The Accidental Embroiderer

Another year, another NEOS

Well, that’s our yearly exhibition over, and as usual it was fun and exhausting at the same time. The North East Open Studios event is always well-supported, and involves almost all of the artists who live in this area, and our local exhibition was as popular as always. There was a great deal of interest in the embroideries - people weren’t used to seeing embroidery used in a way so different from the usual cross-stitch and crewel work. I was particularly pleased to see that the pieces with Mylar were of particular interest, and they also sold well. I must do some more of those!

Anyway, here are a couple of photographs of my table and some of the works 

 

The table, with the machine set up and loose embroideries scattered around for people to handle

 

Some of the wall art pieces, a few of which I’ve shown in past posts, and others which I still have to post. 

Another free medallion for September

 Well, it isn’t quite the first of the month but it’s not long away from it so I think I’ll just post September’s freebie now. And it will be as well to do it now rather than wait until next week when I’ll be up to my ears in preparing for our NEOS exhibition.

A flowery medallion

This is another simple medallion shape, similar to last month’s freebie, and again, although it’s maybe not very exciting, you might be able to find a use for it. The background of the medallion is appliqueed fabric. I suppose you might be able to stitch it without the appliqueed background and just leave it stitched on the background fabric. However personally I think it looks better with the applique, and also I'd worry that it might not be very robust if just done on bare fabric - it might flop around a little. But it's up to you!

Here it is, in .pes v6

Now  you may remember that there was a huge amount of bother last month, when the freebie was just un-downloadable and a lot of people had major problems with it. However I’m hoping against hope that Typepad has now got its act together, and that readers will be able to download the file as usual. If you do have problems, just let me know by writing a request in the “Comments” section of the blog and I’ll send you the file as an e-mail attachment. Just be sure that you’ve given your e-mail address to Typepad so I’ll know where to send the file

Right - that’s it for a while! You probably won’t be hearing from me for a couple of weeks, until the exhibition has opened, closed, and the dust has settled. I’ll report back later in September

Back again!

Well, touch wood, Typepad seems to be able to publish images again, so let's hope for the best...

Anyway, as I've probably bored you with before, all my time over the past weeks has been spent desperately trying to finish all the things I want to exhibit at our yearly NEOS (that’s North East Open Studios) event. This consists of a huge number of art events all over Aberdeenshire, and our local art group always has a big exhibition where I show some of my things and also give demonstrations of machine embroidery

Last week I took everything in to the framers to be finished off properly, so I can now draw a deep breath and relax a little. At least I’m not short of a few new things to show here! 

Looking at the list of exhibition pictures, there are an awful lot of birds - probably 10 out of 12 pictures involve birds in some way. OK, I do tend to draw birds a lot more often than anything else, but I really should try to extend my repertoire! Anyway let’s start with one of these. I’m not sure where the idea came from, but for some reason I wanted to do a picture in dramatic shades of black and white, and this bird with the feathery tail came to mind. It’s unusual but it has a certain drama, so I’m reasonably happy with it

 

Featherbird

It has a certain Baroque feeling to it, and I think I feel a series of Baroque birds coming on. We'll see what happens...

Problems, problems...

It was bad enough that I had major problems uploading the last free designs, but now I can't even add an image to my posts, and as there's not much point to a design blog without images, I'm well and truly stuck

I will try and sort this out with Typepad but meanwhile please don't think that I've forgotten the blog - nothing could be further from the truth

See you later - I hope!

Another month, another freebie

First - an announcement! People have been having problems downloading this freebie - this was due to problems with Typepad. I THINK I've sorted out the problem now, so that the design should download successfully. However if you have problems, just drop me a line via the "Comments" page and I'll send you the design as an e-mail attachment. Very sorry about this!

Now - for the design. Here's a simple medallion shape which isn’t perhaps very exciting, but it might prove useful here or there in your sewing projects. Maybe on a quilt or something like that? And I hope it is useful, because I have several more in the same sort of format which I’ll get ready to give you in the next month or so.

   Maybe not exciting, but perhaps useful?

