Gathering and Gathering small things.

12-30 March. Imagination in Detail: Small Stories.

I have been gathering my small works together so I can figure out which small ones will be best to hang at Lady Sew and Sew next week.

Wow, I didn't realise I had so many.

Well, I knew about each set, but I haven't got them all out together before...en masse, as it were.

Dragons to suit the weather -

Tudors - or part of that family

Maps - though I think I will hold these as 'just in case'

My experiments to teach myself Free Motion embroidery

maybe, but I need to have something for samples for the classes I am teaching.

So, anyway, plenty of decisions to make.

Stripes

The prompt for this month on the Ideas of Inspiration blog is about patterns. This is what I posted about. you can click on the photos to make them larger. The composite photo on the bottom is best viewed that way.

It took me a while to work this one out. I had never really thought about it. I think I like organic shapes. But then when I stop and consider what sorts of patterns I take into my work, hmm, not so sure. But the more I have thought about it, I think it must be stripes.

I hadn't realised their subtle influence had become a sort of a basic for me as in the way people in fashion say things like brown is the new black (or whatever it is at the moment)

I have a series of work where I did corded pin tucks inspired by the boning channels in Tudor period corsets.

This is the page in my Research for Design folder from City and Guilds Fashion.

This led to corded channels to highlight the pattern in striped fabric. I have a whole box of striped fabrics to use in this way. This is a duvet cover on the floor in my studio. My friend was throwing away, but I had to rescue it!

However, I am following a stripe related side track at present where the regular lines of writing are being used as a stripe..like this fabric which I am using with the writing turned 45 degrees.

Anyway, the prompt spurred me on to go find stripes round my neighbourhood. I found the fences the most interesting.

Perhaps because both the negative and the positive create stripes?

***
I have nearly finished the Ramshackle House. Should be able to show it tomorrow.

Princesses on show

Today I took the Sky Princess and the Young Princess Elizabeth garments up to Lady Sew and Sew in Henley. They will be part of the display of work there for the Henley Art Trail.

I have been in a quandary about how to display the young Tudor princess. I haven't got a child's dummy and you can't get the gown over the shoulders or hips of even the smallest adult dummy.
Last week when I gave the talk in Camberley, a few of the members brought their dressmaker's dummies along to help display all the gowns. When we tidied up, I heard one lady say hers was not going back in the loft, she was going to put it in the tip or take it to a charity shop. I said, "I'll take it!" because I thought the Tudor gown would fit. But, no.
So, I was contemplating doing surgery - making narrower shoulders and amputating the bosom. Yikes! I was rather afraid I would just end up with a mess, and I can always use the dummy complete for talks and things.

So, I tried out another idea first. I put the corset on a feather pillow, then put the chemise, farthingale, under skirt and gown on. Yes! It worked. I stuck a hanger in the neckline to support the shoulders and to build up the neck area so she didn't look like an ex-wife of Henry.

Here she is at home.

The pillow/corset base is sitting on a tall kitchen stool...which not being quite tall enough for the skirt not to crumple, has a Quality Street tin taped to the seat to give a bit more height.
Use your ingenuity!

and here she is welcoming visitors just as they enter the shop. Not too bad!

and here is the Sky Princess - not quite in place, because there was a temporary office thing going on, but it will be placed to the right of Kate Findlay's fibre optic quilt. The quilt to the right of that has terracotta colouring, so that will work with the copper accents on the coat.

There was one other wearable art. Judy's 11 year old daughter is more interested in fashion design than quilt design. She made the skirt and accessories! (Judy runs the Lady Sew and Sew stall in the Bracknell Market.)

I hope she carries on with her ideas!

Amazing Architecture

The Olympic Torch has been to Windsor today. (Well, it came to Bracknell today, but it hasn't been the type of day I felt like I manage to go stand in crowds.) Here are some photos of things that caught the eye when we were there in early June.

Just so Impressive.

Symbolic

St George doing his thing

Tudor patterning

And the chimneys on that section

Royal Armoury

While we were in Leeds, we went to the Royal Armoury. We didn't have long because for some reason (!) I rather ran out of steam by that point so didn't get motivated til after lunch.

A fascinating place.
I did prefer the knights and tournament side more than the hunting and the 'g(l)ories' of the Empire. There were some interesting pieces in the Oriental Gallery, though. I hadn't worked out a good setting for my camera, so most of the photos are pretty blurry with lots of reflections from the glass. Here are a few that are better.

