Jane Wheeler's Blog knitting

lovely Paris

Posted jane -->on 24th Mar 2015

in Paris again to sell the collection earlier this month

our little showroom collective has moved, we were back in rue Danielle Casanova, next door to the old place, which you can see in this photo from the stairs of number twenty one. beautiful stone stairs, but a much less fancy building, used by hat makers and their ancillary crafts, up to forty years ago.

a really lovely apartment, open plan, as this huge room was where they made the polished wooden forms for felting hat shapes.

an interesting mixture of high ceilings and pretty plasterwork

with uncovered sixteenth century wooden structural beams. a nice hardwood engineered floor, and big terracotta tiles in kitchen and bathrooms.

Philippe shoehorned six of us in here, and there will be seven next time.

I had an intimate little space, but I didn’t feel cut off from the rest of the family. Colomba Leddi from Milan, Stefano Poletti from Paris, Akira from Sydney, Christine Birkle from Berlin (Hut-up), and a special designer of utility wear from Italy showed here. next time we will have Aurore Thibout with us too.

my collection was too big really.

next time I have to edit myself

summer is easier to do minimally. one dress shape for a start! it just has to be the right shape, that’s more difficult. for the knits, it’s having a wide enough choice so that shops give me a decent size order.

I loved being in this apartment, it’s perfect for my fantasy life of being a writer/painter who lives in Paris. the owners are about my age, intellectuals – the whole end wall is books – and I like the art they have collected/painted (there’s a used big studio easel)

and an interesting mix of industrial

comfortable, and old.

(3 comments)

Paris fashion week for Spring 2015

Posted jane -->on 30th Sep 2014

in Paris again for fashion week. it seems a long time since I did a Paris post

this is the view from the apartment window. we are above and opposite the Tuilerie gardens, very beautiful views of the Paris skyline, the Eiffel Tower, and all the rest, but awful traffic noise with the windows open. and it has been so warm we have had to have the windows open. this morning I can smell the traffic as well, and there is a bit of pollution haze on the horizon.

the collection is very happy in this lovely well lit apartment

and the group we have is all on the artesanal end of things, very small producers

like Christine Birkle of Hut-up

with beautiful dresses, coats, tops … and funny felt animals

I love her happy whales

and we have Aurore Thibout this time,

with beautiful silks dyed by artisans in Taiwan

wonderful tailored casuals and more formal things by Miao Ran from Milan

Colomba Leddi’s crisp and fresh printed cottons which are very special

and Stefano Poletti’s beautiful glass jewellery, made in Paris from special materials. these pieces are from mirror made in Murano, engraved and cut and mounted by Stefano here.

the apartment has some nice bits of furniture, like this art deco shelving unit

and an art deco cabinet – most of the furniture is tidied away for our week’s exhibition though.

the building is pretty special too

marble, wrought iron, the original cage lift

stained glass, parquet floors ……

the alternative is to show in a gallery in the Marais, cool and fashiony, but small spaces with concrete floors, no civilised private areas like we have here, with out lovely bathroom, kitchen …. and the views.

we are still very very sad to have lost the house that Philippe had before, but in lots of ways this is better for the light, and for the position, just opposite the big tent shows in the jardin de Tulieries.

(1 comment)

blue hands, warm hearts

Posted jane -->on 13th Jul 2014

I was lucky enough to get a place on a natural dyestuffs workshop at midsummer with Michel Garcia at Big Hat textile centre in Newburgh, Fife Scotland, run by Alison Mountain and Jeanette Sendler.

Newburgh is a little town on the Tay estuary, not far from St Andrews and Perth in the other direction, and the countryside around is very beautiful, especially with the light reflected from the wide arm of the sea that comes up past it.

and the light changes with the tide and the weather

meadowsweet grows in all the ditches and hedges round about, which I was soon to discover is a useful dyeplant, giving yellows,

and that violet-blue cranesbill is everywhere too, as it is in Cumbria and Yorkshire.

Philippe Model, my master hat-maker, and interiors designer friend from Paris, and I stayed in the the Gallery Flat, which is the other half of the handsome building that the textile centre occupies,

giving all hours access to the studio and the cafe space.

