Stained glass - getting ready

I am about to do something I always thought foolish in others.  I am going to go on a short course hoping to leave it with an object I want to keep.  Normally I arrive and try all the techniques rapidly, aiming to get an understanding of the principles of any craft.  Making stuff comes afterwards, when you understand the limitations and possibilities and have time to think about how desire and skill can interact to produce an outcome.

I have booked on a two day stained glass course in the Malvern SWORCS summer school.  I have wanted to try stained glass for ages, just being put off by the need for the wrists to work adequately to cut the glass.  I am hoping that, with the aid of a wrist brace, good tools, and some help, I will be able to do enough to enjoy the session.

I have a need for a stained glass piece.  Our living room is overlooked by a balcony, and it would be useful to keep something on the window sill that blocked this view without blocking our view or the light.  I have a pot of snapdragons I got from the farm shop yesterday in that position - it gives colour and shape but isn't too intrusive.

So, planning ahead.  Looking at the kind of stained glass pieces one can buy at craft markets I suspect my aspirations will be too high - I don't want a tile shaped piece made of three blobs of colour.  I'd like to have a piece at least 30cm high, and something I am happy to look at everyday.  I have been looking at the photos I took of reflections and ripples in the canal basin in the spring, and have been working on designs based on this.

There is a form of quilting called stained glass, where you lay fabric pieces on a background and stitch in place using black bias binding.  Each piece has to connect to the others.  I thought if I rustled up a quick one of these I would get some ideas for the glass piece.

I started with this photo:

I then drew a sketch and coloured it in with pencil crayons.  I liked the shapes but thought that the intricacy and number of shapes would make the project impossible.  I simplified it and coloured in with felt pens.  Some of the plain pieces I lightly stippled - imagining textured rather than coloured glass. Frank Lloyd Wright used stained glass pieces where a lot of the glass was clear so that the view wasn't obscured, and I am aiming at something like that.

I started cutting little bits of bright fabric out of the old hand-painted ties I have, but the silk was too slippery and hard to control.  I switched to some cotton sheeting I dyed a few years ago.  This seemed appropriate for the colours.  The rather livid colours I had available needed a foil, and I found a small piece of what looked like black hand dyed fabric at my local sewing store, and a mottled pale blue for the background.  I used some fine wrapping paper to take an outline and used this to cut out the shapes in the fabric.  I didn't pin or tack, so  a loss of precision occurred at this step.

I should have course have been more careful.   I should have ironed the fabric first.  I should have numbered the pieces, or at least laid them out one by one on the drawing so I knew where they went.  I piled them onto the drawing, but having to tidy things away in the middle meant that I ended up not being too sure where all the little bits belonged.  I used the drawing to position the larger pieces,and then placed the others where they seemed appropriate, and to fill large gaps.  At this point I lost sight of the fact that these colours were part of a real scene, and each piece should have been connected back to a real object.

I started stitching these bits together, just layering the slips of colour on the blue fabric.  After a while it started bunching so I cut out a piece of thick felt ( some fabric they use for making tennis balls, got from the artist scrap store during Wimbledon) and this made the fabric easier to manage. I stitched pieces on, I stitched between pieces, imagining they were pieces of glass that had to be held together.  I forgot about the image, and lost the vertical and horizontal nature of ripples and reflections.

I don't think much of this piece.  It is rough, flawed, and doesn't look very interesting.  It has lost the ripple effect because I thought of the black lines purely as holding lines and not as image.

This little project has made me think a lot about how the line, colour and space need to be managed in stained glass. Rather than thinking of colour first I need to think of line and then infill with colour as needed.  From that respect it was a very useful thing to do.

Scrapdragons

I made a lot of wire legs for the little birds we started making at our summer retreat (aka play session) at Blue Ginger.   I made them with the spare wire curled up at the top - useful if you want to make a beak or tail or just to add stability to the stuffed bird.  After a day spent trying to learn how to make a badge like Kathleen's my fingers wanted to do what they wanted to do....so a small creature evolved on the legs.  I like to build these little beasts from the inside out and let the materials decide what they want to become.

badge for Joy, my heroic little sister

I unfurled the little loops at the top and stitched wings on.  I used small scraps of an odd slightly translucent crepe fabric which arrives in my scrapbox backed onto heavy satin - part of my treasures supplied by Sue Elliot.  These little scraps had lovely swoopy edges so I used a piece for each wing and didn't cut them to shape at all.  It means the wings are very different in shape but the same texture.

