was fully trained in the art of bread-and-butter-before-cake. The cake is in front of me on the plate now, so I’m looking forward to being allowed to eat it.

Good bye sea-views

Good bye sea-views

 

Hello garden

Hello garden

Knitting and Stitching Show, Part the Second: Gelliping with Hilary Beattie

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I enjoyed a wonderful day of ‘gelliping’ with Hilary Beattie at the Knit and Stitch show. Unusually for the Knit and Stitch show it was a whole-day workshop rather than a ‘taster’ session, which meant there was time to play and experiment. I was inspired to go on a workshop with Hilary when I read about her teaching on Sam Packer’s blog catch a crumpsey. It is lovely to go on a course with a tutor who is so passionate about teaching, and I found the day very inspiring.

I’ve been wondering what the latest craze with gelli plate printing is all about. How is it different from ‘normal’ mono-printing using age-old surfaces like plastic or glass? Well now I know the answer – you can do all the same things that you do on a glass plate, but there are some extras. The biggest difference, I think, is that unlike printing from something firm, gelli plates will take an ‘impression’ of an item you use as a resist. After inking up the gelli plate and placing a ‘resist’ on it (like a leaf for example) the first print you take from it forms a negative print where the leaf appears as a ‘void’. So far that’s the same as a glass plate. But the difference is in the second print you take from it. The leaf gets pressed into the gelli; when you remove the leaf and take a second print from what’s left, you end up with the positive print of the leaf, with the tiny details like veins all showing. That’s a rather muddled explanation, so I recommend Hilary’s new book that has just come out, which makes it all clear through examples.DSCN4978

Or you can use the gelli plate just like a normal mono-print surface, like these that I did by printing several layers of colour and pattern. With these ones I was trying to create an impression of depth by over-printing with light and dark, or matt and shiny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are a few prints put out to dry (below) that were done by the rest of the class. I would really recommend a course with Hilary – she’s like a human whirlwind, good fun, very spontaneous and not at all precious about art. What a great day. And no, I really didn’t have time for a course as I should really have been packing for the move, but it was good to escape from the sea of boxes for a while. Wonderful displacement activity.

 

 

 

 

Knitting and Stitching Show, Part the First

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Renate Keeping

Renate Keeping

Renate Keeping

A Flood Warning for the tidal areas of Shoreham Harbour on Thursday (normal high spring tide plus an extra storm-surge) meant that I spent the morning putting in my mother-in-law’s flood defences, and only got to Ally Pally in the afternoon. I was really pleased that a lovely stranger came and helped me. She was walking her dog along the river and saw me staggering around with giant planks and heaps of sand-bags and came and helped for half an hour. How nice is that? So although my first day at the show was cut in half, in fact I went up in very good spirits, musing on how nice people can be. The other thing that helped me enjoy my whistle-stop rush round the show was that this year for the first time I treated myself to a 20-minute head, neck and shoulder-massage at the show. I’ve seen the people in green T shirts offering massages at previous shows and felt slightly shy about saying ‘yes’. But it got rid of tired muscles from sand-bag operations, and in fact it was so pleasant that I’ll make a point of doing it next year too. I started by feeling slightly self-conscious being massaged in such a public place, but after a few minutes I was relaxed, and soon after that I was away with the fairies. The main thing I missed out was the big trader’s hall, which was probably a good thing for my bank-balance.

Renate Keeping

Luckily I did manage to get round the main exhibitions that I wanted to see. Here are a few of my favourite things. I loved these apples by Renate Keeping, which are reflections on ripening, ageing and time. They are displayed in ‘crates’ and look like they have been lovingly gathered and stored at the end of the season. You could almost smell them, or reach out and take a bite. Closer inspection revealed marks and blemishes, and little holes where a creature had eaten its way in.

 

Renate Keeping

I was very taken with Jo Beattie’s work ‘Precious Memories’ (below) which was based on photographs of people she loves, capturing ‘moments in time’. Images are stitched onto organza and then cut-away into silhouettes, like this one of children in a play-ground. They are mounted away from their background and displayed with a strong light, so the shadows become as much part of the work as the stitching. Judging by conversations I overheard, this was a very popular piece.

Jo Beattie

Jo Beattie

Margaret Talbot’s piece below was inspired by the centenary of the start of the First World War. The description reads: ‘Margaret’s work was inspired by the scars of war on the landscape, the devastation of crops and the pollution of the land between the lines. Perfect fields disintegrate into ‘no-man’s-land’ and then into absolute destruction.’ Techniques include pulled work on silk scrim. I found it strangely moving.

