machine knitting – something from seaview

Yet more knitted blankets …

Our house is full of knitted blankets – we really do not need any more!Nevertheless, over the past few years we’ve made several more, two more of them this last winter. They are all quite different in construction and size, but they still a pleasure to use on these wintry days …That’s Ilsa,- cosily settled on the ruched throw I’ve recently completed …This is a really lovely pattern which you will find knitted in more muted single-colour tones on Ravelry here. I loved knitting it – and so did the cats, cuddling up with me as I beavered away on wintry nights …And it used up some (not all!) of my stash of handspun yarns …

It’s such a simple pattern, all knit in garter stitch. The striped part of this blanket is doubled in stitches when it comes to the plain dark knit – thus giving a ruched effect. I crocheted round the entire blanket several times to tidy the edges of my rather raggedy homespun …We all love this light little throw – perhaps the cats most of all. Indeed, there’s a possessive look to their presence here which is perhaps a little worrying …I really like knitting small blanket/throws. A year or so back, I knitted a green-toned one. This was an adaptation of a pattern I found on Ravelry here. The Scrappy Lengthwise Scarf uses slip stitch to make a scarf, but this pattern adapts very nicely to making a blanket.Such an convincing woven effect!While I wove all the ends in, Anne Wheaton used this pattern to great effect to make a fringed blanket. I stuck to habit and crocheted round my blanket …My only critcism is that slip stitches are very easy to catch!Definitely this winter’s pièce de résistance is the blanket we made of Stephen’s machine-knitted swatches …We’ve written before of Stephen’s machine-knitting designs and another blanket we have made from our knitted swatches.

This blanket started with me crocheting round the edges of his swatches and ironing them flat …Then they are laid out as we struggle to work out which pieces will fit where ..Not easy when Stephen has knit each piece to a different size! (Eggy doesn’t help either …)

Then there’s a long time while I stitch them together and we both get very fed up with the pieces lying on our sittingroom floor. Finally the blanket goes into the washing machine for a light wash (to get rid of all that smelly machine-knitting oil), and out it goes to blow gently in the balmy Northumbrian breezes …The designer checks it out …It has an occasional home in our new (old) caravan. It doesn’t just look cosy, it really makes sleeping in there very cosy indeed …So it was well worth the effort. But can I face next basketful of swatches?! Perhaps next winter …While I’m left contemplating the next knitted swatch blanket, I’ll hand you over to Stephen for him to explain the whys and wherefores of some of his patterns:

Inspiration for my patterns come from all over the place, from 60s op art to designs found in the built environment.
Several years ago we stayed for a few days in Ripon and explored the ruined abbeys of North Yorkshire. We found little surviving of Byland Abbey above ground level, but came across many medieval floor tiles still in situ, including this one.
I first designed a pattern to replicate it in knitted Shetland wool:
I then developed it to a second pattern adding a bit more interest
This is still very close to the original pattern. But my third pattern is much more developed, and it is quite hard to pick out the underlying original pattern:
The next pattern was designed and knitted in response to the Manchester Arena bombing. The bee is the symbol of the city, and both Katherine and I joined others all over the country showing our solidarity with the city in this terrible time by making small bee-patterned items. K made a padded heart, and I made this bee swatch to wrap it in.
The next pattern is one I designed myself, and knitted in tuck stich – this was actually a tension swatch I used for scarves I knitted for my daughters last Christmas. The fascinating thing about tuck stich, where the wool is caught of the needle but not knitted, is that it distorts the pattern, with straight lines ending up slightly curved. In extreme forms of tuck stitch, when several rows of wool are not knitted, the tensions in the knitting make the fabric buckle and pucker in rather unpredictable ways.Finally, a pattern based on a very simple quadrant motif treated in several different ways. Here the motif is put together in opposite pairs, and between the left and right side as shown the colours were reversed. Very effective, particularly when framed by Katherine’s crocheted border.
I used this pattern to knit several large panels for covers for our sofas. For these I also used another element that I like using in my designs, that of pure randomness. The width of each coloured band, and its colour was selected at random, using a simple computer program. Which version do you prefer, black quadrants on coloured stripes?
Or coloured quadrants on a black backgroud?
Food patterns for thought, hopefully!

