The Accidental Embroiderer

Finally - the folk art panel

If you were reading this blog last February and March, you may remember that I posted a couple of designs in a folk art style, and indeed gave some of them away as freebies. The designs were supposed to be part of a big folk art panel, but because digitising is so much more fun than actually stitching things out, I never seemed to get around to finishing the panel. However I've finally got my act together and managed to baste all the little folk art flowers and animals together into a single panel.

The (mostly) finished folk art panel

It's not well finished, but eventually I might get round to putting a border around it and embellishing the junctions between the separate embroideries with some decorative stitching. But as they say, don't hold your breath, so I think I'd better post this now before I forget about it and get distracted by something else

Where did Summer go?

I just can't understand it. Only 5 minutes ago it was March, and here it is almost October, for heaven's sake. I really don't know what happened to summer - maybe it just disappeared because I've been spending so much time indoors, in the same place. But whatever happened to it, I really miss not having any summer this year. So maybe it's a good idea that this idea came out of nowhere, to remind me of our usual flocks of swallows and our wildflowers. I honestly have no idea why I felt compelled to do this design - perhaps it was a subconscious realisation that this would be about all of summer I'd see this year

 

The only summer I'm going to get...

Netsuke again

A few weeks ago on the 13th of August I wrote a post about being inspired by netsuke (small carved toggles used as part of Japanese traditional dress). As I said at the time, I don't necessarily like all netsuke, but many of them can serve as wonderful inspirations and the designs can be taken a lot further. For example, there is this little carving of a spitting cat.

The netsuke cat

It is of course very simplified, because the carving is very small and you can't get many details onto something that size. But all the same it's beautifully observed and it has life and energy. So I thought I'd try an embroidered spitting cat

The embroidered cat

Mine is more realistic, just because I don't have to worry about things like carved tails or ears breaking off, but it owes a big debt of gratitude to the tiny original ivory carving

A free William Morris inspiration

Well, last month I promised that this time I'd offer something a little more elegant than a tractor as a freebie. I'm not sure if this entirely fits the bill but at least it's not another design of machinery! It's a simple flower motif, based on the William Morris style which I've always liked. It's pretty simple in itself, but you could copy it and then mirror the copy, to make a symmetrical floral design that might go well on soft furnishings. It's for the 5x7 hoop (130 x 180 mm) and there's no appliqué - it's all embroidery

 

     A flower from the William Morris tradition

Here's the design file (in .pes v.6) and here's the worksheet

Inspired by a comb

When I was a child, my parents and I spent a lot of time in Mexico - they were both artists and were deeply inspired by the landscape and culture of the country. Naturally we brought back with us many examples of Mexican art and crafts, and some time ago I ran across a little decorative Mexican comb from that time, carved from (I think) some kind of bone or horn.

 

A little Mexican bone comb

I've always liked it and the other day I thought I'd try to interpret it in embroidery, making use of the vivid colours and simplified shapes of Mexican art

...and its embroidered version

It worked out very well, although the comb part of it didn't really make visual sense. It was too much of a distraction, and started you wondering "What's that spiky bit at the bottom?" So I changed it to a bowl shape and it worked much better

Back to the past

First of all, it's likely that the "virus" I mentioned last week was probably due to an over-reaction by someone's over-enthusiastic virus protection software. It probably couldn't tell the difference between a .pes file and a virus! In any case, it was all a fuss about nothing and there was no virus to worry about. I hope I didn't scare people about it

Now back to embroidery designs. I've always liked the complicated but delicate designs of the mille fleurs tapestries that were done round about the 15th century - in style they're sort of mid-way between medieval and renaissance, I suppose.

 

Mille fleurs - the real thing

It's the combination of plants and flowers and animals and birds that appeals to me, and some time ago I did quite a lot of designs in something like the same style. I haven't visited the style for several years, but the other day, for some reason, I felt an irresistible urge to do another one, and it didn't take me long to put together this little mille fleur quail.