Margaret Talbot

DSCN4823I finally got to say hello to Kim Thittichai on the stand where she was demonstrating, but only as the show was closing and the crowds finally melted away. Kim is buried in there somewhere, chatting and demonstrating away!

‘Part the Second’ will follow later. That was a day workshop with Hilary Beattie the following day, which needs some photos sorting before I add it.

A Round Tuit.

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I used to share an office with a colleague who had a round ceramic plaque on the wall by her desk, with the inscription ‘You always said you would get A Round Tuit, so I thought I’d give you one’. OK so it was abit cutesy – but I could identify with the sentiment! I definitely need to get a Round Tuit at the moment. People who have stitched alongside me know that I’m the world’s greatest prevaricator, and I spend for ever getting a round tuit. Right now I think there’s a good reason though, as I’m beginning to pack for a house-move. We’ve had an unbelievable gap of 5 months between exchanging contracts and completing, so we drifted into the mindset that we had endless time available to sort everything out. Now suddenly it’s looming in 5 weeks time and there’s so much to do. I haven’t moved for 19 years and Roger hasn’t moved for 26 years, so it’s a big deal and we’re quite unsettled. Art is virtually at a standstill, so I thought it would be a good chance to tackle some small UFO’s.

Earlier this year I went with some friends on a wonderful course with Gwen Hedley, called ‘Cut, fold, form, patch, piece’. We made a series of little pieces based on manipulating fabric and paper, enclosing and trapping things within folds and flaps. I came home with a head full of ideas and a box full of projects to finish, and of course that’s where they have stayed since then. But they are an ideal thing to keep out during the next few months of chaos, because they are small, portable, easily put-down-able, and can be done in the hand without access to messy space. They don’t need any great concentration on design – they just evolve in your hands as you stitch. That’s great at a time when I’m distracted by trying to get our current home ready for new people, firstly de-cluttering and secondly decorating.

Fellow textile addicts will understand the way that ‘stuff’ just expands, filling cupboards to bulging and over-flowing. When the cupboards are full, then the boxes start to pile up in front of the cupboards. Why is it that whatever you need is guaranteed to be in the most deeply buried and inaccessible place? And horror of horrors, when you start hoiking it out of cupboards and trying to rugby-tackle it into boxes, then it expands in an exponential explosion.

We’ll be saying goodbye to our sea-views, but we’ll gain a garden (and an ‘extra’ room…now I wonder what that could be used for??? Any ideas???) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are some more of these little experiments in the pipeline, and they’ll each have more stitching added before being mounted onto something less harsh than the paper they’re currently on. After that they’ll probably turn into a sort of little 3D sketch-book-thingy.

Roger just looked over my shoulder and asked why I was posting photos of strange stuff tied up with string…

…Is there anyone out there…?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Workshop On The Web Article

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Jane Robinson 3D Goldwork Fossil Rock

Jane Robinson 3D Goldwork Fossil Rock

I’m pleased to say that I’ve just had an article published in the on-line magazine ‘Workshop on the Web’ (Edited by Maggie Grey). I am a subscriber to Workshop on the Web and have enjoyed many a good article and workshop, so I was delighted to be invited to contribute. I was asked to write about one of my finished pieces in the Diploma in Stitched Textiles (Embroidery) course exhibition, which Sam Packer for WoW had seen last year. I had put this piece into the Festival of Quilts (Quilt Creations Category) this summer, so it seemed a good idea to choose this one. The article is split into two parts – the first covers piecing and patching the fabrics and dyeing them, and the second covers adding the gold-work fossils and manipulating it into a 3D piece.

Gold-work Trilobite

Gold-work Trilobite

 

What I couldn’t show in the article is that the rock is designed to ‘levitate’ and float in the air. To see it floating, click here.

If you’re not already a subscriber to Workshop on the Web (or WoW as people call it) then I do recommend it – not only because I’m in it!

