AAW monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)
UK Government advice exhorts us to think Hands, Face, Space before we do – well – almost anything. According to a Times letter writer (5th of October) should you feed these words into the global locator system what3words, this would direct the population of the UK to a 3m by 3m square of sea just off Llandudno, which, as the letter writer suggests, “will make social distancing difficult.” Should you ever need to be rescued from a certain spot in the middle of the South Atlantic, typing forgotten.previous.husband into the app on your phone should alert the emergency services to your exact whereabouts, while imaginary.future.husband would pinpoint your whereabouts somewhere in Russia. People with plenty of time to spare have great fun with this website, while people in dire need of help have been beyond grateful and even owe their lives to it!
Detail AAW monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)
AAW is my last monogram for my friends in the States. For both this and the IPL monogram of the post before this one I tried using DMC’s Magic Paper to transfer my design and I must say it’s absolutely amazing (see below if you want more details.) With Hockney colours in my needle – burnt oranges, bright yellows and luscious greens, spikes of red and violet – my eye was caught by similar colours illustrating an article on Hockney’s latest work in a recent Saturday newspaper. Settled in Normandy during lockdown, in a “little seven dwarfs’ house in the middle of a four-acre field” he began to walk round his house, drawing as he went and producing the beginning of a 360 degree panorama, which like the Bayeux Tapestry will run the length of a wall in his upcoming show in a Paris gallery (about to open – or not – given the recent surge of the pandemic). He has become increasingly fascinated by the tapestry, which he admires for its narrative technique, like a Chinese scroll painting, and for its pictorial flatness – no shadows, no reflections and no perspective. At the moment he’s aiming to emulate that sense of time captured in pictorial space. It’s just wonderful and inspiring when a contemporary artist takes lessons from such a piece of venerable sewing!
Detail AAW monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)
Detail AAW monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)
Another amusing entry from The Times Diary. A reader who had worked on the Iraq Inquiry emailed the diary to say that one day she was asked by her boss to pass a message on to the chairman, Sir John Chilcot telling him to get in touch with Gus O’Donnell. The message, succinctly and with usual abbreviations read “For JC, please telephone God, yours, Mary”.
Drawing for AAW monogram (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)
More colourful children’s monograms blogged about:
Using DMC’s Magic paper:
Normally I mess around using a light box (drawing underneath, linen on top) and end up with a wobbly pencil line drawing of varying degrees of visibility. With Magic Paper, you quite simply copy your drawing on to the sheet of Magic Paper (using a small light box), peel off the backing paper, place the top layer with the drawing on to your fabric and then, when it’s in exactly the right place gently press this down. (Although stuck to your fabric now, there is some leeway for peeling off and repositioning.) The thin layer of fabric-like paper also acts as a stabiliser which means you don’t need an additional stabiliser underneath (which later must be torn or cut away). When you’ve finished your embroidery, gently wash away the magic paper with water. At this point I roll my embroidery in a couple of clean towels (one at a time) to remove as much wetness as possible, give it a gentle tug and lay it on a towel (another) on a not too hot radiator (or you could block it on a towel on a cork board and let it dry more gently). I then iron it carefully, not pressing on the embroidery very much at all. Magic Paper may well have transformed my life. It’s not cheap, £4-5 for two A5 sheets but it gives such a clear and firm image (and one that I can even see when the light is poor or at night under artificial light) that I think it has saved me time and energy.
DMC’s Magic Paper applied to linen with embroidery design
DMC’s Magic Paper (2 sheets A5 in a pack)
6 Comments
I just love the colors.
Thank you, Bev.
That’s a real delight.
Hockney’s work is amazing when seen for real. I went to an exhibition of his in the Royal Academy in happier times and was completely knocked for a loop. Reproductions don’t do it justice. Curse the pandemic and all other hindrances to seeing what I expect will be a truly inspiring exhibition!
Yes, we went to that exhibition too – the one with the enormous canvas of trees across practically the whole of one wall and a whole room of iPad paintings. We loved it too and thought his the fresh, bright colours so stimulating.
Would have loved to see the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition at the Royal Academy, but as you say other things have got in the way.
This is a beautiful piece of work. Some day this pandemic will end and we will get to do all of the things we are wishing for once again. That exhibition sounds like it will be spectacular.
Thank you Amara. Life at the moment is a bit like being in the middle of doing exams – you list in your head all the things you want to do when they’re over (and if I remember rightly never do above half of them) – still there’s comfort to be had in the listing.