Map making

This is a textile map of my childhood home. 

I used sheer fabrics and small scraps of recycled fabric and layered them. Some of the sheer fabrics I painted with  ecoline paint (which was fun to do and gave me lots of ideas!). 

I also added embroidery and some woolen thread.

This piece is inspired by the work of Valerie S. Goodwin, who makes the most wonderful cartographic art quilts.

To me this is a great way to capture memories. I quite like wandering through the past in a visual way like this.

playing with paint:

 

Tiny houses

In an earlier post I mentioned that I joined some speedcrafting sessions, hosted by Helen Robertson. One of the projects we did was knitting these tiny houses (or as they say on Shetland: peerie mootie hooses)

I truly fell in love with this project and ended up knitting 10 of them! 3 I filled with a match box so they can easily stand on their own and make a tiny village. The other seven I filled with some yarn scraps to give them some body and turned into broches. To the façade of each of the brooche-houses I added an embroidered flowering climbing plant.

I used the yarn Helen sent for the project and also some HotButterYarns colour mini balls DK. This is beautiful , locally sourced British wool. I bought them at Tribe Yarns in Richmond-upon-Thames, a truly lovely shop with great customer service!

This is by the way also a lovely way to use up any leftover yarn! 

Herb Garden Shawl

I had some skeins of Garthenor Organic number 3 in my stash, including 10 mini skeins. I could make a fairly big project with this. Lots of different natural colours require a simple and pure pattern, I think, and so I searched for something with a lot of garter stitch (which I love!). I chose the Herb Garden Shawl pattern (very easy and free pattern on Ravelry). I could already see myself strolling around in the garden, warmed by this shawl and a cup op tea...

It was lot of knitting, but with this DK yarn things went on fairly quickly and all the different colours made the project interesting.

Garthenor is a small Welsh company that has been producing breed specific organic yarn for over 20 years. Their customer service is great and there is such a positive energetic vibe around them!  I found the yarn great to work with, it is sturdy and soft at the same time. The natural colours are lovely and work well together.

I ran out of yarn and still wanted the shawl to be a bit bigger, but instead of ordering more yarn, I decided to look through my stash (However much I love to support Garthenor and other sustainable businesses, I also try to use up my stash where possible, which also contributes to sustainability) and found this skein of Bleetingbecka Derbyshire Lopi, a very rustic wool from Derbyshire Gritstone (they don't have their own website, but you can find them on Facebook). This is the white top edge of the shawl.

It turned out to be the lovely warm big shawl I imagined, so let's go for a walk!

me, cosy and warm

the shawl, almost finished:

the lovely (and interesting!) card I got with my order from Garthenor:

the Bleetingbecka yarn:

Abstract Mountains

I love Sabine Kaner's work and was delighted to hear she was hosting a workshop on TextileArtist.org.

She designed this great and simple technique to create an abstract composition, using a crumpled piece of paper. You base your design on the lines that arise on the paper and transfer this onto fabric. With appliqué and emroidery you can then create a unique composition.

This is what I made of it, not a totally abstract piece, since I never quite can suppress my love for a narrative of some kind. My abstract became a mountain scenery. I chose muted colours, with one lively exception, a green segment on the bottom.

The piece is framed with a loosely cut piece of corduroy from an old shirt.

The memory of a picnic

We often visit Cambridge in the UK because our son lives there. It is such a friendly and beautiful city! We love to picnic and one of our favourite spots is Jesus Green. 

This folded book depicts a memory of one of these precious moments where everything felt wonderful and everyone and everything seemed to be smiling. 

It is a fabric and paper collaged piece, with hand stitching and embellishment. I also used some watercolour paint.

The technique used here, I learned from the textile artist Anne Kelly. A PVA glue solution gets used to attach paper onto fabric. At first I was a bit hesitant about it, but I found myself loving it: the technique makes a "fabric" that is really great to stitch through! And I get to use some of my lovely paper pieces I have been collecting for years!