The History of English Embroidery

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A visit to Parham House in Sussex has just reminded me of the wonderful embroideries on display there. They have an impressive collection of stumpwork pictures, as well as tapestries and furnishings. Parham House has a generous attitude to photography, allowing photos provided no flash is used. What a boon for anyone who enjoys the History of English Embroidery – it means you can look at the images in more detail than you can get in a postcard. As well as embroideries, there are some fantastic examples shown in portraits. I love the way the artist has captured the texture of the velvet, shown in the top photo, and the way the pile captures the light. It is quite amazing that although so few actual examples of Elizabethan embroideries still exist, we have such a good idea of what they looked like through portraits. This is such a good example, showing gold-work and silk shaded fantasy flowers in the swirling designs that the Elizabethans loved so much.

Portrait said to be of Elizabeth I.

The one above is said to be of Elizabeth I, although art historians question this as the shape of her face is different from other portraits of her. Anyway, whoever she is, just look at the detail in the starched Reticella lace collar, and the mad little silk-worms embroidered on her dress.

 

 

This poor soul looks like she could be quite spirited, if she could only move her head!

A question for you

Now, I have a question. As part of the City and Guilds Diploma in Stitched Textiles (Embroidery), everyone does a big project on The History of English Embroidery. I loved doing mine; I got completely engrossed in it, and it ran to 100 A3 pages. I would rather not know how long it actually took! Now after all that work it is shut away in a cupboard, which seems abit of a waste. When I was doing it I came across some fantastic books written by specialists in their field which tended to be on very specific areas, such as a particular technique or an era. I found relatively few that had a complete overview (except for the wonderful book by Lanto Synge that includes the whole of Western Europe). What I was also looking for was something that was relatively short and simple, and contained more of a summary that would give an ‘overview’ before delving into the more rarefied professional tomes. Then when we had our C&G end of course show I noticed that other C&G students wanted to photograph pages from our finished projects, as a starting point for their own project. So I wonder if there’s any interest in me putting it all on the website so that anyone who is interested can see it? It’s no substitute for studying the specialist books by the professional textile historians (or preferably seeing the originals) but it may be useful as a starting-point.

I’d need to scan it page by page, so I thought I’d see first if there’s any interest. What do you think?

 

 

The Festival of Quilts 2014

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Sandra Smith, The Cloths of Heaven, Miniature Quilts (detail) I loved the subtle colours and the simplicity of this.

What a feast for the eyes at the Festival of Quilts. The feet have just about recovered from a bad choice of footwear for a day of standing and shuffling about, and the photos are finally uploaded. This was the first time I’ve been to the festival, and I really under-estimated how much there would be to see. It took a whole day just to look at the competition quilts – there were about a thousand just of those. I ran out of time for the curated exhibitions and there was no time at all for the traders stalls so the bank balance didn’t suffer, unlike Ally Pally. Definitely two days next year.

Inneke Van Unen, Emotion in Art, Route du vin blanc. This was one of the few non-competition galleries I did get to see. I bought her catalogue for the exhibition which was worth every penny for the lovely colours. I also enjoyed chatting to her.

I found my first visit to the FOQ really friendly. As well as meeting up with friends and familiar acquaintances, I had some really nice conversations with various unknown people. For example I had an hour to wait between my friend’s train time and my own, and as I was sitting in the bar a lovely stranger came up and asked if I’d like a conversation as she was on her own too. How un-British, and how nice! I didn’t write down a name so it has slipped from my memory. If that’s you, then do reply here and say hello!

My 3D ‘Fossil Rock’ was entered in the Quilt Creations category. I was disappointed with how it was displayed – it’s a tiny little thing that was displayed at knee-height. When people are used to looking upwards at huge quilts, and if they have tired feet, creaky knees or shopping bags on their shoulder, are they really going to bother to get down to knee-height to look at something so small? It’s the first time I’ve entered anything into a competition so I wasn’t specific about wanting it shown at eye-level – I thought it would have been self-evident. Oh well, you live and learn. Here’s someone who did bother to crouch down – thank you, unknown lady!

Most of my favourites came from the categories of Art Quilts, Contemporary Quilts and the Fine Art Quiltmasters (I don’t understand the distinctions between these – can anyone enlighten me?) The rest of this post shows some of my favourites (I’ve saved the best for last) but first there were some traditional ones that I liked too. My favourite traditional quilts didn’t win, but they easily could have been winners in my humble opinion.

Annelise Littlefair, Kutch Diamonds, Traditional Quilts

Annelise Littlefair, Kutch Diamonds, Traditional Quilts

I love the quilt above by Annelise Littlefair. The closer you get to it, the more exquisite detail emerges (see below). The machine-quilting is done very delicately. Apparently this was a winning quilt in a previous quilt competition (Sandown?) and I can see why. It would have been my choice of winner of the traditional category this time too.

