Spirit cloth - Serendipity I is done

I have finished it. I have to admit that I love it.

I have started the next one, haven't taken any pictures yet, but will be back soon with some. I am also experimenting with natural dyes. I have read Eco Colour by India Flint, and there is also a bit about plant dyes in my newest favourite book, Slow Stitch by Claire Wellesly Smith.

These jars contain some alum and spices, like turmeric and paprika, in different combinations. I have also picked some flowers, both wild and garden flowers (asked my landlady for the withered petals from her rose and peonybushes). Put them in the freezer for a few days, then did a few variations, e.g. used some as "tea" (poured hot water over the petals), some I simmered for about an hour before putting in the fabric, some I just put in some warm water and will let them sit for a long time, some I rolled up in a piece of fabric and put them in a ziplock bag... They are outside, theoretically the sun should warm them and help with the process but this is Sweden, we don't see much of the sun. :(

I started a book with records of all the experiments, otherwise it is difficult to remember. I will report here those methods that work. Really curious but have to wait for a while to have some results.

I have also been sewing a lot lately but my sewing machine has been acting up, and this morning it gave up totally. I need to take it to the service. :( Annoying: not only do I have a huge pile of clothes to mend, I wanted to make new curtains, and I am also planning to do some more patchwork. Not to mention the cost of the repair... let's hope it won't be too bad.

Variations - or how to create embroidery patterns.

I had a homework assignment for university: to create a 3-minute videofilm, that is connected to my topic (trees) and my chosen craft (embroidery). So I came up with this idea: you take a very simple motif, like a tree, and draw a really simple line drawing. It dies not have to be anything pretty, you don´t need to be able to draw. Really. Believe me :)

You can then embroider this with different stitches, and then try to do different variations. A tree, or any other object from nature is good to start with because there is no need to be accurate, symmetrical, there is no correct or incorrect shape. Feel free to improvise, experiment, try out different stitches, different colours, materials - go wild!

Here is the little film I made (not very good, but I think you get the gist - and then this was my first film!). Then you can see the photos of the embroidered pieces I made for the film.

And then there comes some more variations of the cross stitched version. You will see that I did not really pay much attention where I put the apples/leaves/flowers on the tree. You can follow the pattern, but you can just make your own version and stitch them randomly.

I hope you will really enjoy the creating process. Please, post here if you stitch something based on this idea, I would love to see them.

Another experiment - "temporary embroidery"

I have been playing around with embroidery and nature again. This time I tried to use flowers, leaves and grasses instead of thread in my embroidery. To make things easier, I chose a loosely woven evenwave fabric, and pulled out some threads.

Then I collected some grass and some flowers, just in front of the house. I wove them in in the places where the threads were pulled out, but I found that some of the thiner ones can go in other places too, they could be pulled between the threads of the fabric.

Here is the result.

I am not sure this will look as nice as the previous experiments after a while. The flowers started to bend their heads even as I was working with them.
But I like it so. Part of natures beauty is, I think, that we know it is fleeting, it is there now, but does not stay the same for long. This temporary, or ephemeral embroidery pays homage to this feature of nature.
But even if my embroidery loses its beauty, the photos will keep it forever. I just wish I could take better ones.

Also, embroidering with plants, and preserving them in a photo, could be a nice way of recording the variety of nature in different seasons, or as we travel.