Tag: family

The Embroiderer’s Children Have No…

13 February, 2015 / Katy / 2 Comments

It occurred to me a few months ago that if I was going to get any quilts finished for our increasing menagerie, I was going to have to get cracking.

Unusually for me, I had the urge to finish a project I’d already started, so I’ve decided to give Little Lion the Shirt Quilt.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this long-term (ca. 2008) WIP, it’s made from my dad’s (forcibly) retired shirts. I’m paper piecing 1″ hexagons for both sides (I have quite a lot of shirts) in a fairly random pattern.

The palette is (as you will have noticed) fairly limited, so there may be some surface decoration, but I’m not quite sure what it will be yet.

If you’re interested in the process of going from shirt to hexagon I can write an explanatory post, but this is a good start for an overview.

Also, if anyone wants some shirt-skeletons – collars, cuffs, button plackets and French seams all still in shirt shape, please let me know.

Happy 2015?

9 January, 2015 / Katy / 0 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time getting 2015 started.

Our goal over the holidays was to keep things simple, and we largely succeeded, thanks to a series of virulent colds which left us alternately in bed or collapsed on the sofa watching films.

I did manage to make the most obscene chocolate log (I should have read the recipe more carefully before I started) which was almost entirely butter and chocolate combined in ways I never knew were possible.

The best bit was the meringue mushrooms, the worst bit was the feeling of malaise and the guilt of Western excess that hung over you after you’d finished your slice. (Yes, that’s a massive Christmas cake in the background.)

When I wasn’t eating cake, I made a piece for the curator of Thrive Archive’s Away Being, and she very kindly hung it in the exhibition.

There was an awful lot of overambitious satin stitch, which was quite stressful at the time, but I’m very happy with the way it came out.

We went to the opening which had live music and lots of lovely responses to the themes of the exhibition.

I’ll be doing my best to maintain some sort of posting schedule over the next two months, but seeing as it’s taken me about two hours to write this piece (most of it spent staring vacantly at the spot where the Christmas tree used to be), I’m not making any grand promises. I hope you’ll forgive me if it slips a little.

In fact, in lieu of proper resolutions this year, I’m trying to make my goals a little less relentless. The last six months have been more of a slog than a challenge, so I’m trying to adjust my focus to allow for some gaps in the schedule. Wish me luck!

Holiday Happenings

12 December, 2014 / Katy / 0 Comments

I think I’m slowly starting to embrace the festive atmosphere.

After last weekend’s slightly manic dash from craft fair to teaching night out to craft fair, Dragon and I decided that it was time to break out the Muppet Christmas films (we’re holding off on Muppet’s Christmas Carol for another week) and try to relax properly.

We’re having a rare holiday at home, which I’m really looking forward to, Dragon is at the age where traditions really start to stick, so I’m hoping we can create some good ones. (The Star Wars ornaments bode well, I think.)

Of course, I have four commissions to get through before I can really consider myself on holiday, and I should probably unpack the craft fair boxes and bags that are lurking at every turn, but I have a cunning plan on that front…

I’d like to offer you 20% off anything on the website until 31st December, just to save me putting everything away! Use the code ‘holiday’ at checkout and you’re away.

I’m making a concerted effort this year to buy exclusively from local or handmade sources for my gifts, and it would be lovely if everyone could at least buy one more thing from a friendly face than they did last year.

I hope you’re all managing to stay toasty wherever you are, I’m slowly adding layers of legwarmers, cowls and shawls as the weather dictates!

A New Member of Staff

4 November, 2014 / Katy / 7 Comments

I’ve just looked at my holiday craft fair diary (you can see it here) and it’s looking so busy that I thought it might be an idea to recruit a new member of staff.

After due consideration of potential candidates, we decided that it would be better to train one up from scratch rather than hire someone who wasn’t versed in the ways of Misericordia Mansions.

Unfortunately, this process takes a while, so the new employee won’t be joining us until March, well after the holiday rush, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.

Dragon is looking forward to his position as line manager, and we’ve given the new recruit the honorary title – Little Lion.

(Any and all advice about how to seamless expand an embroidery empire will be gratefully received.)

Many Hands and Happy Returns

26 September, 2014 / Katy / 1 Comment

Misericordia Mansions has been a hive of activity this week, but not of the usual kind.

Piles appear on all available flat surfaces, surmounted with shopping and to do lists.

We even get the apprentices involved (trousers – not seen).

All for a rather special event this weekend.

Not everyone has been quite so carried away with preparations…

Coming Over All Matrimonial

13 June, 2014 / Katy / 0 Comments

I love a wedding, do you?

I’ve got a few friends’ weddings coming up and they’ve made me feel all nostalgic for the excitement and fevered planning that went into our wedding.

(Although I must admit, I find great relief in being well through that stage. It was fun while it lasted, but matronhood suits me quite well.)

I have a variety of visions for these pieces, ranging from a gift for the work colleague who you wish well but don’t fancy buying a lone dinner plate off the uninspiring gift registry to a rather sweet bridesmaid’s gift to an ironic gift for the couple who are passionately devoted to their cohabitative state.

Mr & Mrs hand embroidered hoop - Misericordia 2014

I must apologise for the rather traditional wording, I’m desperately awaiting my first Dr & Mr or Ms & Ms, so please get commissioning!

Commission – Ellen

7 March, 2014 / Katy / 0 Comments

I made this piece for my gran’s 90th birthday at the end of February. It’s one of the first pieces I’ve made about someone I know and I really struggled with it!

The first thing I knew was that it had to be bright. From purple hair and turquoise eyeliner to Indian fabrics and sequins for all occasions, there is always lots of colour around Ellen.

I also wanted to capture her sort of energy; curious, enthusiastic and irrepressibly sunny. (Does anyone else get letters from their grandparents about roadtrips across the States, politics in the Middle East and art – all within the same paragraph?)

In common with many people who stride easily past their four score years and ten, Ellen is an irrepressible optimist. She got a tattoo at 80, and can be counted on to denote her approval with an ‘aw, isn’t that darling!’

I’m not sure I’m ever going to adequately compress the essence of the person who helped me make my first quilt, showed me that more is more when hanging pictures in your house and let me try on every bright and beaded item in her wardrobe at the same time into an embroidery, but here’s hoping I get another chance to try in 10 years!

A Habit of Speech

4 March, 2014 / Katy / 1 Comment

If you know someone with a specialist subject, especially if you live with them, you’ll find yourself picking up some of the knowledge they leave lying about (this can only be a good thing, of course).

Sometimes this leads to unexpected actions, such as the many photographs of paving I took on my honeymoon (our most long-standing flatmate is a landscape architect), or an experiment in writing my undergraduate dissertation in LaTex about tutus (that would be the computer scientist sitting next to me).

It doesn’t all go one way, of course – Dragon pulls out my Pilates mat and announces he needs to do his exercises and LYM tuts sympathetically when I complain that the new DYMO label-maker has slightly different kerning than the old one.

So I hope that you’ll appreciate following hilarious monologue by Mike Lacher on the font everyone loves to hate…Comic Sans.

But…

…don’t read this out loud to your granny, unless she swears like a trooper already!

U+273F

31 January, 2014 / Katy / 1 Comment

Here’s a first for me, a commission in Unicode!

The Lovely Young Man is a computer scientist and introduces me to all sorts of charming people who solve problems about information and toil down the data mines. When they’re not pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge, they come and commission embroideries…

I always love to play with the distinction between the digital and the handmade, so I’m particularly pleased at how this one turned out.

Apparently I have a very consistent way of making my stitches, it wasn’t until I turned one of the canvases over that I realised that the back was almost as pleasing as the front!