Tag: experiments
Stella’s Birds – Stabby Bird (part one)
I started Stabby Bird quite simply with a line of feather stitch in the variegated thread, but then, my goodness, I wandered off the path of success and created a sad and congested mess!
I like the padded buttonhole stitch on the leading edge of the wing, but the tangle of fly stitches and feather stitches on the body , and the trellis stitch on the leg – nope, don’t like any of that. It’s too heavy and blocky, it doesn’t provide any light and shade, it just makes the wrong impression. Out it came!
I added a bit to the leading edge of the wing – feather stitch in the variegated thread. I like that, I think it’s fun.
Floral feather stitch on the wing – that’s a stitch I’m very fond of, but don’t often remember. I must do it more often! The top edge of the wing, and the leg, both in feather stitch in a very fine linen thread. It’s a bit pinkier than I had in mind, but it doesn’t draw attention unpleasantly.
Stella’s Birds – Bitey Bird
I decided that all the birds would have the variegated thread in them, and that it would be used to outline the body as a starting point. In the case of Bitey Bird, I used a single thread (“Watercolours” is separable into three plies, each of them just like a pearl cotton in behaviour) and started with Mountmellick Thorn Stitch. I did a second row to give Bitey a bib (as it were), and while it looks a little stiff as I concentrate on it, it will probably settle nicely when the whole panel is done.
The rest of Bitey was worked during the MathsJam Gathering, and I took no more photos of work in progress, so cue me desperately trying to remember what I did….
So here we go.. Hungarian Braided Chain for the bird’s head and back – see how it’s not such a thirsty stitch as the Mountmellick Thorn, so the colour changes spread out more? Vandyke stitch to separate the feathers, Cretan Stitch for the crest, Coral stitch in various other places.
I had specific areas I planned to make strongly raised, particularly the leading edges of the wings, so in this case I used Buttonhole Stitch, padded with chain stitch. I do love that redundant but highly ornamental spiral!
I finished Bitey – to a first approximation! – ten minutes before the formal part of the MathsJam Gathering ended, knowing, however, that various changes would be needed once I had the whole thing before me.
Not much changed, in the end – the beak darker, and outlined rather than solid, and the legs darker too. And now he looks nicely ornamental and joyfully voracious. Just as he should!
Stella’s Birds – A few false starts
As anyone who follows my adventures will know, I always expect to improvise and have any number of false starts.
This is Cording Stitch, which is a classic Mountmellick work stitch, so I wanted to include it. I enjoyed stitching it, but once the whole design was stitched, I had Reservations.
I stared for a while, and then decided that it wasn’t working in the context I was using it, somehow it looked too stiff, and the thread didn’t seem like the right colour.
Another false start was when I started the second vine leaf. I was planning originally to have a riot of different stitches across the whole design. I was happy with the first one, in Palestrina Knot Stitch, but I thought I’d try something else.
Wheatear Stitch is a pretty stitch, and it fits well within the textural theme of the design, but it’s too broad – however hard I tried – to deal with all the wiggles around the edge of the vine leaves. After some thought, I realised that keeping some consistency in the “background” – the branches, the leaves, the tendrils – would enable the birds to shine.
That insight helped me with the tendrils and the stems for the vine leaves, When I was first stitching them, I used different stitches, and different threads, and somehow the piece wasn’t hanging together. When I found a stranded cotton that matched the colour I used for the branches, and used that for the tendrils, and for the stems of the leaves and the grapes, that worked better.
The tendrils are now all in Coral Stitch, and the stems are a Feather Stitch variation. I’ve not been able to track it down, but it’s created a loose and pretty plaited effect that I’m very pleased with!
Dragonfly – first trial..
I find dragonflies and damselflies absolutely enchanting. I’m not entirely sure that I’ve got the right sense of delicacy and enchantment here – the threads are a little clunky, maybe, and the metallic thread wants a conditioner or something else to protect it as I work. I wanted to use a longish thread so that I didn’t have lots of tyings-off, but that just meant more opportunity for tangles.
I outlined the body and then worked straight stitches across in a dark metallic thread. The intention was to work needlelace type stitches in the coloured thread, catching into the dark straight stitches. The idea was that that would modify the colour slightly.
It has worked after a fashion, and the feather stitch veins on the wings also work after a fashion. But not quite.
I need to think of ways to finish off the veins in the wings so the stitches don’t unravel – glue? fraycheck? enclosure?
And I think I maybe need to do it again, smaller, and using a single strand.
Mary The Pekinese again
It’s quite hard to explain what I mean by the improvisatory, painterly approach I’m using for the assorted Animal Vignettes for the Conversion of Placidus project, so since Mary the Pekinese is relatively simple compared with some of the others – mostly straight stitches, rather than the tangle of Cretan I used, for example, for the little rabbit, I thought maybe a sequence of photos was the best way to show you what happens.
In each case I’ve put the frame on top of the photo I’m using. The finer, subtler details of the fur don’t really show through the gauze, but it does give you some sense of how I am selecting my threads to capture the impression of colour and texture that I’m working from. I’m not concerning myself at all with what fibre the thread is made from – if it does what I want it to do, I’m using it.
