Two great finishes!

My first woven article is done! I am pleased with how it turned out, but even more, I enjoyed the whole process thoroughly. I was so worried that after so many years of wanting to learn to weave, that I would be disappointed once I actually did it, but it is more fun than I anticipated. Just to watch the fabric grow each time I sat down to work was very gratifying. But it was also exciting to see the way the colours changed depending on what colour was in the next pic.

Here is the final hem stitch to my piece from a week and a half ago.

And here is the shawl blocked on the guest room floor. I still have to weave in a few ends, or at least trim the ends of the ends I wove in. I'll do that a little neater next time - although I won't have so many colour changes anyway. I also need to decide on the fringe. I alternate between a macrame like knotted trellis or adding some extra warp threads to fill out the fringe and make it short. Part of me thinks that a long, knotted fringe would fit with the modern sort of feel of the shawl, but then a short, full fringe would keep the focus on the weaving. Any thoughts?

Here is my other finish from last week. The Gilt Sylke Twist from Plimoth used to decorate a pre-made satin box. I'm keeping this because the spools of GST fit in perfectly.

It is quite interesting that Mary Corbet at Needle 'N Thread and
Carol Ann at Threads Across the Web also thought to do strawberries with the GST. There must be something about the gold bits that lend themselves to strawberries.

Finally, another garden photo - roses. Another bonus living in Virginia - roses in April. Mind you we have black spot by June, but what the heck.

Lots of Life, Some Needlework and a bit of Everything

There are lots of photos today. I should have spaced them out but today is my day to putter around and get things done around the house.

First, some weaving. This really isn't needlework, although it is part of my passion for fiber, so this is the everything part. This is what I was able to get done last Thursday. Most of the weft is mohair, except for some nubby yarn in the wooden shuttle that I'm using as an accent between various colours. The overdyed mohair in the red shuttle is just wending its way through the shawl. I was able to spend a few hours weaving on Saturday and made great progress. Many thanks to my DH for making sure I had the time to do it. The photos don't really do justice to the colours or texture so you'll have to trust me that it looks quite nice.
I contemplated counting things out and making a pattern to the stripes, but decided not to in the end. My husband thought it looked like waves, so I guess that is the pattern!

Now to the life. It is spring in Virginia and my garden is starting to bloom.

And the house finches nested behind the light on our front porch. These three fledged the next day, which isn't surprising given the amount of room they have.

Now some needlework. I'm doing something with the Gilt Sylke Twist from the Plymoth Jacket Project. I looked over my photos of the jacket motifs and decided to do some strawberries and a cornflower. I've done them in detached buttonhole because...
...they are going on the top of this satin box.
I found the box for $1 at Michael's. Of course when I decided that the box would be great for needlework projects and went back, there were none left. Stay tuned for the results.

First Anniversary Musings

I realized recently that my first anniversary as a blogger came and went without me noticing. As well as blogging myself, I have been reading more blogs this year, as I discovered the wonderful online community of textile lovers. I have a bit of time to reflect on this past year and I thought I'd share my thoughts on how it has gone.



My original reason for starting a blog was to participate in the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge set up by Sharon B. I can't tell you how much I am humbled by her energy, expertise and artistic talent. While I haven't finished all the weeks (I've reached 47 although I haven't blogged it yet), I have been pushed into many new things by the challenge and I will be eternally grateful to Sharon for setting it up.


Once I started participating in Sharon's challenge, I realized that there were many, many textile blogs out there. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent looking at all the wonderful things everyone out there is doing. I've added many inspired ideas to my visual journal thanks to my blog surfing.


At that point, I was working a couple of consulting jobs from home, but in March, I was able to start working more outside the home. Many years ago I 'retired' from full time work as a library director to stay home with my children. While I was able to fit in part-time work back in NY, when we moved there weren't enough hours between my morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up times. With the change in grades I have a good stretch of time to get out now. It was great to get back into a library and work at a busy reference desk. I forgot how much I love a university atmosphere. Of course, it means less time for stitching and blogging but I usually do feel more energized and creative after a good day at work.



I have summers off for childcare, so I was able to catch up and try new things then. I wrote an article about the tapestry project I worked on with my daughter's art club (see the Dec. NeedleArts magazine). My biggest inspiration was going up to Plimoth Planation in MA to work on the reproduction jacket project. That has totally changed the direction I want to go with my embroidery.


I started back at the university again in September where I'm doing some things that I find professionally exciting (I know, you are wondering what is exciting about being a librarian, but really, it is fun) I was also asked to be on the EGA National Youth Program Committee and edit the Crayons to Threads column for NeedleArts. That was a great honour (plus I still do the chapter newsletter). And the Sampler Round Robin I am in seems to be moving again. At least I have finished one and have another to do, so that is good.