Christmas makes

Part of the fun of Christmas for me is the making of both gifts and Christmassy stuff. It’s an excuse to make all sorts of things. In the lead up to December, we were busy with lots of such projects, but because they were presents, I haven’t said much about them. Now – with Christmas well behind us – this is the opportunity to show what we were busy with in those autumn months.

I started my GiveWrap making in September with lots of fabrics spread around, and some very intriguing printed pieces from my cousin Polly. When I’m working with Polly’s prints, I sort them first into colours, and themes. These two predominantly blue GiveWraps mainly incorporate a mix of her human body prints. Her images are bold so I try to marry them up with fabric that has equally strong images – thus, in the top example, there are striking Japanese ladies from an old yukata, and some wonderful owly pieces too. The images in the lower givewrap are softer in colour and tone, and have accompanying softer fabrics.Other prints from Polly inspired work in different colourways. Her “little people” are all facing inwards here, dancing to the central tune, in a golden melange. It’s a particular favourite of both of us.This wine-coloured GiveWrap is at heart a worn-out cushion cover of Polly’s. I covered up the holes with bits of new fabric, and built up the edges.Later in the autumn, I made more GiveWraps. These blues, yellows and golds worked so well together that I got carried away and made two more similar GiveWraps.Another old cushion cover (this time an old green one of mine) got re-pieced here. The holes and stains were removed and I added some strong contrasting purple. Interestingly, this GiveWrap attracted more interest and likes on Instagram than any other that I have made.Lastly, I made a small red silk GiveWrap with my mother in mind. This to my mind is the best of the lot! I loved it – was sad to part with it – but my mother loved it too. And when a recipient loves the gift that is best of best!Off they went to new happy homes, bearing Christmas wishes and love!Apart from GiveWraps, there were practical things to make like the Christmas cake – here garlanded with our own gorgeous glossy holly.We also made jams and jellies. Here’s Stephen concentrating intensely as he pots up his chilli pepper jam.The finished products – chilli pepper jam and spicy harvest jelly – don’t look bad for Christmas presents, do they?I made two little Toft monsters this year as gifts. The patterns come from Kerry Lord’s brilliant flip book of patterns, Imaginarium. A mix-and-match pattern book to enable the crochet creation of just the monster you want. The other little monster I made is quite different – but that’s the whole point of a book with so many pattern choices!Different they may be, but they look like good friends, sitting here together.You may have read an earlier blog I wrote this autumn about our Seaview poppies … we collected as much seed as possible, and packaged it up to send off to friends and family, hoping to spread a little bit of poppy colour in other gardens.I made hats too. Some I forgot to photograph. But one I did remember to photograph was this pink two-eared beanie for my daughter. The pattern came from my beloved ancient (1977) Paton’s Woolcraft, and I knitted it using odd pink scraps from my stash. The scraps included some Rowan Kidsilk Haze so together with the alpaca pompoms, it was a fluffy hat!Just right for our beach walks …My son is fascinated (and most knowledgeable about) the periodic table. So what better to give him than periodic table pillowcases?! Stephen found the fabric on the internet, and I sewed them up. Does he now dream of the elements of the periodic table? …. I must ask him …There was the usual making as well. You might say, the bread and butter making. Wonderful to have a man around who makes all our bread.Stephen made some wonderful knits for Christmas presents. He wrote in an earlier blog about the blanket he knitted on his knitting machine as a present for his youngest daughter. That knit incorporated a knitted monogram of his daughter and her husband’s first initials: J and E. My cousin admired it especially because her two daughters share those particular initials. So how about some cushions with your daughters’ initials on them as a Christmas present for my cousin! Here is the maker man himself with his wonderful knitted cushions.He made two scarves for other daughters.
Stephen here: Here is one of the scarves I knitted about to be cast off the machine. For the technically mind it is knitted in 2-colour tuck stitch using every third needle with tension dial set at 10 (the largest possible stitch size) to give a lovely loose feel. The wool is Rowan baby merino silk double knit – in all I needed 100g of each colour. When washed carefully they came out beautifully soft, though somewhat narrower and longer than anticipated.

I also experimented with some Christmas designs. Here are two panels I knitted just for fun. The left hand one is of random snowflakes ( see the end of our blog Ellie’s Blanket for more details of this design) and the second is derived from typical Scandinavian Christmas designs and made using their traditional colours.Perhaps by next year I will have my own machine-knitted supply of Givewraps.

