A finished scroll of our NC500 trip ...

 I love a summer holiday project or two or three when my students & I have a break from each other & it is a luxury to fill time as I please. This year, due to commitments, we have not taken an overseas holiday but had a wonderful 10 days exploring the North Coast of Scotland on the NC500 route. read all about it on the previous posts with links here 

I shared that I had decided to do a sewing scroll on a long 1.5m linen fabric length, originally just as a small scroll. However, once I got started, I realised how much I was enjoying the randomness of just doing it that soon the whole scroll was covered in stitching doodles. 

We often have the idea that creative work has to be 'perfect' but there is so much more joy (in my opinion) in the imperfect creative act where the process forgets about judgements & fear about 'is it good enough?' and just goes with the pleasure to create something that has no purpose other than to give pleasure to the one making it.  Comparison & perfection is the thief of joy so it is best to just go where the process takes you. Sometimes it is about stepping out of your comfort zone & trusting your intuition. 

I made a conscious decision not to add fabrics to the scroll itself because it is a huge distraction for me to select fabrics from my generous stash & I get too side-tracked or overthink the colours etc which means everything grinds to a halt. 

I decided on thread stitching only but added details with the sheep wool I picked off a fence & the shells I found on the beach along the way because they belonged to the journey.  A large shell & piece of driftwood I picked up on various beaches was set aside for the scroll handle. 

I found a lovely bit of fabric in my stash with the same colours with a scene of trees & sheep & decided to machine embroider some of the place names to attach to the end of the scroll. After an initial mishap when the bobbin thread bunched up & had to be cut loose & unpicked, it went well & I managed to  do many of the place names with just one spelling mistake (you have to select all the characters for each word & save before it stitches so it can be tricky as you don't see the whole word together ...) The green thread was a good, gentle choice & the colour doesn't jar ... 

I bought in a piece of pale lilac linen from a trusty ebay seller I use for my linen bits & decided I wanted to hand stitch it to the scroll front. None of my threads looked just right but on a trip to our county town of Shrewsbury, I saw a variegated thread & knew it was the perfect colours.  Blanket stitch uses so much thread that I bought 3 lots but used up a whole one only. The rest will be used on other things as it is lovely colours. 

The edges were done with 3 strands of this cotton in blanket stitch to hold the various layers together,  then the decision on how to attach it. The end fabric was merely rolled over, the drift wood attached by stitches at the top & bottom then the large shell attached to the driftwood & scroll. Easier than I anticipated. 

The scroll will roll from the one end to the drift wood / shell side & ties with a 'made in Scotland' ribbon I already had. 

I am rather pleased with it, a project purely for my own joy & that is surely the best way to doodle with thread. I hope you have enjoyed the journey with me. Thank you for stopping by, 

Dee 🪡🧵🐚🚙

Going where the needle takes me on a NC500 sewing scroll ....

 I hope you enjoyed some previous posts about our recent trip exploring the North Coast of Scotland ... 

I often blog (alongside a travel journal) so the details are at hand for future reference. 

This was our NC500 Scottish trip = 

#1 - Exploring Scotland's Black Isle

#2 - Easter Ross along the coast

#3 - Wick & Sinclair castle

#4 -  The North Sea & coast of Scotland

#5 - Western Sutherland to Ullapool

#6 - Wester Ross to Skye

#7 - Crossing paths with the Picts in Scotland

After a busy year of working closely with pupils & their families as an Elective Home Education tutor, I like to take time to just clear the mind completely in our summer break before new academic diaries are filled with the overflow from the previous year. 

This year we do not have an international holiday booked so can enjoy the luxury of filling the day as I please & that is a huge privilege & pleasure for me. 

I have several sewing projects on the go, a monthly circular stitching one, a 100 day one (that has faltered as I have done other things)  and on a whim I took a length of white linen (that I use for many projects, I decided to start a Scottish scroll.  

     

There was no plan; just doodling with needle & thread to see where it goes, trusting your skills to take you where it will. That is the best sort of stitching for my intuitive mind. I am not a pattern follower at all, I like to just make it up as I go along & this is what I did. 

I moved some threads, cottons, a hoop & bits to the conservatory table which has a lovely view of the garden & then looking at my trip photos & a book we used along the way, I lightly sketched out some outlines with a frixon pen (heat erasable pen used in sewing) and decided I wanted to outline in black. I was not even sure I wanted to fill in, just stitched & outlined as I went along, completely without thought to scale, placements or timeline - just stitching for the pleasure of the repetitive nature of thread through fabric which is almost meditative. 