Michel Garcia, Plant Alchemist (biochemist actually), taught a concentrated five day course,

covering dyeing wool,

silk, cotton and linen, with plant co-mordants, aluminium accumulating plants, silk screen printing,

and on day four, three different kinds of indigo vats

one with the exhaust dyebath from dyeing wool with madder

one the swedish vat, with ferrous sulphate

and a big one, with henna as the reducing agent

and lime as the alkali. it was wonderful and we all dabbled our hands in it, together with India Flint who joined us for the last two days, as we flocked to dip shibori tied fabrics and all sorts of personal projects, rather more than we were perhaps supposed to … it was a generous vat, producing a second big bucket full just from the rinsings.

We had a trip to the Hat Shop in Perth (both Alison and Jeanette sell their hats there and run more courses there too)

Philippe and I, and fellow dye student Beate from NY came back with felt hats made by Alison; they are irresistible, soft and pliable but tough wool felt with depth of colour and lovely shapes.

now I have ambitious ideas about dyeing with madder and indigo, and a box full of dyestuffs just arrived from Michel in the South of France, smelling very exotic; I am waiting for the fair trade indigo from Maiwa in Vancouver to arrive, and planning a trip to Foulsham for natural builders lime. it was a very special week; we were fed by Michel with almost more brain food than we could take in, and by Alison with plenty of delicious meals to sustain us, and by Jill with baskets of her gourmet handmade chocolate . I met a lot of very special people and learnt an amazing amount; thank you so much to Alison and Jeanette and Michel.

you can see more photos from the course at Hat in the Cat’s facebook page if you have a facebook account

here

here

here

and here

(3 comments)

grand ideas, inspiration and temptation

Posted jane -->on 7th Jan 2014

a beautiful hand-sewn silk dress, made and dyed by Australian artist India Flint, and reproduced here by her kind permission. she used her leaf bundling technique to dye it, including some shibori tie-dye, and a huge kelp stem which seems to have been twisted round the outside to help with the colours.

a photo taken by Australian artist Kaz Madigan as it was unrolled after boiling then cooling.

my efforts up until now have not been quite as exciting

these are some sample pieces I tried out eucalyptus leaves and some native leaves on

but I have been inspired to hand-sew some dresses with silk, silk jersey, and silk and merino jersey, and taken the plunge;

rolling this one up with eucalyptus leaves given me for christmas, and in this case with ivy berries, which may or may not give a pale sappy green, and a piece of old iron chain from the old pig sheds in my garden

to make this bundle, boiled in a copper bain-marie with red onion skins and a splash of vinegar.

and this one, a dress made from the tube of silk and merino jersey, bundled and boiled up on my woodstove with eucalyptus leaves, more scrap iron and a splash of vinegar

which I unbundled today, and found, to my huge excitement, the most marvellous colours and leaf shapes, plus the piece of ilex oak leafy twig I had popped in came up as a purple-grey spotty leaf print, and the black outside of the bundle as a square “bib” on the chest, back and front. I am not sure where I am going with all this but it is huge fun, and addictive.

guided by India’s blog and her books, Second Skin, and Eco Colour I bought a book on Shibori, Japanese tie-dye, and I have tried out two of the methods – this one, pleated-on-a-rope Yanagi, resuscitating a hand-knit cashmere shawl which had been at the bottom of the stock box for several years

and this one, mokume, on a Katherine Hamnett silk top from the eighties which had been lurking in my chest of drawers, unloved, for rather a long time. these were boiled together on the wood stove with eucalyptus leaves, scrap iron and vinegar. I think the fact that these are cooked in a better casserole with a good lid, hotter, and probably for a bit longer, may account for the more definite colours. but I haven’t opened that onion skin one with the ivy berries yet … patience! time makes all the difference ….

(3 comments)

a new year

Posted jane -->on 5th Jan 2014

I never make New Year resolutions, partly out of laziness, and partly because that’s just not how my year works.

but it is an interesting point in the year, when the number changes, and it encourages looking back at other numbers, like this year of 1958, when five cousins were staying at Bacton, jumping off the seawall that was breached and damaged in December 2013.