Child Armour - seems hard to understand, but then again - think of the cowboy costumes, the camouflage t-shirts/trousers, and fighting film heros modern kids dress in. These boys would have wanted gear 'just like dad's' to play in and it would get them used to moving in tin cans while they were young enough to not mind!

Stirrups - an example of some of the decorative gear for more than the men (I have photographed alot of the decorative armour before, so didn't this time.)

engravings in the skirt of armour worn by Henry VIII. I was able to get closer to this piece this time than when I went before. I used the design here as inspiration to develop for some of my City and Guilds work. Mainly the decoration on the coat 'Tudor Glows'.

I was fascinated by the work which went in to decorating weaponry and hunting weapons. Rather ironic in a way. and I can imagine hard to keep nice!
The display these crossbows were in gave me a bit of insight on how they eventually came to the concept and shape of guns from the original bows.

more decoration - the mother of pearl inlays must have costed a lot.

even the accessories for the weapons were decorated.

an amazing piece in the Oriental Gallery. I love the shape of the garment.

I hope to go back again sometime when I don't have to dash and get a closer look at some of the garments like that.

New Book

My Mother-in-Law gave me some money for Christmas. Just enough to get this new book I had heard about. It is done by the same people who did The Tudor Tailor.

First glances show it is going to be very exciting! It has all the research and visual images. and then it has the layouts and making up! The period is Early Tudor. One I quite like. Maybe I can make up something one of these days! or at least make up something modern inspired by and using ideas from what I get in the book.

Yesterday I got the bags to the nearly finished stage...just need to put on the fastenings. I also adapted my bodice block to make a yoked top. I have a few RTW (ready to wear) tops I like, and this one is based on the idea of one of them....with the advantage of fitting everywhere and not just making do. I have some airforce blue crepe fabric I have cut it from. So it is next on the sewing list.

Tudor Rose on the road

Today I have been parcelling and reparcelling Tudor Rose in order to get it to America for the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza XVII without it costing an arm and a leg. It will be part of the Stretching Art Exhibit. The theme is Famous Pairs. I made it a couple years ago, but I felt it fit the theme. I had wanted to make more work in a similar vein, but college was a bit too draining this year.

Detail

Description/Statement:
Henry VII, of the House of Lancaster, married Elizabeth of York helping to settle finally the Wars of the Roses: Red Lancastrian Rose vs White Yorkshire Rose. The symbol of the resulting House of Tudor was a combination of the two colours which became known as the Tudor Rose. These colours are reflected in the quilt. Techniques include burn marks on natural colour silk and red brocade quilted with copper thread. Inspiration for the Rose and Tudor couple are from historical artefacts and stonework at Cambridge University.

So, tomorrow I will post more about the Festival of Quilts.

Featured Blog

I haven't done a Featured Blog for some time, but there are several blogs I keep track of that I haven't added to the side bar.

One of those blogs is that of Celia Darbyshire, whose blog is called Cheshire Cheese.

Celia regularly posts images of the samples she made when doing C+G Embroidery. She is now doing the Stitched Textiles programme. I find it interesting to see how she interprets her ideas into a variety of contemporary embroidery designs.

If you want to get encouragement to do bits and pieces with your ideas, I would suggest checking out the Cheshire Cheese blog. Celia often visits exhibitions of textile art and embroidery, so I hope you will also find her comments about those visits of interest.

And to link with interests of my own, here is a photo from a page in my design research project I did on the Tudors. You may recognise this as a starting place for alot of the corded work I have done. It was also a starting place for the ideas which I developed to design the rust dyed skirt for which I won the award at Festival of Quilts in 2006.

Book binding

As I said last week I went with my husband to the book binding exhibition at the Bodleian in Oxford. I wanted to see this book in particular.

I was not able to take a photo, but this one is from Needleprint. From what I saw, the above image is a bit lighter than the actual book. I was not able to see the difference in the colour of the silver and the gold braid. Perhaps it was the very low lighting, but even the hearts ease didn't seem to have colour. I hope it is not because it is faded.

I hope I convinced the man at the desk that they need to do a postcard. There was not much more information to be found about it other than the small blurb about the binding in amongst the other bound books of that era. I think it should have at least had something to draw attention to the fact that it was produced by "royal hand."

As quoted here at the Crafting Spot the Princess Elizabeth translated 'out of frenche ryme into english prose, joyning the sentences together as well as the capacitie of my symple witte and small lerning coulde extende themselves.' It was wrought for her step-mother, Katherine Parr. The dedication reads: 'From Assherige, the last daye of the yeare of our Lord God 1544 ... To our most noble and vertuous Quene Katherin, Elizabeth her humble daughter wisheth perpetuall felicitie and everlasting joye.'

