The Accidental Embroiderer

Guidette again - a procession of ducks

This week we have another work inspired by Guidette Carbonell - the idea came from this painted dish.

Guidette's duck

I really loved the expression on the duck’s face, and the idea of lots of legs going very fast. I thought that it looked rather like a lot of different ducks hiding behind the first one, so I used that idea as the beginning of a design

 

My ducks

Guidette’s duck is far more imaginative than mine – I just used plain old mallards as my models. But mallards are beautiful too, and they make a nice procession

A tribute to Guidette

Well, I’ve discovered a new Artistic Hero (or Heroine, to be accurate) Her name is Guidette Carbonell, and she was a French ceramic artist who worked in the later part of the 20th century. Her work is astonishing, eccentric and totally original. At first glance it seems to be naive and primitive, but when you look at it closely it has an unexpected sophistication. It reminds me in many ways of the Inuit art of Dorset Bay in Baffin Island, which I also love. Like me, she uses birds a lot in her work, and here's one of her crazy owls

Guidette's owl

 

Anyway I‘ve been doing several designs inspired by her work. Here’s the first - another untidy owl. Of course I’ve done owl designs before, but this one, inspired by Guidette, is a bit looser and more imaginative than my previous owls. It’s not quite up to Guidette’s standard of eccentricity, but I’m learning!

 

My owl

Finally – a freebie for May!

I was rummaging through a drawer full of T-shirts yesterday, looking for something to wear in this nice warm weather, and I found something which I suddenly realised might make a (very late!) May freebie. This is a design I did years and years ago, which was intended to embellish the neck of one of my T-shirts, and here’s the shirt as it turned out for me.

 

My version of the design

The design is just for one side of the neck, of course, and you mirror it for the second side. When I sent the design to Cherri, she still used it on a T-shirt, but she turned it so that it looks quite different.

 

Cherri's version

So you can use it in at least two different ways, and probably more. I haven’t tested it recently but there’s no reason that it shouldn’t stitch out all right, just as it did for me and Cherri those years ago. There’s no worksheet, because it’s all in just one colour. It’s for the 6 ½ x 10 ½ inch (160 x 260 mm) hoop, which is of course a large hoop which not everybody may have, but it’s not really possible to make it smaller, because if I did, it wouldn’t fit round a T-shirt neck

When you open the file you’ll find that there’s an outline in basting stitch (in vermilion) which may help you place the design on the fabric. If you don’t need to do this, just skip the vermilion, but if you do stitch it out, it should pull out easily

Here's the file, in .pes v.6

An apology and a second inspiration

First, I really have to apologise for not having posted for so long.. I like to post every week if I can, but the problem now is that the preparations for the Danish show are taking all my time, and there’s just no time left for anything else. I feel particularly bad because I’m so behind-hand with a freebie for May, but again there’s just been no time to choose one and stitch it out. So I’m just going to have to postpone the freebie for a while, but I’ll try to make it a big one when it finally comes!

Meanwhile here’s something that’s ready to be mounted for the exhibition. You may remember that several weeks ago I posted a design of fishes based on an exit sign I saw at a museum. (here's the post) When she saw this, my friend Cherri said that she was surprised that I hadn’t made a crow design out of it, which got me thinking, and I eventually came up with this

This Way for the Crows

So what’s the obvious title? “This Way”, of course!

Anyway, I’ll try to be back more regularly over the next few weeks, but if I’m not, you’ll know why!