 

 

Mille fleurs - a modern version

To give it an authentic look I really should have stitched it out on a dark background, but as it was just a spur-of-the-moment impulse I didn't bother. Next time I stitch it out, though, I'll try to make it look a little more like its 15th century original inspiration

 

 

Inspiration from the East

First, I have just discovered to my absolute HORROR that an embroidery website has mentioned a virus attached to last week's post (the freebie) Apparently the "virus warning" (whatever it was about) has now been removed, so people are now downloading the file with confidence. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what this was all about, and have received no message from blog readers about it, so maybe this "report-of-a-virus" was some sort of scam. I certainly knew nothing about it until I accidentally stumbled upon a mention of it on an embroidery website

Anyway, back to something more interesting.

I don't know how many people are familiar with netsuke, the little carvings that are used as toggles in traditional Japanese dress. There are countless numbers of different netsuke designs of all sorts of subjects, and I've recently spent a lot of time looking through them. It's particularly interesting to see designs and ideas from another culture, and although I can't honestly say that I like all the netsuke that I've seen, all the same they are a great source of inspiration. I particularly like their interpretation of animals, and have played around with embroidered versions of several of them. Here, for example, is a netsuke ram, carved in breathtaking detail

 

The netsuke ram

And here is an embroidered version of the same thing - not the same in every detail, of course, but modified to make good use of the new material. All in all I'm quite happy with my little ram and I'll keep looking for interesting netsuke for more inspiration

 

The netsuke-inspired embroidered ram

A freebie for the boys

 A few days ago I was browsing through my very oldest design files, and I came across this design. Goodness knows why I ever digitised it - it's just not my style at all. Perhaps I did it for someone who wanted a boy's design? I honestly can't remember, but maybe some blog reader can give it a home! There are rather a lot of jumps on it - well, it must have been from my earlier digitising days. I'll have to re-do it sometime and see if I can make it stitch out a little more smoothly

 

A little tractor from the distant past...

Now, I know that not everybody will like or be able to use this, so I'll make sure next month to have something a little more elegant in the way of a freebie!

Here's the file (in .pes v.6) and here's the worksheet

A folk genius

I am always overcome with admiration when I find the work of a true folk artist, and by that I mean someone who draws and paints totally from their own experience and talent, who has never been to art school and who follows only their own vision. A few months ago I discovered one of these true artists in the person of Bill Traylor, who I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd never heard of until recently. He was an African-American born into slavery, who lived a life of poverty, but whose personal vision inspired his astonishing art. His work looks very simple at first glance, maybe even crude, but when you take the trouble of looking carefully, it grows in significance.

Here's an article about his work: https://americanart.si.edu/artist/bill-traylor-4852

 

A Traylor-inspired bird

This is a bird that was inspired by Traylor's work. It's certainly not a copy of anything he's done, but when I looked at some of his paintings of birds, this version slipped into my mind, and I hope he wouldn't mind my being inspired by him     

Back to the serious stuff...

Regular blog readers may remember that every September I exhibit in our local NEOS show (North East Open Studios) which is always a lot of fun. However I thought that because of all the restrictions on public meetings that there are now, it wasn't going to take place this year, so I haven't been preparing anything for it. Rather, I've spent a lot of time with folk art projects, which although a lot of fun aren't really what's required for NEOS. However I've just discovered that a kind of "mini-NEOS" is going to go ahead after all, with various restrictions, so I'd better get my skates on and do some work for it

 

 

A heron for NEOS

Portraits of local birds are always popular, so here's a heron. It looks simple enough, but it's actually technically very complicated. For example, the body consists of appliqueed fabric, plus 6 different layers of overstitching on top of it. To be honest I'm not sure that all that overstitching really adds much to it - it would probably have been fine with just one or two. But it's finished now and I'm certainly not going to stitch it out again!

By the way, MANY thanks to readers who wrote to let me know that my "test message" got through last week. What happened was that a message that I'd posted had not been published, so I put up a test to see if that managed to get through. It did, so let's hope that this one does too!