Knitting a plant

Recently I’ve been sorting through some experiments from my City and Guilds course. We had to find pictures, use them to inspire our knitting, and produce a sample to go in our A4 files. I knitted a mangrove swamp. Unfortunately, it is now too squashed to take a decent photo. Perhaps one day I will restore it.

Then I also remembered the way my Mum used to do Jacobean embroidery. She would make a basic tree outline from chain or stem stitch in a variety of colours. Then the leaves and flowers would then be added, using a range of shapes that were filled in with various crewel work stitches.

So I thought I would try to combine the two ideas and knit a plant with knitted stems and leaves, and then embroider flowers. I reckoned that starting at the top would allow for not knowing how the tension worked out for width and length. I started leaves etc in random places, and after knitting down for a while I decided that I had a basic design, so I started moving the stems toward the centre of the piece.

Once the knitting was done, I embroidered flowers in french knots, bullion knots, lazy daisy stitch, and straight stitches. Here is the result:

Some basic embroidery stitches

I’ve come upon this quick guide to basic embroidery stitches, which I thought would be worth sharing. As the author says, it is amazing how much you can achieve with a few basic stitches.

Although I am surprised they have missed out herringbone stitch, which is one of my favourites. And how do people manage without feather stitch and all its variations?

But I am getting carried away. We are talking basic stitches here.

Peacock fire screen update

Over Christmas, I’ve been working on my fire screen project again, so this post is an update following on from the post I published in September.

Obviously, a crucial part of the whole thing is the method of attaching the feathers to the bird. Originally, I was thinking that it needed to be quite sturdy, so I was thinking of asking somebody competent to cut a suitable piece of wood, and drill holes to hold the pieces of dowel that forms the middle of the feather. But that idea works best when the feathers are a nice even shape, with identical width.

Which they aren’t.

So I thought I would see what I can do with fabric. I made two piramid shapes out of felt, to support the back of the bird, and stop it from moving from side to side. The outer side is embroidered, of course, to blend in. Then I cut two semi-circles of calico, and sewed channels in them, to take the dowels. That looked promising, so I attached it to the piramids. Then I cut a felt cover for the dowel holding calico, partly to make it blend in, and partly so that I can sew the lower end of the feathers to the holder, as I cut it larger. The front of this felt cover needed decoration, but I wasn’t sure how much would be visible, and I didn’t want it to get in the way of the structural stitching, which will come later. So I’ve just done some random machine embroidery.

These pictures show the feathers, slotted into the holder, cut to size. As they are not yet sewn in, they are laid out on the living room floor, with the bird slotted in to check the effect. I’m hoping that the fact the bird stayed balanced there for some time without further support is a good omen!

The bird, balanced on its tail, while I work out the placement of the feathers

An arial view. The hessian on the right is there to help work out how many more feathers I will need

The structure of the tail

The side of the piramids

The tail support cover

The cover in place

I’m now thinking of making some smaller feathers, with just the upper half visible, to full in the gaps. And I’m also thinking of fixing a horizontal dowel (or two) at the back, to stop the feathers spreading sideways, or twirling in their sockets.

And the prospect of sewing the feathers into the base, and the base onto the bird isn’t particularly appealing. Still, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

But it may take some time…

Knitting faces in the crowd

It is surprising how inspiration comes.

I was rummaging in a basket of odd balls of yarn, as you do, and I found this “flesh” coloured smooth cotton.

Which reminded me of my long standing doll project, where I have some knitted dolls, and use them as models for unusual garments. This is a wonderful game, as it allows me to:

Play at being a doll designer.
Experiment to see how patterns and shapes work. It is amazing how many designs look fab in the pictures, but a mock up reveals that it only looks nice if you are careful how you stand and move about. It is also surprising how many patterns for really chunky yarn knit up nicely for a doll if you use 4 ply and the smallest needles you can manage,
Play with novelty yarns that need buying, but I’m not going to wear in a full size garment.

Anyway, I wasn’t convinced there was enough of this cotton to make a whole doll, so I put it down again. And then I thought of making pictures.

I have seen some interesting paintings of crowd scenes, with a variety of faces looking out of the frame. And I loved the Antony Gormley check installation Field for the British Isles when it came to Scunthorpe. Although ideas have been lurking for a while, I haven’t actually got round to doing anything.

So I experimented.

The first idea was to knit some bobbles on a reverse stocking stitch ground. Bigger ones were too round, and smaller ones didn’t give enough space for embroidery to make a face.

So then I tried increasing for a bobble in one stitch, and then working a few rows all across the piece before decreasing. I decided not to plan a design, because that would lead to some annoying endless dithering, so I just went for it and made it up as I went along. After blocking it out, I embroidered faces, hair and hats. One end of the head was a bit too open, so I made that the top of the head, stitched it up a bit, and covered it with hair and hats. I decided not to go for faces on this one. That is on the list for future experiments.

This one is now for sale on Etsy.

My peacock fire screen

It isn’t unusual for ideas to come together to form a plan, but I don’t remember the inspiration for a project coming from two ideas found on the same trip.

A couple of summers ago, I went on a trip to Scampston Hall, between Malton and Scarborough. They had an embroidery exhibition of work inspired by the local landscape. There were a couple of group projects, where a picture of a suitable size had been divided up into squares, each of which had been embroidered by a different person, using whatever technique seemed appropriate. The result was a series of very different embroideries, with a variety of colours and textures, but they all worked together as parts of the picture.

On the way home, we stopped at the Stained Glass Centre near Filey for a cup of tea. In front of the tea room window was a rather splendid peacock fire screen. Now I need a fire screen. The one my Mum made when she was a teenager died a few years ago, about 30 years after Dad said the leg wouldn’t last long and couldn’t be mended again. But a stained glass screen is going to look best in front of a window, so the light can shine through.

Both these ideas were burbling round my head. Then one day I found an old book about making felt toys. It had a pattern for a peacock. A quick rummage in the stash produced some hessian that was about the right side, and some suitable colour felt. I enlarged the pattern to fit on the hessian, and made a start.

The ideas for the feathers are a little more challenging. Several ideas just haven’t worked, but here are the ones that are finished or nearly finished so far.