My blogging has been sporadic. I constantly question why I'm doing it and why anyone would care. But I am so inspired by others, maybe somebody will find what I do interesting as well. And since not many people blog stumpwork, I feel I need to keep going with that, just to encourage more people.


All in all, I am pleased with what I have accomplished in the last year. Especially since I have also been working at the barn one or two evenings a week for much of the year. I even took riding lessons for a while. Mind you, I can't be to complacent right now because the tree is only half decorated and there are still presents to buy.

I am looking forward to 2008. There are going to be some new work challenges, some column editing, and lots and lots of stitching. And I hope to do some work with the high school art guild in the coming year as well. I don't know if I'll participate in any more challenges though. I think I want to challenge myself to create the work that I've been planning since I first saw the 3-D embroidered gardens book. I'll keep you posted on that. I also want to explore some other ideas. Today Sharon b wrote about a new blog that has captured my interest, Red Thread Studio. Elaine Lipson writes about Slow Cloth, New Cloth and Art Cloth. I love doing hand sewing, so the idea of slow cloth really appeals to me. (One of my favourite places is the milliner's shop in Colonial Williamsburg) Elaine's third post mentions one of my favourite books Elizabeth Wayland Barber's Women's Work, The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times. There is a vague notion in my mind that somehow the ideas in Barber's book should combine with those in Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species by Sarah Hrdy to form an interesting take on why women feel and act as they do. I'm not sure what yet, but one day it will hit me.

I'm sure I've gone on long enough now, but I've at least interspersed my meanderings with some photos of current projects, and to end it all, some silk that I will be using to knit myself a lace scarf. If nothing else, over the last year I've learned that I can make something really special for myself, not just everyone else.

TAST 25 Long and Short Stitch

In my stumpwork projects I often use long and short, or at least a reasonable approximation, for shading and filling petals and leaves and such. So I thought I'd try doing counted long and short to get a real feel for the stitch. I also wanted to experiment with colours and shading so I made a rainbow band of sorts. I had a harder time than I expected getting four shades of the same sort of colour, I guess that means I need to add to my stash:-) But it was very interesting to see how the shades worked together or in some cases didn't - although I guess it would depend on the look you were going for. The small red sample is done with 2 strands of overdyed silk. I love this colour and I love the way the shading works. It would be quite different with satin stitch covering the same area so I can see the use for this stitch with overdyed threads as well.

Below is a stumpwork version of the watercolour 'portrait' of Jane Austen done by her sister Cassandra. which I have stitched using long and short.

Stumpwork project done!

Back at TAST22 Satin Stitch I showed a leaf and some petals that I was working on for a new stumpwork project. It all started out with my trying to figure out what I could do with Altoid tins, other than a tiny sewing kit, since I've become very fond of the chocolate coated Altoids and have a few tins lying around. I came up with the idea of making a book, sort of. The outside shown above is supposed to look a bit like a book, complete with gilt page edges. Instead of pages inside, I have put a stumpwork Virginia rose.

In my new spirit of creating for art's sake, this piece has no purpose and will not be a gift. I am just going to enjoy it.

I would love to hear from others who have done stitched things with Altoid tins (since I have more). I did do an online search and found all sorts of things, but most weren't stitched and I really don't want an Altoid tin mouse for my computer or an Altoid tin wallet! I am also interested in how you stick things to the tin. I have used double sided tape and some Heat n' Bond for my projects so far because I hate liquid glue.

TAST 22 Satin Stitch

I use satin stitch heavily in many of the pieces I've been working on lately, especially stumpwork. But since I slacked off last week by using what I had been working on, I thought I'd do something just for TAST this week. The inspiration for this was a fill stitch gone bad, done by somebody else, and while it didn't work for that piece, I thought it would be perfect for this. The leaves and flowers are also satin stitch.

Since I've mentioned recent projects with satin stitch, here they are. These two are petals and leaves for a wild rose stumpwork project. I'm planning a special finish for these so I'll post more photos soon.

This is the tail of a dragon I'm putting in the center of a CQ pillow for my daughter. I started the dragon back in February with the tail and discovered I needed more floss but I could no longer find the DMC colour variations I had started with. They had stopped making the all dark blue and now only had a dark blue with purple. So I blended it in by adding some purple to the tail and then getting on with the rest. So far I am happy and so is my daughter. She likes the scale effect of the chain stitch in the body. I love the way the satin stitch reflects differently with the different directions.

Finally, here is the Virginia tapestry project finished and framed. Most of the motifs were made with stain stitch because that was the easiest filler for the designs the kids drew. Some, like my daughter, thought about the direction of the fur or petal growth while stitching, others went higglety-pigglety but they still look good. This was displayed at a county festival today and well received by those who saw it. It looks like a local museum wants it for the summer, but afterwards the principal wants to keep it at the school - she even paid for the framing!

