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The Faience Hippo Finished
The Faience Hippo Finished
So here is the Faience Hippopotamus finished. That is, unless I decide to go over him with another layer of long and short stitch to break up some of the patterning even further…
I’m reasonably pleased with him, as a matter of fact. The loose weave of the base fabric was sometimes challenging to work on, and it isn’t at all a hardwearing piece – some of the stitches are half an inch long, which would be bound to catch on something – but as it will be part of a carefully protected wall panel if it makes the final piece, this is not going to be a problem.
I enjoyed doing it, as well. It was fascinating to see the colours change more subtly when I started using the thread turned end-for-end, and this vibrant turquoise/teal colour is one of my favourites.
And, yes, I did manage to work an entire piece in long and short stitch. It is fair to say, I think, that it will never be my favourite stitch, but it does have its place, and I am certainly happier to use it now I have had Tricia’s instructions on the Floral Glove Needlecase Course.
Piracy isn’t cool
Forget Peter Ustinov playing Blackbeard or Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow – piracy isn’t cool, it isn’t clever, and there is nothing endearing about it!
I don’t usually attempt to produce topical posts – my embroidery is a very long-term sort of occupation! – but I care about the health of the needlecrafts industry, and there is something we all need to be aware of. I’ve let my thoughts settle over the weekend, and this is my two-pennyworth.
Monique over at Inside Number Twenty has recently discovered her charts being “shared” without her permission and has done a few sums to see what the actual financial costs are to her and to the other businesses associated with hers. The results make sobering reading. No wonder designers are shutting up shop, as Jen Funk Weber reports – not merely because designs are being “shared” (read “pirated”), but because people are downloading free charts rather than paying for a designer’s work. Eventually the designers will have to do something else to earn a living, and then the range of designs available will no longer develop and grow.
A few months ago Tricia Wilson also discussed the financial and social aspects of needlecrafts in a post on The Embroiderer’s Story. There’s a great deal of subtle interplay between the buying decisions we make and the ongoing effects that spread throughout the industry.
The music industry has been complaining about piracy ever since file-sharing became possible, and has been ignored because people consider that pop stars make so much money they won’t miss the few pounds from file-sharers. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know about margins in the entertainment industry, so I can’t comment on that.
Copyright and intellectual property law was originally devised to support and encourage artists – in all media – so that society as a whole can benefit from their work, while they receive just recompense for their efforts.
As for needlecrafts – most of the businesses are so small that “industry” conjures up entirely the wrong image. The margins are small, and loss of even a small portion of revenue may make a difference between a viable business and a designer giving up and getting a non-creative job to pay the bills.
As Yvette has already commented, sharing a copyrighted design is theft. There are a whole range of people who suffer as a result, including ordinary people who enjoy stitching and would never dream of using a pirated chart.
We were all told at kindergarten that theft is wrong. How come people have forgotten?
Tudor and Stuart Goldwork Course – Month Three Practice
Month Three Goldwork Practice
I am continuing to work practice lengths and fragments of the stitches in the Goldwork MasterClass, since I am still working the silk motifs that form the basis for the Spot Sampler.
Again I worked the Heavy Chain Stitch in two “scales”. I find it rather surprising that the stitch changes width with the length, even though the needle comes up from and returns into the same hole. Still, it is useful to know that I can change the appearance of scale so much without changing the thread I am using.
The second stitch is Four-Legged Flat Spider Web Stitch, and I’ve not found a diagram on the web anywhere. It is a large cross stitch, woven around in a weaving pattern. Simple to do, if you make sure to go over the top layer of the cross stitch and under the bottom layer. The challenge lies in keeping the thread spiralling smoothly around, rather than catching itself and crossing where it shouldn’t. I think I would be reluctant to use this stitch on a garment or something that would move a lot, as I would be uncertain of the stability of the coil. Using it on my sample cloth might reveal that, of course. I shall try to remember to examine it at the end of the course!
C is for Cat
C is for Cat Cushion Panel
When I saw this as a painted canvas is a needlework shop, it immediately made me think of a friend who had a black cat, so I thought of doing it as a present.
The original canvas showed a seal-point Siamese with blue eyes, so I stretched a few points and used grey and navy to create a black cat that was light enough to show its shape and markings, and gave him green eyes as well. The cat is entirely worked in basketweave tent stitch. Much as I enjoy working the ornamental stitches, sometimes restraint is advisable!
