Autumn Leaves and Robins

 Shirley's Autumnal Panel. She's machine knitted the fabric then fulled it in the washing machine. Then added some leaves and was embroidering them down using a variation of stem and blanket stitch.

 Celia's purchases. One from Thurso which was machine embroidered and the other from Vietnam which was hand embroidered.

Celia's wee robin.

 Shirley's lutrador panel. Its icy blue with a top layer trapping in various threads and leaves.

Dorothy's Hymn book cover. This is a three layer sandwich of lutrador, threads and sparkles and then bondawebbed with a chiffon top layer then embroidered down.

Catherine's Autumn leaves. She'd painted some lutrador and then hot air gunned it to get some holes. She was matching threads to start embroidering onto it.

Paint everywhere

On a trip down to Inverness to a Highland Textile craft fayre the group decided to get some Christmas cards started. They made a list of materials and These are some of the results.

This was Shirley's hand embroidery of some Pictish runes. We were joking on what they meant. I'll let you make your own mind up.

The Scottish Parliament

The Great Scottish Tapestry has been exhibited in the Scottish Parliament.
Celia, Dorothy, Catherine, Shirley and Valerie went down to the preview day for the stitchers on 2nd September.

Ella and Louise went on different days. Joan is waiting until it tours closer to home.

Louise took the family and whilst the whole event was overwhelming for them they were delighted to see the Caithness panel and tell other visitors that they too had taken part in its making.
Louise got talking to other visitors and was stood in front of the panel for 45 minutes telling everyone with great pride of her groups part in the Tapestry.

The group felt the whole tapestry together was amazing, overwhelming, artistic and beautifully stitched.  We also had to deal with the fact that our panel has been handed to the people of Scotland and is not ours any more. We felt that our panels quality was equal to the rest of the panel and we were really proud to be part of Scotlands History.

The exhibition has attracted over 300,000 visitors and it is going on tour around Scotland and then is going back to the Scottish Parliament in 2014 for 3 months. Louise would recommend taking 2 hours to look at it all and breaking for lunch in the very reasonable cafe in the Parliament and also go have a look in the debating chamber if you can as the Parliament building is very artistic and design elements are hidden around every corner.

Our textile artist group will carry on with the theme of Caithness Inspired work until Christmas. It is nice to be able to be free to paint, cut, stick materials again but seeing the panel again made us miss it.

650 Hours later

It is done.
Ella took it home and completed the extra outlines, added a few French knots and tied in some ends.

From January 8 where Valerie took the first stitch.

To June 27 2013 when Ella proclaimed it complete.

Caithness Textile Artists and some visitors have achieved an amazing piece of work.

The group were very privileged to take part in the Great Tapestry of Scotland.
It was an immense challenge learning about the History of Caithness in 1851, the Embroidery and also more about each other in the group. Ella, Celia and Dorothy had not done much embroidery before the project but are now very capable and will be incorporating it into their future crafting. Louise, Valerie, Shirley, Catherine and Joan had all done embroidery before but all learnt new stitches and stepped up their creativity.

The unseen part of the tapestry was the hours spent researching the history of the panel. Our panel had spaces around that had been left to us to fill. It was very important to the group to fill them with pertinent historically accurate scenes of Caithness and its people in that time.  As a group we are most certainly inspired by this County of Caithness up on the Far North of Scotland.

The Great Tapestry of Scotland will be displayed 3-22 September 2013 in the Scottish Parliament. I hope you all manage to go along to visit it and you too can point out our 'Hairy Brotag' and you know all the names of the characters we have gotten to love stitching.

Thank you for reading this blog.

Last Dash

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Our panel was not yet complete. We had passed the closing date by 2 days but we were thankful the Facebook group stated 'Don't rush the embroidery'.
In the morning the panel looked like this.

As you can see most of it has been completed. What a difference the outline makes.
What has been completed since the previous post is as follows.

Ella had the panel after Louise and she finished the croft and the fields behind the croft. She used a very close chain stitch which gave it the look of the lines of the fields behind her house. It frames the top of the panel lovely. She also added some lichen to the end of the stone wall.

She also completed the teachers blackboard which has the notes to Jesus Loves Me This I Know.

Dorothy added the Caithness Scorrie. A Scorrie is Caithness Dialect for a Seagull. She also added WK8 to the boats sail. WK is the Port Registration Number for the port of Wick. 8 is the number of stitchers this panel had.







Catherine finished the cliff with the Lighthouse. She added some French Knots and some straight lines for the sea.  There are numerous lighthouses around Caithness and in the Pentland Firth which is one of the fastest tidal races in the world where the Atlantic meets the North Sea twice a day.

This is Catherine adding a 'Hairy Brotag'

A Hairy Brotag is a caterpiller for the Tiger Moth. They are most comical creatures and can be found on the peats waggling their hairy bodies.

This is the final Alexander Bain Clock with the writing outlined

 Louise went to the Caithness Horizons Museum and found an electric motor that was made by Alexander Bain.




This is the final Morven panel. When the outline was added there was room for more stitching and Louise still wanted to dampen the blue of the flow country lochan.




This is the final Hen Harrier. Joan added some grasses and heather flowers.




