My 'Cross Stitch Sampler Book' now on sale on my website

I'm now selling copies of my latest book the 'Cross Stitch Sampler Book' on my website, which is www.susanbates.co.uk

The book is available from the shop section of my website for £9.99 (plus postage).

The book features 15 different sampler designs on many different themes - take a look at my website for more details!

My sreenprinted cushion design

Last night I went to a screen-printing workshop at 'super+super' in Brighton. The workshop teaches you how to make a paper stencil to create your own screen-printed cushion cover that you can take home with you. I decided to do a design of a 'Day of the Dead' style sugar skull as I'd already been working on some sketches of this idea.

Tracing and my sketch

On the right (above) is my colour sketch, on the left is my tracing of the design. To make the stencil you trace around your sketch, deciding which bits you want to print (e.g. which bits to cut out). You then cut out the stencil from brown paper with a very sharp scalpel. Its quite tricky because you have to remember not to cut out too many fiddly bits that separate themselves from the main design!

Sketches and finished cushion

To print it you put your cut out stencil on top of the cushion cover but under the screen, then squeegee your colour through the screen...

Then here's the finished cushion!

My finished cushion design

Detail of printed cushion cover

Some other stuff I've made, below.... a couple of cushion covers that I finally got around to making from some old fabric I found in a charity shop. The material was 1 curtain and I bought it basically cos I liked the fabric - I didn't know at first what I wanted to make from it - but I decided it would make a nice couple of cushions, picking out the square parts of the design to make a feature of these parts of the fabric.

Cushions made from retro style fabric

My sugar skull cushion against my retro style cushions.

London Snaps

On a trip to London to see the Kaffe Fassett textiles exhibition I walked along the Thames by the south bank. I walked from London Bridge down past The Globe Theatre and on to the Tate Modern - so I decided to post a few of the photos that I took along the way..

I didn't realise that the Shard building is pretty much right on top of London Bridge station!

The Shard

London Bridge

'The Gherkin' and London skyline

London does look great on camera - you can't really go wrong, can you?!

I took a couple of photos of reflections in some tower block windows - I like the way the angles of the glass windows reflect the light  and make it confusing as to what is the wall and what's the reflection of it...

Reflections

And this one reflects London life... the river, buses and all the nearby building work. I like the way the bus and the person in the window are confined to the top right of the picture, as if they are in mid-air....

Angles..

Whilst wandering along the south bank past Southwark Cathedral I came across a brilliant market under the railway arches: Borough food market. The smaller section, the 'Green Market', had lots of little stalls selling freshly cooked food and some lovely cakes, smoothies and coffees etc. There was some really yummy food and it had a really buzzy atmosphere - but I guess if you live locally you know all about it...

Borough Green Market

 I had a vegan burger and a vegan banana and date flapjack in the grounds of Southwark Cathedral and soaked up the atmosphere :-)

Borough Market.

 

 

 

 

Then I walked down past St. Pauls and past The Globe Theatre, stopping off at the Tate Modern, where I'm ashamed to say, I went straight to the gift shop, haha! ...Well it was late and I was tired ....and I wanted to buy a poster and a few postcards before heading home! ;-)

St. Pauls and The Millenium Bridge

 

 

 

 

 

Bridge across The Thames

Kaffe Fassett Exhibition in London

A few weeks ago I went up to London to see the Kaffe Fassett 'A Life in Colour' exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. I've seen lots of his work before, but the last time I saw his work in an exhibition was years ago - also in London... so it was nice to see again some of the designs I saw years ago.... and some newer things as well. Unusually the exibition allowed you to take photos, so as you can see I was busy snapping away!

More recently Kaffe Fessett has ventured into patchwork, as well as knitting and needlepoint, and the patchwork pieces were some of my favourite items in the exhibition - his use of colour is so vibrant and amazing :-)

 The needlepoint designs, of course, are beautiful too - he really does love pattern and strong colours. Below is a detail of a needlepoint chair seat - I really like the 'mosaic' effect of lots of seemingly random little images put next to each other.

 Although I do really like the 'busy' colours and images some of the designs that use a softer colour palette are really lovely - like this long stitch rug below:

 And these more muted colours below are great too...

Blue and white patterns, (on china etc.) seem to be a recurring theme of his - this cushion below reminds me of the first ever Kaffe Fassett book I bought - 'Glorious Needlepoint'? ....I think! His love of colours, pattern, textiles and the painterly quality of Kaffe Fassett's work really inspired me in my younger days to take up needlepoint design - and then eventually cross stitch design too!

I took lots of photos, too many to post really - but I've just picked out a few of my favourite things here :-)

New knitting yarn...socks ...and samples....!

A couple of weekends ago I went to the 'Shoreham Knitting and Needlecraft Shop' to get some new knitting yarn for my mum. She loves to knit and has been wanting to knit something new for me for a while now, (which is lucky for me!)

'The Shoreham Knitting and Needlecraft Shop' is an amazing! It's jam-packed full of knitting yarns, floor to ceiling and it's really colourful... it's like an old-fashioned sweet shop!

If you want to check it out for yourself here's the shop's website address: www.englishyarns.co.uk

Anyway, this is what I bought.......
(I already had the Kim Hargreaves 'Indigo' knitting pattern book - top left pic), so I just had to buy the yarn. I bought some lovely Rowan 'Creative Linen' yarn, in a fantastic cherry red colour.

My purchases!

My mum is going to knit this pattern for me, (top right and bottom left pics).... it's quite a simple 'T-shirt' style pattern - it'll give my mum a break from the complicated knits I often ask her to do for me!

The 'Indigo' book came out last year, but the patterns don't really date and Kim Hargreaves is one of my favourite knitwear designers :-)

After buying something for my mum to do I wanted to have something to knit myself too:-) So I'm doing these stripey socks. I've knitted gloves and mittens before, but not socks... but how hard can it be?!

Work in progress....

The yarn is such a great combination of earthy and jewel-like colours and its a bit of a cheats way of knitting stipes! It keeps you wanting to knit it too, as the colours change every few rows or so. The yarn is from a range by Regia/ Kaffe Fassett and it's a 4 ply yarn. As you can see, I'm knitting in the round - an interesting and slightly strange process!

I've also bought a few other new knitting patterns recently - a new Kim Hargreaves summer book, 'Spirit', and 2 new Martin Storey  pattern books - all for Rowan summer cotton yarns.

All this knitting inspired me to dig out some old knitting samples I made years ago but never did anything with. I designed and knitted them myself and even after all this time I still like them!

My knitting samples

It's funny how if you wait long enough fashions come back around again, and these kinds of designs are back in fashion again now, especially the 'kilim' style design. But maybe things don't ever go out of fashion... they just get recycled(?)! I came across these beautiful charts below on the internet the other day. They come from an old DMC embroidery pattern book and feature the same kind of geometric, kilim style designs that I used in my knitting samples above. Not sure how old these embroidery patterns are..

 

Pictures of the DMC charts are taken from this website: http://albumsdantan.canalblog.com

Here's a couple of recent fashion shots of garments that I like that have a similar feel :-)

Picture above from:  www.hautelook.com
Picture below from: http://pinterest.com