City and Guilds progress

I just completed Module 2 of the City and Guilds Embroidery course I'm working on with Distant Stitch and thought I'd share some photos with you.

The brief was to make a three dimensional embroidered useful object inspired by animal print.
During the months it has taken me to work through all the research, design exercises, samples, etc, etc I found I was most inspired by lizards. The prairie points on the lid of my box are not only inspired by the spines on the lizards' backs, but also by the dragon back roof on Gaudi's Casa Batllo in Barcelona.

 

All the fabrics were dyed by me and then many of them machine embroidered before being cut and pieced to make the patchwork body and lining of the box.

 The lining is slightly padded and hand stitched in random lines of running stitch using a soft Coton a Broder thread in off white.

I have to say that I'm absolutely delighted with the way this has turned out - much better than I sometimes thought it would do.

In and amongst the coursework I've been stitching a few French knots onto this little rockery.

 I also took some time off recently for a day out in Haworth to visit the Bronte Museum in this 200th anniversary year of Charlotte's birth. It was lovely to revisit the Parsonage Museum and see the new exhibits of tiny scraps of fabric from some of the gowns she wore and her tiny gloves and shoes. Walking round the museum it is so easy to envisage the sisters reading out their books to each other as they sat together in the parlour in an evening.

 Another day out to Salts Mill in Saltaire. For those of you not fortunate enough to have visited this huge memorial to England's industrial age, the mill has now been turned over to exhibition spaces, the inevitable cafe's and sales spaces which contain luxury homewares, art materials and books on every subject imaginable. It is interesting to see little reminders of the mill's past life in the structure of the building and to imagine it filled with looms and people and deafening noise.

And finally a picture taken in our town centre of a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. Spring is truly here!