I’m also recollecting a quotation I found, attributed to the painter Edgar Degas : “If it were not difficult, it would not be fun!”
Worth the effort, though. I do think she’s turned out rather well!
Starting Mary the Pekinese
Now, although the starting impulse for the Placidus panel is the Pisanello painting (and I will be saying more about that in another post), it is also Elizabeth Goudge’s story, woven around an imagined version on an ancient wall. In the book, “The Herb of Grace”, the painting is already in the air, in your mind as you read, long before the mischievous young twins start pulling wallpaper off the pantry wall to reveal an ancient fresco.
So although I’m not intending any humans other than Placidus himself to be in the painting, the family dogs are definitely going to be in there, and I am starting with Mary the white pekinese.
And here we go again – the sketchiest of outlines, a piece of gauze, and the sort of breathless pause you take when you Definitely Don’t Want To Ruin It.
As you can see, the stitched version isn’t the same size as the source photo, so I can’t quite lay the gauze over the top to find where to stitch, but I can compare the shapes I’m creating. The black thread (good grief, I’m using black thread!!) is a fine silk, as used on the woodpecker.
The grey thread here in the highlights is from a gorgeous variegated silk eight strand thread. I think I may have bought it for “Leaving The Tyne“, but to be honest, at this stage I have no idea! It’s going to be useful, though, because I have several shades to pick from within a single length..
And I am already startled by how well Mary the Pekinese is looking.
There’s going to be a woodpecker, too..
I am going to start rereading the book again, at some point soon, but in the meantime, since I’ve rediscovered my “Vision of Placidus” notebook, I know that one of the birds I was going to include is a woodpecker.
I’m going to have to go to the shops and find some more gauze soon, as well, but while I can squeeze an animal in to the existing fabrics, I will do so.
I’ve commented before, I think, that getting a readable and workable design drawing onto gauze is a non-trivial exercise, but this opaque white line (a Posca pen) is pretty much the best I’ve found so far, and it also allows me to help myself by putting a few extra emphases on the lightest parts.
It’s amazing how quickly these little animals go, once I have a chance to get started. In fact, I was so entranced by how Woody was growing that I didn’t stop to take photos. In fact, I barely stopped to draw breath.
So this photograph shows a single afternoon’s work. I’ve used mostly fine silk threads, although his red breeches are a soft perle, and some of the white is probably cotton. As for approach – I simply tangle my stitches together, feather stitch variations, Cretan stitch variations, the occasional chain stitch or straight stitch. What I’m hoping is that the tangle of stitches will create a subtle variation in colour that will help the whole thing feel alive when it’s viewed from a reasonable distance.
I didn’t have much I wanted to add, in the end. A few highlights, filling in the wings a little, and then really the woodpecker is done. I may add more when it comes to assembling the piece (remember all those seed stitches I added to the View of the Excavation once I started assembling the Dreams of Amarna panels?), but that can wait until I know what is being balanced with what.
I have been thinking, on and off, since I was asked about it after my talk, that assembling Placidus may prove to be an exceptionally challenging process. The panel I envisage is going to be about five foot by four foot, and I have a horrible feeling I’m going to be propping it against a wall or slinging it from hooks or even emulating one or other of the great Impressionists by somehow arranging a slot in the floor to drop it into while I tackle the top.
Maybe I shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to finish this one…!
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?
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.
Finishing The Kingfisher
The kingfisher has been really quite tricky, but rewarding, too.
I do enjoy these colours, for a start, and the chance to use the really glossy rayon thread that helps his bright orange breast to shine. For the bright stripe of his back and tail, I’ve ended up combining threads in the needle to get just the colour I want. Even with a full range of Madeira stranded cotton in my thread stash, the precise colour and tone weren’t quite there. There’s another variegated mercerised machine thread in the mix as well – I think the motto for this piece is going to be “Whatever It Takes!”!
When I looked closely, I realised that the lower beak and the little claws were a very similar colour. The feet have been made a little scalier by stacking single twisted chain stitches atop one another so that they narrow into claws.
I’ve made the dark line of the beak narrower by bringing split stitches close in on either side, and done a lot of staring and adding little areas – the top of his head, the white flash at the side of the head, and the tiny bit of white at the throat. When I put him wherever he ends up, that will be one of the push-pull elements that helps him to detach sufficiently from the background to do his job.
Finally, I decided that the couple of bits of dark showing the underside of the far wing did in fact need to go in – more of the push-pull.
Then he wanted a twig to sit on. When I come to set him in place, I may cut some of the fabric close or turn it under, but other parts may be left so that the blue gauze modifies whatever is underneath. Some of this twig may be undone, some of it may be enhanced and extended.
I am reminding myself that I don’t work my best when I’m fretting about the Whole Thing. I do very much better when I get started and work out the whole thing later. I need to read the book again, to see whether there are particular animals I have to include. That will be no hardship, it’s a much beloved book!
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!