A little machine embroidery lesson…

June 25, 2015March 23, 2025 Julie Gardner8 Comments

I love drawing but always feel as though I should take up painting or go back to screen printing or something to bring my work to life and give it colour and depth. The only problem is I think I’m a bit too lazy to get the paints out and I don’t really have a space dedicated to messy screen printing equipment just yet; as much as I love the effects it can produce. I’m, much more likely to have a play with my drawings in PhotoShop which is fine, but sometimes it feels a bit like cheating to me.

Anyway, I haven’t been completely lazy and have been really enjoying working on my drawings with lots of machine embroidery lately which is great fun.

I was inspired to get my sewing machine out of it’s cover when I visited the Affordable Art Fair at Battersea earlier this year. When I walked into the show the first thing I saw was an artist sitting at a sewing machine and I had to go and have a look. Harriett Riddell was artist in residence for the evening and was surrounded by ‘spectators’, avidly watching as she casually machine embroidered portraits for just £40 each in half an hour. I loved her quirky free style and couldn’t believe that she did it all without drawing anything first!

Harriet Riddell of InStitchYou portrait at the Affordable Art Fair

And now for the machine embroidery lesson…

I’m not quite so brave… yet. I like to draw on paper first, then, if it’s a drawing I really like and I think it would look good on fabric I prepare for machine embroidery by tracing the drawing onto some fabric using a washable pen. I starch the fabric first – this makes it easier to sew using a sewing machine and means you don’t need to use an embroidery hoop which can be a bit cumbersome.

You need a special foot for machine embroidery – see the photo below – it has a kind of ring foot so that you can see where you’re sewing. It’s also vital before starting to lower the sewing machine teeth – this means that you can move the fabric freely, rather than sewing in straight lines. Set the sewing machine to a normal stitch and don’t go too slow. Just practice on a scrap of fabric first; try writing, it’s very liberating once you relax and un-hunch your shoulders!!

Here’s a picture I took when I was working on my first machine embroidery flower picture – dried poppy seed heads. The blue lines are from the washable pen and have to be washed out after sewing. I like the way machine embroidery gives the drawings a sketchy feel and I’m getting better at accepting the fact that they can’t be perfect (and it’s actually best that they aren’t!) I’m on my third flower drawing now and I have become much better at drawing the outline first but then filling in a lot of the detail as I go; using the needle as if it were a pencil.

Once I have stitched the outline of the drawing I get out my stash of fabrics and choose 2 or 3 I think would work to add some colour and pattern. I attach the fabric by ironing on Bondaweb – all a bit fiddly but it stops it moving around and means you don’t have any messy glue or sharp pins in the way. Then you can get sewing again. It’s definitely not something to do if you’re in a rush or not feeling very patient!

Sometimes I add paper too – here’s the same drawing a bit further on:

And here’s the final piece. I think it’s my favourite one so far and that’s because it’s very simple and I really like the colours (grey and yellow always a favourite) and shapes of the flowers. Watch out for more on the other drawings in future blog posts.

For now though, my latest project is to cover some foam on a window seat in our new dining room, hopefully edged with contrasting binding (arghhh!) A bit of a challenge as I haven’t made cushions for a long time; I think I’ll have to watch that video on inserting a zip again first!!

Since this I have started a gilhoolie embroidered lampshade collection – you can see them here, available to buy or commission now.

Lampshades

gilhoolie is still here…

June 12, 2015February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

It’s been a while since I posted on here, well a really long time actually! In fact it took me five minutes to figure out how to login to my WordPress account to write a new blog post! ha ha…

It’s not that I haven’t been doing gilhoolie ‘stuff’, it’s just that I got out of the habit of blogging I think, and found it really hard to motivate myself to get back into it.

I started this gilhoolie blog when I wasn’t working and it was a brilliant way of motivating myself to get on with my creative ‘journey’ as I was exploring what I could do when I didn’t have to go to the office for a while. I was really lucky and absolutely loved it; my head was buzzing with new ideas and I had so much I wanted to learn and do.

