Embroidered portraits

 I know that everyone is missing their families during lock down and I am no exception. We managed to see our 3 daughters in between lockdowns last year but I haven't seen my mother or sister since last February. In a week it will be a whole year!

After watching 'portrait artist of the year ' on TV I wished that I could paint portraits of my family but, sadly, I am not much good with a paintbrush. Then I wondered if it would be possible to embroider a portrait because I do know how to use a needle. After trawling the internet I discovered that a few people do make them so I decided to have a go.

My first attempt was a self portrait as a sort of warm up piece. It was recognisable but not great. I did learn from my mistakes however so decided to have a go at my mum. I am actually quite pleased with this one.

I used mostly crewel wool on linen but didn't have all of the colours I needed  so improvised with stranded embroidery thread and even machine thread doubled up. It was kind of magical seeing her face appear beneath my needle.

I am attempting a portrait of my husband next but that is proving to be much more problematic as he has a more olive skin tone and I really don't have those sort of colours. I wish the shops were open!

Anyway, I will show you that one when it is finished.

Slow stitch . Garden birds in lockdown.

Like a lot of other people I have been looking out of the window a lot more than usual during lockdown. We always put food out for the garden birds and enjoy watching them but with more time I noticed how even the birds that look drab from a distance have beautiful markings.

I considered including them in a piece but my mind was made up when a small flock of long tailed tits moved in. They are not common around here and there was great excitement in the Forey household !

Eventually I decided to collage them on an interesting background and add lots of stitching. 

A robin in the snow.

Close up of a house sparrow. This one is also framed in a hoop.

The long tailed tit.

These took ages to make but I found all of the hand stitching really relaxing. The rhythmic  act of slow stitching is one of those things that soothes and makes me forget the madness going on in the world.

I also enjoyed picking out the fabrics from my left overs stash to make these pieces. The only bit I didn't enjoy was enclosing the back to make everything secure in the hoop and tidy.

Reverse side of hoop.

These are all currently available in my etsy shop. There are also more photos there if you want to take a look.

Next time I will tell you about another project that was bought about by lockdown. Nothing for sale on that one but you might be interested in trying it yourself.

Catching Up

 It's been a very long time since I've written the blog so I thought we should do some catching up before getting down to business.

The first thing that happened was my youngest daughter got married !

Her husband is lovely and we really feel that we've gained a son. 

Next my husband and I decided that we were getting too old and creaky for smallholding and we were rattling around the farmhouse. Time to down size. We have only moved about 5 miles but have left the hills and now live on the edge of a village just a mile from the sea. I do miss smallholding but it's nice to be able to walk to the beach and post office plus have really nice neighbours. These are our nearest neighbours.

As always in a new home, there was lots to do. Particularly in the garden . One of the exciting things that I am doing is planting a dye garden. Last year I made an 'eco jumper'. We were in lockdown but I managed to obtain some very nice fleece from a smallholder in the village where we used to live (socially distanced of course ). I then dyed the fleece with plants either from my garden or collected on daily walks. Next in the process was spinning the fleece which took ages. When I had finally spun around 700 grams of fibre I made a crochet jumper. All I had to buy from outside the area was a small packet of alum for mordanting the fibre. 

Lovely soft colours offset by the bright orange which came from dyers coreopsis. 

This is the finished sweater.

 I have still been working and you will find lots of felts in my etsy shop. To have a browse click on the etsy banner at the top of the page. I also have some new products but I will tell you about those next time.