I stitched a little wadding to the body and then tugged a piece of vari-coloured velvet in place.  Eyes were added - brown buttons I got from a treasure trove of materials donated by a fellow embroider to the group when we were at Blue Ginger.

The legs are made from a wire that is moderately easy to work with but it is too springy and won't move into new shapes as easily as I would like.  Getting all the toes to hit the ground is very hard, so I think a different kind of wire will need to be found once this lot is used up.

Fabric Hoopoe - build-as-you go fabric and wire bird

When I was a child I lived in Southern India, in a town called Ootacamund.  It was seven thousand feet above sea level, so we didn't get the vivid tropical birds you might think of when you hear the word India.  My favourite bird was the Hoopoe, which, along with the glow worms, iridescent green beetles and marble poochies, I still miss.

All this fun making birds just based on the fabric to hand took a new direction when I finally got around to shortening the sleeves of a jacket I bought ages ago.  It was of a very complex construction, with multiple seams around the elbows as well as a long snapped placket, so simply shortening at the cuff wouldn't really work.  I had taken off the sleeve at the elbow meaning to shorten the piece above...and got stuck, leaving the job for months.  Finally decided to just make a short sleeved jacket, and finished the hems, ironed the jacket, and hung it in the wardrobe.  I was left with two half sleeves of a lovely fabric, dark chocolate on one side and a tawny amber on the other.  Just the right colours for a hoopoe.   The last bird I made was a little one from the fabric they make tennis balls from - Wimblebird, very apt given that Wimbledon is on.  Time for something a bit more complex.

Wimblebird

A bit of old cloth from a sail made the third colour.  I started with wiring the crest, as this is the most distinctive part of the bird.  Perhaps it would have been easier if I had built the body of the bird first, but I managed to work with this spiky bit getting in the way all the time.  It suits my thought processes to go with the most interesting / distinctive thing first and then add in all the rest.

crest - used seam turning to give change of colour at tip of feather

body - note spiky beak is part of continuous body wire

crest attached to body

stitch stuffing to wire

sail underbelly

wings and head - on piece of fabric making use of placket

I used the snapped cuff as the wings, so this bird can separate its wings...but not fly.  I found a wonderful photograph of a hoopoe in full flight with wings curling flamboyantly around the body, crest fully erect, but decided that would be too complex for me to manage.

sail cloth for white wing stripes

front of body and towards tail

tail

added the eyes as the last action

don't know why these look different colours! 

This bird has a lot of attitude, so I don't mind the baggy undercarriage (I might tighten that up later) or the comment from a friend that the crest looked like it was made from an old gardening glove (but with too many fingers).  It has joined the rest of my strange menagerie on the windowsill.

Fabric birds - wonderfully whimsical

Kathleen, of Murgatroyd and Bean, introduced my embroidery friends, The Wednesday Group, to the delights of making little birds on our summer gathering at the Blue Ginger summerhouse.  We had a couple of patterns drawn on tracing paper, which we used to start with.  I had bought some wire from a hobby store, and also brought some galvanised garden wire left over from making supports for raspberry canes and a wall trained fig tree. I had also brought some of my jewellery tools, pliers of various shapes and wire snips, and safety glasses, so that we could make wire legs if wanted.  

first bird, silk scraps

I had tried various patterns for birds ahead of this session, and had come to the conclusion that stitching little birds where seams were on the outside would be quicker and easier, especially when finishing off the bird after stuffing.  To make it easier to add wire legs it is better to make a two part belly, so that you can stitch from beak to middle and tail to middle, insert the legs and then close this final seam.  You can either do this with the frayed edges out like the rest or tuck them in to give a smooth belly.

bird with tuft of merino wool for tail, hand-dyed silk and velvet

I made a lot of legs; I discovered I really enjoyed the process.  The fine copper and gold coloured wires I bought from the craft shop turned out to be easy to work but a bit too soft for good stability of the bird.  Birds made with this wire were better wired to a block of wood - I had some little legs left over from bookcases that had come with a hole drilled, so we just wired the legs on - it was a bit clumsy but worked as a first attempt.  Wiring the bird to something also allows you to perch the bird on one leg or in a non-upright position, so you may wish to do this even if your bird is very stable.

made from a silk tie I had painted

Working with wire is much easier if you have the right tools.  As a minimum you need wire snips and small pliers to allow you to bend the wire precisely. It would also be good to wear safety glasses when cutting the wire.

legs and body to scale, size for birds if printed as A4 sheet

Bird:

Cut the pieces of fabric to form the bird.  Chose patterns that you like for each piece, but remember that the two sides need to have the pattern facing opposite ways.  