That was a few years ago now. Since then things have changed… a lot. I now work part-time at a job I also love. I work for someone else who has their own business, five minutes from my house. 🙂 Well 20 minutes at the moment as I’m trying to be good and cycling there. What is my role? Doing everything really… I recently redesigned their website and had to write a biography on myself and could have written pages! From admin to social media to web design and anything else I want to get involved with. It’s great working for a small company; I get to have a big influence and can easily see the effect my efforts have on the business. And it’s not all boring stuff like customer databases and PowerPoint! Plus I get on really well with ‘the boss’ and we’re visited by her two lovely dogs occasionally too…

So working has definitely affected my creativity but I feel as though I am getting back into it now, it’s amazing what you can do once you just get on with it and stop procrastinating! Actually, I probably haven’t written on here for so long partly because I haven’t done as much gilhoolie stuff but also because I do a bit of writing at work (I write some of the mailings we send out to clients) and I also write a blog for an Interior Designer now too. That’s great fun, really interesting and sometimes involves going to venues to look at the interior or visiting art shows, then going home and writing about it. So it’s understandably hard to find the time and motivation to write here sometimes. But I have decided I am going to try and write every other week; should be a doable target I think, don’t want to stretch myself too much!

So what is happening at gilhoolie right now? Well, I made a lovely big tartan lampshade this week for an Interior Designer in Henley. It’s really hard to photograph lampshades well I think – it’s not on a stand for a start but I did my best! It’s lovely, 45cm in diameter and 25cm tall, made from a soft wool grey and blue tartan fabric by Sheila Coombes called Hamish. I have a big soft spot for tartan as I had a much-loved pair of tartan trousers at university. I bought them on an outing with a good friend (you know who you are!) to Kensington market in London. Anyway, it was a bit of a funny experience as Ronnie Corbett was buying some at the same time, not to mention all the zips on them (which I removed as soon as I got back to my room!)

I am also making a huge effort to get back into drawing and actually doing quite well at fitting it in with job, school runs and exercise (and the odd coffee with friends). This is brilliant as it really helps me escape and I now realise how much I miss it. I’ll show you more of that on another post, along with machine embroidery and helping a friend design a logo for her new business. So you know when you think, I haven’t done much, just list what you have done and it usually adds up to quite a lot!

At least I can tick off ‘write a blog post’ now at last. And I really enjoyed it, hope you did too!

Artwork · gilhoolie loves... · Inspiration

gilhoolie loves… printmakers

January 22, 2014February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

Okay, so I don’t have any new year’s resolutions as such but I do know that I want to be more creative again this year. I’m reading a positivity book for my ‘other job’ and one of the things that I liked the sound of was doing more activities that give you ‘flow’. They can be anything you enjoy doing that help you escape and lose yourself. So it could be walking, drawing, swimming, writing, knitting, reading, or even work if you’re really lucky! For me I really escape when I’m drawing, or making a lampshade, or teaching a workshop or doing some machine embroidery, or writing this blog. So that’s why I intend to do more of these things in 2014.

Sometimes it’s just hard finding the time to be creative, but I thought I’d start with a look at my favourite printmakers to get some inspiration. I already have a piece of lino and some tools so I’ll be having a go really soon, it’s just deciding what image to print – always my stumbling block (that and aiming too high to start off with – I want to be as good as these straight away, wow, I love them!!)

I think there’s a common theme in terms of subject and colours I seem to be drawn to which is good, now my turn… (You can get to all the links for these via my Pinterest page).

Artwork

Christmas, what Christmas?!…

January 10, 2014February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

I don’t know about you but I feel as though Christmas was a life time ago, or was it all just a dream?! Not a bad thing I guess; good to get on with a new year and all that. I don’t have any new year resolutions as such but I do have plenty of things I want to get on with as soon as possible. One of them is writing on here regularly again as I know I neglected it in the second half of 2013. So here’s my first post of 2014, hopefully the first of many!

I have a list of the other things I want to achieve and I was about to put them on here but then decided not to, all will be revealed as the year goes on (as long as I get on and stop procrastinating!)

Anyway, back to Christmas – below are some of the house picture commissions I received at the end of last year. I still get asked to do these occasionally and of course it’s always a pleasure. I still love looking at and drawing houses…

Artwork

Lovely fresh pasta!

December 18, 2013February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

If you live in Maidenhead you’ll probably know ‘Palmieris’, the lovely Italian cafe on Furze Platt Road. It’s well known for its yummy fresh pasta and if you’re a mum like me you are bound to have met friends there for coffee.

Well, I was recently given the opportunity to do some small drawings for Palmieris new menu and I jumped at the chance.

I really enjoyed this project; it was so nice to be given a brief on what to draw rather than making it up myself! I love the way the menu turned out too, down to some amazing design work by 360 Design in Maidenhead.

