Bristol-based Art-academia-community Group MakingLearning Are Producing A Series Of Patchwork Poems -

Bristol-based art-academia-community group MakingLearning are producing a series of patchwork poems - each patch contains a word, and is made by a different person. I just did the piecing and the quilting. MakingLearning may be Bristol (uk) based, but for the patchwork poem project we've received patches from lots of different places - not just other places in the UK, but also from other countries in Europe, and other continents. So if you think this is something you'd like to participate in, please don't think distance is a barrier! Get in touch, and we'll post a patch out to you. MakingLearning has a Facebook page, which you should totally check out: https://m.facebook.com/makinglearning

This one's P. mountmellick stitch. Te big stitches are Rhodes stitch. In execution, mountmellick stitch is sort of half way between Dutch knot or Sorbello stitch, and an inverted feather stitch (guess which stitch is next?). And a shot of what the whole thing currently looks like, too.

A--R. Half way now. An detail of M and N. M might look pretty much like G above it, but I promise you they're different stitches. G is just a plain vertical cross, M is knot stitch/ four-legged knot stitch, where you wrap the thread around the cross before completing the final leg. The big stitch is captive rice stitch, to complement the triple rice stitch of the G above. N is Turkman stitch, and a spiral of my own design in the middle. Let's call it four-legged spiral stitch!

Small relaxation project from last night. Lots of detached chain stitch, buttonhole variant, a whipped woven wheel (or double whipped, I wrapped around the two strands of the chain stitch spokes separately) and Ceylon stitch in the middle. It was more an experiment in shape and design than stitch techniques. As you may be able to tell, I'm rediscovering my love for geometry.

More geometric play. The symmetry isn't perfect, but given the amount of tension points, I'm happy with it. The stitches used here are all really basic - twisted satin, buttonhole, vandyke, lazy daisy, whipped wheel. The complexity comes from how they interact with and tension each other (e.g the vandyke stitch will loop around the cross junction of two button hole stitches, and pull them into a new positions (and then you have to try and get exactly the same tension another 9 times). I don't know if there's an official name for this type of embroidery. I have a lot of stitch dictionaries and collections, and I've never seen anything like this in any of my books. If no one else knows of a pre-existing name for it, I'mma have to invent one. Maybe... Arachne work.

This is the start of the piece for the winner of the giveaway. The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. I spent a lot of time figuring out the exact lay out of this one. I ended up writing the pattern out four or five times, but I think I've finally figured out how I want to do it, so here we go. I also think I'm going to make quite a lot of mistakes in this one.  I've made it pretty complicated, but hopefully it will be worth it.)

Incidentally, the winner was allibys.