Stitching Together.

My little girl is called Dara, she is four years old. This Christmas she has some spending money and to my absolute delight she wanted to buy a toy sewing machine she had seen in The Works in Harrogate. The whole family had gone up there to take some Wychbury work to The Stalls, the fab shop run by Natasha Harris. Natasha stocks amazing work including many of our fave Yorkshire Artists and we were thrilled when she also agreed to stock us.

Dara discovered the sewing machine while we were rooting around in the Dr Who annuals for Aidan, my six year old and was immediately taken with the fact that it is like mummy's but PINK! So, shaky though my faith the quality of a toy that costs £6.99 was, I liked her style and went with the purchase. From what I gather, all toy sewing machines are without a bottom thread and sew in a chain stitch. If they work and you secure the thread at either end it is perfectly possible to sew small items together and certainly embroider patterns. My mum had a gorgeous red Vulcan sewing machine that she passed on to me and I have had it, unused on display in my various houses for as long as I can remember. If distant memory serves, the Vulcan sewed in a neat chain that automatically pulled the fabric round so that you could do little to resist sewing in a very pleasing spiral!

Anyway, back to the charming pink plastic machine. I inserted the 4xAA batteries as instructed and was (perhaps predictably) disappointed that they didn't in fact power the tiny pedal OR any motor that may have existed, but instead poured all their 4xAA energy into playing 'Twinkle Twinkle' very slowly and very endlessly! Never mind I think, I'm sure it will work manually - alas, the chain stitch wouldn't catch and unravelled every time.

I must admit I wasn't entirely devastated by this discovery as I had been secretly hoping for an excuse to clean up my Mum's old machine and see if I could get it to work. A load of WD40 and a new clamp from ebay, painstakingly filed down to fit and it works! Dara is thrilled to bits to be using her Nanny's toy sewing machine and so am I. I still use an electric Singer sewing machine that belonged to my Grandmother from time to time and the thought of the endless stitching running from one generation of my family to the next is nothing but wonderful to me!

It is nearly time for me to buy a new machine and I am a little sad to think that anything I will choose to buy nowadays will almost certainly not stand the test of time like the ones our ancestors used. Fellow stitchers will no doubt all agree that sewing machines are like pets, they either become one of the family - or they don't. Some we bond enough with to forgive any malfunction, oil regularly and get repaired when they break, other we smack with our hands, swear at them and grumble at the endless torment they put us through until we can afford to replace them!

What I will remember when I buy my new machine is that it doesn't matter if a sewing machine plays 'Twinkle Twinkle' or can make a stitch in the shape of an chain of crocodiles. If it makes your shoulders tense up the minute you sit down in front of it and there's no way you would ever pass it on to your daughter then it's not worth knowing!

Paula x

I Can Type!

Well ok, I can't - not on a typewriter anyway. I recently freecycled for a typewriter and got a fantastic 1980s gem. I stab the keys with my index fingers, then when I realise haven't pounded them hard enough I backspace and stab again! I over-type with xxxx when I make a mistake or simply slam the correct key over the top of the typo without a care. There is something very beautiful about having all your mistakes on show, etched indelibly into the paper like tattoos. The uneven, unpredictable quality of the lettering is unique to the typewriter and the typist and personalises the writing almost as surely as handwriting.

Recently I have been thinking that the medieval style of a lot of our packaging wasn't really working with some of the work I've been producing recently. I've been working with vintage fabric and buttons and have been deliberately choosing materials for the story they can tell, marks, holes, wear and tear, a manufacturer's mark on a discarded selvedge and I felt the packaging needed be a better continuation of the idea.

I love to use rubber stamps, especially lettering, our usual cards show the font from our Wychbury logo, it's called Scythe. It's flowing, inky and renaissance and the stamped version takes on a woodcut feel. It's such a strong look that even when I added 'England' in what would seem to be a completely incompatible 1950s font from the John Bull set, it still keeps the 'I should be sold from a basket of straw' vibe. It's perfect for Tudor clips and herb garden earrings but wasn't hitting the spot for my button pieces.

So, I've come up with new cards that use a combination of letters from my John Bull printing outfit, typed text and a button graphic from my own linocut. I've stitched through the stamped buttons with thread to finish them off. The results are still unpredictable, the typewriter is temperamental and the rubber letters of the stamp are old and cracked but inked on to clean, cut card seems to work perfectly with my new pieces.

I have no clue about fonts, I'm deciding what's aesthetically pleasing through what equipment I have available, trying it out and screwing up my eyes to see if the look works. If I'm honest I wouldn't know an era-appropriate typeface if I was served one in an envelope with a portcullis on it and I really don't know why I choose the lettering I do (she says, changing body of blog into verdana as usual!). So I am very excited about the imminent new book by Simon Garfield, 'Just My Type'. You can read the introduction to the book on Simon's website and my picture of the John Bull set is going to be in it - Wychbury stamp and all!

I think my fascination with lettering will accelerate when this book is released but in the meantime I've started wearing it! This BACK SPACE typewriter key ring is from Zincwhite and it's temporarily adorning my wedding finger, make of that what you will!

Paula x

My Pocket Sewing Box

I love this and felt the need to share! I found it on our local car boot sale last year for the standard 50p and didn't realise that it had sections in it until I got it home. I have no idea how old it is but I'm imagining it was a trinket box in its day, I now use it to carry all my tiny bits of hand-sewing in that I can work on away from the house. I sew at toddler groups, outside school, on the bus/train, in the park, cafes, on the stall at craft fairs - anywhere! This is way more atractive than the plastic bag I used to use and my needles don't poke through it!