Here’s some of my favourites but you can see the full menu here, or pop along to see for yourself!

(Drawings by gilhoolie, all other design by 360 Design).

Artwork

Foxgloves in print…

October 18, 2013April 14, 2025 Julie Gardner

Last weekend I attended a screen printing course at the London Print Studio in West London. I’ve been wanting to have a go at printing some of my drawings for a while now, just to be more ‘arty’ really; rather than ‘cheating’ and printing everything through PhotoShop.

I decided to try and print my foxgloves drawing on the course to see how it would turn out. The plan was to print lots of layers to experiment with screen printing so I did 8. In hindsight this was a little optimistic but I guess I learnt a lot because I had chosen so many, and definitely had lots of screen printing practice too.

So this is how the foxgloves drawing looked in PhotoShop:

I really like it but the colours are almost too perfect if you see what I mean, so screen printing seemed like a good option to give it a similar feel but with more texture.

We started by breaking down the image into different layers and colours for printing. We did this by tracing the sections of the image onto acetate using pens and paints to get different effects.

Then these were exposed onto the screen, all 8 of them!

Next was the ink mixing to get the right colours – a really fun (and messy) bit but harder than you think as it’s kind of difficult to visualise how it’s going to look in your head, especially when time is limited. I had to mix 3 greens and 3 purples and choose a grey for the outline.

So that was the end of day one, no printing done yet, just lots of preparation work. It was incredibly tiring nonetheless and I needed a nice glass of wine when I eventually arrived home that evening.

The next day was all about printing, yippee! You could sense everyone’s anticipation as we all started off printing our layers and looked forward to seeing the finished pieces of art work at the end of the day. Here’s where I wished I hadn’t done 8 layers; I’m really not known for my patience so it was very hard for me!

These are my prints drying on the rack, some with a graduated oval background, some with just a white background (which I preferred).

And here’s a close up of one of my prints. Not perfect but not bad and I learnt so much about layering.

So thank you London Print Studio, I had the best time (and never realised screen printing could be so exhausting!) I’d love to come back soon to print some more gilhoolie artwork (with fewer layers this time!) Just need to find the time to fit it in…

Creative Courses

7 vital ingredients of great craft workshops

September 26, 2013February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

I haven’t been to that many craft workshops but I’ve been lucky that the ones I have attended have been fab. The ones that made me go W O W were at The Make Lounge (now sadly closed) and at Homemade London. I remember leaving with an enormous sense of achievement and satisfaction that I had learnt a new skill and had the opportunity to chat to some lovely people. I traveled home, proudly clutching whatever I had made, thinking “I made that!”

So, what’s the difference between a memorable craft workshop and a not so memorable one?

7 signs you’ve attended a great workshop

When you attend a great workshop, you should:

Receive clear correspondence beforehand on what to bring, where to go and what to expect, so that you arrive feeling relaxed and ready to learn
Be taught by a teacher who is patient, knowledgeable in their skill, and interested in what you do too
Meet like-minded people, even make new friends and contacts to stay in touch with afterwards
Learn a new skill in a relaxed atmosphere and in pleasant surroundings
Get a chance to ask questions about the craft and learn some useful tips
Be invited to give feedback on your experience
And finally… Be offered refreshments, and if at all possible (I personally think it’s really important….)

h o m e m a d e c a k e ! ! !

After all, a craft workshop isn’t complete without it, don’t you think?!

I consider my lampshade 1-2-1s and workshops for small groups to be all of the above, I really do. I think it’s important that people leave feeling happy, with a buzz about their new found skill, and of course full of cake and cups of tea!

Here’s some feedback from a 1-2-1 I held last week with a lovely lady called Helen (including the cake above):

“My only feed back is that you have a lovely teaching style, relaxed , friendly and not rushed. For me, the perfect thing to do on my day off and the finale that gorgeous cake. Just perfect!!!!”

Pictured in the photo below are Tamsin from Curious Upholstery and Libby from Elizabeth Eley Upholstery. We had a lovely time making four lampshades, including lined ones – workshops can be tailored to suit you, just let me know when you book.

You can find out more about my lampshade lessons here, or contact me for more information.

Inspiration

Happiness message in every tub…

September 9, 2013February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

Last week I opened an ice-cream tub to discover a message inside the lid that kind of summed up my first week back making lampshades after a long summer break.

