Tag: apparel
Starting on the Calyxes
Once I had my flowers in, I scattered every green thread I had over the pattern piece, and performed a triage.
I ended up with this. It’s not terribly informative, now I look at it, if you aren’t me, but it gives you a sense, perhaps, of a variety of tones and types of thread. Some of them are a little heavy and need to be deployed cautiously, some of them I don’t have much of and need to be careful with for other reasons.
There was much thought needed about the calyxes and stems. Did I want something contrasting, more solid? Did I continue in the same style, maybe tweaking my stitch choice? What about stitch direction? Should I keep to the verticals? Contours? Horizontals?
You can see here what I ended up with.
The two outer leaves have the stitch lines running horizontally, but a little echoing the contour.
The leaf that is curling out towards us has lines following the edges and lines following the central vein, and then I left gaps. I hope that creates a little the sense of the highlights on a strongly shaped leaf.
For the calyx itself, I have used colour and stitch direction to create the sense of the leaves wrapping around one another, and the dark colours of the major shape turn further and merge into the stem.
Yes, working so far, I think.
The half-open flowers
Having got over that momentary wobble about the half open flowers on the Lotus Flower Coat, it was just a matter of carrying on, rows and rows of stitches in a variety of shades and thicknesses of thread.
I’ve kept to the same feather stitch and chain stitch variations for both of them, and I worked small facing sections in lighter shades – borrowed from the fully open flower – to suggest the inside of petals on the other side of the centre.
One of the flowers uses more purple and lilac tones, the other is more pinkish, still trying to create a certain balanced effect without symmetry. I worked a bit on each flower in turn until I was done, making the petals variations on each other, emphases not in quite the same place, patterns rippling slightly as they move across.
I’m very happy with the little channels of fabric showing around the edges of the petals. It’s a way of moving the design more towards a graphic and less towards naturalism – and let’s face it, there’s nothing very naturalistic about my stitchery! It also creates a lightness to the design which I think will be very suitable for a light spring and summer jacket.
I’m aware that the relatively dense stitching has created ripples in the fabric, but it’s quite loosely woven wool, and I’m pretty confident that once I’ve pressed or steamed it, all will be well.
I have to do the calyxes and the stems first, though. I have a few thoughts about that, but I’m not entirely sure it will work as I hope.
Watch this space, as they say….
Lotus Flower Coat – Reassured!
You may recall that I had a crisis of confidence over the lotus flower. Having decided I actively disliked my second thought, I persevered with version one, and I am Very Happy Indeed with how it has turned out.
So much so that I offer closer photographs below (click through to look at the stitching more closely and see what I’ve done). It is very simple in conception, just rows and rows of stitching in close shades of white/cream with a bit of pink and lilac, and a couple of the threads are variegated. Somehow it looks light, sunny, charming – and not at all like yet another version of the Jacket of Many Stitches!
And I’m making good use of Floral Feather Stitch, which is one of those delights I feel I don’t make adequate use of. I’m making up for it here – it’s one of my “hero” stitches, breaking up the density of stitching and allowing the tweed to show through. At some point I’ll do a little video of this one, as I’ve not seen many people mentioning it – I found it in Edith John’s Creative Stitches, I think.
But in the meantime – it’s Feather Stitch with an Up-&-Down Blanket Stitch beside each feather!
Lotus Flower Coat – Difficulties!
My idea for the stitching on the Lotus Flower Coat is that the petals will be filled with chain and feather stitch variations in a variety of threads and shades. White and cream for inside petals, white and cream with some lilac and pink on the outside petals and the half open flowers. I have plans for the leaves and stems, but we all know how my projects change under my feet!
This – one of the small petal tips that show the inside – shows how this developed in the early stages. I think the tapestry wool is too heavy, so that’s coming out.
Mindful of the difficulties I sometimes have with repetition, I decided to work across the whole open flower at once, and at the point of writing, it had got to this, on the right. And at this point, I rather lost my nerve. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, or why, I was just rather unhappy with it.
So I decided to try an entirely different approach on one of the half open flowers, to see whether that helped at all.
