Tag: stitches
Un-idling My Hands
I would like to have a small pencil bag to take sketching, and I’ve been finding myself in the evening, fidgeting because I can’t concentrate on the complicated stuff and my crochet has fallen so far out of my head that I am contemplating pulling the whole lot out (most of one sock, from rib to the beginning of the toe) and starting again.
And yet I would like my hands not to be idle.
I’ve just taken a pair of side panels out of a skirt, so I’ve pressed one of those panels and drawn some rough fernlike curlicue things on the fabric in chalk – just freehand, nothing complex, no attempt at evenness, just a sense of balance and an all over pattern.
Then I went rummaging for a thread that would live happily on the fabric. This is quite a heavy thread on a cardboard spool, and I’ve not the vaguest idea where it came from. It varies from a very dark teal to a lighter version of the purple of the fabric, and it’s going well so far.
Strictly speaking that thread is on the heavy side for the fabric, and I may find that coming back to bite me, but for now, my little homage to the “Fernmania” that brought you the scrolls on custard creams is going well.
When I’ve done the whole length I will need to decide, do I line it with the other side panel or save that to make another bag with? Little drawstring bags are always useful, after all….
More on the Barn Owl
I’m on to the next layer of stitching now, changing the granularity of the colours, changing the balance of colour, trying to really see what my source is showing me.
I’m not quite sure where this refusal to do detailed planning drawings has come from, but for these Animal Vignettes I simply don’t. Partly, I think, because once the first layer is in you can’t see the details you want in the second layer, partly because I have become engrossed, if you like, in the challenge. When it works, it can work phenomenally well, and even when it doesn’t, as Hebe Cox puts it in her book about embroidery design, it has the virtue of spontaneity!
The owl is proving quite tricky. I’m not seeing the shapes and their relationships as well as I might, and I’m struggling to get the colours nicely combined.
However, I am also being reminded that in this way of tackling my stitching, I expect not to get it right first time. There are iterations, tacking from my stitching to my source and back again. Staring, stitching, trying to analyse the image, find the shadows, find the highlights. In fact, treating each fragment rather like a painting en plein air. Well, I’ve said before that if I fall into any artistic tradition, I’m an impressionist!
I’m not at all sure about this one. I think it’s done as far as I care to take it at the moment, and it’s certainly much better than it was. The fine layer of stitching – single strands of stranded cotton in a tangle of feather stitches and fly stitches – has made a considerable improvement on the breast, providing a contrast with the wing and some of the stitched shadows under the body. But I’m not sure that it’s right, I’m not at all sure that it’s finished, and I may very well find myself doing a new version of the owl later on, either because it’s too big for where I want it to sit in the final piece, or because I decide it’s got too much wrong with it and will draw the eye.
But then, this whole project is partly inspired by a fifteenth century masterpiece, and the anatomical exactitude of fifteenth century animal representations isn’t exactly perfect, so maybe my flaws of observation will contribute positively to the atmosphere?
Finishing The Penknife Case
The penknife case came together fairly well in the end.
Some years ago I settled on a satisfactory way of joining two canvas pieces at an edge. It’s a sort of long armed cross stitch, which goes into each hole twice. That means it’s fairly secure, but doesn’t take security to excess, and it’s easy to do, even when I’m a bit weary.
I used the dark green thread I used on the front for the cross stitches, and I think the top, “hinge” seam has turned out well, if a little stiff.
For the side seams, having run out of the green, I used the grey mottled thread.
That was a bit more of a challenge. I didn’t quite have to heave the needle through with pliers, but it was, nevertheless, quite an effort at time.
I don’t think this seam is going anywhere in a hurry!
However, it’s all nicely finished and secure now, and I didn’t buy any thread at all for it. Or canvas. Or felt to line it with.
Given how often avowedly “Stash Busting” projects turn into “Stash Growing” projects, I am going to take that as a significant win!
I believe that by now, anyone who signed up for my talk a couple of weeks ago should have received access to the recording.
Thank you to those who were there at the time, and thank you for the kind comments I’ve received. Please do ask more questions if they occur to you!
The next Animal Vignette begins..
For the next animal vignette, I’ve changed fabric.
This is partly because it’s what I had to hand, and partly because I think it’s a better surface for my purposes in this case.
What it definitely doesn’t provide is a a good surface for the outlines that I promise you I’ve put on! This is going to be a more than usually improvisatory animal, even by my standards. It’s as well that I’m doing so much sketching at present, as that should be helping me to improve my observational skills.
I’ve skimmed through the book again (Elizabeth Goudge’s “Herb of Grace”, for those who’ve lost track of my plans and sources), and there is a barn owl who lives near the inn, and occasionally wafts through the scene on silent wings. I’d forgotten him, so I was glad to be reminded and have a go.
