The Accidental Embroiderer

Cats again...

For some reason I seem to be doing a lot of cats recently. I'm not sure why - certainly I'm very fond of cats but I like dogs too and indeed I like all animals and include a lot of them in my work. But there's something just so appealing about cats' furry coats that seems to ask to be interpreted in embroidery. And when you consider the complicated stripy pattern that you see in tabby cats - well, it's irresistible to the digitiser!

 

A furry kitten

This is done in the "scribble style" that I've been using a lot recently. First I applique a fabric shape onto the background, then overstitch it lightly and finally scribble over it in various colours. As usual with scans of these works, you can't see the furriness of the stitchout in much detail, but take my word for it - the kitten really looks quite furry! However it's not quite right - I think maybe it needs another colour worked in there somewhere, and I'll remember that when I do my next tabby cat. So it's not a perfect replica of a tabby kitten but it's not too bad

The difference between painting and embroidery

OK, I know - you paint with paint and you embroider with thread. But embroidery is a craft, and like all crafts it is limited by the techniques that you must use to make it. But let's start with painting. This is a spectacular example of Mexican folk art that's been in my "Inspiration" file for years.

The original painting

I was reminded of it recently when it was sent to me by a blog reader, who said that she'd had it digitised so she could stitch it out. Well, nobody could blame her for that - it's really beautiful. BUT - she then said that the digitised version had involved 4,999 colour changes. 4,999! And goodness knows how many jumps there would have been. So in the first place it would have taken an absolute AGE to stitch out - imagine changing the thread 5000 times!  But also the back of the piece would have been matted with knots - not only those caused by starting and finishing a colour, but also because of all the jumps.

So, as beautiful as this design is, it is intended to be a painting and NOT an embroidery. But I liked it so much that I was tempted to interpret it in a design that could be easily embroidered. As you can see this is not a copy, but I hope it has the same energy and spirit as the painting that inspired it

 

Embroidery inspired by the painting

There are a few jumps, but not many, and there are 29 colour changes - NOT 4999!

Birds from the exhibition

A couple of weeks ago I reported on our annual NEOS exhibition, where I sold a respectable number of things. One thing was clear to me - although people admired many of the pieces, almost everything that was sold involved animals or birds. This is no surprise to me - I prefer them myself, which is probably why they appeal to other people too! One piece that was sold was a special favourite of mine - a panel of three wagtails, which went home with a friend and neighbour who lives not far from here

 

Three wagtails

Wagtails will probably not be familiar to American blog readers, - I think they live only in Europe. But they're charming little birds who love nothing better than to run around lawns, looking for insects in the short grass and bobbing their long tails wildly up and down. They are definitely well-named!

 

The wagtails in their new home

A mysterious Mexican freebie

Regular blog readers will know that I love Mexican folk art - I find the simplified but sympathetic animal forms and the vivid colours quite irresistible. Well, the other day I found this design somewhere in my files. It's clearly inspired by Mexican art but I have absolutely no memory of where it came from or even when I did it. That's the problem with doing so many designs - you tend to lose track of them!

Two Mexican birds from...where?

But I thought it would make a nice colourful freebie, especially just now as we're heading into winter again and may need some reminding of summery times. It's a nice compact design, for the 4 x 4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and with no applique. Here is the design file (in .pes v.6) and here is the worksheet

Over for another year

Well, the NEOS show is now finished and I'm exhausted! Who would have thought that just sitting and sewing and talking to people could be so tiring? But it was brilliant to be able to talk to so many people - the embroidery machine is a huge draw and fascinates everybody, and many people had some really interesting ideas for embroideries that I might do

I had a large table in my usual place and as usual rather over-did the display

 

Too much of a good thing?

OK, maybe it is a little bit over the top - maybe rather too many colours and shapes and all sorts of different things to look at - hangings and cards and loose embroideries among other things. But it did get people's attention, and after all that was what it was supposed to do!

