February 2025

Always a short month, but this year it seems shorter than usual. I’m ending this month with an anniversary, as today is a year since we moved in to our current home.

It’s taken a while for it to feel like home, but it does now and I’m looking forward to seeing our new garden grow a bit more this year. The seeds and ideas that we plant can take a while to yield visible results, and what starts as a scrap or fragment becomes part of something much bigger once it starts to grow. It all happens in its own time.

I’ve enjoyed using up scraps and odd ends this month.

circular form made with a scrap of silk fibre

Running stitch, whipped running stitch, and couching are probably still my favourites. I like lines. Time lines, perhaps.

Mostly it’s mark-making with needle and thread.

There is a lovely darn on the edge of this linen, presumably made many years ago. I’m guessing this linen was probably hand-woven on a home loom because the width is much narrower than a machine-made sheet would be, and the selvedge that you can see beside the darn had originally been in the centre of the sheet where two widths had been joined. Someone, long ago and in a different home, carefully mended this cloth for the future, and their future is my present. Time does stand still sometimes.

Holding time in stitches, weaving between past and future.

The long view:

And the other side:

Onward to March. Marching onward. See what I did there.

Have a lovely weekend.

YouTube

It’s a whole new adventure, and I’m not quite sure how or why it happened, but I appear to have set up my own YouTube channel.

I’m in the process of uploading my Instagram short videos, and yesterday I made a video on starting a new sketchbook, which you can see here.

This one is a little square (ish) concertina folded sketchbook, with seven pages each side, which I’ve filled with collaged illustrations and found poetry cut from an old anthology.

I’ve made it in preparation for a forthcoming course in my Teachable school on making your own sketchbooks (yes?), and very enjoyable it’s been too.

I really like the way these simple folded sketchbooks become circular, where the end is also the beginning, so I’ve created this one on the theme of day and night revolving around each other.

If you saw the beginning of this little book, here’s how it turned out (ignore all the paint on my fingers, it’ll come off eventually):

mixed media sketchbook with found poetry

The text comes from various early twentieth-century poems and I’ve just cut out and rearranged the lines and phrases to create new poems.

Returning to the subject of YouTube, I’ll be keeping teaching and online courses on Teachable but I don’t mind sharing occasional processes and techniques on my YouTube channel.

So my next question is, what would you like to see?

Mixed media sketchbook

I’ve been working on this sketchbook for a few weeks now, finding homes for all the tiny samples and scraps of painted paper and fabrics. At the same time I’m in the process of preparing to write a new course on mixed media/collage in sketchbooks, and I find it helps to actually make the thing you intend to teach.

I made the very simple sketchbook, using cartridge paper and some handmade cotton rag paper – it’s just sheets of paper stacked, folded in half, and stitched along the spine. The wrap around cover is cotton rag paper and it ties with some hand-dyed cotton tape that wraps around the button. Mixed media sketchbooks often become quite bulky because of all the inserts and layers, so it helps to bundle it up like this.

Sketchbooks are sometimes regarded as preparation for something larger, but I tend to see them as valuable and inspirational objects in themselves. I see them as a place to collect abstract thoughts in the form of shape and colour, and also as a place to try different colour combinations and design elements. Some of the designs in this book may or may not become larger works, and if they don’t then it’s enough to have them as they are in the sketchbook.

Here’s a quick flip-through. The pages are about 9″ x 6″ ish:

mixed media sketchbook pages

And a closer look (details are in the captions beneath the image):

simple mark-making with thread on layered fabric scraps (4″ square)

I don’t often write in sketchbooks like this one, but I do sometimes like to add a few words of text. I have an old poetry anthology that I cut up to make found poems. I know some people have strong feelings about cutting up books, but I only ever use very old books that have missing or damaged pages. The text serves to remind me of what I was thinking when I made the image, and sometimes it might also suggest the title of a larger work.

stitched sample (about 5″ square) with simple mark-making

I like the way samples in different media can support and inform each other. The top sample on the page below was made by collecting and layering fabric scraps, and then the lower image is a collage inspired by the stitched sample.

inside back cover, handmade foam stamps and simple drawn grid

As I’m currently taking a temporary break from Instagram, I have a bit more time to focus on structuring the new course. It generally takes a month or more to put one together and I’m still at the thinking-it-through stage, so there’s a fair way to go. But watch this space.

A little distraction

No stitching whatsoever in this post. I’ve been a little distracted recently by this beautiful vintage Sid Cooke Georgian shop kit. This is purely for my own amusement, by the way. In a past life I made one-twelfth scale miniatures and it’s been fun to reconnect with my younger self, though I notice my eyesight isn’t quite as good as it was then.

The kit is basically a box with a hinged front, about 12″ wide, 9″ deep and 9″ tall.

The front is almost finished, apart from a bit more weathering on the stucco (paint, glue, and a little sand).

The columns and step are made from wood, sanded and painted to look like old stone.

The shop door that comes with the kit is a little chunky to be properly in scale, but I think there’s no harm in having an extra-thick shop door. I guess that makes it more secure for the tiny owner. It’s glazed with perspex and the letterbox opens.

I’ve opted for a modern-day shop selling vintage items because I still have some tiny treasures from when I had a larger doll’s house a few years ago. I’ll probably paint some of the furniture to make it a bit more contemporary.

previous doll’s house, set in around 1900

The benefit of ‘vintage’ is that you can make pretty much anything from any era and it will all sit quite happily together.

shop sign and fascia with glazed bow window

The interior is about ready to be filled. I made a false wall for the back, with a back door and a set of recessed shelves (all made from foam core and mountboard) to stop it looking so ‘boxy’. The glazing in the back door is graph paper with a layer of tracing paper on top to make it look like frosted safety glass. The door handle is a bit of thick armature wire. I would wire lights if it were a larger house, but just for this little box I’m using a couple of LED battery lights. The coving and skirting board come as lengths that you can cut to size.

I’ll make a shop counter to sit alongside the shelving at the back. The shelves are mostly full of shop paperwork, lever arch files, and a couple of ornaments.

It’s a lot of fun. The problem is that now I’ve started it, I have to finish it to the point where I can sit the whole thing on a shelf, and then I can make the contents in stages whenever I have a spare hour or two. I only have one work surface in my (real-life) room, and while this is all spread out (along with paint, brushes, wood glue, saw, sandpaper, etc) there isn’t space to get on with anything else. That’s my excuse, anyway.

They say a change is as good as a rest, right?

Normal services to be resumed soon. Ish.

Month: February 2025

February 2025

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YouTube

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Mixed media sketchbook

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A little distraction

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