Tag: experiments
Another observing animal for Placidus
Elizabeth Goudge’s book “The Herb of Grace”, which gave me the idea for Placidus, is set in a pilgrim inn near to some ancient woodland, and in her writing she regards the trees and animals of that woodland as very much part of the world the family inhabits. She wouldn’t, I’m sure, have considered herself an environmentalist, but only because she probably couldn’t imagine considering herself as other than part of the natural world. Certainly the fictional fresco maker she imagines would have done so.
My reboot over the period between Christmas and Epiphany has suggested that since I want to have a welter of animals observing the scene, maybe I should just start on them. Once I have enough to make a start, that might help me with the trees, the rocks, and the stream. Then Placidus with his horse and hounds, and the stag will have somewhere for their drama to take place.
It was the Herb of Grace that told me of the word “brockis” as an old name for a badger, and over on Patreon, the writer Anne Louise Avery has a character she calls “Grey Brock”, whose adventures are often illustrated with a photo of a badger paying very close attention. I’ve used that photo as my starting point, and sketched my brockis on some green gauze (on a frame, this time!) using a white gel pen.
And can we just pause there to celebrate the fact that I sketched this, freehand, on a difficult surface with an indelible pen, and ended up with a recognisable badger? Even last year, I don’t think I’d have managed it!
The animals are going to be quite experimental, I think. Certainly there won’t be a lot of long and short stitch. I want a lot of rough and ready texture and an excuse to experiment.
So the first layer of my brockis is actually vandyke stitch in a middling creamy beige that will help, I hope, to create some depth in his fur.
Hawk in a clear blue sky…
A good, optimistic start to the creative year, here, with my first bit of stitching for Placidus – who’s only been in the planning stage for a decade or so!
You will see from the progress pictures that I was absolutely rocketing along the edge of catastrophe curve here, very little planning, and just alternating staring at my source and stitching. This is the way I tackled Ankhsenspaaten, and a few other pieces, and it’s very much the way I prefer to paint. But it’s highly uncertain as to success, and I may come back in a few years and try again.
Clicking through will show you how little guidance I’d put on the gauze, and how little it showed once there. Furthermore, I was in such a fever of impatience to start that I used neither frame nor hoop, working in the hand instead. I won’t do that again.
(Until next time I do it..)
I’ve mostly used silk perle, which is lovely, and the particular bundles I’m using I’ve had in my stash for decades. I use it, but it’s quite fine, and until recently I’ve preferred to work with rather more solid materials. We also discovered, when my grandfather’s carer boil washed a tray cloth I’d embroidered for him, that the colours aren’t washfast. Not a problem in this case: a panel hanging on the wall, using a wild mix of materials, is unlikely to be boil washed unless by someone deliberately seeking to destroy it.
In the meantime, if it is to work in the eventual piece, it will need to be savagely blocked or pressed to get the crinkles out of it – not because my tension was tight, but because the stitching is filling up the spaces between the fabric threads and making them move and misbehave.
I don’t mind – I’ve already pinned it out, and I’m just so pleased to have made a start on the Vision of Placidus at last!
Update: I showed this to The Australian, who immediately started singing the Hawthorn team song (Australian rules football). Go, Hawks!
Sashiko – something more complicated
I said the next one would be rather more complicated, didn’t I..!
The pattern is vaguely floral or vaguely snowflakelike, depending on your sensibilities. Since I’ve been finding it very hard to work out which line I’ve done and which I haven’t, loooking at the front, I thought the best thing to do would be to show progress from the back. Please forgive the changing colours – I refer you to the light in rainy Decembers in England!
When I got to the middle of the sequence, I started to have doubts about how I was going to finish the pattern in a neat and tidy fashion, and I was wondering whether I was missing something or it was really going to be a bit messy on the back.
Then it occurred to me that I have a graph theorist in the house (The Australian), so I consulted him. I explained what I’d understood to be the principle, and that I was afraid I would have to have long floats on the back. The Australian looked at the pattern, pointed, and said “There’s a degree three vertex there, so yes, you’ll have some long floats!”
As indeed I did.
But it does look pretty when it’s done, doesn’t it!
Sashiko – following instructions for a change!
You may recall that for the past few years, for the period between Christmas and New Year, I’ve bought myself a kit, or put together a kit, of something I don’t usually do, that will involve me in following instructions. So, for this year, when I went to the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show in November, I bought myself a “Sashiko Patch” packet, some thread, and some needles – quite long needles, and quite strong, because the idea is to rock the needle through the fabric to take several stitches before pulling the thread through – so I was told.
When I opened the packet, I discovered that there weren’t really any instructions, but as I understand it sashiko is worked in rows of running stitches that cross each other to create the finished pattern.
