The Accidental Embroiderer

More bags…

Our group exhibition is just a couple of weeks away now. The idea is not only to show the work of local artists but also to have a few things for sale to visitors, so I’ve been making more embroidered bags to sell.  Besides the large shopping bags (pictures of which I posted some time ago) I’ve been experimenting with smaller bags, because these are easier to embroider with smaller designs, and so (I thought) they should be faster to make.

   Two mini-bags, embroidered with designs done in the 5x7 inch hoop

 

A small “grab-bag” in dark blue silk, embroidered with a folk-arty bird

 

The designs worked pretty well, and the bags are quite attractive, but the problem is that they take just as much time and work to make as the larger shopping bags, and their small size makes them extra-fiddly to work with. So I think I’ll stop there and get back to the large embroideries

 

 

 

 

The Charley Harper yellowbird panel - almost there

I’ve finally finished all 8 pieces of the Charley Harper bellpull and stitched them together. It turned out more or less OK, but somehow the whole thing was not really what I’d intended. The masses of leaves tended to obscure the outlines of the birds, and the birds somehow looked flat and undefined. Also the differences in tone of the hand-painted fabric backgrounds made the breaks between the separate panels too obvious

So I turned again to brush and paints. First I made the outlines of the birds darker and more defined, and I made the background to the birds paler, so that they stood out more. Finally I blurred the boundaries between the individual panels so that the whole panel looked more like a single piece of fabric

The Charley Harper bellpull after painting

The long thin shape looks a bit distorted but that's mostly due to the way I had to photograph it - in real life it isn't quite so bad. The bellpull isn’t entirely finished – in particular the individual panels need more work to blend each one into its neighbour. But it’s getting there. Now all I have to do is figure out how to mount it

 

 

Goat in progress

Following on from the Optical Bird, I’ve drawn and digitised an Optical Goat. The basic principle is very simple. First there’s just a simple outline drawing of the goat, divided into equal squares (in this case, 10 cm x 10 cm)

The basic goat drawing overlaid with a grid of 10 cm squares

Then it’s just a matter of filling each square with a little design that is both complete in itself, and which contributes to the overall shape of the goat. In some ways this is a bit like doing zentangle drawings, and I’ve used some familiar zentangle motifs in some of the squares. But it’s different from zentangles because each square has to relate in some way to the adjoining ones – otherwise the shape of the goat won’t be clear

The goat with each square containing a different design

Over the past few days I’ve been stitching out the squares – there are 42 of them so it’s taking a while. It’s been very enjoyable, because choosing the right colours of fabrics and threads for the panel is always fun. Of course I don’t always get the colours right but if I make a mess of it, at least it’s easier to re-stitch a small square than it is to have to re-do an entire design

Rather than using “bought” quilting fabric, I’ve been using home-painted fabric for the work. Here are some examples of painted fabric that I used for the goat

Hand-painted fabric for the embroideries

and here are some of the squares embroidered on the painted fabric.

 
Squares embroidered on hand-painted fabric

To my eye, the uneven colours add a lot of interest to the embroidery. Made with ordinary fabric the squares would look flat and boring, but the irregularities of colour of the painted fabric should add to the complexity and appeal of the final work

The stitching-out of the squares is now mostly complete, and by next week the whole panel should be finished

Distracted by bags

I’ve recently been trying to find ways of using up a lot of old fabric scraps, and have thought of recycling them into shopping bags.  Cherri recommended this pattern for a simple tote bag

http://www.quiltingdaily.com/media/p/22016.aspx

which I found very straightforward to make, and a good basis for a decorative pieced shopping bag

 However, as this was supposed to be just an exercise in recycling and not a serious project, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it, and instead of piecing fabric together to make the bags, I tried a kind of “faux-patchwork”. This just involved stitching fabric scraps onto a backing fabric, using decorative patchwork stitching. It turned out well and the work went very fast

Bags made of fabric scraps stitched together with a faux-patchwork technique

However, although I liked the results, it didn’t really use up a lot of scraps and I reckon I would have had to make about a hundred bags to make any serious inroads on my scrap store. Also I felt like getting back to embroidery. But the tote bag pattern was well suited to embroidery – that large central panel was just the right size for a piece of embroidery done with the large Innovis hoop

So I drew out a simple vase of flowers in a Jacobean style, stitched it out twice (one for each side of the bag) and made it up into a bag with an old piece of denim that I‘ve had around for years.