If you want to stitch any patterns on the bird before assembly do it now.  Both types of embelishment can look very good; do whichever you want.

Stitch the head onto the two side pieces, starting from the beak each time.  If you don't return to the beak each time you will get a twist in the pattern, much like if you fit a zip by starting at the top of the fly and simply running down and then back up the zip.

Stitch the front belly on, stopping with a gap before the point you want to insert the legs.  You can change the way the bird stands by changing where the legs are inserted.  

Stitch the second belly piece on, starting from the tail. If you want a tail piece you can stitch it into place before joining this seam, or add it afterwards.  Which you choose to do will depend on the nature of the material you want to add.  The birds with merino wool scraps as tails had these sewn into place before I closed this seam. I have made all the birds shown here by having only one belly piece and stitching the second half of the belly piece after the legs are fitted, but it is quite awkward and the other stitchers in the group were not happy with the quality of the seams they could get with this process.

Stuff the head and the tail of the bird. I used synthetic wadding bought from a sewing shop.  Use whatever suits you and the type of bird you want to make. Wrap some stuffing around the legs, tieing on with some thread or fine wire. This ensures the wire ends won't poke through and adds stability. Insert into the bird, making sure stuffing goes all round the leg device.

Stitch the remaining side seams if any, and stitch the front and rear belly together.

Adjust the legs and feet to give a stable position that you like.  Stitch on eyes. 

You can wrap the legs with florist tape if you don't want to see the wire. I could only find green - brown would have been better.  Many colours are available on the internet.  You could also use threads or fine cloth, but you would then have to stitch or glue the ends in place.

Legs

wire legs - 5cm long

Cut 55cm of wire (longer for taller birds)

Mark the midpoint of the wire with a bend.  Start making the foot about 5cm from this point

Bend the wire at right angles to begin forming the big toe.  I make the toes between 1 cm and 1.5cms long - bend again to make the toe flat to the ground.  Go past the leg the same distance and form the middle front toe. Make one outside toe, curve the wire behind the leg and around to the other side of the foot to make the final toe.  Complete the final toe and wind the wire around the leg and up to the middle.  

Repeat on the second side.

If you have floppier wire you may need to wind the wire around itself more to give stability.  You can always reinforce the legs with another piece of wire if need be.

You will have some spare wire in the middle.  I make two curly loops to make sure the birds sit neatly and sturdily on the legs.  You can uncurl these loops later to make the bird take a different shape or to form a beak if you want.  This spare wire also means you don't have to worry if you make the feeet a bit bigger

 The legs look like little creatures as they are, the top curly bits giving them lots of character.

 These little birds are full of charm and character, and a great way to use up small scraps of fabric.

Once you have made a few birds you might want to experiment with scale and shape.  I made a large bird with a wired beak - I shaped the beak and attached this to the large legs before beginning to stitch stuffing and fabric on in an emergent ( don't know what you are doing in advance) mode.  This was an interesting process as the bird went through many shapes and colours before I ended up with this mad-looking quasi-cockerel.  I had originally envisaged a large rook type bird with a big beak.  This bird is about 20cm tall, made from cotton I had dyed in a summer school a few years ago and scraps of silk from Sue Elliot.

Another bird made - with an owl in mind, had to acquire a stiff tail that reached the ground to allow it to stand steadily.  Apparantly some birds do use their tails to give themselves stability, so it isn't such a strange notion.

I made another free-form bird and took photographs of the process.  This will be a blog on its own as otherwise this introductory blog will be immensely long.

A few birds from the rest of the group:

Katie's glamorous tweed and silk bird

Katie writes as Textile Treasure Seeker

Annie made this little bird from calico and denim scraps, including using the seams to form a curly tail.  Annie writes often on our group blog.