Anyway the design is 4x4 inches (100 x 100 mm) and the background is appliqueed on. However you can easily leave out the applique if you prefer and stitch the design straight on to the background fabric. Indeed you can even leave out the "mint green" frame (colour number 4) and it should still stitch out with no problems

 Here it is, in .pes v.6. By the way, if this is your first time using free designs from this blog, bear in mind that the link is the word "Here". Just click it and the download should start

Art and Mylar

Well, it’s back to doing yet more pieces for exhibition, although to be honest the particular design I’m posting today is almost more decoration than art. It owes a lot to my recent preoccupation with Mylar. If you’re not familiar with Mylar, it’s just thin transparent plastic sheeting. I think it’s mostly used for industrial purposes, such as food bags, emergency blankets and things like that. But it can be used in embroidery as well, because it’s so thin and flexible you can just applique it on to give an interesting shiny and transparent effect. I’ve used it a lot to make shiny things like fish scales, but I’ve been trying to come up with some new ways to use it. And then it occurred to me - what’s shinier and more transparent than glass! So of course it was then just a question of making some Mylar vases and designing some flowers to go in them

 

Mylar for the exhibition

 

The Mylar is just appliqueed on and then overstitched with decorative patterns to give an interesting texture. As always, though, the scan doesn’t really give a very accurate idea of the final effect but you can probably get some idea of how it looks. 

A decorative interlude

As some readers may know, I have a few collections up on the commercial embroidery site “Secrets of Embroidery”. They have some very interesting designs for sale, and I thought that my style would suit them, and so it has turned out. I’ve done several collections for them, and they’re a lot of fun to do, because the decorative style I use for them is very different from the more “arty” and formal style I use for exhibitions. So when I get tired of art, I can just turn to decoration and produce something for Secrets.

 

Recently I posted a collection in my Secrets of Embroidery store of 10 “Fantasy Horses”, which consists of horses with wildly un-realistic colouring and completely un-natural decorations. They were a lot of fun to do and were an excellent exercise of the creative imagination. Here are three of them:

 

First Horse in gold

 

Second Horse in silver

 

Third Horse in green

To be honest I’m not quite sure where these horses could be used. On bags or jackets, perhaps, as gifts for someone with horsy interests? On towels or cushions? Oh well, I’m sure they’ll find good homes somewhere. And now I have to return to the world of Art, and start worrying again about things for upcoming exhibitions

A mob of mallards

Well, after a LOT of work I’ve finished another piece that’s destined for an exhibition. I always like doing designs with animals, and I usually prefer to feature the animals that are native to this part of the world - which explains the red squirrel of a few weeks ago, and also all those shiny fish. And today we have another animal (well, another bird) that’s very common here - the mallard duck. I get more than enough time to watch them, as crowds of them are always sitting on our large pond, and indeed they usually have their young ones in our garden. So here’s a mass of mallards swirling around in the water. It’s rather a complicated design but it should look fine when it’s framed

 

A lot of swirling mallards

Oh no! Not another free bird!

Yes, here's yet another one to add to what must be your massive collection of colourful free birds! And I know it’s not quite July yet, but I promised this freebie to some people a few days ago so I think I’d better get it out now. 

 

Yet another one...

 

I can’t remember exactly when or why I did it but it looks a bit folk-arty, so perhaps it dates from my Pennsylvania Dutch phase. It’s a simple enough design, for the 4x4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and it’s embroidery only, no applique.

Here it is, in .pes v.6. Good luck with it!

 

 

Some shiny (?) fish

Sorry for the long silence, but as I explained, I’m not able to post now as much as I usually do, because I really have to concentrate on things that I can show at this year’s exhibitions. OK, I know that it’s a couple of months now before I have to have anything ready, but it can take a long time to do something complicated enough to be worth exhibiting, so I have to get started early

But at last I have a couple of things which should be OK, and this week we have another design that is meant to show off the effects of Mylar (that is, plastic film). The problem is that there aren't very many subjects that are really suited to Mylar, and the one I always come back to is fish

 

Oh dear - they don't look as shiny as they really are :-(

 

They’re really well suited to stitching with Mylar, because the stitching of the scales can emphasise the shininess of the plastic film - although I have to admit that this scan doesn’t show the scales to be nearly as shiny as they really are. Maybe a couple of close-ups will show them to be shinier

 

Shinier in close-up?

So they're better when you can see them in detail. But that's really enough fish for the time being, and I’ll eventually have to discover a new way of using Mylar. Perhaps it could be part of the design of a glass vase filled with flowers? We’ll see what I can come up with in the coming weeks!