3-D Boquet DONE! (for now)

Since I had a few comments on doing the stumpwork petals for the first fritillary flower I thought I'd do the next set as a demonstration. The First on the left is the couched wire. You can see I used a plastic coated copper wire and only one wire sticks out - this is so I only have 6 wires for the stem when I'm done. This particular flower is based on a Jane Nicholas flower (unlike the others that I designed myself) and you can see a bit of wire sticking into the petal. This is because the real petals actually have a line like this that sticks out (see photo in previous post) The second petal has the wire covered in buttonhole. The third shows the start of the satin stitch layer in the lightest colour. You can see it goes under the wire that sticks into the petal. The fourth shows the finished satin stitch, with the tip of the wire under a few threads. The fifth petal shows the darning stitch used to get the checkered pattern. And the sixth is the finished petal. This time instead of detached buttonhole petals I tried doing the satin stitch on muslin technique like the petals, being very careful to make the backs completely covered.
And the completed stem, with two flowers and two leaves is below.

Then I put all my flowers together as a posy.

Now that I actually have spring flowers blooming (first tulip today) I don't feel the same urgency to design more - maybe next January. In the meantime, I have several WISPs I would like to work on, and a few other ideas in my head. The laidwork pattern I did for the TAST couching stitch looks like it would make an interesting brick pattern in a knot garden and I have been pouring over Embroidered Knot Gardens: Using Three-Dimensional Stumpwork, Canvas Work & Ribbonwork by Owen Davies and I'm thinking I might start planning!

TAST 10 Barred chain and Stumpwork Fritillary

This week I decided to try something completely different and so, inspired by Sharon B's embroidery samples I made a colourful pattern out of barred chain. It was great fun and helped me learn alot about colour combinations. I also wish I'd used more textures as well, since I was only using the one type of stitch. But all in all I'm happy with it.

Below is my first fritillary flower. I tried wrapping the wires to form the stem but I didn't like the way it looked so I went back to the floral tape. I find I can get the wires together much tighter this way, which makes a big difference when trying to bend wires to adjust the way the petals fall. I still need to do another flower and two leaves to finish the full stem. I think I'll make the petals slightly wider on the next flower because they don't' quite overlap the way they do in the picture I posted. And since none of my fritillaries are in bloom right now in the garden, I can't check a real flower.

TAST 8 Fly Stitch and stumpwork

Other commitments kept me from TAST earlier this week, but that was fine because this morning I was able to surf around the blogs and get inspired. This week I was taken with the fly stitch wheel and kaleidoscope that Mary sketched and stitched and did my own starburst sort of design. I'm also learning about colour so I tried working on a monochromatic colour scheme.

I have used fly stitch in the past as leaf and stem parts of plants.


Finally, I have been working on my latest 3D flower. This one is going to be a fritillary

Luckily I had a pattern this time, from Jane Nicholas beetle book. She has hers done as regular stumpwork with 1 full petal and two partial petals sticking out from the fabric. But I did all the petals with the one pattern and used her suggested weaving pattern - and her suggested DMC colours. I 'm making two flowers on one stem so I drew all 12 petals on the same piece of fabric, but then I realized when I had the first six done that I had to see how the flower would look. I'm still working on the stamens, but I have cut out the petals and held them together and I think it will look good. Of course that wastes some material but I just had to cut them out!

So many projects, so little time...

I am busy working on a more complicated than usual TAST sample this week, but in the meantime I wanted to share some of the different things I've been working on lately.

I finished another 3-D stumpwork flower.
ktj asked me what size they were, so here are all three I've done so far with a ruler:

My daughter had some time this weekend to draw me a dragon to stitch to put in the middle of her CQ pillow. I decided to try to imitate scales by covering the dragon in detached chain stitch (TAST 3 so I'm in practice). I've used some dark blue variegated DMC floss with a strand of peacock blending filament. I hate blending filament but it looks nice - hard to see in the photo but in real life it just gives a bit of extra depth to the colour.

I've also been working on this year's President's Challenge for my EGA chapter. Some Stitching Post members may remember that I wanted advice on what to put in a fabric envelope, because the challenge is to stitch an envelope and send a token gift to another member in it. The recipient is a secret until it arrives. It also has to have a holiday theme - although any sort of special day will do (maybe Talk Like a Pirate Day?). So I'm sending a spring envelope. This scene - based on some DMC charts - is under the envelope flap so it won't get ruined in the mail. It has been fun to design the envelope, but now I have to line it and sew it up so I hope it works!