Paula x

Old Ink and Paper

In the process of trying out various branding for Wychbury, I have become a huge fan of hand stamping. Not the perfect, embossed, multicoloured kind you see on done so expertly on greetings cards: but rough, black, half-stamped and smudged. I discovered that making display cards by hand took a similar amount of time to creating a template on the computer and faffing about with spacing until my eyes were popping out of my head. The handmade results were so much more pleasing, showed off both mine and Lesley's pieces way better than before and often offered the chance to recycle card as well!


The first batch of handmade backing cards I produced were made from an old poster book of Toulouse Lautrec, made of thick, rough paper aged with a lovely yellow tinge. I kept all the glossy prints from the the pages but scrunched up the paper itself, soaked it in tea, ironed it, burned it and then did it all again until I was left with a gorgeous absorbent surface just gagging to soak up some black ink! I used some long forgotten rubber stamps that had gone all dry at the corners and used the bottom bit of our logo stamp with the tree covered up for the lettering. A bog standard blacker-than-black ink stamp from the stationers and a beautiful little tin of sticky red ink I had been given with a soapstone stamp (of a pig - my year!) from Hong Kong. The whole effect was rough, random, even sloppy but somehow when our work was pinned to the cards the pieces had a warmth to them that hadn't been there before. Now Lesley and I both make our own versions with our own card and stamps and it all comes together.


Lettering is always an issue with rubber stamping. We both own several of the gorgeous little sets of peg stamps in various fonts and they are great fun to use - especially since words are never properly spaced or in-line - a look we have come to embrace! But the only real way of repeating words like 'Tudor Bobby Pins' with any speed is to get two sets of stamps and sellotape the things together in blocks! This process has always sparked a distant memory for me.


When I was a child in the 1970s, I remembered owning and loving a simple little printing set. It had tiny, blue, rubber characters that you placed into a red plastic frame with fiddly tweezers to spell out whatever you liked (the most I ever had the patience for was my name and that was about it!) and make your own rubber stamp. The ink was a gorgeous purpley blue colour that wouldn't wash off my hands for days! I mentioned it to my husband and he said he also owned one but neither of us could remember what it was called. We googled and googled but to no avail and we started to think we had dreamt it!

Until a stroke of Ebay-related luck many months later. I am after some vintage printers trays to store stuff in when I get my long awaited loft conversion (I'll be blogging like a maniac as that unfolds!) and the search term 'vintage print tray' brought up, joy of joys: 'VINTAGE JOHN BULL PRINTING OUTFIT No.18' to which my husband and I both exclaimed 'That was it!'.

This one was a beautiful version from the toy's heyday in the 1950s and internet research and a call to my mom revealed that it was THE toy to have if you were 7-11 years old in post-war Britain! It had wooden trays instead of plastic and the letters were black rubber and when I won it and it arrived I discovered with glee that most of the letters were still in one strip and it had hardly been used. The ink tins were dried up but the residual powder was unmistakably the purpley blue still around in the 1970s when I owned my set. The tweezers were made of pliable tin and the previous owners' name and address were carefully printed - in purpley blue ink - inside the lid of the immaculate box.

Since the rubber has hardened a little with age I have had to be very careful separating the letters and placing them in the block but that has proved to be half the delight of the thing. Taking and examining each tiny character and treating them with the reverence and care a 55 year old toy deserves. The same way that I tried to keep the dust jackets on my mom’s original hardback Famous Five books, or took care with her little tin toy sewing machine when I was a child.


If I owned a brand new John Bull Printing Outfit, if such a thing existed, I know I would be my usual slapdash self and all the letters would be lost in days because I didn’t take the time to put them away. Always one to leave a huge gap in a used car’s previously immaculate service history, I hope I am worthy of my new treasure and keep it as intact as the previous owner did for many years. I still had a go with it though – it is a toy after all!

pxxx

Foxgloves & Jacob's Ladder

I made a couple of necklaces last night which I'm quite pleased with. My sister had made some gorgeous large lampwork flowers which I've added the usual brass and copper to.

Got quite frustrated as my favourite pliers are not well. (see previous comment on the last post)

Anyway here are the herbal pretties, the Jacobs Ladder pendant inspired by Patrick Wolf:

Jacob the ladder is falling down
Heaven is out of reach for us now
golden gates the closing clouds
Jacob the ladder has fallen down

Patrick Wolf.







As the foxglove loves the fur of the bee
flushed and spotted, long-throated with longing,
I love you, honey, let me smear your face with pollen,
take fur inside me mouth and belly --
oh it's been too long, the sun has swung around and around
and all my dews are gone,
but bid me and I'll open sudden as a rock-spring,
I'll bloom like a wadi, only touch me and I'm milk and honey,
your rose of Sharon, your lily of the valley

Song of Solomon

Look what I got!

Well this is Wychbury's very first blog and I am posting first!

Well, I can't think of anything at all to say about me or my stuff today so I thought I'd take the opportunity to show off a purchase I made instead. This is one of Lesley's latest medieaval creations that I snapped up quick! It's Ruby and Zoisite in vintage brass with a pair of love birds above the stone. All the links on the chain are embossed, it's all brassy and vintage and lovely.

I traded this necklace with Lesley for two tickets to see Iamx in Birmingham - much better than the money!

There's another medieaval necklace that's nearly as pretty as mine in our Etsy shop right now, http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=9466277 , I nearly bought this one too!

Paula x