Besides, the bright blue “C” is double padded with soft embroidery cotton and then satin stitched over with pearl cotton. I thought that would be quite dramatic enough without any additional flourishes!
The background is worked as a gentle oblong check in Straight Cashmere Stitch, using two shades of soft embroidery cotton that tone with the velveteen I used to make the cushion it is mounted on. I’d almost forgotten about this panel until I was rummaging for notes of some other embroidery I had done and found a reference to it, so it is gratifying to find that I am still very pleased with it. It was a fairly simple and straightforward design, and I think my choice of stitches and threads was simple enough to reflect that while having enough variation to be interesting.
I’m not sure what the real cat thought of his portrait. Cats are what they had in mind when they came up with the word “inscrutable”!
Dreams of Amarna – The Faience Hippopotamus, Second Stage
The reason I am calling this poor fellow an experiment is that I’m working him in long and short stitch. I have said that working on the Floral Glove Needlecase project has been illuminating and that I am warming to long and short stitch – well, we’ll see what I think when I’ve worked an entire piece in long and short stitch!
Half Done Hippo
In the meantime, here he is, half done. The darkest and lightest shades are ordinary stranded cottons, but the middle three use overdyed threads. One of them shades from turquoise blue to russett, and the others are both fairly subtle variations on a dark and a light turquoise.
I am using two strands, with one of them turned end-to-end in comparison with the other. I’ve never done this before, but it means that the shading of the overdyed colours is slightly more spread out and more subtle than it would be if I left them both as they came off the skein. It also means that the twist in one strand runs counterwise to the twist in the other so one strand shortens during stitching. I’ve chosen not to mind about that, but if you did happen to mind I think the way to achieve the same effect would be to buy two skeins and start them at different points in the cycle of colours.
I’m also working in slightly untidy sections of the body, with two or three needles ready to go, depending upon the colour I need. I’m using long stitches, and aiming to cover the fabric beneath without packing the stitches too closely.
I’m really pleased with this so far. The colours are working well, and the variations will give a bit of modelling without attempting to create a needle painting.
A Closer Look at Modern Goldwork – Five
Bark Effect
For this panel, Tracy told us to think of tree bark and then to use stretched and unstretched pearl purl of different weights couched to create a bark pattern of light and heavy lines.
I really enjoyed this for some reason. The pearl purl is stiff and springy, and doesn’t feel as fragile as some of the other metallic materials.
Shisha Variation
The second panel shows an adaptation of shisha work. The “mirror” is in fact a circle cut from a piece of metal foil, and the “stitches” holding it in place are made using check purl. This looks clumsier than I would have liked. Partly, no doubt, because it is not an easy technique even with the standard materials, and I leapt straight in with non-standard materials. Partly also, I think, because having decided to do this I should then have picked a finer purl to use for the “stitches”. It might have been easier to achieve the effect I want if I had thought through my choice of materials. I recall also that the metal foil was flexible and tricky to keep in place while I worked the “stitches” over it.
Note to self: Next time, try the standard technique using the classic materials before making life more difficult for yourself!
I think it is fair to say we all had a wonderful time on the course. Never having worked with metallic threads before, I think the Modern Goldwork course provided an entertaining introduction, whereas it is possible that going straight into classic goldwork might have proved a little scary!
Dreams of Amarna – The Faience Hippopotamus, First Stage
I have two Amarna projects already on the go (one of the backgrounds, and the Dig House) but they are both monochromatic, and you will have gathered that I like colour. So I thought I would experiment. Again!
Small Hippo Outlined
My rule for the panels and motifs is that I may only depict items that Mary Chubb mentions, or that she would have known about, or which were excavated in Amarna about the time she was there. That means that anything seen in Howard Carter’s excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun or excavated by Flinders Petrie is also allowed. So a faience hippo is just about permissible, as they seem to have cropped up in a lot of excavations, not just those of the Egypt Exploration Society. I’ve also just purchased (courtesy of Alibris, since it is out of print) “Tell el-Amarna”, by JDS Pendlebury, who was Director of the Excavation when Mary was Secretary. It should give me more ideas about what was known or thought at the time, which in turn will help me to plan more illustrations.
The background fabric is an overdyed silk noil from Stef Francis, and I will be using some of her stranded cottons as well. I began by copying the outline onto tissue paper and then went over the outline in running stitch. I rather like this technique for marking designs, at least where the design is relatively simple (see Ruth O’Leary’s Spirograph hangings for a less than simple design using the same transfer method – eek!).
