Tag: stitches
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.
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…
Stella’s Birds – more thinking about the design
You may recall that I said last time I mentioned the design I am trying to work out here, that it was proving very difficult to balance three birds not looking the same way, and that making them look the same way didn’t work at all.
Then it occurred to me that – obviously! – the two earlier birds would be facing towards the one that’s singing. Partly because we always turn to look where the noise is coming from, and partly because that is their aspiration.
You will notice that all of the rough designs I’m playing with here are in colour, which is not at all in keeping with my idea of using Mountmellick work. That’s because at present I want to find it easy to distinguish parts of the design. When I’m a little clearer about the shapes and their flow, I’ll start moving towards a more tonal patterning that will help me to think about stitch choice.
In the meantime, I am playing with shapes and layout in very vague terms.
Eventually, I want the birds to be quite medieval and slightly mad in appearance, and I’m thinking of trying to find some suitable thread – a round, matte cotton in two or three thicknesses – in a variegated colour that will help me to create the look of carved wood. The challenge is in finding it. This is not something easily bought online with any confidence, and so many of the thread companies don’t go to the shows anymore.
Difficulties With The Staff
I’ve been a bit bothered about this pair of workmen ever since I finished them. The pale stone coloured thead is a bit too close to the background colour, and the squarish stitch looks too spiky, too contorted, and very uncomfortable.
What’s more, no matter what highlight and shadow I have added, I’ve not liked it more. So while I’ve been working on sunlight and shadows, I’ve been thinking about it.
Out it has come, and good riddance!
However…
With what should it be replaced? Clearly not Braid Stitch/Cable Plait Stitch (depending on which dictionary you have beside you!) in pale yellow. Only about half of the workman was reinstated before being swiftly removed.
Well, the decision was swift – the action, rather less so!
Fortunately all that playing and wrestling with it brought something else to my mind.
Hungarian Braided Chain is an old favourite, and I had been dismissing it because I’d already used it, but in one of the finer threads. Here in undivided stranded cotton, it has enough authority to back up the Shell Chain of the workman in front, and the slightly darker shade of gold helps too.
I think I’m happier now…
Continuing to think about display ordering..
You may recall that I wondered whether I should reverse the order I had planned for these two main panels of the Dreams of Amarna.
When I finally add the border panels and the “spots”, my intention as far as possible to have the spots that were already known set with the Map, and the spots which are more closely linked with Mary’s experiences at the dig set alongside the View of the Excavation. I’m still not sure which way around to put them, but perhaps if I can arrange the border panels to be moveable, we can change that depending on what else is in the exhibition? There was a suggestion, pre-Covid, that particularly northern British museums associated with the EES might be interesting in combining my embroideries with their finds. Now that’s an enticing thought…
I don’t think I’ve quite finished adding details, and I still need to think out my reasoning and placement for these two, but although the extra shadows are barely visible, even in person, they have, I think, brought a better sense of focus. I do, however, have a few highlights and details to add!
One thing I really like is the clear, un-seed-stitched section at the bottom. When the fabric is washed and ironed, I think that area of plain cloth above the title and surtitle will help to make everything settle together.
Finally Displaying Tudor Trinkets!
As I forecast, I had a rather entertainingly messy time with plaster bandage and acrylic paint to create my Trinket Tree.
As you can see, foamcore, wire, crumpled paper and lots of tape were involved, as well as some tissue paper to vary the texture a little. Although I needn’t have worried – now the Trinket Tree is loaded, you can barely see it!
At present it sits on the hall table – the table it is on for this photograph is where I stitch and usually covered with bits and pieces relating to the current task. Not a good place for a glass dome, although it fits so neatly over the trinket tree’s base, that it’s quite hard to knock adrift!
Adding more detail..
I started by tacking a shadow line along the edge of the Gufti with the staff, decided that it did indeed help, took out the tacking stitches, and started adding very fine stem stitch shadows in single strands of cotton or silk along the right hand sides of the figures.
I used different shades , and different levels of detail – I want the archaeologist in his pith helmet to remain only semi visible. He’s clearly consulting with the Gufti, but he’s not the focus of the flurry, he’s part of the pattern.
The middle distance figures gave me a little trouble, as the colours seemed a more emphatic, close to, than I remembered.
I’m looking across the room at them now, however, and they have settled back into place, just the slight thickening and darkening at the edge helping to make sense of the pattern that’s developing. Even the slightly darker basket, which I had doubts about when I’d stitched it, doesn’t unbalance the whole view.
In this bit of foreground, you can see that I have been varying the amount of detail I shadow. Some of these figures may get a little more detail, to bring them forward even more.
I’m even wondering about putting a shadow on the edge of the creamy white veil the foremost figure is wearing.