Somehow the outlines filled up the 150 cm fabric scroll, my interpretation of the scenes I had encountered & enjoyed. It is  intuitive, primitive stitching, none of the perfect scenes that are found commercially. I do not consider myself to be a textile artist, just a lover of textiles & art. 

My mother was a great embroiderer & sewer, as was her mother & grandmother.  They were more precise with their stitches - there was no quick online search to remind you of stitches etc somehow they were ingrained in their minds.  Their work was as neat on the back as the front but their work had purpose - tray & table cloths, clothes, crochet doilies, bibs for babies, covered coat hangers, cushions, sports bags - they did not baulk at making anything.

My sewing is more for pleasure now (though I did a special harvest apron recently) & I often browse instagram & pinterest for ideas & inspiration but that can be limiting because you get bogged down in too much detail & that hinders the doing. 

This is the conservatory where I have been working - the long rectory table taken up by beads, a felting sponge & stabber, multiple containers of threads of all sizes & colours, & of course multiple needles. 

Who else has loads of needles loaded up with all sorts of colours at the same time? 

I decided that I did not want to add fabrics to this scroll - I wanted the details to be in threads only. The reason being that fabrics would introduce too much choice & distraction again -   you know how you get side-tracked looking for a particular book then sit on the floor with books you have rediscovered? Fabrics are the same - too much choice is distracting. 

So I just dipped in to the container of threads & used threads for the details - lots of choices of shades in the various colours - a challenge to think of stitches for each part (a simple running stitch can be so versitile) & then trusty favourite stitches I use like French knots, fly stich, whipped running etc 

At Sinclair castle, I had pulled some sheep fur from the wire as we walked back along the windswept coast & I picked up another little bit of darker wool near Ullapool so I outlined some sheep & felted in the bits of wool I picked up. 

I picked up a large straight shell, some small drift wood & other shells on the beach at Dunnet Links, Strathy & Farr beaches & at Skerray Bay, so I decided to add a  beach to the scroll.  Some of the sheep wool was again felted / jabbed on to the linen as the soft, white sands of those stunning beaches & then beads were added.  Beading is best done in good light as the needles are so thin & the thread is fine too but the effect is worth it. 

Because the scroll was unplanned, the width is too big for my vintage wooden bobbins - however, the driftwood & shell will make good bobbins to wind the work around. That is the final step - backing the untidy reverse side with a lovely soft purple linen which will be handstitched to the 150cm scroll & attaching the driftwood support parts. 

You will have to come back for that finished bit in about a week. 

What is keeping you busy at this time - tell all. Thank you for your company, it is always appreciated. 

Dee 🚣‍♀️🚙🪡🧵🧶 🐚🦪🌊⛰️

Strolling along the lush canals ...

 Everything is glorious & green with summer lushness & hedgerow flowers bursting in to bloom. 

The fields are golden yellow & the sight of harvests is evident all about our county. 

Today, my choice of a Sunday stroll was to visit the canals which snake through our county of Shropshire & Staffordshire. I treated the Godsons to a special trip on the same canals some years back, in midwinter. In winter, the canals take on a mystical view with ice & frozen water. 

They were the highways of times gone by, carrying goods around & especially the delicate pottery from the many potteries in our counties. This pottery from Coalport & Stoke on Trent was world famous & the waterways helped to move it about. 

Our canals have many interesting trips like this afternoon tea last September.  Summer is beautiful along the canals with green leaves & light filtering through the canopy of leaves.

Today it was just the local one with a deep cutting & a long tunnel that give beautiful views on both sides. 

The tunnel is long & it gets dark towards the middle before emerging at the side with elegant strands of ivy draping over the tunnel. 

As we approached the tunnel, 3 sets of canoeists were making their way towards the tunnel, a boat going the same way, hung back for them  & then an approaching boat had to pull up for the 3 canoes to safely transverse the tunnel. 

Voices echo in the tunnel & then the throb of the approaching boat reverberated around the stone & brickwork. 

We walked back to the spot where the boats moor up & I am always impressed by the handpainting details on boats. Many have solar panels on the roof now & their plant boxes are briming over with herbs, tomatoes & more. A reminder of autumn is evident with firewood stacked on top - it can be cold on the water & most of the boats have a woodburning fire in them. 

A lovely time in nature, enjoying the feeling of space along the canals. It is the little things in life that reset us ... 

Thank you for stopping by, for subscribing, liking or sharing the blog, it is much appreciated. 

Dee ☔️🪴🚙🚣‍♀️