Green Twinchies

First an apology. Especially to those of you who were enthusiastic about the Green Twinchies and sent me your wonderfully decorated squares.

I have finished the Blue Twinchie collaborative piece and will show you that in another post.

When I turned to these Green Twinchies, they just would not come together in a design that felt right, so I set them aside waiting for inspiration to strike.

Amanda had sent one with a see through ‘window’ and that made me think about making something 3D so that light could filter through.

and because of the earthy colours, I wondered about putting them in a grid and use my bug hotel as an inspiration…… but after several attempts nothing sang to me.

Right now I am part of another collaborative project based on a woodland theme. We are working on hessian, and I am loving it. I have found some old camouflage off cuts in my stash.

Something is stirring and I think I might be going into the woods with the Green Twinchies.

So be assured they have not been forgotten.

If you have any thoughts or ideas about where this might lead, I will be delighted to hear them.

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Squares Together

Back in July 2020 I made a piece of crazy patchwork

Chopped it up and sent the pieces off to 15 members of the group Stitched Together – a splinter group from The Stitchbook Collective, made up of people who would like to work collabratively on pieces of textile art.

The aim is to make some pieces in a relaxed and enjoyable way and then to exhibit them to raise money for both national and local mental health charities.

I sent a little bit of sari-waste ribbon with each piece. This did not have to be used but some did.

Magic happened!

It seems like a miracle to see how all those 2″ squares have been transformed

I have had permission from all participants to share our work on my blog.

It was so exciting to open each envelope and discover a beautiful gem inside.

The eye suggested Egypt to me and the nearest I had to a parchment background was some reused teabags that I had sewn together in layers and painted with Gesso.

I painted it a pale sandy colour and started to arrange the pieces.

Each time I thought I had arrived at an arrangement I liked, I left it overnight and then in the morning realised something needed to change. I tacked the squares down and undid and rearranged them 4 times before I was satisfied.

Here they all are now sewn into place and ready for some surface stitching to complete the piece.

If you are wondering what has happened to the Wild Green Twinches, I will be working on them when I have finished this piece.

Textile Tuesday: Wild Twinchies

I just love seeing those little envelopes pop through my letterbox. If you want to know more about this project see this post.

These are just arranged randomly at the moment.

Aren’t they yummy! An Autumnal theme is developing methinks.

Only two more to come and then I can start playing around with how to bring them all together.

Thank you so much to all who have joined in

Life is a bit hectic here right now – all good but it is keeping me away from blogging – I am looking forward to it all calming down soon.

Textile Tuesday: September

Good Morning! A brand new month and moving into Autumn. I am looking forward to more stitching time, but for now the garden still occupies much of my creative time.

However, the Wild Twinchies are returning home! Which is very exciting.

These are the two little gems arrived from Dawn, so beautifully wrapped in a tiny box, it felt like opening a lovely present

and when I put them with the others ideas started to form about how I might work with them

Thank you so much Dawn,  Cathy, Amanda and Rainbow J for your beautiful pieces of textile art – all gorgeous, all fabulous little gifts arriving in the post.

Just over half are here, I’m excited to see what comes next.

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There was a piece on Woman’s Hour last week about a collaborative Quilt project organised by Sue Brown and Louise Asher called Same Sea, Different Boat.

It seems that many of us had a similar idea at the same time  – Hundredth Monkey Effect and/or Zeitgeist!

There is also the Quarantine Quilt on Instagram

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If you have any textile news or views to share – pop a link in the Comments.

 

❤  Happy Stitching!  ❤

Textile Tuesday Twinchies

Now I am back in the swing of blogging, I thought I would try and make most Tuesdays all about textiles. If you would like to share any of your posts about textiles, past or present, put a link in the Comments, I’d love to see them.

On Friday, I shared a project that I am making with a private group called, Stitched Together, which is a splinter group of the Stitchbook Collective.

A few of you expressed an interest in joining in with a twinchie project. This makes me very happy! I am really interested in working in a collaborative way and seeing what unfolds. So I have created another set of Twinchies for us to do together. Exclusive to Wild Daffodil followers (on WordPress and Instagram).

This time, I tried to make my squares slightly more uniform, by measuring and marking up the squares on the back

I think it worked – well – good enough for me anyway.

In Stitched Together we are working towards an exhibition to raise money for Mental Health charities. Our collaboratively created work will be exhibited and pieces will be sold to raise funds.

So what will we do with this piece made by Wild Daffodil followers?

I could put the finished article up for sale with the proceeds going to Mind, a UK Mental Health charity (the chosen charity of Untangled Threads) but I am happy to hear your suggestions.

How will it work?: Any number up to 15 (+me) can join in. I will post you one or more squares, depending on how many join. If you only want to make one, that’s fine.

We all work on our squares with stitching and embellishments in any form we like.

When done, post them back to me, within 3 months of the initial posting date.  I will put them all together to create a piece of textile art.

I am happy to post to anywhere in the world.

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I picked one square to make a start

and will share progress as I go.

This is by no means an example of how yours ‘should’ be done –  just one way to do it in case anyone is completely at a loss. I am hoping for 16 completely differently decorated squares – let your imagination run free.

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I am tempted to call us the Wild Twinches, but do you have a better name for the group or the project?

Edit: It is absolutely fine to join in and not mention the project on your blog. So if you blog about something entirely different, but would still like to join in, you are very welcome.

Twinchies

 

I have long wanted to make a collaborative piece of textile art and there are a few members of the Stitchbook Collective who are also keen to join in.

Between us we have lots of ideas, so it is going to be a fun challenge to decide where we go with it. Early days.

Somebody mentioned Inchies and I went to Pinterest to see what they were talking about. Cute! But I thought a one inch square is too tiny – hence Twinchies– also to be found on Pinterest.

To get us going I have been doing some experiments

A 10 inch square of calico, allows for 16 twinchies. I am making them appproximately 2.5 inches square to allow for creative eventualities.

I laid some scraps of fabric on the calico, pinned them and ran some machine stitching through, with the stitches at the longest setting

Then measuring about 2.5 inches, I cut them into strips

and then squares

As you can see – not accurately measured or cut! I know that will drive some people mad, but I like the randomness of it. Others might like to trim them to an exact square.

They will all get jumbled up in any final arrangement

The idea is to send these little fabric collages out to a few people for them to decorate as they wish. When done they will all be reunited and mounted as a piece of textile art.

I don’t know if anyone else will want to join in with this particular method, I am interested to see how my fellow stitchers react to my rather drunken twinchies.

A little bit of recycled sari ribbon will be sent with each one, to be used or not.

What do you think? Could you cope with randomly sized ‘squares’ to work on?

Have you ever made an Inchie or a Twinchie?

EDIT: This project is just for our Stitchbook Collective splinter group which is called Stitched Together (a closed group). I’m excited about Crafty Creek’s comment below, so if there are more of my blog followers out there who would like to join in with another wonky twinchie project let me know in the comments and we can see where we go with it.