Things I'm Working On At The Moment: A Giant Hyperbolic Mass, In Super Bulky/chunky Yarn. This Is 12

Things I'm working on at the moment: a giant hyperbolic mass, in super bulky/chunky yarn. This is 12 balls in. (It takes about 40 minutes to get through one ball). And some geometric crochet - beginning with a simple series of Platonic Solids. Currently layering and layering fabric stiffener onto one triangle for the tetrahedron to see how many coats it's going to take to get a sturdy enough facet.

Maaaan, I really need to get back to practicing free-motion quilting.

Quilting Circles - Ruler Work

I am having so MUCH FUN with the Circles on Quilts templates by Westalee Design by Sew Steady.  There are so many possibilities.

Two Circle on Quilts sets include four sizes that can quilt concentric circles from 2-inches to 12-inches at ½ inch increments.

The templates rotate from a pivot point. A metal tack is placed underneath so the template rotates from from the same axis point to create concentric circles.  Watch short video demo below.

Using the Circles on Quilts is so EASY. With the right free-motion tools: thread, needles, supreme slider, a machine capable of free-motion quilting and gloves, all you need is Westalee’s ½-inch ruler foot and the templates to make perfect circles WITHOUT marking.

A 10-inch and 9.5 circle made the outer 1/4inch channel and a 6-inch and 5-inch circle created the inner ½-inch channel. Both channels created space for a beautiful swirl of feather plumes. A 2-inch circle in the center and the 5-inch circle encase the swirl design.

So, what do you think? Are you ready to try the templates?

I'm running a workshop (co-designed with colleague, who is a star and also did most of the prep whilst I was busy talking about the Stitched Iliad at UCL's Homeric Summer School) this weekend at the festival as well. I'll post photos from that later.

Book 1 & 2 exhibited together at the Beyond the Borders festival.

Die Nase. I've been writing fragmentary bits of pattern for a crochet face for years now, and finally put hook to yarn and made a prototype nose today. Here are my "pattern" notes, which also function well to show why I don't write patterns: Dec, Dec, inc, inc, Dec Dec Inc inc Plain x 3 Inc inc Plain x3 Sl, ch2, dc2tog, ch2, sl Dc flt Sc3tog The next challenges are figuring out eyes and lips, and then, of course, integrating them into one pattern. (Eye holes are easy enough, but sculpting the curves of eyelids a little harder).

Don’t tell me embroidery is relaxing.

“By the eighteenth century embroidery was beginning to signify a leisured, aristocratic life style — not working was becoming the hallmark of femininity.” (The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker, 1984: 11)

Women’s work as an oxymoron: if women do it, it cannot be work. Women cannot work, so anything a woman does cannot be work. Therefore, embroidery, actually called ‘work’ by women, cannot be classified as work. It is instead, a leisure pursuit – assuming one is not paid for it. And one cannot be paid for it because it is not work, cannot be work if it is produced by an upperclass woman. To try and pay her for it – for her to try and sell it would be to undermine her husband’s fragile masculinity by implying he cannot support her. But all of this is to say nothing of the women who did do embroidery as work, as a living, who did sell their labour. 

I think this is one of the reasons I get irritated by people telling me it must be so relaxing to sew. I don’t find it relaxing. It is work. It is labour and it is my job. I don’t tell other people that their work, their job, the thing they do everyday must be ‘so relaxing’ because that would be an absurd assumption to make. Maybe they do find it relaxing. Or maybe they enjoy it, but don’t find it relaxing because actually it’s hard work and concentration. But it is not my place to assume these things, and of all the questions one could ask about another’s job, whether it is ‘relaxing’ is a strange place to start. What are people implying when they tell me I must find embroidery relaxing? That it’s easy? Unskilled? Requires no concentration? That it’s not work. 

Some people find embroidery relaxing because they do it as a hobby. They do it as a thing which is not their job. Just as some people take up wood-carving as a hobby. But do people tell the professional carpenter that their job must be relaxing because it is considered by others to be a hobby? 

Don’t tell me my job is relaxing. Don’t tell me my job isn’t work. 

I've also been playing with wire crochet again.