This is the final Altnmarlich Cross. Celia added a couple of highlighting stitches and an outline to the lettering.




This was our party lunch. We had a feast worth of the hours spent stitching.

This is Dorothy adding up the hours and announcing how many we had entered into the book.

In the book there was over 570. It did not include the time spent researching, unpicking, trying out practice squares and the Tuesdays when we were all stitching at the same time.
We estimate it took us over 650 hours since January 8 2013.

On the days stitching the following was finally completed.


We had a visitor of Norma.

Her reaction was 'Wow, just Wow'.

Our Littlest Stitcher Daisy

Louise took the panel home to stitch the side panel with the hill Morven and the Caithness Flagstones in the foreground. Louise has 2 young children who have been very interested when the panel came home to visit them from time to time. They liked hearing about schools in 1851 and how different it was to their school presently. This time she persuaded her youngest, Daisy to put in a few stitches.

Louise would put the needle where she wanted it to be and her small slave, ahem, her daughter would then pull it through and she was extremely good at it. A natural for when there is a tapestry when Daisy is older!

Daisy concentrating. Not bad for a 4 year old.

Daisy sitting with the threads all out the case. She was 'helping' get the colours Louise needed.

Louise has been randomly stopping around the county to take photos of the Flagstones that are used as fences to keep livestock in. They are now backed up by modern fencing but the farmers would use them as they were a plentiful local resource.  This was a profitable industry in the 1800's which continues to this day at Spittal in the middle of the county.

Castletown on the north coast of Caithness had a quarry and exported high quality flagstones. Caithness Flagstone floors some of the worlds most prestigious buildings from the Scottish Parliament to the streets of New York, Boston and London. 

It ages well and the clear air shows as the lichens find a home on them as you can see in this photo.

Valerie outlined the flagstones in a Quaker stitch and Louise and Lorna French knotted the wee sheep. It was going to be a lamb but then it was pointed out that Cheannie was harvesting the Neeps so it had to be a sheep from a distance so to mirror Dolly the sheep Louise added some grey French Knots. Louise then started filling in the stone using thread painting of long and short stitches in various colours to reflect the stones many colours.


Morven dominates the southern horizon of Caithness. It is classed as a Graham and is 706m high. It sits to the south edge of the county at the bottom of the Flow Country which is a tentative UNESCO World Heritage Site. The flow country is a 4000km squared area of low lying peatland and wetland area of Caithness and Sutherland. Which is the largest bogland in Europe. It is home to a plethora of  wildlife and fauna.

Family Affair. Louise on her knees just taming down the lochan's bright blue edge. It was stitched with a chain stitch and then some short and split stitch then whipping the split stitch.  The grass was herringbone stitch.  Louise used small and longer Fly stitch on Morven to give a directional impression.  Louise's mother Zelia looks after her children whilst Louise goes to the group and is a very gifted embroiderer and quilter so she asked her to put a few stitches in her panel as she's been part of its story.

On her way to hand over the panel to Ella, Louise went to collect Daisy from her first induction days in Crossroads School.  She then had a 'show and tell' for the primary children and the teachers which was very interesting to see how much has changed. The children were glad they had shoes now and didn't have to pay for school with peat. And they thought that the fish seller would be very smelly.

Morven, the Flow Country and Flagstone dyke. And Sandy the sheep.

Tick Tock Alexander Bains Clock

This is the group holding up the panel. We had visitors who kindly took the photo of us all.

 

Tick tock. Shirley has sewn the Electric Clock which was invented by Alexander Bain in 1850. He was born in Watten which is in the middle of Caithness. The old Post Office in Wick now is a Weatherspoons pub which is named after him. A fitting reminder to an item we now take for granted. Shirley used satin stitch for the face and straight stitch for the hands.

 

Dolly has been completed by Celia. Dolly is a handsome beast. A good shaggy coat suitable for a Caithness winter and then the wool would have been turned into clothing or fabrics. These were French knots and straight stitch.

Celia stitched this stone cross which is situated to the west of Wick. Altimarlach was the site of the last battle of the clans in Scotland. It was fought between the Sinclairs of Keiss and the Campbells of Glen Orchy. George Sinclair the 6th Earl of Caithness had run up debt to Sir John Campbell who took over his titles and lands. George Sinclairs heir disputed this and on 13 July 1680 they had a battle at Altimarlach where legend has it so many Sinclairs were killed the Campbells could cross the river without getting their feet wet.  George Sinclair turned to the law and became the Earl of Caithness the following year. (This was abridged from the Wikepedia site)

We had visitors of Lorna and Virginia. Lorna had advised the group at the start of the project and has been encouraging along the way. Louise persuaded her to put a few French knots in the wee sheep she was stitching.

Catherine had been stitching a sea cliff. This one is to show the many headlands around the county. The lighthouse at the top is on Dunnet Head. They are typically 30-60m high and of Old Red Sandstone.  On the east coast there is an inlet called Whaligoe steps where the cliffs had 365 steps carved into the cliff and the fisherwomen would collect the baskets of fish from the boats in the small harbour gut them and then carry the baskets up the cliff to be sent to market. The women would still be working into their seventies.Catherine used long stitch and then continued to pin it down using a variety of short and fly stitches.

  

This was the panel at the start of the day of stitching.