Or not. The first one I tackled was relatively simple, single rows of running stitches in a wavy configuration. I think the finished effect is a bit like a very stylised bark pattern, and it went quite quickly.
The next one (see the fabric in the first picture) isn’t going to go nearly so quickly…!
Making a Mending Kit
I have a rather nice spectacle case which is surplus to requirements for spectacles, but which I thought I could make useful for other purposes, so it’s now a mending kit!
I’m notorious in the family for reaching for needle and thread even when a machine stitch might be better (I was doing some mending when visiting with friends a few years ago, and when their father rang, they said “Guess what, Rachel’s been here half an hour, and she’s already got a needle in hand!”), but what I don’t have is a mending kit I can just stuff in a suitcase/glove compartment and be sure it’s to hand.
I put some thought into what I wanted to have to hand, and embellished various elements with embroidered motifs inspired by the motifs on the case.
There are pockets for small cards of thread. I’ve used half metre lengths of stranded cotton in a variety of colours so I should always have something close-ish to what I need.
Other pockets hold some round elastic and a measuring tape. The measuring tape isn’t often necessary, but it’s hard to improvise when you need one.
I’ve found a small pair of folding scissors and attached them at the back of one of the sections, as well. I’ve seen an idea for a captive blade for a really minimal mending kit, and I’ve a small packet that idea might be perfect for, but I don’t have to be minimal here!
I’ve ended up with three sections.
The top one is essentially a needle book, but I’ve tacked four shirt buttons to one page, and I’m gathering safety pins for another. I’ve got two sewing needles and one rather larger eyed needle on the one page with needles in.
There are three cards with three colours of thread on each, in their own pockets, one pocket with elastic (black and white) and one with a tape measure. If I find a flatter tape measure I’ll swap that out. I’m sure I have one.. and on the back of the middle section I’ve got a strap for the scissors.
You just watch, I’ll not need it for a year at least!
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.
Playing With Flox
Well, if I had paid attention, forty years ago, to the adverts in those nineteen thirties The Needlewoman magazines, I would at least have known that Anchor “Flox” was a twisted, fairly heavy thread. I might also deduce that it was fairly new, because the tone of the adverts suggests that the reader needed to have the idea of it explained. So it is a fairly heavy thread, glossy and lustrous, and brightly coloured, creating bright, impactful pieces for interiors, rather than tiny delicate pieces for baby’s layettes.
I laid out all my colours from the bunches I bought on the Embroiderers’ Guild stall at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show in colour families to see what I had to work with. Bright, colourful, lustrous, yes – yes, all of that. The thread is a bit heavier than the heavy pearl cottons, but the twist is not so tight. I wonder how it will make up? (Apart from “in half the time”!)
Now I look at it in better light, the red is more of an orange, so it’s misplaced, but there’s a fair range of colour here, as long as I’m not going for subtlety..
I went through my magazines, to find a selection of designs that were specifically intended for Anchor Flox, but not so huge (the Persian Fantasy Screen was intended for Anchor Flox, and that ends up as five feet by six!) as to demand more thread of each colour than I have.
I’ve decided to do one of the floral table runner designs, the middle of the top row here, because I think it will talk nicely to the Queen Anne style teacloth which is presently gracing a side table in the the living room. After that, if I seem to have enough, I am very tempted by that parrot…
Yet another idea!
Long time readers of my blog know that I use it, not just to talk about the embroidery I’m doing at the moment, but also as a place to put some of my ideas, in the hope that the Search facility will help me find them again, rather than having to paw (I use the word advisedly!) through stacks of paper and notebooks. This is one of those posts!
Some of you may recall that the Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists used to send out, not just cards, but little sheets that had angels printed on them. You could press them out and curve them into a cone shape, making a charming little Christmas decoration. I was reminded of them when we got the decorations out of the loft, and found a whole boxful!
It occurred to me that I could use a variation on that little pattern to create a needlelace Nativity scene.
That idea became a bit clearer when I looked at a few of them. If you look at this one, the angel’s wings have clearly been made to represent fabric with a bobbin lace edging laid over it, and if that necklace isn’t based on a piece of tatting, I have never seen tatting before!
Clearly, I would want to tweak the shape a little. Only the angel, of the characters in the Nativity, needs wings, and besides, I think a bit of variation in height would be advisable!
The basic shape can be seen when you open one of them out. The wings wouldn’t be hard to remove, for those that don’t need them. But the shape is fairly simple, and it would mean that I could use really gorgeous thread and stitch, allowing the thread and the stitch to do all the work.
I doubt I will be tackling the idea any time soon – I still have to work out how to create the Baby Jesus in the manger in much the same style! – but I think it would be fun to do.