At this stage, I’m simply trying to put in the first shadows, and because I’ve got the rather heathered felt as the base fabric, I don’t mind if it shows through. It provides a sort of softening which I think will be very helpful.
Now that I’ve gone over the owl for the first time – just the legs and feet aren’t done – I can see places where I need to look harder and see more clearly. There are the markings on the wings to add, and a better sense of the legs being in front of the closed wings and tail, with shadows behind them.
But it’s a start, and since I have also now found my little notebook for Placidus Planning, I should soon be able to settle down to read again, this time with attention, looking for plants and animals I want to include. In my usual fashion, I will be bouncing between the story of the book, and the image that Elizabeth Goudge describes, and somewhere along the way it will acquire that twist that shows me the real root of my desire to stitch it.
Final reminder! – I shall be giving a talk for the Embroiderers Guild on this evening (June 3) at 19.00!
I believe I’ve turned this image into a link to the Eventbrite page, and for anyone not in the right timezone, or otherwise occupied, the Guild makes recordings available for some time afterwards.
More on the Canvaswork Penknife case
When you last saw this panel, there were gaps. They’ve now been filled with green cross stitches.
Yes, that works, I like the way the Caron Collection Watercolours thread runs from yellow to orange, the brown provides a bit of stability, and the green ties the inside and outside together. . It’s not the stitch pattern I was aiming for (I’m not sure what went wrong), but I like it.
However, that was, if I am honest, the last easy thing about this canvaswork!
I wanted to put a different stitch on the back, maybe more hardwearing, because I was considering using the finished object on belt loops. This, however, isn’t it.
Again, somewhere along the line it’s not the stitch pattern I was aiming for, and I’m not sure quite what happened. Suffice it that reading charts and diagrams seems to be a somewhat episodic skill for me, and I am at present in an “Off” period!
Furthermore, the coverage I want is requiring too many passes, too much tangling, and looking altogether too busy. Out it comes!
In the end, I went back to Mosaic Stitch.
It is built up in a rather haphazard fashion of zigzags, starting with two rows in the Watercolours thread, again, then moving outward with soft cotton in two shades of brown and adding a few details in a goldeny mustardy pearl type thread that I think is absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately I’ve not the vaguest idea where I got it from, or when. It might even be silk – and here’s me putting it on a cover for a penknife!
Oh well, better to enjoy using it than have it sitting in a box asking me When it will Get A Chance To Play!
Now – a very exciting thing! – I shall be giving a talk for the Embroiderers Guild on June 3!
I believe I’ve turned this image into a link to the Eventbrite page, and for anyone not in the right timezone, or otherwise occupied on the day of the talk, the Guild makes recordings available for some time afterwards.
I shall remind you every week until it happens!
Penknife Case In Canvaswork
I’ve decided this penknife needs a case. (Of Course I Have!).
Canvaswork is often a good choice for this sort of thing, and I’m going to try to keep to stash. That may make things a bit harder, because my canvas is not especially fine, and as it turns out I don’t have much that’s suitable for that count of canvas.
I have prior experience of making something that ended up too small to do the job, so this looks very much too big. By the time it’s done, it might be the right size, but if it’s too big, even with padding and lining, I’ll simply start again, and use this for something else!
I actually started with the grey flecked yarn. It has flecks of green, and a browny-orangey colour, so I thought that might make an interesting challenge to combine. The panels are outlined in Mosaic Stitch, using a soft cotton in a green that goes with the green flecks. The grey had to be used double, so I think this is going to be quite a close run thing to get to the end with enough yarn to do the job!
The next panel started as Pavillion Steps, from Jo Ippolito Christensen, but I couldn’t quite make sense of the diagram, so it’s become something much simpler. Caron Collection (Wildflowers, I think) in one direction, soft cotton in the other, both of them used double to achieve reasonable coverage.
It’s clear I need to fill in that gap with Something, so now I need to rootle around in the stash to find something suitable. Several somethings suitable, in fact, as I don’t think the remaining stock of these threads will be enough for the rest of the case. I can do more Mosic stitch on the back, perhaps, but making sense of the top flap if I can’t run the same pattern across it is going to take a bit of thinking about.
Now – a very exciting thing! – I shall be giving a talk for the Embroiderers Guild on June 3!
I believe I’ve turned this image into a link to the Eventbrite page, and for anyone not in the right timezone, or otherwise occupied on the day of the talk, the Guild makes recordings available for some time afterwards.
I shall remind you every week until it happens!
Parterre – where had I got to again?
There was a lot of path to stitch, but that gave me plenty of thinking and experimenting time. I started playing with the Milanese Pinwheels when I wanted a break from the endless limestone pavement, and began by using them in the interlocking form shown in the book.
But I didn’t like the look of it, too congested, too solid in the wrong sort of way.
So then I tried a square.