2013 was a very good year for my pots, and now I have work in six galleries in the UK; Bircham gallery in Holt, Bils and Rye in Yorkshire, Padstow Fine Art in Cornwall, Cupola Gallery in Sheffield , Newfield Galleries in Newark, The Stour Gallery in Warwickshire, one in New York, Cavin-Morris, and one in Tokyo, Pragmata. another three galleries have expressed interest, Maude and Mabel in London, Galerie Quincampoix in Paris, and Lynne Strover near Cambridge, although she wants just very large expensive pieces, so we will see whether I can manage to produce pieces that are up to scratch …

meanwhile the planet goes on merrily twirling round the sun, leaning here, tilting away there, and the weather seems to have purposes of its own. now stormy with some sunshine in between, rather wet and not very cold, so cakes lane is greasy and hard to walk in, but it is always sheltered, until those biting north easterlies start in and bring us some really cold weather.

I am still having fun with my shake it and see pinhole camera;

the bare trees are more portrait-worthy than in the summer.

this morning it was sunny first thing and we slipped out for a walk that is not very sheltered on a rare day when the wind didn’t feel like it was blowing through you.

the sun soon got behind a thin screen of cloud that looked like silvery fishscales,

reflected in the copious puddles making this path very unattractive to walkers

we walked across to Sharrington, past Valley Farm and round to Bullfer grove. no sign of bluebells poking their heads through yet.

but back in the garden, snowdrops are through in places,

hellebores are showing big pink flower buds

daffs coming through in the flower bed

several roses are in flower

and I proudly present next summer’s crop of broad beans all standing present and correct.

(4 comments)

the uses of leaves two

Posted jane -->on 20th Dec 2013

I have been trying out dyeing with leaves culled from the florist, and the garden, and the campo in Spain, wrapped into bundles with many windings of string.

here’s the bundle of silky merino jersey (30% silk/70%merino wool) after the strings that bound it have been removed.

these long pointed leaves are the eucalyptus I bought back from Spain, probably nidens, I didn’t get much colour from them here inside the bundle, but in Spain I got a slightly greenish gold. on the outside of the bundle the colour is from the same eucalyptus and cut up lemon.

these rounded leaves are eucalyptus from the florist. as I had cut up the lemon and put it to soak for half an hour with the fabric, I think it will have changed the colour.

this is the second immersion for this grey cashmere shawl, which was left unrinsed from its first contact with eucalyptus, without the lemon as above, and the florist’s leaves have left a russety imprint, a bit stronger than this looks. it’s very hard to photograph these.

I put leaves from the garden into the bundle as well as the eucalyptus. these are field maple,

and they left a distinct lemon yellow print. the three-dimensional imprint seems to stay after the first wash, it has been heat-shaped into the textile.

some of the eucalyptus from the florist has come out quite yellow on the silky merino too, this may be due to my lemon soak …

these patterns are due to the string acting as a resist, and therefore the part of the garment/piece of fabric which is going to be on the outside of the bundle needs careful consideration, as it will be an important part of the end result.

this piece, which was really a sample, has taken on a life of its own, it even looks a bit like a patchwork quilt.

I tried out blueberry leaves, which turn this amazing red in autumn. however, the heat I used probably killed the colour. I still like the soft grey mark the leaves left.

apple leaves

plum leaves, and hawthorn for their pretty shape, but the hawthorn has disappeared, so it seems that there is no colour to be had from that.

my first aim in trying out this method (which I found in India Flint‘s remarkable and beautiful book, Second Skin) was to bring a new and exciting interest to some old cashmere knit samples which failed to sell. but it also has a relationship to some of my pottery work, and to be honest, is fascinating and a little addictive in its own right, and it is taking me down new paths that I never dreamt of before. the thing that makes these wonderful to me is the imprint of the leaf, with all the wayward spotting, branching and fractal patterning of nature.

