'Swaledale Wall', Textile Wall Hanging.

Hello from a very blustery Yorkshire Dales. I'm in the attic trying to keep warm and hoping that it won't snow any more today. We've got to venture out later this evening to a meeting at my daughters school. I really don't want to go, and I certainly won't want to go if it snows again. In the dark it's a very bleak and winding 16 miles when the weather is bad. On the other hand though, when the sun is shining, it must be one of the most breathtaking school runs in the country!

I've been pondering what to show you today. I appear to be in between projects at the moment, so I thought you might like to see a pre blog project.

What do you think? Fancy a trip back in time? Have you got a cuppa and a bickie?

Good. Here we go then.

Today I will show you my 'Swaledale Wall', wall hanging.

This was a project from my one year, one afternoon a week, textile course that I did in 2005.

Our brief was to make a wall hanging. Yes, as simple as that, anything we liked.

Back in 2005 we still lived over in East Yorkshire and only holidayed in North Yorkshire. I don't think we'd even thought of moving here then.

But we came here for little breaks when ever we could.

My inspiration came from all the lovely mossy, lichen covered dry stone walls.

I especially remember taking lots of photos of fairy glade mossyness in a beautiful little place called Keld over in Swaledale. There are more pics of Keld on a previous post here

We stayed in Thwait. This was the view from our cottage window.

Look at all this lovely purpley Aubritia hanging down this wall in Muker. How could I resist!

Here are the pages from my sketch book.

I was seduced by the gardens and rockeries in Muker,

but my final working sketch took me back to the moss and lichen covered stone walls.

This piece for me was very different to what I usually do. It's much larger than I usually work (19" x 35") and much freer, not so precise. And certainly not as 'girly'!

Everything is hand stitched to a hessian backing fabric. I loosely felted merino wool to look like moss and lichen.

I hand painted calico to get stone colours and embellished them with lots of little straight stitches and crocheted bullion circles.

Each ivy leaf is made individually and some of them are attached to wire coils to make them spring off the hanging like real ivy would.

My 'Aubritia' is hairy green crocheted spirals with lots of little individually attached hand dyed fabric circles.

Not a very good photo, but it's the best I could manage with the lack of light today. Not to mention having to almost perch ontop of my book shelves to get the whole thing in shot.

I hope you enjoyed our little pre blog trip, maybe we can do it again some time.

How about it?