Among other interesting books, the Crafting Spot also has an image of another book the Princess Elizabeth made for Katherine Parr.

As you may know, I did a series of Journal Quilts which I called "The Elizabeth Pages": A private textile journal of Elizabeth the First. It was a flight of my imagination...what if Elizabeth the First had done a textile journal?...what would it look like? At the time, I didn't know she may well have done something of the sort if she had thought of it!

I did another related series I called the Forgotton Tudors. (further down on the Journal Quilt Page) At sometime I had intended to put them all together with the first series to make a book, but I was never quite sure what the cover would be like. Now, I think the cover will at least be inspired by these two books that Elizabeth actually DID make!

and so til tomorrow I wish thee "perpetuall felicitie and everlasting joye." I think it worked for Katherine Parr
...she actually outlived Henry!

Fashion Show

Well, here's a thing!

Yes, I am still here! As you know, I like to post everyday. But I was involved with the Fashion show nearly all day on Friday and got home quite late. On Saturday, I had already planned to go to a studio gallery event with some ladies from the Contemporary Quilt group. So, another day was taken up. But, I am back now.

The Fashion Show was exhausting but such a buzz! We had work from Students and tutors. Some had been beginner sewers and some were finishing up their City and Guilds Qualifications. We had vintage clothes that were being shown. Other categories were Contemporary, Day Wear, Golden Oldies (some of the lovely older ladies in the dressmaking class), Children's, Corsets, Evening Wear, Tudor/Restoration, and Bridal! Some of the vintage clothing was very small. There are several model size ladies who work for the Central offices of the college who could wear them, as well as some of the corsets and other small things. However, it meant that it got a bit frantic at times. They would go off in one thing, go up and down the catwalk, and then run back, some of us would be doing unzipping, pulling down or up and over. Often they would be stepping out of something at the bottom while pulling the next thing over their head at the same time! And it wasn't long before there wasn't even much fuss about getting out of bras and into the corsets then out of the corset back into the bra and an evening dress! We did try to keep the odd man from wandering in and out of the room, but it wasn't always easy! (We have one male student who had made his waistcoat, and he had purchased some vintage kneelength trousers that buckled at the knee, so he could show off his knitted socks!! Quite a few fancy patterns on them, too!)

We had proper themed music and the compere for the show was a man who presents the news show for BBC South Today. He has connections with the college because he took the British Sign Language course. We also were taught how to do the walk...which I think we all sort of managed in some fashion. It did quite help that the audience clapped ferociously as we came onto the stage. It did make you lift your head and strut forward! You really couldn't see much besides just what you were doing due to the lights shining on you!

I had my 2 Tudor costumes there which fit the 2 daughters of one of the students perfectly. So, besides wearing the lovely dresses their mum had made for them, they also wore the Tudor costumes. They loved it!

Here are some photos of the Tudor costumes from when I first made them.

This is from the Early Tudor Period - Henry VII... I made it when I worked with the children at a Primary School.
This is made after the Portrait of the Young Princess Elizabeth. It was made for my Formal Wear Project for City and Guilds.

Marianne asked me about showing more detail from the coat I made (and modeled!) which was inspired by Tudor fashion. You can read more about it here. But here are a couple closer looks at some of the embellishment. Some of the photos were taken during construction.

Tomorrow, I will tell you about our Day Out from Saturday.

Coat - Tudor Glows

While I am working on assignments, I will show you one of the garments that will be in the Fashion Show tomorrow night at the Novotel in Reading. You can still get tickets through any of the New Directions college centres.

I use the above photo for my profile. My friend Gill Gee was doing a photo shoot for me and I got in the way. I call it "me pfaffing about"...a British Term, perhaps not spelled that way, but I sew on a Pfaff!

Anyway, here is a better photo.

This is the coat I made for the Coat project for City and Guilds Part 2. Actually I was making it in similar weather to what we had last week! However, it is meant for winter and besides being velvet and brocade, it is interlined with domette. It is warm! I did wear it for a while in the winter. Now I am back to that size, I think I shall be wearing it this winter.

It is called Tudor Glows because it is inspired by the highly embellished velvet and brocade garments of Tudor times. I split each side - left and right, front and back into 6 parts. And then made a plan so that there are 6 embellishment techniques, but in different positions on each side. Also, the sleeves are made in one with the yoke.

Although it was warm work in the summer, I really enjoyed making this! It has been on exhibit at the Festival of Quilts and also shown in the -“Made To Wear” Fashion Show , Nov 2006, A Quilter’s Gathering, Nashua, NH, and featured with Student Work in the “Popular Patchwork Magazine”, October, 2005. Now it will have the chance to dazzle another audience tomorrow night!