Annelise Littlefair, detail 1

Annelise Littlefair, detail 2

Annelise Littlefair, detail 2

I loved this traditional one below, with beautifully stitched applique. It could have come straight out of Averil Colby. I can picture a group of people sitting round the quilt frame stitching it, in a quilting bee in ‘Little House on the Prairie’. Shame the photo makes it look pink – it was a lovely crisp white.

Sue Horner, My Baltimore Quilt, (Traditional Quilts)

Sue Horner, My Baltimore Quilt, (Traditional Quilts)

Simon Henry, 1850, Traditional Quilts

Simon Henry, 1850, Traditional Quilts

Here are two more I liked in the traditional category. On the left, a lovely applique by Simon Henry.

Below: a piece by Laura Armiraglio. I did wonder if it might have been more ‘in place’ in the Pictorial category, but as I mentioned before I don’t understand the categories so what do I know??? It’s lovely anyway.

Laura Armiraglio, Omaggion a Gerda Bengtsson

Laura Armiraglio, Omaggion a Gerda Bengtsson

 

 

Penny Armitage, Cosmos, Miniature Quilts

Penny Armitage, Cosmos, Miniature Quilts

And here are some that struck me from the other categories.

Here’s another ‘pretty’ one by Penny Armitage in the Miniature Quilts category, which I think is a machine cut-away technique (beautifully done).

I liked the colours and the freshness of Yvonne Brown’s Tulip Time (below). I particularly liked the way the cut-away sections echoed the other bands of tulips.

Yvonne Brown, Tulip Time, Quilters Guild Challenge Winner

Cherry Vernon-Harcourt, Holkham Beach

Cherry Vernon-Harcourt, Holkham Beach (detail)

 

Definitely a case of ‘less is more’ here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two-Plus-One, Shared Abstraction, Group Quilts.

Two-Plus-One, Shared Abstraction, Group Quilts.

 

I like the contrasting colour-scheme of this quilt by ‘Two-Plus-One’, and the simple restrained stitching.  I also liked the mat texture, which included paper as well as fabric.

Two-Plus-One, detail

Two-Plus-One, detail

Two-Plus-One, detail 2

Two-Plus-One, detail 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I read a complaint in someone else’s blog that ‘the arty set’ are taking over the Festival of Quilts. No doubt some of my choices would have her full disapproval, but hopefully there’s room in the quilt and textile art world for the whole spectum, from ‘arty’ through to ‘cutesy’, and all shades in between.

Yvonne Kervinen, Urban Landscape, Art Quilts

Yvonne Kervinen, Urban Landscape, Art Quilts

Louise Peers, Bushfire, Art Quilts (Highly Commended)

I loved the subtle colour-gradations of ‘Bushfire’ above. I’m not sure if the background was painted or shibori-dyed, but it was lovely, with more trees appliqued on top. I love the tiny little green shoot on the right – the piece could have been called ‘hope’.

Louise Peers (detail)

I had to put my hands in my pockets to avoid stroking the quilt below.

Cecilia Gonzalez Desedamas, The Difference, Art Quilts (detail)

Maggie Birchenough, Rose 4, Art Quilts (Judges Choice)

Maggie Birchenough, Rose 4, Art Quilts (Judges Choice)

Maggie Birchenough (detail)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I loved the very restricted colour-palette of this one by Maggie Birchenough, and the textured detail in the stitching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Wrapped In Colour’ by Meredith McCarthy (below) is a very different kind of quilt, which glowed as the light shone through it. It reminded me of old stained glass windows.

Meredith McCarthy, Wrapped in Colour, Art Quilts

Kate Crossley, Clock, Quilt Creations

And here’s my favourite, Kate Crossley’s ‘Clock’ which had the unanimous vote of all the judges to win the Quilt Creations category. Of all the things I saw at the show, this is the one that I would be most pleased to have created myself. It’s a wonderful concept as a way to make a textile statement on ‘time’. It’s completely bonkers, stuffed with detail, and beautifully stitched. The closer you look, the more it draws you in to study the detail (see below).

Judging by the people crowding round to photograph it, this was a popular choice by the Judges. Look at the photo at the bottom – it shows how captivated people are by this piece.

