For centuries women have used cloth as a tool of comfort and as an expression of beauty within their homes. Creating cloth for warmth, cloth for shelter, our female predecessors embellished these linens with hand stitch using laborious and time consuming techniques thereby enhancing the functional beauty of objects which enveloped and protected their families. Inspired by these women I hope my creations pay tribute to and recognise the devotion expressed in cloth by our female ancestors .







''the use of traditional often time consuming process alludes to the devotion of a mother''. c K. A. Ruane 2007







Monday, April 14, 2008

Progress, Sneak Peek and Kind Words

I have begun to stitch my embroidered text and trailing floral patches to the card templates. This is when the making of a cloth becomes extremely time consuming, I never have enough templates or embroidered patches so consequently need to spend at least another full day embroidering more and another day damp stretching. I tend not to beat myself up about not having enough of either, making my cloths is such a pleasure, I suspect if they took a year I would still enjoy creating each one.




In the meantime I thought I would give you a sneaky peek at the now finished mini cloth. I am currently trying to make at least another two of these and when that is done I intend to put them in the shop. You can see here how I have joined the applique piece to the patchwork text hexagons and also how the prairie point edge looks on the finished piece.




Another reason to be happy today is this review I received on blogged. Many thanks to the lovely Camilla of Made by Milla.

9.7!!!!!!! Ta very much!!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really like the petal shapes made from vintage embroideries. I was wondering what stitch have you usedfor the words on the hexagons? is it palestrina?

Camilla said...

I actually voted 10 points for you, but I think they have a default setting that brings it down a bit...I guess 10 out of 10 was maybe being a bit over the top!

Shirley said...

hi,

it's been a while since i lost posted a comment. love your work as usual. i check it every so often.

i was wondering, how do you get your fabric to have that fake "smocking" look? (if you don't mind sharing your secrets). i've tried to do it myself and it doesn't come out very neatly or exactly the way yours look. just curious.

and thanks for sharing your "doodles". i've recently picked up embroidering again and have been making my images freehand. but seeing your doodles make me want to start a new one just for that reason. i love doodling in notepads as a child and the idea of it being transformed into an art piece is a splendid idea!

your blog is inspiring as always.

thanks for sharing,
shirley

Francesca said...

9.7...great score! thanks so much for your advice karen, i will look up the 10 group. sounds like you're there quite often.
i love that silk purse in your shop, did i mention it before? and your little beads. so beautiful.

Ulla said...

Your hexagons are so lovely! Mine tend to have one or two sides that are shorter than the others (multiple use of paper hexagons does this),and they cause me headache!