Katherine here: I’ve written so far about the pre-Christmas preparations. But there was one project we made that involved all of us who were here over the Christmas period.

One of my most treasured Christmas decorations that comes out every year looking sadder and more worn is the crib my children made when small out of toilet rolls, tissue paper, and a bit of glitter and trim. There’s only one shepherd these days, and one king has gone AWOL.I put this picture on Instagram, and a helpful virtual friend of mine from Nice suggested it was missing a Ravi as well. You don’t know what a Ravi is?! Well, a character from the santons of Provence, the Ravi stands amazed at the events taking place, with his (or her) arms in the air. So we got to work, and we got delightfully carried away. I made a Ravi, Stephen created a new king, and son James added a Cagador. (James knows this character as a Cagador having lived in Spain, but it is elsewhere known as a Caganer.) When the Cagador turned round and revealed his true intent, the King and the Ravi turned away, a bit giggly and embarrassed.But they all came together to make a much happier crib scene … Several other creatures and presents crept into the mix … but that’s life isn’t it? All can come to the manger …

Ellie’s Blanket

Guest Editor Stephen:

I was in my early thirties when I first got interested in machine knitting, and having obtained a machine, used it to knit garments mainly for my two youngest daughters. The only garment left from this time is this child’s lace top knitted in cotton:
When, we moved to Devon about 5 years after I had knitted this, I continued to use the machine, but focused on knitting whole panels which were sewn up into blankets. I am more interested in the patterning possibilities of the machine than constructing garments.

Here are two blankets from that time that we still use on our bed:
The left-hand one is all my own work; the other was put together by Katherine from her hand-knitted and my machine-knitted samples and test swatches. When we tried to put this blanket on display at a craft show in Devon there was much debate about whether it should be included as some on the selection committee did not consider my pieces ‘craft’! Eventually it was displayed, thrown over a beam high up at the back of the room.

I also knitted a blanket in black and white for my stepson. It recently returned to us for repair and washing when he moved house.
These 3 panels show off some of the inspirational ideas I use for my design.
The top one is mathematically based on Sine Curves with alternating wavelengths. The all-black portions are where the waves overlap.
The middle one is based on stitches whose colour is chosen at random. The chances of a stitch being black gradually changes from 11/12 at the left to 1/12 on the right.
The bottom one is influenced by Op Art, in particular the work of the British artist Bridget Riley.

This photo is from the time I made this blanket and shows my holding the punchcard for the sine curves. Like all punchcards for this machine it has a width of 24 stitches, but can be as long as you like. The ends are clipped together and so it operates as a continuous loop.In September last year my daughter Ellie got married in Cornwall – and asked me if I could knit her a new blanket. There’s a challenge – but happy to oblige for this late wedding present. The themes I thought I would use were the sea and dogs – she and her husband Jak have a dog called Bailey who is somewhat spoiled.

Here are some of our collection of cones of wool, including some monofilament glitter to add to the mix, from which K put together a palette of colours for the blanket. The machine will knit fair isle – ie two colours in one row. And I got designing –
– and setting up the knitting machine. It is a similar model to the one I had all those years ago. When we moved to Northumberland 6 years ago I got rid of all my old equipment, but have since been re-acquiring it.

Just as Cornwall is bounded on the east and west by the sea, so my blanket is framed by patterns based on waves. Each wave pattern uses Sine Curves such as this which are stacked up, and given a sideways shift.

Sine curve

Here is the punchcard for this design:
which gives this when knitted up:
Indeed, it gives an optical illusion when viewed from a certain angle, that the fabric is not flat but undulating:The second wave design is similar, but the stitches between the wave forms have been chosen at random, gradually tailing off until the next wave to given a broken effect, almost like breaking waves.In addition I broke up the pattern by having a completely random section across the panel after every third complete sine wave. That occurs at either end of this pattern’s punchcard:
Again, from the right angle, the fabric no longer appears flat:
And so to dogs! This was a real labour of love as I have no great fondness for dogs and find it very difficult to be in a room with a dog. But I put together two dog-themed panels to go next to the waves.

The first used 4 different dog motifs from a book by Wendy Phillips, along with some doggy words:I alternated each pair of dogs with one of the word motifs. I also had a common background, white, for the whole panel, and added the diagonal stripes to tie it all together.I particularly like the Dalmatian design. Notice how I have had to put the letters of the words stepping down so that I didn’t have a single float for the row underneath the words across the whole panel.

