I created a project for my learners called Seascape where I designed a picture using watercolours; applique and a variety of stitches to create a unique design for my learners to be inspired to create their own. I also collaborated with a poet called Malcolm Whiteley and a fellow sound artist called John who created the piece called “where elements meet”. It was a fun project to work on and guide my learners through, they loved all aspects of creating their own picture as well as listening to the poem, which brought them into a calm state of mind. As the project went well and I received good feedback from learners, viewers who have watched the video on YouTube and senior management, I will recycle the project again and use it in a couple of years’ time.
As I am writing this piece now, I am slowly starting to zonk in energy, so I will try and post on a regular basis again especially as a little more energy is improving. I must admit I didn’t quite realise how long and slow recovery is from long covid, I thought initially it would take a few months at best, but since being on this journey I am realising that many people do not understand what it is like for someone who has an energy deficiency, before having covid I was able to be out and about, working four days per week, doing all my creativity for selling at Greenwich Market and also being able to meet up with friends, those days will return, but I do not know when. I am grateful to be able to work for a few hours one day per week and have enough energy to do teach prep and for me as I am a creative it is apart of my creativity to be able to design a course to teach leaners who also need to learn how to do embroidery for their own journeys of recovery.
Saturday 21st I sat down at my art desk and worked on new and existing pages for my sketchbook. I am currently working on more images for building the Seascape project that is in full swing with my embroidery learners. I was given a lovely sketchbook for Christmas, it was too good not to be used and what a good way to use such a beautiful sketchbook filling it with stitch samples, magazine cuts, watercolour washes, ink drawings of current embroidery stitches I am working on.
I have invested in a course to improve my machine embroidery skills that I learnt over twenty years ago. Each month there is a new project to be working on and modules at the start of the course, this is from module 1 to be free motion embroidery on a sewing machine a flower. The flower design was nice, but I decided to freehand draw it into my sketchbook which was not great, so when I came to transfer the pattern onto tracing paper using a sulky pen, I adapted it to be more free flowing. What I didn’t realise is that once the pattern is ironed onto the fabric after multiple times the pattern disappears, also when I first iron the pattern, I had the heat set to medium which was for a polyester setting and the highest heat is for cotton, which calico is of course.
You can see a seam in the calico and that is because instead of using a new piece of calico I wanted to upcycle and reuse the toile of a waistcoat or vest as the Americans would say and I am exploring designs and ideas to do machine embroidery onto garments again. It has been taking me an age to be doing practice for machine embroidery which I cannot always do due to whether there is energy or if I am experiencing the bananas, (my replacement word for fatigue that I experience on a regular basis as I am recovering from long covid or cfs which are one and the same thing I think).
Below shows the underside of the toile, sometimes it is good to see the back of the embroidery to double check that the tension is correct.
In 2024 saw big birthdays for three members of my family, myself included. I never made myself anything, but for the other two members, I wanted to make something special for each of them. It is in the last few years that I have come back to my hand embroidery, once I got the diploma in hand embroidery at the Centre of Excellence, it opened the door for me to successfully secure my teaching position at Islington Council within the ACL department. I have been in the position as the embroidery tutor for over 18 months and I am flying high and having the best time!
My sister got a hand embroidery piece with green fly, straight and feather stitches and then ribbon and organza overlay, flowers secured on with buttons on top of the green foliage for her big birthday, but what about my nephew? I knew I did not want to do another hand embroidery piece as they are time consuming and yet at the same time so calming to do to take my mind off things. I had a deadline of going away to America and I knew for my nephew I wanted to do something different, so I looked on his website and Instagram and I was reminded of The Breathe Key. It is a guided series of mediation and deep breathing techniques to centre the body into a calm state, once I looked at the colours of turquoise, I knew that was it, I had my inspiration.
I did not plan anything in the sketchbook as I worked directly onto the fabric. I did not have any turquoise fabric; all the satin had been used to make the fabric flowers that were selling at Greenwich Market before the pandemic. I did however have calico and water colour, so I did a water colour wash in turquoise and painted that over the fabric, this was coming out quite big to about A3 or just under it. What do I put on top of the watercolour? I went through my box of old pieces of calico of hand embroidery or painted fabric and I found it, a calico piece painted with bronze, blue and it is either silver or grey acrylic paint. I cut the piece up into stripes and played around with the placement of the shapes onto the fabric, pinned it down and then decided I wanted to do complete this piece with machine embroidery. I used the Bernia 1000, which I love, but the machine was not loving the rayon threads that my sister bought for me one birthday many moons ago, but the rayon is nice and has a nice shine so I preserved. I am glad I preserved as the piece evolved into a semi-circle and then I realised I needed something to fill in the bottom space. As I was in deep flow I also realised I needed something other than machine embroidery so I looked through my button box and found some beads and a button in a clear plastic bag that was intended to be made into a piece of jewellery, although the initial links had been put on they had not been linked up to make the said item. I took a few of the beaded wire over to the piece that had been machine embroidered and positioned them on; I was happy with the result and I felt satisfied; I took a picture and then proceeded to hand sew the beaded wire to the piece. I was so happy with the results! It was only until I had given the piece to my nephew that I remembered I had not taken any closeup pictures of the piece after it had been laced, thankfully my nephew sent me over 45 shots.
Saul’s birthday was in August and as I am still in recovery from cfs/long covid it was not until March 2025 that I was well enough and during the school holiday’s that I had the extra capacity to travel to see him to hand the piece in person. I did not want to send the picture in the post.
I am learning a new photo editing programme called Gimp and I have successfully saved the above image to jpg format and blurred out the names of the Blackheath Ladies who attended the workshop in April 2021 from the screen shot.