Kate Crossley, Clock, detail 1

Kate Crossley, Clock, detail 3

Kate Crossley, Clock, detail 2

Kate Crossley, Clock, detail 4

Kate Crossley, Clock, detail 5

A constant crowd of people to photograph Kate Crossley’s Clock

It’s Shaun the sheep

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That's not a stake through his heart, it's the remains of a sparkler

That’s not a stake through his heart, it’s the remains of a sparkler

Here’s a quick post to show you the photos I’ve just received of the Shaun the sheep cake I made for my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday. The whole family are Shaun fans, influenced by Audrey aged 90 and her sister Ann. This includes the middle-aged generation, the young adults, the teenagers and the school-age and pre-school children.

Shaun is made from sugar-paste icing made with glycerine (wonderful stuff that you can mould like plasticine). The grass is coloured butter-icing and the flowers are courtesy of the local supermarket. Shaun kept letting his head droop onto the grass, so he has a cocktail stick in his neck to help him stay awake. I had two helpers to make the grass and arrange the flowers – Veronika and Milo. And yes, there were a few spare sugar flowers that had to be sampled first.

My mother-in-law is called ‘Granny Cake’ for good reason!

Waiting patiently for cake while adults keep talking

Waiting patiently for cake while adults keep talking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only problem was that the adults couldn’t bring themselves to eat Shaun. The children were less squeamish. But after some discussion of the method of dissection (pull his head off? chop him into slices?) in fact he was removed to a plate while his field was eaten instead. (Update: I’m told that Shaun now lives in a box and may make a guest appearance on another cake).

Pay Up!

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Pay Up

There has been alot of interest in my previous post, ‘Reclaiming Childhood’ which was about the exploitation of children in the embroidery industry in India. The exhibition of paintings by Claire Phillips will move to Worthing Museum and Art Gallery from 13th September until 24th Jan 2015. Do go and see it if you can.

Do you remember the sewing factory that collapsed in Bangladesh, The Rana Plaza? It was in the news in April 2013, when all 9-storeys collapsed, killing 1138 workers and injuring 2600. Workers in the shops and bank on the ground floor were all evacuated the day before, when big cracks appeared in the building, but garment workers on the other floors were ordered back to work the next day despite the known risk. There was shock and outrage in the Western world for a while. Then other things took over in the news, and our daily lives took over, and how often have we consciously thought about it again? There was a flurry of publicity a little while later about setting up a compensation fund for the families and survivors, and the willingness or otherwise of the big clothing companies to pay up. We are lucky to live in a country that has stricter health and safety legislation and enforcement, and prosecution of companies that breach these regulations. If something does go wrong, there is compensation, and there are state benefits and free health-care. Nothing can compensate for the loss of a loved-one, but it is in the power of the big clothing companies who used the factory to make sure that the injured and bereaved are not destitute.

Well over a year later, the compensation fund is still a long way short of the amount that should have been raised. Some companies paid up straight away, and some gave in gradually and reluctantly to public pressure. Others have yet to pay up, or have just made a small contribution that falls a long way short of what is needed. Click here to see more information about who has and hasn’t paid up, from the website of Cleanclothes.org, who campaign for fair wages and safe working conditions in the clothing and embroidery industries. http://www.cleanclothes.org/ranaplaza

Some companies have made the amount of their donations public. Some companies that had no clear link to the factory also made voluntary donations. However, others failed to pay up. One of the companies that dragged its’ heels is Matalan, who until this week were the only UK company not to have paid a penny. After considerable public pressure they finally made a donation this week, only the day before the deadline for payment and well over a year after the disaster. This is only a ‘token’ payment, to the short-term disaster-relief, not the full amount that is needed for long-term compensation. Their argument is that they stopped using the factory a few weeks before the accident. But this was for quality reasons, not humanitarian or health and safety reasons. Most garment manufacture in Bangladesh and India is done on this short-term basis, which makes health and safety harder to enforce. Another argument is that they were not found culpable (but nor where any of the other companies who used the Rana Plaza, but they have paid up anyway). Their third argument is that there is no court order forcing them to pay (but the other companies who have paid up willingly have done so without a court order). They refuse to disclose the actual amount they are offering to the fund, and without Matalan’s permission to disclose it the fund also cannot state how much they have offered. If they are as proud as they claim to be about their (reluctant, late) contribution, then why not disclose the amount? Their argument is that they ‘only’ used the Rana Plaza for a short time, although they acknowledge that this was very shortly before the disaster, and that they stopped using it for commercial reasons not for humanitarian or health and safety reasons. If every company took the same line as Matalan then there would be no compensation fund at all.