The other dog-themed panel is based on a print by one of my favourite artists, MC Escher:This design has always fascinated me as to how it works with its tessellating dogs pointing in two different directions. It took me a long time, and many failed attempts, until I came up with this punchcard:
And this is what results when it is knitted:The central panel is specially for my daughter and her husband with a motif of their initials, J & E, intertwined. I placed this in tessellating hexagons, alternating with a star motif.This is the punchcard I created:You can see the initials quite clearly. You may notice that the hexagons on the punchcard are somewhat elongated. This is because, when designing patterns for the machine, you have to take into account the fact that each row is roughly half as high as the width of a stitch – ie to knit a square with a width of 100 stitches, you would have to knit 200 rows. An added complication.

Here is part of the end result:What’s gone wrong here? In fact the punchcard snagged on the edge of the machine and jammed for about 16 rows until I noticed – hence the elongated legs on the star!

Now, with all five panels knitted, in total about 560,000 stitches, that is 5 panels of 140 stitches, each with 800 rows, they could be sewn up. Katherine did the bulk of this but I did one of the them:But our cats, Eggy and Ilsa, sometimes were not very helpful:But we managed, and then Katherine crocheted all around the edge several times to give a weighty edge to the blanket and to tie all the colours together. I have tried to do this, but somehow I just cannot master this task that she makes look so easy:Again, the cats thought they had a found a wonderfully warm place to sleep – and things ground to a halt:But eventually all was completed. Then Katherine very lightly washed the blanket using a machine wool wash to get any wax or oil out of the wools, and we hung it outside to dry:Here it is laid out on the lawn. You can clearly see all the designs, and Katherine’s crocheted edge tying it all together:And so we sent it off to Cornwall to the happily married couple, about 13 months after their wedding. Here is one happy recipient along with Bailey – Enjoy this blanket made for you all with love:

The technical stuff:

In case you are wondering how I construct my designs here is a brief explanation:

Once I have worked out my design, I write a computer program to convert it into the stich pattern I need. I do this using a program called BASIC, which I first learnt over 35 years ago. I use a freeware version of this program called Just Basic or JBASIC, which you can download at: http://www.justbasic.com

At present I am working on a Christmas-themed design called Blizzard. It consists of overlayered snowflakes, the size, orientation and position of each snowflake being chosen at random. Here is the program I wrote:When I run this, it generates possible patterns to use. When I find one that is particularly interesting I can then print it out. It comes out like this, 24 stitches wide and repeating every 108 rows:This is then transcribed onto a piece of punchcard cut from a long roll, and punched out to give the following:
But what will the resulting knitted pattern look like? Watch this space!

Our knitted patchwork blanket

When Stephen and I married in 1991, we each brought to the marriage a stash (a dowry, so to speak) of children, books and knitted swatches.

Children and books both found their places, respectively settling into a pecking order and a merger. But the swatches – what to do with the swatches? What about a patchwork blanket?!We come from different knitting traditions. Stephen is a whizz at the knitting machine, which allows full expression of his sophisticated designing skills. He’s a mathematician and is never happier than when with a notebook or computer, calculating patterns, repeats, algorithms. Stephen works with coned, oiled yarns, preferably 2-ply Shetland wool.

I’m a spinner, and a hand knitter. I’d knitted on and off from my teenage years, but what really sparked for me in the early 1980s was the combination of learning to spin and the multi-coloured knit designs by Kaffe Fassett. My chunky, wildly-coloured, homespun yarns worked perfectly with his garments.Both Stephen and I swatched – and we still do. I’m always hearing of people who skip this essential step. But how do you test colour mixes, patterns, designs – let alone tension – if you don’t swatch?

These old swatches now tell stories. They are reminders of garments we have made, perhaps for others, possibly for ourselves, – and some, for one reason or another, never got made at all.

Let’s start with one of the most popular Kaffe Fassett patterns, and definitely one of my favourites: Poppies. I’ve knitted it again and again.Both the two swatches above became cardigans for good friends of mine. My old photographs leave a lot to be desired, but they still give some idea of one of the finished knits. Odd buttons are the perfect finishing touch to this riot of colour.Small swatches in the blanket remind me of other colourways I’ve experimented with.Eventually I made an orange version for myself.I still have it – little worn, alas, these days because it is huge affair, with massive square shoulders (so fashionable at the time). You can make out quite clearly the mix of yarns I’ve included – somewhere in there is my own handspun hair!