It has. I don’t like this at all, heavy, clumsy, not at all conveying the sense of enchantment I have from looking at my assorted source materials, or the sense of enchantment Mary Chubb describes in her first encounter with the Lotus Tile Fragment.
Look, I said that Dreams of Amarna had come to a satisfying and coherent conclusion – I never said that it would never guide my needle again!
Starting, at last, on the Lotus Flower Coat
You might recall that a gorgeous piece of turquoise tweed came my way and provoked thoughts of a jacket or coat decorated with lotus flowers. So, not part of the “Dreams of Amarna”, but once you have an interest in something, or an attachment to a design style, it never really lets go!
And I didn’t find myself a Twixmas project, so rather than having a small pause, I’m moving straight on. It will be worked in the hand, so it fits the challenge of not needing the place the Christmas Tree lives, and to be honest, I’ve not been finding the last few months stressful in embroidery terms (in others, yes!) and I don’t feel I need a reboot. So, onward!
Anyone who attended the ThreadTalk I did for the Embroiderers Guild, or who was reading my planning for Stella’s Birds will be familiar with my paper cutouts by now! You can see that this isn’t quite right. It looks a bit too abrupt, the spaces are maybe in the wrong places.
This is altogether better. It’s not so abrupt, it’s paying heed to the botanical form while keeping to the stylised appearance of the original ancient Egyptian inspiration.
My intention is that the shapes will be filled with rows and rows of line stitches, chain stitch and feather stitch variations mainly, and at the moment I am planning to leave a line of untouched fabric showing around each of the elements. Once I have the thing finished, I can decide whether to fill in the gaps!
I’ll be using a mix of threads, too, wool, silk, cotton, some plain, some variegated.
More Thoughts on a Coat..
I want my design for the Lotus Coat to be big and bold, maybe a bit blousy, so what I have here may be a bit formal, and need rethinking.
Well, happy to do that, I had a lovely morning in the studio playing with these ideas, and I think what I have now is a good point for further play.
The idea of this set of designs is that the single lotus in the image to the right here will reach almost the whole way across the top of the back, from one seam setting in the sleeve to the other, while the supporting buds will be set in fact a little lower than they are shown.
Meanwhile, on the front there will be something very similar on the left and right front.
I don’t want to make these identical – that would be too formal. So I want to create something that looks balanced, that doesn’t make me look as though I have one shoulder higher than the other.
I’m also planning how to actually achieve all this. At the moment, I’m thinking that I will try to find a light, loosely woven silk fabric that I can dye to match the tweed and stitch on that. Then I can do the stitching and be making the Coat at the same time. I’m not much of a dressmaker, so it might take a while. So I’ve ordered some samples from Whaley’s of Bradford, to try stitching on.
And for the stitchery? At the moment, I think, lots of line stitches in varying shades of white, lilac, and pink, using relatively heavy threads (at least in comparison with Aethelflaed’s filament silk!). Opportunities to use my favourite chain and feather stitch variations, to layer up stitch and effect – I might even find some angora or similar for some slightly fluffy areas. Not so densely stitched, perhaps, that you can’t see the silk, and through it, the tweed.
Of course, by the time I get to doing the stitching, I may have an entirely different idea…
Lotus Flower Coat – starting to plan..
When we visited last year, my aunt gave me a lovely length of faience blue tweed, and although I could, of course, make a skirt (another skirt!), the idea eventually came to me to make it into a sort of cross between a cardigan and a jacket – something that I can wear with lots of things, that makes a good additional layer in our cold house, but looks cheerful and casually smart.
I thought about the colour, and some variant on the Egyptian Lotus Flower pattern seemed like a good start. Then I thought some more, and decided that the very graphic, formalised versions used in border patterns would want to be used formally and make the garment too formal. The tweed is relatively unfulled, and widely sett, so anything too structured won’t work well.
Something like this, I think. It’s a Simplicity pattern from the Seventies or early Eighties, and it won’t be hard to lengthen. It will be lined (which the pattern doesn’t call for), but there are few pattern pieces and almost no shaping.
Naturally, it won’t be going to go undecorated…!
Maybe a border pattern?