A good beginning

As you're probably tired of hearing me say, our annual North East Open Studios exhibition is about to open, and yesterday I went along and set up my machine there and got prepared for my usual embroidery demonstrations. These demonstrations are always very popular, as most people have never seen an embroidery machine in action and don't often have any idea of what it can do

So I was setting things up and putting out some sample stitchouts for display when someone came along and bought one of them! This was the rooster I mentioned a few weeks ago

 

The popular rooster

It's certainly a good beginning to the exhibition for me! However, I won't be posting here for a week or so, because I'll be at the exhibition full time and won't really be able to think of anything else. Now - I know that a few blog readers live quite near here in Aberdeenshire, so if that's you, please do come along to "Art in the Buchat", which is our exhibition at the Glenbuchat Hall. It's on from the 11th to the 19th of this month, and we'd all love to see you!

An early Halloween freebie

I was going to post this in October so it would be a little closer to Halloween, but then I thought perhaps if people were going to use this for decoration it might be useful for them to have it a bit early so they would have time to plan the work and stitch it out

Most of the designs I do are based entirely on my own artwork, but this one isn't - I only wish it were! It's a famous image - the Black Cat by the French Art Nouveau artist Theophile Steinlen. I'm sure it will be familiar to many people and it's been in my "Inspirations" file for many years.

 

Theophile Steinlen's original Chat Noir

 

It was very easy to convert it to an embroidery design which might go well on Halloween decorations of many kinds.

This sample was stitched by my friend Cherri, using a zipper bag design from her stash, and making some very effective fabric choices. I love the black cat print she used for the bag - it really sets off the design well

 

Cherri's version of the Black Cat

 

I'm offering it in two sizes - small (5x7 inches, 130 x 180 mm) and large (8x12 inches, 200 x 300 mm). The design is very effective when stitched at the larger size, but I know that not everybody will have the larger hoop size on their machines, and in that case the smaller version might come in handy

Here is the large version, here is the smaller version, and here is the worksheet

This isn't a simple design: it has three applique areas, but I hope that it will be worth the effort! If it really is too much, you could always leave out the moon

Some more little furry animals

Now that I've worked out the way to give embroidery the appearance of fur by sketching over appliqueed fabric I don't seem to be able to stop designing things that make use of the technique.  Here's another one which makes use of the method to give a nice furry appearance

We have a lot of red squirrels around us, which is very nice as they're not all that common in the UK. But they come all the time to raid our bird feeders and we're always glad to see them. 

 

Two squirrels on a tree

 

You can't really see the details clearly on this final version with the painted background, so here's a test stitch out of one squirrel which perhaps shows the textured fur a little more clearly

 

The test squirrel.  But is he the right colour?

 

There is one problem, however, with stitching a design that is supposed to be quite realistic, and that's getting the colour right.I have a collection of many hundreds of different threads in many hundreds of different colours, but all the same I found it difficult to find threads for these squirrels that were exactly right. A colour might look OK on a chart, or even on the spool, but for some reason once you have something stitched out, the colour isn't necessarily QUITE right, and that's what I found with these. Oh well, I'll just call it an "artistic interpretation" and let it go at that

Back to the browns

OK, I have to put some more effort into pieces for the show, which usually means more complex and less decorative designs - things which you have to look at for some time to be able to "see", rather than designs which you can appreciate quickly. This is a scene which I picked up from our garden, where a wind was blowing a willow sideways and a flock of sparrows was trying to hang in there in spite of the wind. I know that sparrows are often thought of as common birds but I love them - when we lived in London they were about the only kind of wildlife that visited our house, and I still appreciate their noisy company in the garden

 

Sparrows in the willows

But to be honest I'm not sure about it. It's a nice enough image, and one with birds that I like, but it's not what you could call madly exciting. Still I think it will show up well at the exhibition, and I'll be interested to see what sort of comments it gets

Something way over the top

For the past few weeks I've been spending all my time working on very serious, very worthwhile pieces to show at the upcoming NEOS exhibition. And I'm getting a little tired of all those brown and grey animals and faded green leafy backgrounds, so I decided to break loose and do something really colourful and abandoned, but something which I could still use for the exhibition. So I modified an old design by adding lots of leafy fronds, painting a bright background and then stitching it out

 

Eighty-four colour changes!

It took me three solid hours and there were EIGHTY-FOUR colour changes in it, but it did make a change from all the sober wildlife portraits, and I hope will add some colour to my exhibition