These were my first attempts at rainbow dyeing. I had some beautiful yarns to work with, notably the fleece of a local Shetland sheep called Charity. My sister brought the long lustrous mohair back from Turkey for me – it caused great alarum among my fellow spinners at the Devon Guild – ooh, it might have anthrax, scrapie ….! I survived.

There are all sorts of other interesting bits and pieces of yarn included as well that I used to pick up in charity shops or was gifted by friends.Kaffe Fassett aficionados will recognise the patterns in these swatches below. They were experiments that never took off – I forget why now. In some places the yarns have faded very badly. Those are yarns I dyed with natural dyes, and this explains why I am so reluctant to dye with plants nowadays. The fade completely changes the pattern. Let’s move on now to one of Stephen’s swatches. Here are two examples of the same interlocking pattern. He writes:

This is based on a tessellating design trying to interlock the shapes with a variety of different colours – alas, some of them did not have enough contrast to bring it out.These are wave patterns he was experimenting with. Over to you Stephen:

Trying to do 2 things here – firstly a pattern that moved sideways, and secondly trying to capture a wavy design so that the finished fabric looked as though is was rucked up or creased. Alas this version was not particularly successful.He continued to experiment with wave patterns and came up with this fantastic wave pattern which is part of another blanket we made.

A much better version. This blanket looks even better when lying down under it in bed after a drink or two – certainly brings out the wavy effect.I too have worked with wave patterns. My inspiration came from this small saddle bag.If you change the colours, replace the reds, browns and oranges with sea colours, you come up with something like this.Or Or try the blues and greens in a slightly different arrangement, and you get this.I used the design and colour plan from the first swatch to knit a Kaffe Fassett-style cardigan. A beachside cardigan that I still have. It’s huge and bulky but such a good friend.We could not be more of a contrast, Stephen and I! While his knits are all about calculation and accuracy, mine are wildly colourful – and remarkably inaccurate. I have two pieces in this blanket which are testament to how very bad my calculations can be – perhaps the reason is I never swatched, because I can not find the swatch I might have knitted for this particular cardigan. Instead, I have the two side panels I had to cut out of the finished cardigan because it was so huge! I’d even gone so far as to knit pockets into the cardigan, so the blanket has the rare distinction of have two pocketed swatches!

Here is one of the pieces. You can see the rib at the bottom, and the slit for the pocket in the centre.And here is the finished cardigan – before the side panels had been removed.It was so huge that I had to run elastic round the neck to draw it in before casting on the enormous collar. It’s very 80s, isn’t it? Actually, I still have it, and it is a great cardigan to wrap myself into on bitterly cold winter days. None of this is handspun so it’s much lighter to wear than the Kaffe Fassett cardigans I have. It’s a happy joke to myself of my terrible calculation skills.

Back to Kaffe Fassett and this lovely pattern, a sort of variant of the poppy pattern earlier.I used this pattern for a pullover for my aunt – and I believe she still has it. I love the colourway – her choice. It was knitted predominantly in Colinette hand-dyed yarns which are very soft and comfortable to wear.This little snippet is a another variant of one of Kaffe Fassett’s patterns.I knitted it into a vast sweater for Stephen. Occasionally, I would wear it, but was soon banned because I turned the sleeves up! It doesn’t get worn very much because it is just so bulky.I don’t know how to describe this colour change pattern that Stephen came up with – so I will leave it to him:

In this pattern I used the random function on my computer program to select the stitch colour at random, the probability of a particular colour being chosen changing from 1 stich in 12 to 11 stiches in 12 over 120 rows – the idea being that the colours should seem to merge from one to the other, From these designs you can see that some give a better effect than others.
The colours in the swatch are very strident, but the design was used to much better effect in this panel that Stephen knitted for another blanket.This is another Kaffe Fassett motif that I am very fond of.I knitted it up several times, and eventually came up with this.Which became a gilet (which I still have, and still wear).There are some more interesting swatches in the blanket which Stephen made. Here is his Briget Riley piece. Eye-boggling, isn’t it?! Tell us about it, please, Stephen:

I was just playing about with trying to capture some of Briget Riley’s op art designs and this just seemed to work. Very effective as the shapes seem to swirl and catch the eye.This stridently green and orange swatch went on to become something much nicer!