(2 comments)

paris october 2011

Posted jane -->on 14th Oct 2011

a week in Paris at the beginning of October for the showroom at Philippe Model. it was amazingly hot and sunny, and felt like a holiday in the south.

parisian market stalls sell beautiful fruit. mangoes are my breakfast treat when I am there.

pollen from my flowers on this lovely crackled platter.

Philippe is collecting my pots. one is in a photo in his book about using colour in interiors “Les Couleurs” – as is this mantelpiece.

this metallic knit hat is an old favourite, and blends in very well with the aged mirror, the faux shabby subtle stripes and the hat head (which is polystyrene with papier-maché and paint layered on). the pillbox hat is Philippe’s favourite (he is a hat designer amongst many other things).

here we are. next door there were three designers sharing a room. Kyoko is a japanese bag designer from London, and Aki makes plastic, very modern, jewellery. Hut Up is a felt designer from Berlin, Christine Birkle. you can see her website here. we will probably share this huge space next season. I only had it through enormous luck – the previous occupant cancelled, and the room could not be booked to anyone else in time, so Philippe suggested I took it instead of my tiny attic room. what a blessing! I would have suffered terribly from the heat in that tiny low-ceilinged south facing room. this room has two huge windows facing east into the courtyard, breezy, high ceilinged, and hardly any sunshine coming in. one of the coolest rooms in the house, I think. I didn’t need to use the lights until the last day, which helped to keep the temperature down.

it has panelling painted in whatever colours monsieur Philippe is experimenting with currently.

I was worried that my small collection would look a bit thin in such a large space, but it seemed to work. everybody was very complimentary, and I did a lot better than for the last few spring seasons. this is partly an ongoing trend anyway, but I am sure it would have been very difficult to take any orders in temperatures of thirty five plus.

I brought this beautiful patchwork blanket assembled by my assistant Sue Harper with infinite care and patience from old swatches, mostly cashmere. normally it is on my bed, but I thought it would help to dress the space.

pigeon pie came along. the panels are treated with some mysterious effect using chalk so the deep pink in this part of the room is permanent.

in the kitchen the northern light is cool and translucent. the windows in this house which is used for photographing interiors so much are never cleaned. the dust forms an opaque screen so that the view is always obscured.

a funny little teapot arrangement in this eclectic room, which is our common room as well as the hub of the house. hospitable breakfasts, sociable lunches, and many cups of tea and coffee.

Philippe’s collection of objects includes this watering can which of course drew my camera’s eye.

the classic Parisian court. during the first five days it became very mediterranean with the sun blasting in, but on this last day cloud cover kept it grey.

and the view from the windows of the new room (the ante-chamber). I am very lucky to be able to show my collection here, in company with other european designers, plus one japanese designer from Sydney, Akira, and one italian from New York, Matta. we are always sad to pack up and leave.

(3 comments)

seeing pattern

Posted jane -->on 20th Sep 2011

summer officially over now the last of the swallows have flown south. a slow walk with a recovering elderly dog presents dawdling opportunities with the camera. everywhere I look there seems to be pattern and structure capable of translation.

why have I not spotted these lichens before; growing on a cement wall, which to a superficial eye is an ugly anachronism amongst old brick and flint buildings.

using embroidered stitches on a soft grey cashmere knit this will make a very elegant design …

silvery grey lichens on soft red brick walls turn my mind more to clay and glaze than wool

all this variegated blotching over rusty reds and algae greens ….

old hogweed seed heads stand out in the sunshine like sculptural jewels

and even such a mundane and ugly thing as a recently flailed hedge still has potential for a strongly drawn embroidery.

the hedgerows are still full of charm even though it’s that stub end of summer before autumn colours get going – maiden hair ferns bright green in the cooler wetter weather –

a stand of knapweed with seedheads – all the branching stems and repeated shapes make good pattern material.

pretty field scabious

I love plantains – strongly ribbed leaves and upright flowers –

all these red stems on the elderberries – more fractals of repeating smaller and smaller patterns –

dog rose hips blaze out of the hedge, with thorned looping stems, quite heraldic.

these lime tree seeds are quite irresistible, hanging like Christmas tree decorations

and ivy stems – fat wavy branching ropes with pretty leaf shapes … perhaps a cable design?