So there I was, eating my ice-cream and apple and blackberry pie with the family, when I read:

“The three grand essentials to happiness in this life are: something to do, something to love and something to hope for” (by Joseph Addison, born in 1672)

Okay, so it’s not just making lampshades that makes me happy but after a glorious summer holiday my first week back couldn’t have been better. In amongst catching up with friends, I made and posted off a lampshade at the beginning of the week for a company who make kids curtains (Kids Curtain Company). Then, after making the most of the last day of summer, I made two beautiful silk drum lampshades for a client in Maidenhead. It’s always nice to hand lampshades over in person and Gill was thrilled with her lampshades as she had struggled to find some to match her newly decorated lounge. The butterscotch coloured 100% silk she chose matched the curtains and finished off the room a treat (the photo doesn’t do them justice, they were gorgeous!)

So, I’m really looking forward to more lampshade making and I know I’m incredibly lucky to do something that makes me happy. Oh, and I’m wondering when I can buy another tub of ice-cream to discover another happiness message inside! 🙂

Lampshades

Bling it up!

July 18, 2013February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

I was recently asked to recover a traditional lampshade to go in an Art Deco living room. I just thought I’d show you some photos of how the lampshade developed, because it really did develop over time as various fringing and braiding was chosen for the design. It had been bought, along with the stand (not photographed here), from eBay, and was definitely a bit of a floral granny shade with a gold tassel trim. Nevertheless, it was a lovely shape with scalloped top and bottom rings:

From here on the design was down to the client along with her Interior Designer, Kate Lovejoy. I have to admit it wasn’t my style, but I also became quite attached to the finished lampshade – especially after working hard attaching so many trims and fringing! It was also great to make something a bit different, with strict instructions to ‘bling it up’!

The body of the lampshade is made from pink herringbone tweed which I love. Here’s a shot of it pinned to one side of the lampshade frame:

Next I added purple braiding to the top ring of the lampshade (this is a good close-up of the fabric too, oh and a gilhoolie tag with matching purple ribbon added at the end):

Followed by two layers of different length fringing in grey and purple:

Then more purple braiding on top of the fringing and a silver sequin trim (the bling):

Finally, the finished lampshade in all it’s burlesque glory:

I’ll post a photo of it in-situ soon hopefully; it doesn’t really go in my conservative looking dining room does it?! I was sorry to hand it over in the end though, maybe I should think about adding a bit of bling more often…hmmmm…

Dressmaking · Sewing projects

My first attempt at dressmaking!…

July 4, 2013February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I attended a dressmaking workshop at the lovely guthrie & ghani in Moseley, Birmingham. I had booked it as a spur-of-the-moment ‘thing’ when I was inspired by the amazing people on the Great British Sewing Bee programme. I really didn’t think about the (nearly) 2 hour journey to get there on a Saturday morning; I just knew I had to have a go and I really wanted to visit Lauren’s haberdashery shop too.

Well, I wasn’t disappointed by the shop that’s for sure. I only wish I had had more time to browse before the workshop started upstairs. So many gorgeous fabrics, trims, patterns, not to mention the stunning decor of the building (love the pink woodwork!) I really do wish we had a guthrie & ghani near me!

So, my workshop was taught by the lovely Tilly from Tilly and the Buttons. You can see some more photos from the workshop on her website (and a few shots of me looking very studious!) It was a great introduction to dressmaking, with lots of tips on things from cutting out the pattern pieces (I didn’t realise it would take sooooo long!!) to lining up the pieces against the selvage, to symbols on patterns and lots more. We had 6.5 hours to make the miette skirt designed by Tilly (a skirt for beginners with no zips or buttons).

It was a bit of a rush to the finish but lots of fun (we did have a break for a cuppa, biscuits and a very yummy lunch though, sewing is very thirsty work you know!) I only wish I had had more time to socialise as I was desperate to finish with Tilly’s expertise there, rather than finishing off on my own at home. Luckily though, I only had to finish the ties and hem so it wasn’t too bad, my studious-ness paid off!

Whizzy pink zig-zag top-stitching on the pockets

I was thoroughly exhausted after my drive home but really felt I had achieved something. So here it is – I’m not sure about the fabric I chose but I didn’t want to have to match patterns so it was okay for a beginner I think… and I’m not sure about the fit on me but then I’m ultra-fussy with clothes, I really am. I already have a Collette pattern for a shift dress to make next, I just need to find the right fabric, a bit more colour and pattern this time I think.

It definitely made a nice change from making lampshades, thank you guthrie & ghani and Tilly for a brilliant workshop, I loved it!