It looked better with somue actual pinwheels, rather than the skeleton pinwheels I used to determine the placement, but again, I thought this was too congested, pulling away from the border a bit too anxiously.
Nope.
So I asked for comments, and my cousin said, have you tried the diagonal placement without the central one – four pinwheels, rather than five, more space for them to breathe.
I think this is going to work, in fact. There’s plenty of space for the heroic pinwheels to make themselves felt, and if I can find a stitch pattern for the background that runs all the way across, I think they will be nicely set off by it.
It’s good to have progress to report!
Playing with Flox 4 – finish
I worked both ends of the table runner at the same time, because I thought that would enable me to see the whole thing as a single piece, rather than two pieces the same. As I’ve said many times, I have a real problem with repeating motifs, and this is one way I try to trick myself into not seeing the repeats, as it were.
The other thing I did was to put the stems in quite early on in the process. Partly because it was an easy choice to make, and partly because one of my other discoveries over the years is just how much different it makes to the sense of making progress if the design is visually joined up. “Spotty” designs are very discouraging, but if the design elements are linked, somehow progress is easier to see.
In the picture here, you see most of the decisions I made for the main section. Each of the orange petalled flowers uses a different combination of the several orange threads I had in my bundle, which turned out to be just as well, as it makes it look deliberate while reducing the terrors of playing Thread Chicken.
I also learnt from the first frilly flowers and when I reinstated them in blue, I used two shades, which makes for a much lighter and less blocky look.
The two shades of pink in the bell flowers also help to make the whole thing a bit less monolithic. It’s just as well, because the weight of the thread does make the stitching very emphatic.
So, it’s finished, although yet to be pressed owing to the fact that the ironing board bites and I’m rather fighting shy of it at present.
My suspicion, based on my experience with Kai-Lung, is that had I been able to use the original transfer, the design would have been larger, making it maybe possible only to do one end of the table runner, but also changing the relative scale of design to thread. The design is a little small for the thread, so when I come to use up the leftovers on something else, I must remember to enlarge whatever I use. I will just have to be ingenious with my colour distribution!
Playing with Flox 3 – a couple of missteps
Flox is quite an odd thread to use. It’s tough and almost wiry. I love the shine and brilliance of the colours, but even the fairly loosely woven fabric I chose was a little bit too closely woven for the thread. I had rather a battle with it, and it was a bit tricky to find stitches I liked the look of. I’ve ended up using a very small selection of stitches – chain stitch, stem stitch, French Knots, and fly stitches.
The pink fly stitches on the frilly flower, I decided, were a bad choice. I’ve no quarrel with the stitch, but pink beside the apricot/ orange of the six-petalled stitches looked wrong, too congested and overheated and all in all, Just Wrong. Amid much muttering, and no little anxiety (dear heaven, I’m not used to playing thread chicken to this extent any more!!), out they came.
I replaced them with two shades of blue – much better!
The final flowers were the bell shaped flowers. I did wonder about working them with a full-coverage stitch, such as Romanian Couching or something like it. You can see in the picture at the right that I tried a fully stitched bell. That came out two. But then I discovered that my two pinks were slightly different shades, like the oranges. So I’ve deployed the two shades to eke out my thread a little.
I did the same with the six petalled flowers – each of the four is a different combination of thread shades.
Playing With Flox 2
I found a suitable – fairly loosely woven – fabric, and evened up the edges (a lot of unravelling happened!), then hemstitched around the whole thing. In the past, I’ve done the hemstitching last, but as I had a few occasions coming up on which I had time to myself, in public, in which stitching might enable me to be usefully occupied and not loom at people, I thought this was a good use of my time. One reel of cotton, my knitter’s captive blade, and a needle – no other equipment needed, and no risk of losing any of the precious Flox!
Then I did a colour plan for the chosen design. I don’t usually plan pieces like this so much in advance, but since I have limited thread to work with, I picked out a crayon for each colour I had, and had a go. The background is blackened because I first tried to used prick and pounce to transfer the design. It didn’t at all – possibly because the fabric is too loose and all my pounce ended up in gaps rather than on threads. The next attempt was a transfer pencil. That didn’t work either, not at all, no sign of transfer of anything. I wonder whether transfer pencils degrade with time?
So then, which much muttering, I moved on to my cheap and nasty LED lightbox substitute. If I ever find an old-fashioned one I shall leap upon it, LEAP, I tell you.
You can see that I didn’t transfer all lines in all detail. This is a legacy of the Stitch Off, and a result, also, of the efforts I’ve been putting into painting and sketching over the years. This sort of design doesn’t rely on precision, all of the charm of it comes from the sense of life and profusion, and the fabric and thread are both too chunky to allow for much delicacy. So I’m trying to minimise my reliance on guidelines, and indeed, gradually make the guidance still more minimal. A work in progress, again.