(3 comments)

philippe’s paris house

Posted jane -->on 13th Mar 2010

paris in early march, colder and brighter than it has been before, gusts of bitter and freezing air, static making hair fly and clothes snap and cling, piercing blue skies and skull numbing black nights.

in contrast the house is warm and welcoming, full of beautiful things magically displayed amid the splendour of Philippe’s latest interiors book, Les Papiers Peints.

there are scraps of wallpaper everywhere, a patchwork of old and new, exquisite and bold.

the high ceilings and tall windows with their iconic views of Paris streets add to the elegance of Akira’s beautiful dresses.

this staircase leads to the “maid’s bedroom” which is where I hang out with my knitwear.

Rosa’s shoe, boot and bag collection against more wonderful wallpapers with an oriental feel.

a green/grey theme, all elegant prettiness

in Donatella Pellini’s jewelbox, an octagonal room with four painted mirrors, the colours are sunny and vibrant. birds painted free-hand fly around.

the jewellery has gone and our showroom has finished; a few days high energy, then the house is left empty – until its next chameleon change of identity.

more of Rosa – beautiful leathers, most desirable shoe and bags, and a very elegant lovely person.

wallpaper seen through glass

the mixture of elegant house, with its ever changing paint and paper, and collections of beautiful decoration for the female form, is an intoxicating one.

dove grey and antique silver, light and reflection.

imperfections all go to make up a sensitive accumulation of impressions, like a painting. the house is an ongoing work of art, always changing, fluid, never finished.

(no comment)

next winter – story of a tuft

Posted jane -->on 7th Feb 2010

having spent the weekend photographing the collection thus far, and processing the result, I have put the photos up here

I have a large stock of the most beautiful italian spun merino wool, and am trying to use it more. this cardigan exploits the fact that knitting cables pulls the work tight, and uses it to make a shape that flares out at the waist. the green/brown fleck is a lovely colour.

my theme this year is northern forests, the boreal forest, the inspiration coming from the survivalist, Ray Mears. this may seem an unlikely source, but his recent series of documentaries on the northern wilderness of Canada had some beautiful photography, and it seemed a very special place. colours of trees and lichen in the forests, the huge open spaces and wild rocky rivers, and the bleak tundra, each with its animal life, all formed an impression in my mind.

this intensely textured embroidery shows the most direct influence, I think of it as a map of trails through the forest. it came from a photograph I took of algae on an old unfired pot in the garden, through which snails had eaten random paths. I had already used the bullion knot stitch in the last collection, and searched for another stitch which would complement it. I found the candlewick tuft stitch in a victorian encyclopedia of textile techniques.

I used the same design and stitches on this wool jacket, in a heavier version of the merino. it has a big collar which buttons and folds over, or can open up into a shawl.

I can’t stop using the olive tree and bird embroidery, it is one of those classic designs which goes on working whatever you do with it. we did some children’s cardigans for friends with it this Christmas. this waistcoat is pretty and puts a shot of� stronger colour into the collection.

here we go with the big hats in very thick wool again – and the tuft stitch on its own. I love this hat. Sid looks gorgeous as always. I use my canon EOS D300, handheld, on the most ridiculously slow shutter speeds. as a result, some of the photos are a little soft, like this one. we sat next to the window to take the hats, but the light had got very weak, as the fog had descended on us by then.

the vintage button caps do really well, but� one has to try something slightly different, so a fuller shape, a buckle instead of a button, and a soft band to pull through the buckle – suddenly a completely different hat on the same theme.

I felt an urge to try a bag again this year, keeping it simple – no expensive leather straps, no stiffening, just a silk velvet lining, which gives it a little more substance, and the boreal embroidery for extra texture – a touchy-feely kind of bag. the strap is lined with ribbon, it stops it stretching and is quite strong enough. this year I have used the colour swatches for all the different colourways to make little bags. usually we use them up by making blankets, but there is a limit to how many cashmere and sequin blankets one needs!

(5 comments)