ORCHIDS

I LOVE orchids! Ever since I saw the pansies in posy holders made by Marsha Papay-Gomola at EGA National I have been thinking about making a 3-D stumpwork orchid. Well, one of the Stitching Post members did one that is wonderful. I hope this link works:
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/celeste_stitch/photo/294928804206158194/0

Celeste mentions that she has a couple of orchids in bloom at home that she will try next. Not wanting to wait for mine to bloom (I have three sending up buds right now) I went to the Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden in Richmond, VA and had my fill of orchids at the conservatory. Here is a selection of photos - my husband took them while I just stood and stared! Imagine dozens of orchids like these in a tropical waterfall setting - pictures can't do it justice.




I am working on a daffodil for my spring bouquet right now but as soon as I figure out how to do these colours, I think I'll try an orchid.

Guilt and a new flower

Kate left me the comment that she laughed at my guilt about using ribbon because she had guilt without being Hungarian or Jewish. I have this theory that there are different types of guilt that could maybe be different nationalities of guilt, I'll have to do some research.

I learned the never use the new/good stuff yourself guilt from my grandmother - actually my Namama, my childish corruption of the Hungarian for grandmother. When I was in university I lived with Namama and one year I decided to get her a new bathrobe for Christmas. She was using a ratty old thing that my mother had made at least 25 years before in high school home ec class. The terry loops were worn off in many places and it couldn't have been very comfortable. So I purchased a beautiful new butter-coloured terry robe for her. Of course she wouldn't wear it. It sat around for 2 years then she gave it to me. Well, I graduated, moved out, did my Master's, got married, and moved out of the country. Then she came to visit. By that time, the butter-coloured robe was my old, back-up robe. Namama didn't want to pack her bathrobe and so she asked to borrow one, so I lent her the old robe. Believe it or not, and I'm sure you will, she decided she now like it and took it home with her and used it until she died 10 years later! So you must admit that I learned self denial guilt from a master.

I'm getting better though because as mentioned before, I'm keeping my stumpwork tulip instead of giving it away, and now I've made some forget-me-nots. It was quite a challenge to get the flowers so small and figure out what to do with the stems. I wrapped most of the wire stems, but for the extra flowers, I purchased some 32 gauge covered florist's wire (it was only $1.29 for a whole spool so there was no guilt).

I tried first with some detached chain stitch, but the flower was too big, although I think I'll use it later for some other technique.

TAST 3 Chain stitch part 2

This is a roundel from one of Jane Nicholas' books. I love the swirling lines and thought it would be fund to do it all with chain stitch and a few variations. I thought it would be nice to do an actual picture for practice now and then, rather than just rows of stitches.

As an update on my tulip, post below, after sleeping on it, I decided that I would keep it for myself and do a whole mini- bouquet and make another tulip for my mother. Thanks to everyone here and on Stitching Post for the comments. Christine suggested using floral parafilm or really stretching the floral tape, so I'm going to work on getting the stem right on the second tulip and future flowers. Some people were quite understanding about me obsessing about the stem. Usually I am happy with what I do but every once and a while, something just gets me and I can't think of the whole picture. At least now I have an excuse and some ideas to try again, and again...

Christine is from Australia so I have no idea if I can get floral parafilm here. I know about regular parafilm for using in laboratories. Many years ago, about 20, I used to wait around for my husband as he finished experiments for his PhD, and I would make mini parafilm sculptures after balling up a square and warming it up to make it pliable. If people can make duct tape sculptures, why not parafilm!

Thinking of Spring

As a gardener, I've always started thinking of spring flowers in January. Even though they come sooner here in VA than they did in Canada, I still long for spring. And the two yellow crocus that came out during the heat wave last weekend don't count for me.

So I made my own tulip to help me feel like spring is coming. This is for the posy holder in my earlier post:Life, needlework and everything: Lapel pins



When I first finished the tulip, my husband said " This is your best yet but what about inside? People are going to look inside." So I went back to the drawing board and finished the inside.



Then I made a leaf of detached buttonhole in a wire frame. All in all, I'm very happy with the way it has turned out, since it really was a total experiment with no planning. I'm still not sure about what to do with the stem though. The consensus here at home is that the floral tape is fine but part of me feels that it should be covered in thread. But then it will be thicker and won't look in proportion to the flower. Any suggestions?

Lapel pins

Back in October at the EGA National Seminar, I took a one day course from Marsha Papay-Gomola to learn stumpwork and make the Autumn Lapel Pin (left). I made it as a gift for my mother. When it was done, my daughter told me I needed to make her a pin for each season so I designed and stitched the Christmas pin with holly, ivy and mistletoe. It was great fun. Now I'm working on a tulip which you can see the start of below. Today I realized that even with a couple of tulip leaves, the wire stem, which will be covered in florist's tape, will still show and I think it will be too thich if I try to stitch around it. So I'm thinking of a bunch of forget-me-nots to cover the stem. I'll post photos soon since I'm on the last tulip petal.