Not my own pattern, and the swatch was done with some spare bits of yarn to see what it turned out like. Pleased with the design, but not these colours!
A beautiful, softly-toned jersey. Alas, very little worn these days. It was knitted cuff to cuff making it quite short and bulky. But it is such a beautiful work that I have felted it in the washing machine, and plan to cut it up for another life, one day …. Perhaps make bags, hot-water bottle covers …

Much better colours – but making garments with ribbing like this takes an awful lot of work. Anyway at present I no longer have my ribber.Some kind friends, thinking I was lacking inspiration, brought me back this wonderful print of the golden altarpiece in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice.I did have a go at knitting it – honest! but it was a nightmare to knit … so never went any further.The same was true of this cat swatch.It’s interesting to me looking back on all this knitting to see how very little of my knitting was textured. The emphasis is almost all on colour and pattern. However, there is one swatch that indicates that I was toying with textures.And then I reverted to pattern! This is another disappointing 80s knit (with the same homespun yarn), with enormous upper sleeves (you can just see at the join on the right side how big the sleeve setting is). Consequently, the jersey has been little worn, but I do love the pattern and have it in mind one day to re-knit it.So here we are some twenty five years on, and what do we have? There is still knitting going on … a new knitting machine, no less ..new swatches …

Based on a medieval tile we saw at Fountains Abbey on our recent Yorkshire trip.

In fact, there’s a whole new pile of swatches waiting to be made into a blanket … perhaps one day …I guess you could say these blankets are a metaphor for our marriage. A mixture of talents and skills, many of which you wouldn’t think would work well together, but amazingly they do.

(Should you wish to make a blanket of your swatches, this is what I did: I crocheted round each swatch, sometimes several times to enlarge the swatch to fit the space available. The crocheted pieces were then sewn together, and I crocheted round the entire blanket several times to finish it off.)

Family treasures

Recently I wrote about my story quilt, and the fabrics I had chosen to include and their family associations.

It got me thinking. I started looking around at all the textiles lying about the house, and thinking about the people who had sewed or knitted them. I was amazed to find so many treasures that family members had made.

Let’s start with the needlecase that my step-great-grandmother made. Great-Gran lived in Miss Havisham-esque magnificence in her bedroom in a huge house in Leicester. She took to her bed in early old age in the belief that her heart was weak, and she was waited on hand and foot by her family and a saintly elderly retainer, Miss Wood. All around her bedroom were cupboards and boxes, filled with beads, silks, threads and other treasures. If I was lucky (and a good girl) she would give me some beads or silks from her treasure trove.

