A Family Concern

Two of our grandchildren were with us this week. Gramps used his CAD program to draw hearts of various sizes, stars and even Christmas trees. The children cut out the patterns - I cut and stitched the fabric pieces which they stuffed. The real fun followed - they raided my sequin stash and these are a couple of examples. (Only a 10 year old boy would want a smiley on his ornament)!

Embroiderywise, I am trying to make up my mind what might constitute a series. What sort of linkage is necessary to form a unified collection of a number of pieces on the same theme?

The same, or toning, colours and possibly stitches. Do I need aspects of both? Can I do something else? Do I need to make sure that the same style of embroidery is used in each piece? Any ideas on this subject?I would be most grateful for any input.

I have started. I only have a fairly basic idea of what I want to do and it is very fluid at this stage. I am not sure how many pieces there will be. The only given is the subject matter - gum trees (eucalypts), their bark patterns, leaves etc.. My inspiration is no further than the back door and any number of different leaf shapes turn up on the lawn each day. The box lid embroidery in the last entry will not be part of this exercise as it is intended for a gift but I would like to make another piece quite similar. So please don your thinking caps and share your thoughts.

A little stitching accomplished

Stitching life has been fairly slow lately. Waterlilies is finished - well the hardanger embroidery is complete but I intend to make a cushion cover and that will take some time. I think that my future forays into hardanger will avoid those pesky picots. They really seemed to defeat me and spoil an otherwise acceptable piece of embroidery.

Nonetheless I have done some stitching which I really enjoyed. (Sometimes I ask myself why I don't just stick to my comfort zone instead of attempting techniques beyond my capabilities). Also this was stitched at a leisurely pace and that was a nice bonus.

This is the lid for another box . There were seven boxes in all - five became gifts last Christmas. This means I have one left for us. The design is offering a challenge at the moment but I guess it will suddenly appear clear.

Moving on! Carefully now!

The eyelets are finished - couldn't stop, could I?

The threads are cut (without mistakes so far, thank goodness) and I am ready to start the first section of needleweaving. Yvette's instructions in the book are clear.

A new perspective

They say a change is as good as a holiday but, while I can't exactly agree with that statement, I do think a change can give you a new perspective. Recently we rearranged our living area and a woven hanging that was originally over the sideboard near the dining table is now overlooking the lounge chairs. This morning as I drank my coffee I realised just how wonderful the hanging looked from that position. Here it is - the lighting is fairly minimal but the effect is very obvious.

A full sized hanging and the lit section. Quite difficult to believe that this is actually a flat two dimensional piece of fabric mounted on a stretched canvas!

A shadow weave with two shadows using single colour gold weft but three colours,red, white and blue, in its warp. It is also not quite conventional shadow weave in that the spacing between the shadows is not exactly even - a real 'what if' experiment.

A Week's Progress

The kloster blocks are finished for the Waterlilies piece - the eyelets come next. The interesting thing about doing a piece of this size as in comparison with the small samples I made earlier is that I am suddenly getting a feel for Hardanger design. Not that I am capable of designing a piece yet but the understanding is increasing.

I did stitch 9 eyelets this morning (Who is counting? Just 39 to go! ) but no photos yet.

Mainly Hardanger.

Firstly the needleweaving from Jenny Gelden's book - some are better than others - ah well, one should always leave room for improvement!

I have joined a SAL that Yvette Stanton mentioned on her blog. To stitch this piece of Hardanger with Yvette available for assistance just seemed too good an opportunity to miss so I ignored my inner voice that said "You can never manage to keep up - ever!"

So far so good! In any case I have decided that I can work at my own pace and will still learn as I plod along. This is a couple of weeks' worth of stitching. I can only stitch using a magnifying lens so this will be slow going.

In the meantime I am also working on my thread painting, again at snail's pace, and trying out some pulled thread work on some fairly heavy handwoven cotton fabric.

A Finish

After a period of inactivity - a very pleasurable family visit followed by a nasty cold resulted in no stitching in this house for more than three weeks - I have spent my spare moments this week with my Gum Trees. Sadly the colours I have chosen are not easy to photograph and the effect in reality is slightly different.

I found this very enjoyable despite some stitching that needed unstitching - a small price to pay for designing on the run. This is where I decided to stop ( always a difficult decision to make, I have found).

I think I have followed Sharon's Sumptuous Surfaces guidelines despite the low level texture in the finished piece. That class was so good and I learnt so much - I keep hoping she will offer Sumptuous Surfaces 102 some day soon - hint hint.

There are only four stitches used - satin stitch, stem stitch, wave stitch and foursided stitch and the thread is all cotton perle , #8 and #12. I deliberately changed the size of the 4 sided stitch in the leaves in a couple of places - not sure whether to leave it or try again - this show up only in the enlarged version.