I then stitched around the edges using split stitch to make the edge of the design clear, and took a deep breath…
A Closer Look at Modern Goldwork – Four
Burden Stitch
The next two panels show contrasting materials and techniques.
This first panel is using purl to create the pattern of “burden stitch“. This can be more or less closely spaced, and while I worked it as a very open, rough texture, it would be possible to use it to create the impression of basket weave. I’ve used Burden Stitch before, but only in thread.
I’ve used Smooth Purl here, threaded on the needle like a bead – which is fairly hair-raising when the bead in question is a floppy tube about three inches long which could easily be damaged and allow the needle through prematurely!
This next panel shows a classic, straightforward couching of imitation Jap gold, worked as a simple doodle.
Couched Gold
I rather like the effect of this – rather like the old idea of “taking a line for a walk” that is one way of creating the basis for an abstract painting.
It also provides a gentle introduction into the method of couching that can be extended and formalised to create or nue.
As such, I have plans for using this technique and its variants on the Amarna panels!
Tudor and Stuart Goldwork Masterclass – the first two Goldwork Stitches
I’ve not come near finishing the silk work on the Spot Sampler, so I am going to do some practising first. The fabric is a heavy plain weave, about 16 threads to the inch. Compared with the linen for the actual piece it is almost like binca! I chose it to give me some chance to see what I was doing and to count the threads if it proved necessary for the stitches. It wasn’t really for the first two, but I did so anyway!
Reverse Chain Stitch
Reverse Chain Stitches
This produces, to all appearances, simple chain stitch, but it doesn’t involve the “scooping” motion used when working in the hand and seems somewhat easier to control.
I’ve done it both over three and over two threads.
Reverse Twisted Chain Stitch
Reverse Twisted Chain Stitch
Again, the resulting appearance is of simple twisted chain but the stitch is worked backwards, I think this reduces the chances for the gold thread to snag on itself, which certainly helps.
As shown in the original diagram, it is worked over a grid in effect, of two threads by two. After doing that fairly easily I decided to play a bit.
So I worked several variants, over two by four, two by one, one by one, and two by two.
The one by one was quite a challenge, but I am pleased that I have an impression of the changes in appearance effected by the different stitches.
Dreams of Amarna – The Dig House Experiment
I’ve been thinking so hard about Amarna over the past two years that I have begun to get itchy fingers. So I thought I would try something… I don’t know whether this will find a place in the final pair of hangings, but it was time I started stitching!
Photo of the Dig House (courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society)
Mary Chubb comments in the book that the Expedition House is one of the houses of Akhenaten’s time, built back to roof level and then roofed, so of course I want to include it. The photograph I am using came from the Egypt Exploration Society, and I simply sketched a freehand outline of the Expedition House on the cotton with a quilter’s pencil and started stitching.
Dig House - Detail 1
In a sense what I am doing here is treating the original photograph as a pattern of dark, medium and light tones, and trying to recreate that tonal pattern. I hope that if the pattern in accurate enough, the whole piece will make visual sense as a representation in fabric and thread of the house that the members of the Expedition lived in.
The fabric and threads are by Stef Francis, the fabric a fine turban cotton, overdyed in sandy and stony colours, and the threads, stiff linens and cottons, a greyish blue and blues shading into dark reddish browns.
Dig House - Detail 2
The threads are really much too stiff to work as well as I’d hoped. They are difficult to control and need a more substantial fabric than I am using as a basis. They are also not quite the colours they seemed on the hank, so the overall colour impression is unanticipated.
The stitches include herringbone, stem stitch, chain stitch, couched filling, even a sort of brick stitch – all simple stitches, but this is an exploration of the image and not really of technique.
Experiment in stitching the dig house
This is very much an experiment as I’ve never worked with so sketchy (sorry!) a plan or so little on the fabric before when I’ve been working on something so relatively complex. It’s quite scary, but as I mentioned in a previous post, over the past couple of years I have also been learning to paint in watercolours, and I’ve discovered that in that medium I do much better when I don’t put too much on the paper before I start painting. Of course I get many fewer “successes” than if I were to draw in detail from a photograph, but it makes me observe more closely and take more pains.
At the moment I am not entirely happy with the way this is turning out. I was hoping to use the fabric as a mid tone, but the threads are not close enough in colour family for that to work, and so I am having to stitch more of the design than I would have liked. I should maybe try again using a different fabric, but in the meantime, persevere with this to see what else I can learn.