Somehow, no. I’ve not done one before – the Coat of Many Flowers has a swathe across the middle, and the Jacket of Many Stitches has the pattern dripping down from the shoulders – but I think it might end up looking a bit obvious, and a bit formal. I’ll still think a bit more about this one, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be this.
Watch this space, as they say…
Another Mathematical Patch
We discovered another thin patch on The Australian’s trousers..
This time I found a slightly darker grey marbled fabric, and got The Australian to write one of the equations I remember from maths lessons at school in chalk.
I’ve done the letters in Hungarian Braided Chain, the plus and equals signs in Coral Stitch, and the “2” in Cable Chain – so that’s several of my favourites all at once! – and then had a thought..
I’ve done the patch as a speech bubble, attached using varied length blanket stitches, and put a few little lines of stem stitch in the same green thread to suggest the speech bubble is moving.
Then I did a little stick figure, sitting on a yellow lounger, declaiming. I found three shades of grey, so make the figure a bit more broken up but still looking “drawn”, and did the head in ordinary chain stitches, the body and arms in Alternating Twisted Chain Stitch (so it looks like a woolly jumper) and the legs in Heavy Chain (a nice pair of jeans). The feet are ordinary chain again.
I hope The Australian’s trousers will survive without further patching for a while!
Final Mathstodon Details
Well, now, it turns out there was more to the Mathstodon than I had first intended!
The mathstodon didn’t quite cover all the weakened fabric, so I added some trellis couching behind him to support the parts he hadn’t reached.
Then I felt he looked a bit odd with a wall but no floor, and added a floor in Bokhara Couching. Now I look at it, I feel it rather suggests the poor Mathstodon is heavier than the floor can take, which is a little unfair, as what I want to suggest is a Mathstodon happily using his counting frame for some mysterious purpose of his own!
The counting frame is two lines of chain stitch all around, with “wires” make of long stitches in the linen thread I bought for “Leaving The Tyne”. The beads are made with satin stitches. I did think of making them indicate a significant number, but there were two things in my way – first, which number to choose, and second, I was using thread from my Odds and Ends box, and wasn’t sure I’d have enough if I tried anything too exciting!
But he is now finished and has gone toddling off with The Australian for his next speaking engagement!
A scarf called Anthea
Just recently, I have been feeling rather bereft of the sort of simple embroidery that passes the time pleasantly. I’ve been assembling the Amarna pieces, and while they certainly engender a sense of achievement, it has not been relaxing. I had a couple of periods in the offing when a bit of stitching in public was in order, so I was looking for something that could be worked in the hand, with a minimum of materials.
In one of my favourite Georgette Heyer novels, “The Unknown Ajax”, the heroine (Anthea) is seen, in one tiny incident, following instructions from “The Mirror of Fashion” to make a reticule (handbag) in the shape of an Etruscan vase, so when I was leafing through “Jane Austen Embroidery” in search of inspiration for a quick, easy to carry project, and my eye lit on a circular design inspired by an Etruscan design from The Lady’s Magazine of around 1808, it leapt out at me.
But I have a scarf, not a cushion, so the adapted pattern is going to readapted, and what’s more, this is just a little something to remind me that I really do love embroidery. I’ve been spending so much time on finishing the Dreams of Amarna pieces, that I’ve done almost no real embroidery for months, and I miss it. So this is simple, sketched on by eye, not seeking perfection, just, if anything, charm. I’m going back to what I learnt from the Great Lady’s Magazine Stitch Off, drafting by hand and trusting myself to make something that is as close to accurate as I need it to be.
And indeed, with just a needle and my thread (white cotton floche), I was able to travel very light, and sit quietly stitching in the places where I needed to be present but not unoccupied, stewarding an exhibition and waiting in waiting rooms. It attracted attention, of course, but that merely offers the opportunity to evangelise on the pleasures of embroidery.
Since I didn’t even take scissors, I wasn’t able to finish lines of stitching which would take less than a length of the floche, but I can come back to that. I’ve also decided that I’m going to stitch the same pattern (approximately) on the other end of the scarf. I’m fond of this sort of goldeny mustardy colour, and it will be very cheering to wear when I’ve finished it!
My apologies, Anthea – when I’ve finished her, of course!