Form: 3D

Yesterday I showed an example of Low Relief. Here is a 3D example of Form.

It was inspired by Elizabethan clothing...the wheeled or French farthingale in particular. I folded down corners of an old book, and then spray painted it with copper paint. When it is fanned out, it has a simliar form to that of the French farthingale. The lesson today went very well. The students are keen to get to grips with the Design Principles and how to apply them to the garments they are designing. Because we were doing Form, we did the folded boxes. I wanted them to see how 2D could be transformed to 3D. One of the students already started using some of the painted papers she had made previously to make a box.

We also did a bit of playing with playdough to create soft sculptured items. Many of the experiments were more in the Low Relief category, but some ventured further to 3D.

And finally, we looked at structure, as in wire or stick structures, which could then be covered with fabric...or the struts could be wrapped with thread, etc. We also made large paper spills
which we Sellotaped together to create larger structures. The difference between sticks and the paper spills is that the paper can be bent. One lady was well on her way to making a spidery looking structure inspired by fan vaulted chapel ceilings! Sort of like this.

Anyway, I am looking forward to working with the group again. They were great! What fun to talk about design and artistic things to a group and have them "get it". It will be fun to do Texture with them in a few week.

Too bad it is only for 2 sessions!

Tudor Rose

This is one of my Textile Art pieces I made earlier in the year. I love the Tudor period. The rose and the couple were inspired by photos I took in Cambridge. I was trying to depict the sculptured stonework on many of the buildings there.

This was entered into the innovative category for a certain show. The lines and shading on the cream silk were made with the soldering iron. I quilted round all the motifs on the brocade with copper metallic thread, and then applied the cream silk and quilted through the burnt lines.

I was quite surprised then to have comments from all three judges about the couple needing more quilting. In my mind, I had really quilted this! However, I have only recently started working big, so I wasn't sure what they meant. (Okay, this is big for me! It covers the large desk/table in my studio!)

Well, last week in Houston, I took a class called "Here Comes the Judge!" with top quilt show judge, Dixie McBride. I took the quilt, just to see if they could give me some ideas. Mrs. McBride said she probably would have said the same thing, but then went on to explain that the extra quilting would be for texture.

Following more discussion, I realised that I could use cream silk thread and quilted patterns as if they were sculptured by the artist to represent brocade patterns on the clothing. It would not be "clothing" them, but would allude to the idea. I am thinking of how Holbein drew brocade patterns on the drapery and clothing in the portraits he painted. It is possible his painted patterns weren't true to scale, but it gave the idea of opulence he wanted. What I will have to work out is how to do patterns that lay naturally on the drapery of the clothing. For instance, portions of patterns will be hidden in folds of the cloth. SO, that will take some thinking.

Any ideas?

Journal Quilt Returns!!

So, last night our son showed up from uni for the weekend. He wants to collect his bike and skateboards. Apparently he is doing skateboarding with a new friend, and has a collection of scars on knees and elbows. How many years ago has it been since he was doing that?

Also, my journal quilt from last year arrived from Quilts, Inc in Houston. I could put a label on saying "This quilt survived Hurricane Ike!" They were about to send the quilts out when the warnings for the hurricane came. Instead of sending them out with the possibility of them ending up in a washed out post office somewhere, everything was moved from their upper story business to the ground floor or basement. When the hurricane came, the building did suffer damage and windows were blown out of their floor. However, all has been sorted and the quilts sent out a week or so ago. I was so glad to get it!

I had wondered how the bits of grapefruit peel would stand up to all the travel. Besides Houston, it has also been in Chicago and Long Beach, and perhaps a few more places. A few tips of the peel have broken off, but the composition of the piece has not been compromised. I have a few more dried grapefruit peel peices I could replace them with, but I think it will be alright.

Actually,I nearly missed it, since the parcel man left a note in the letter box that he had left it at the local PO! I was in all day, but never heard the bell if he rang it. I am sure I would have, since the dog barks furiously! (That's why we have a seperate letter box mounted outside. Otherwise the post ends up with teethmarks punched into it.)

Along with the journal from last year, was the one which Karey Bresenhan kindly included on page 40 in her book Creative Quilting: The Journal Quilt Project. Now that it is back I can take all my Tudor Journals (2004 and 2006) and make a book with them. I think I might add about 3 more, as I always meant to do Henry's brother and sisters. and I want to make an interesting cover as well. Which life will I find time to do that in I wonder?