Great-Gran’s workmanship was exquisite. Here is the needlecase she made me. I still use it everyday, and look at her skilled stitches and remember her bedroom. It’s worth enlarging this image to see her detailed work – there’s beading along the edge.Her son, my step-grandfather was also extraordinarily skilled at – well, just about everything. He repaired clocks, made jewelry – and was a successful and busy business man to boot. He also did tapestries. This is one of a set of chair covers he embroidered. A very stylish simple design which regularly gives me great pleasure. (And – sadly – he predeceased his mother, tucked up in bed with her so-called heart problems). His wife, my Australian grandmother Dordy (she didn’t want to be known by any ageing grandmotherly term, so we grandchildren gave a family twist to her first name, Dora), was also a fine sempstress. She never did any “hobby” sewing that I know of, but she made almost all her own clothes. Perhaps there’d been greater necessity for practical sewing in the world she’d grown up in – I don’t know. She loved to wear batik fabrics which suited her colouring very well. Here she is outside her little London home with it’s beautiful garden wearing one of her handmade batik dresses.Many, many of her clothes came to me, and I wore them (usually cut down and altered into shapes I considered more fashionable). The dress Dordy is wearing above is now in my story quilt (of which I have written more here). Look below! My father, (Dordy’s son) took to tapestry like his step-father. The best of his embroidered cushions are masterpieces of design, incorporating words and phrases in many languages. (He had been a linguist, a traveller and a diplomat). I treasure this cushion particularly. Apparently the Japanese characters say “Good Health. No smoking.” (I can’t verify that!) A rough translation of the ancient Greek at the centre might be: “For each person chooses best for themself.” The cushion was a gift from my father to mark the occasion of my giving up smoking. He’s put his initials round the motif on the left, RHE, and the date on the right, 1982. An important and precious reminder to me.None of the men on my mother’s side of the family sewed, but her mother did. Granny was another embroiderer, and her chosen colour was blue. She worked the cover of this stool, and this little bag for me. It’s got my initials on it (KE) and the date (1960).My Aunty Jilly (her daughter) was a talented weaver. I treasure this scarf she wove with it’s red and purple pink tones – and the occasional shot of turquoise to give it lift. Her use of colour is brilliant – she always gets it just right.My mother is a sempstress par excellence! She made many of our clothes when we were little. Here we all are, in a symphony of blue (her favourite colour like her mother), at my youngest sister’s christening in the hot hot 1961 Belgrade sun. I’m the eldest on the left, and my sister, Marian, is on the right. My mother has made us the most enchanting hand-smocked blue and white cotton dresses. Her dress is also blue – a paler colour. Don’t we look an delightful family, with these beautifully dressed children (I see we’re even wearing gloves!)? How extraordinarily photos can conceal the truth – my mother’s heart must have been breaking amidst all the happiness because just a year before she’d given birth to a still-born baby. I don’t remember at 7 being aware of this – just the heat and the cosmos and sunflowers growing exuberantly. My mother also knits, embroiders and does patchwork. It’s really hard to chose what to chose to show that captures her skills best but I think I have to include a patchwork quilt. Here she is, sitting beside the patchwork quilt she made with my mother-in-law, Liza, for my 1979 marriage to Hugh. My mother designed the quilt, and sewed the patchwork. Liza was an artist and embroiderer, and added names and dates, and some delightful little embroidery stories.Aaaggh – this quilt evokes so much pain and guilt in me! So much care, so much love, so much skill, and what did Hugh and I do but get acrimoniously divorced! I know it is ridiculous, but the quilt sums up all my sense of failure at our divorce.

So what do you do when your marriage has fallen apart, and you have this beautiful beautiful quilt, made specially for you, and relevant only to you? Well, you put it in the attic, which you know to be a nice dry place because you keep lots of other old fabrics and children’s clothes etc up there. You put it in it’s own suitcase, which you know is clean and safe – and you forget about it. Your mother never mentions the quilt again.

Then, one day, there’s a patchwork exhibition locally, and you think – wouldn’t that just be the right place to put this patchwork quilt, so it could be exhibited and admired as its due? You hasten to the attic, get down the suitcase, and absolute horror of horror, the suitcase has “wept” red-brown stain (as I have never known a suitcase do before) all over your quilt. Aaaagh again – and again, and again. *And, no, I have never told my mother what happened to the beautiful quilt she and Liza made with so much love and hope for my first marriage.Let’s move on to later times, other generations.

My husband, Stephen, is an absolutely whizz with the knitting machine. It suits him so well, giving his mathematical mind full scope for the design of elaborate and beautiful patterns. Here is the blanket he made for us. These are all patterns he devised himself – that’s something I could never do, so I am completely in awe of this skill.Then there’s these gorgeous cushions that my cousin, Lucy, knitted for me. Vibrant strong colours and patterns.This beautiful wall-hanging that another cousin, Polly, designed and worked. There’s calligraphy and stitchery and printing all combined into one marvellous work.Last Christmas, my step-daughter, Zacyntha, embroidered this cushion cover for me. Incredible use of colours and design. Each time you look at it, the patterns shift and it looks different.Another step-daughter, Lorna, also designed and made us a cushion cover. I think this was part of her A-level Art project. I love it – particularly how the colour changes just slightly where she’s run out of a yarn. Just like the carpet weavers of old.Then there’s this wonderful box that my daughter, Helen made. It’s another A-level Art project – she constructed the box, and the fabrics that adorn it are machine and hand-embroidered. Naughty, naughty mum left it in the sun so the top is much bleached. It’s still a treasure. It was always a secret….. So many precious things, so much love, so many memories – so much inspiration!

*Comforting words from Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt : “And remember, no matter how careful you are, you might not be able to prevent some damage to your quilt – no matter how attached you are to it… something may ruin it beyond repair, leaving only the memory of the quilt behind. Do not castigate yourself; you may not be to blame. You did your best. These are fragile textiles. These things happen.”

Thank you, Whitney.