 

 

Reclaiming Childhood

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Claire Phillips: Geeta

Last week I went to the opening night of an exhibition of paintings by Claire Phillips, a Sussex portrait artist, at the Oxo Tower in London. The title of the exhibition is ‘Reclaiming Childhood: Face To Face With Child Labour In India’. For several years Claire has worked with the charity ‘Bachpan Bachao Andolan’, which is a charity that rescues children from slave-labour in India. Some of the children come from factories and from domestic service. Many come from embroidery sweat-shops, where they have been stitching for hours and hours each day. They have no education, no health-care, no freedom, no time to play, and no kindness. If they fall asleep while working they are beaten. If they cry, they are beaten. They can’t see any way out or any future. Children are particularly desirable to embroidery sweatshops; they have good eyesight, nimble fingers, and can do detailed work that is more challenging for adults. One particular irony in India is that the numbers of children who are estimated to be in bonded labour instead of education is roughly equivalent to the number of adults who are out of work. This is the cost of the cheap embroidery that we buy in the West.

Painting by Claire Phillips: Mukti-Ashram Boys

Painting by Claire Phillips: Mukti-Ashram Boys

As embroiderers we know just how long it takes to hand-stitch sequins, or to do exquisite metal-thread work, or to stitch on tiny beads. How often do we buy a piece of embroidered clothing, or a bag or scarf, which has been hand-stitched in India? When we do, how often do we stop to ask ourselves why it is so incredibly cheap? Why not apply a quick bit of logic. Start with the price we pay, and subtract the cost of the shop that we bought it from (staff, premises, business rates etc). Subtract the cost of handling and shipping it across the sea from India. Subtract the cost of the wholesaler in India. Subtract the cost of transporting it within India. On top of the costs at each stage, add a profit margin. Once you have taken off all that, what is left? Peanuts. In that case, how can the person at the very end of the chain, the person who stitched it, possibly have been paid a decent living wage? And how likely is it that this person was a child?

The lucky ones are rescued by the charity. Some are returned to parents, and others stay in children’s homes run by the charity. Here they receive care and kindness, proper food, education and time to play. They learn to trust people; they learn hope, and they learn that they can have a future.

Painting by Claire Phillips: Deepika

Painting by Claire Phillips: Deepika

The sound-track and the written commentary to the exhibition tell us about the conditions that some of the children were rescued from, and the painful stories that led to their exploitation. However, the exhibition is lighter in spirit than I expected. The paintings show the children just as children, as Claire met them; playing, playful, exploring, mischievous, and fun. These are children who have a second-chance at childhood. It takes them time to learn to trust the adults around them – but once they do, their sense of fun is tremendous.

Child working on zari-work

Child working on zari-work

The art on one wall is a poignant reminder of what these children have lost and regained. There are two sets of pictures done by the children; the first set is soon after they are rescued, when their drawings tend to be timid and unconfident. Some, like the ones below, show details of the embroidery work they had to do for hours – in this case Zari (goldwork).

Children's art soon after rescue

Children’s art soon after rescue

Children's art soon after rescue

Children’s art soon after rescue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Children's art

Children’s art

 

 

Other pictures are done by children who have been at the centre for longer and who have started to experience the world as free children should be able to experience it. These pictures fill the page with expressive, joyful images of the world around them; houses, the sun, a cow, or flowers. They have recovered a sense of childhood that most western children can take for granted.

Children's art

Children’s art

Children's art

Children’s art

Children's art

Children’s art

Kailash Satyarthi

The exhibition is on at The Oxo Tower until the 20th July, and will be at Worthing Museum and Art Gallery from 13th September 2014 until the 24th January 2015. Do go and see it if you can.

For more information on the charity, go to http://www.bba.org.in/

For more on Claire’s art, go to http://www.clairephillips.com/

There is also a talk by Kailash-Satyarthi at the Oxo Tower on the closing day of the London exhibition (20th July). Kailash is rated as one of the top human rights defenders of the world today. He and his colleagues literally risk their lives in the process of freeing enslaved children, and they have rescued around 80,000 children. In the painting by Claire (bottom left) he is pictured with some of the children rescued by Bachan Bachao Andolan. They are having a school lesson, something taken for granted by western children.

http://www.oxotower.co.uk/events/talk-human-rights-defender-kailash-satyarthi/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you to Claire Phillips for permission to include images of her work on this blog.