The Jacobean vase embroidery, and the denim bag made from it

I can think of a lot of designs that would go well on bags like this and I'll start thinking of some new approaches. However for the moment that’s enough bags. I may do some more later to go into a local craft show this autumn, but now I really have to get on with projects like the Optical Goat and the Charley Harper bellpull panel

 

 

Back to the files for a while

Disaster! My embroidery machine has broken down, and because it’s the holiday season and because we still have a snow problem here in the Highlands, it’s going to be a long time before I can get it down to Edinburgh to be fixed. So at the moment I’m spending all my time drawings and digitising, but because I can’t do any stitching there’s nothing new to show

So I thought I’d go through some old things I have in my files, and the first thing that came to mind was a series of leaves, suggested by Cherri and inspired by a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall (http://www.edenproject.com/index.php).  If you’re not familiar with the Eden Project, it’s a spectacular series of huge domes filled with plants from all around the world, and there’s no better place to see a stunning variety of beautiful tropical leaves. I spent hours there filling up sketchbooks with drawings. The leaf shapes themselves are usually very simple but the detailing of leaf colours and veining can be dramatic. So the designs that were inspired by the leaves were also very simple in shape and concept

 

Some of the Eden project leaves as stitched by Cherri. The leaf shapes are very simple: it’s the choice of fabric that gives them character

 

 The only problem with these leaves is that they’re a bit indeterminate and vague in shape – they just sort of fizzle out at the stem ends. They desperately need organising into larger patterns, and that’s just what Cherri did with this brilliant cushion. She stitched the leaves on to a simple leaf print and added a few embroidered insects from another of my old collections, and the result is truly tropical in feeling

 

Tropical cushion by Cherri Kincaid, using the Eden Project leaves

Christmas

I love the Christmas holidays and since childhood have made my own Christmas decorations. In the past I’ve played around with using embroidery to make tree decorations but I could never really solve some of the technical problems that presented themselves. However this year I‘ve been trying a new approach

 

The bird and star are straightforward appliquéed and embroidered designs, made with hand-painted fabric and stitched onto a normal medium-weight calico. I stitched one side of each design, then mirrored it and stitched that, and then glued the two halves together. I used “Paverpol” but you could use any kind of thick PVA glue. The advantage of this kind of glue is that it’s transparent when it dries (so spills don’t matter much) and it also makes the embroidered fabric hard and rigid. If you don’t have any PVA to hand you could probably use any kind of fabric glue, although you might have to sandwich a piece of cardboard between the two pieces to make them stiff enough to hang.  If there’s any white showing along the line where the pieces join, you can cover it up with a dab of paint. The bird’s wings are just made as a separate piece in the same way, and then slotted into place

You could add sequins or crystals or little gold or silver ornaments to these to make them sparkle, but unfortunately I don’t have any to hand (and we’re snowed in yet again so I can’t go out and get any). So this will have to do

 

Projects

To be honest, I’m not all that interested in making things out of embroideries. To me the most interesting thing by far is the quality of the embroidery as a design or even as a piece of art (if that’s not too pretentious).  Add to that the fact that I’m useless on a sewing machine and the result is that I don’t make many things out of my embroideries. But embroidery is after all a craft, and I realise that most people think of it as an embellishment for objects, so every now and then I try to think of useful things to do with it. Here are a couple of ways that people have used my designs in the past.

 

Jacobean motifs on a stole, embroidered by Carolyn (http://www.creativeneedlecraft.com/)

 

 

Little celtic bag – one of the few things that I’ve actually made myself

 

 

Art nouveau motifs make a shade for a bathroom window (by Cherri Kincaid)

 

 

Trunk show of my designs that Cherri put on at a local sewing shop

 

Shells

It’s been a long time since I did these. Some time ago shells were apparently a popular decorating motif and I was asked to do some shell designs to applique on cushions. At first I wasn’t all that keen on the idea, because shells seemed to me to be static and uninteresting, but when I got into the work I changed my mind. The shapes of shells are simple but strong and organic. They needed very little embellishment from embroidery apart from a few contour and defining lines, and I think the final results are all the better for being simple. In the end I did 25 different shells but will put up only a few here. Cherri Kincaid did the imaginative stitchouts and used variegated thread to great effect

Back again, with some chickens

I can’t believe that it’s been 18 months since I last wrote the blog. Admittedly it’s been a busy time, mostly taken up by a major house move to an isolated part of the Scottish Highlands and consequently having a lot of trouble in getting a broadband connection. There was also an eventful trip to the US last year, followed by our first experience of a Cairngorms winter (which involved getting snowed in for 6 weeks). But now things are slowly getting back to normal, and over the past few months I’ve been working on a lot of new projects, so there will be a lot to talk about here

 
 Winter in the Grampian Highlands

First there were the Chinese chickens. A friend of Cherri's wanted some cheerful chickens to put on kitchen towels, and the idea reminded me of some Chinese folk art I’d seen on the Internet. These pictures are naïve, simple and colourful, but with some very interesting compositional ideas, and they also include some charming animals. (There are lots of Internet sites showing this kind of art, but nearly all of them are commercial (that is, they sell prints of the paintings) One typical one is http://www.folkartchina.com/ Follow the link "Jinshan Peasant Painting)

So I drew some chickens in the same style and digitised them as appliqués, which worked very well on kitchen accessories. The stitchouts are by Cherri Kincaid

Strippy purse: the stitchouts

I finally managed to digitise the flowers for Cherri's purse (the one made from long, narrow strips of material) and she did the stitchouts. The flowers turned out well, and I'm pleased at the effect of the outlined leaves - it wouldn't have been as effective with solid leaves. I also like the black background that she gave the flowers