The Accidental Embroiderer

Crows in Scotland and in Chicago

Here’s the second in the series of Scottish birds in Scottish places, but it owes a lot to Chicago. When I was growing up in Chicago, my parents’ closest friends were two other artists, Max Kahn and Eleanor Coen. I was very fond of them, and I also loved their work. They both had a wonderful feeling for animals and I have several of their prints on my walls now. One of my favourites is a big woodcut of Max’s, of crows sitting on a cactus

Max's crows

The other day as we were driving through Banchory, our local market town, I saw a flock of crows alighting on a bare tree, just as they’d done in Max’s print. So I combined a Max Kahn style with some Scottish crows

 

Banchory crows

The feet aren't quite right - I thought that by making them flat-footed it would make them look as if the birds were just about to land on the tree, but it didn't quite work out like that. Also I think I should have given all the crows two wings. But it will be a simple matter to change both those things

 

A new departure

After a great deal of thought, and encouragement from some blog readers, I’ve decided to put up some of my designs for sale. The main problem in the past has been that many of the designs I’ve done were commissioned, made especially for a customer, or sold at an exhibition or gallery, so it wouldn’t have been ethical to sell the files. But I’ve contacted many of my past clients and most of them have been happy for me to sell on “their” designs.

I’m starting with a series of owls, which (when stitched out) have been very popular among visitors to our local exhibitions. To check out the terms of sale and have a look at the owls, please have a look at the "Designs For Sale" tab on the menu at the top of the page, and then click on the link to the "Owl Collection".

I’ll be adding other designs for sale from time to time. As in the past, though, I will still be putting up a monthly freebie, so do keep checking the blog regularly to see what’s on offer

A Zentangle Gemini

Here's the second in the zentangle zodiac series. It’s odd, but although I love drawing the human figure (I do a lot of sketch portraits and go to as many life classes as I can) I always find it very difficult to incorporate the human figure in embroidery designs. Somehow they just don’t seem to fit there. That’s probably why these zodiac designs with human characters in them don’t look quite right. Still, the colours are interesting. I’ll just have to get on with some of the animal signs, which I think will come more easily to me

The Twins in a zentangle style

Midnight inspiration

Sometimes people ask me how I get ideas, which is of course a difficult question to answer as they come from so many sources. But I’ve noticed one interesting thing – solutions to design problems often come in the middle of the night, in that strange state between waking and sleeping. Often if I’ve been having a problem with a design, I’ll wake up in the morning knowing perfectly clearly what I should do next.

This is an example. I wanted to do a simple design of “nested” birds done in a naive, folk-arty style, but I didn’t have the least idea what I could put in the background. I didn’t want to have the design just floating aimlessly in space – I wanted it to be part of an overall pattern. I came up with a few ideas but didn’t really like any of them. But then next morning there was the solution, finished in the last detail in my mind. Birds live in trees, right? So put the birds in a textured background with a feeling of leaves. It could be stitched on fabric painted in irregular blotches of green, and the birds would go well in blues and reds

Here are some of the leaves by themselves

The basic pattern of leaves 

and here are the birds with a background of leaves

Leaves plus birds
 

They’re OK but I think I’ll re-do them with more patterns on the bodies – either that or stitch them with bright, busy prints as the appliqué fabrics. And I might just put in a few branches among those leaves

Kitten – free to a good home!

Looking for a home...

 Continuing the cat theme, February’s free design dates from several years ago, when I was experimenting with various ways of representing fur in embroidery. I did a large series of semi-realistic cats, but this one, I think, was the best of them. You may need to experiment to get the colours right. The various browns and beiges should blend well together, but shouldn’t be too similar, otherwise you won’t get the furry, stripy effect. There are a lot of jump stitches on the whiskers – it was necessary to do them like this to keep them very thin and fine, the way a kitten’s whiskers should be!

If you’d like to try the kitten just drop a comment to the blog asking for it, and I’ll send it out. It’s for the 4x4 (100 x 100mm) hoop