The cover of the book is a piece of a kitchen towel and it has a button and beaded cord to close it.

I hope to have the time and energy to make many more of these memory-books!

I made a little video where you can see me opening the book, which you can watch it if you click here.

Jo Mittens

Jo March has been one of my heroes since childhood. In "Literary knits, 30 patterns inspired by favorite books" by Nikol Lohr, I found  a pattern for Jo mittens and really wanted to knit them. Partly because I like Jo so much, but also because of the practical boyish look of these mittens.

I struggled with the pattern, to be honest. I don’t think it 's written clearly enough for a not so experienced knitter and I had to frog more than once. I didn't seem to be able to make the pattern work, so in the end I modified it. Overall, sometimes a bit of a frustrating experience but, in the end, also very rewarding.

I like my Jo mittens a lot and am happy I persevered! I love the look of the knitted fabric, its warmth and the way the mittens fit and feel. 

The yarn I used is Rauwerk 100% merino (100g - 220m), an eco-friendly and ethical yarn from Germany. this is fantastic yarn, soft and rustic at the same time, in wonderful colours, a real favourite of mine! I bought this skein at Yarnporium in 2018 (you can read my blogpost on Yarnporium here) at the booth of Wild Woolly (a super nice London yarn shop)

And a little shout-out to the knitting needles I used, Lykke driftwood double-pointed needles : simply super! The combination of the yarn and the knitting needles made this a lovely project!

the wonderful yarn and super needles :

Bookbinding

I went to an online bookbinding workshop with Ali Ferguson and I am SO excited by this new skill!

We learned how to make (stitch) a small sketchbook consisting of several sections (signatures), with an open spine and fabric taps and a fabric cover.

It’s a time-consuming process but very rewarding. I love paper and have been collecting all kinds of paper and wrappers for such a long time. It’s wonderful to put these to good use!

So far I’ve made 5 sketchbooks. I’ve used paper from the Flow book for paper lovers, notepaper, food wrappers and other assorted leaves and scraps. I embroidered onto the pages, decorated them with washi tape, little envelopes, some fabric, postcards, images and quotes. This way the sketchbooks became quite personal gifts and I hope they encourage people to continue to decorate and fill up of the pages.

Bookbinding is defenitely a craft I hope to explore more in the future!

            

some of the pages are decorated, others are still blank :

Dawn

This work has an architectural image as its starting point. By editing and reducing the image I created a more abstract design. Out for three pieces of fabric (old clothing) I cut pattern pieces, then started puzzling them together until I got 3 similar and yet very different views. I sewed the pieces onto a neutral background and added some embroidery. That is how this fabric triptych “Dawn” came to life. 

Many thanks to Richard McVetis who taught this great technique via TextileArtist.org.

creating the piece:

Another dear woodland friend

And here is Robbie the robin, knit from a kit that came with the Christmas special 2013 of Let's Knit magazine.
These kits often contain acrylic yarns that feel horrible and aren't so great to work with. But sometimes the pattern is so cute, that I have found myself persuaded to knit it anyway. Besides, I have learned some great things by making these small objects. And that is why I feel attached to them, although nowadays I make more sustainable yarn choices.
The filling is sustainable though: all kinds of yarn and fabricscraps, so this is one heavy bird!

The nicest words

When we assembled this blue cupboard (from the well-known furniture store) we noticed one of the little crossbars wasn't properly painted. Instead of going through the hassle of driving back to the store and sorting it out, I decided to find a solution myself. I painted the part white and stamped some lovely words on it and let the words spread onto the sideboard. They are all wonderful Dutch words, starting with my favourite letter W. Love my cupboard now!

 

Inspired by this, I decided to spruce up another handy but boring cupboard this way. 

"Always another walk", something Virginia Woolf used to say, walking to her sisters house every day in the Sussex South Downs. I love walking.

"Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday, and all is well". I spotted this great saying in the tower at Sissinghurst Castle, where Vita Sackville-West used to live. It is a good thing to see first thing in the morning.