08.27.10
Posted in General at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Liberty Sofa Cover Design
The great shower curtain (which I’m now considering prick and pounce for transferring after all… ) is a Victorian variation on the tree of life pattern that became so popular in Renaissance needlework.
No one is really sure whether European needlework influenced middle eastern and Indian woven textiles that were imported, or whether it was the other way around. Like so many things in history, the truth is probably that they influenced each other, and both developed because of it.
Often at the bottom of these designs live lions and lambs in harmony, hunters chasing deer as a symbol of the human journey (no harmony there!) and every other emblem and symbol the Jacobean embroiderer could fit in — these were the people who sewed rebuses into the hems of their dresses, after all! (I’ll look up my reference for that later…. it’s in a book upstairs in the extremely hot studio (the AC still not fixed… we’re getting there, slowly!)
I’m partial to the quiet little plant-ridden hillocks on the bottom of this design. Although I might be tempted to slip in a rabbit (or squirrel) if my husband isn’t watching.
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08.25.10
Posted in General at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Choreography? 
They have a lot in common, really. Kind of surprising on the surface, but not so much as you dig deeper. Everything has a structure, and physicists are finding that mathematically, everything is related.
I’ve been playing with stitches in crewelwork lately. Often I fall back on old standards that I know work, because they have for centuries – long and short stitch, satin, chain stitch, stem stitch, the occasional french or colonial knot. Blanket stitch and I don’t get along particularly well if I’m not covering wire, and I’ve just recently re-discovered a love for Palestrina knots.
Repetition and Variation
I got to thinking about how similar placing stitches into a design is to placing dance steps in a choreography. The same design rules apply. You need repetition to make sure that your viewer doesn’t get overwhelmed or lost — it creates a safe place – and you need variation or it gets boring quickly.
In dance, we call it the “rule of four.” It takes four repetition for a viewer to get to the “Yeah, OK, I’ve seen that” point – so you can change it up with a bit of surprise on the fourth repetition – 3 hip circles and a figure 8 with the hips for example (or three 8s and a big circle, for that matter…) I can achieve an undulating flow by alternating moves, a-b, a-b, or hip snap, circle, hip snap, circle.
Click for larger image
And this is applicable to needlework, too! (Really – watch me!)
For example, you can use color as in the top wing feathers here – red/blue, red/blue. Or in stitches – stem stitch filling, chain, stem, chain. I did the latter on the bottom wing, with a subtle color addition, too. (And note that the top feather is the equivalent of the 4th rep variation ( it’s a raised stem stitch right now… but I’m considering ripping it out and making it plain stem stitch… it just seems jarring.)
The trellis work grid pattern on the leaves provides repetition and the size change gives it variation.
How do you use repetition and variation? Even if all you do is geometric cross stitch designs, do you ever replace a color with beads? Use more than one color?
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08.18.10
Posted in Artwork at 11:53 am by deRomilly
Precious Kitty!
It’s something you sometimes hear in art circles – “Don’t get too precious” “Don’t be precious about it!” “Keep your work fresh, not precious.” Precious connotes perfectionism – sometimes overworking, sometimes underworking a piece in order to get it “just so.” For some reason, this is considered bad. (I’m a perfectionist…) But who am I to talk? When a friend complained about a town being too “twee,” I said, but I LOVE that town! (I also never told her that I was planning ot move there… and in fact, I didn’t – I fell in love and moved 2500 miles away instead!) maybe “precious” is in my blood.
You don’t hear the word precious thrown around in American needlework circles very often – sometimes I’ll hear it in the more avant-garde UK textile forums. I have, however, have had acquaintances tell me that American stitchers tend to replace creativity in design with perfect craftsmanship. Indeed, needlework kits feel the need to underscore “the back should look as good as the front.” And there is a fear here that someone will turn over your work and analyze the back… (I do, but not for neatness… I want to know HOW they did what they did!!)
Note on the photo – I’ve never met a cat named Precious that wasn’t psychotic and scary. 
Dora is NOT named precious, but she has the nickname of The Cuteness… does that count?
I’m not sure where I’m going with this ramble. So let me ask y’all a question – are spontaneity and craftsmanship deadly enemies? Can we have spontaneous, fresh design and still keep quality of stitching? Can stitching be taken into the “real art” world without sacrificing this?
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08.16.10
Posted in General at 1:26 pm by deRomilly
Sock Yarn for embroidery!
My yarn for the test stitching for the shower curtain came on Saturday (ordered it from Knitpicks, and it always arrives so fast)! I am a very happy camper. I only messed up color wise on about three skeins, so I can work on looking that up. I decided to work up a cafe curtain in a similar design to use on the window, and to test out the stitching – it will give me the opportunity to test stitches, and see how much thread I’m really going to need without guessing. One of the catches to using sock yarn is that because it isn’t designed for embroidery, colors change seasonally. Sometimes drastically!
The colors that don’t work in this pile are pretty obvious, the bright yellow on the right, and the very light blue at the bottom. There are two other blues that are too close together in shade… if I can find one in between, the light blue might work after all…
So now I’m off to transfer the smaller cafe curtain design to the fabric and start playing! Yay!!! (oh, wait. There’s other work that needs to be done first. Darn real life!)
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08.13.10
Posted in General at 7:00 am by deRomilly
As you walk in the door.
Seems appropriate for a Friday the 13th. My confession – My studio is beyond a mess. 
A year ago I realized that my studio needed some serious attention. Despite working toward that goal, I’ve failed in that, but have a renewed push toward that direction.
Recently I’ve been going through my yarns, realizing that many of them = especially the cheaper varieties, were purchased for specific reasons that just aren’t going to happen — hair for “tribaret” or tribal dance costumes, for example. So I’ve started giving it away. I’m keeping the sock yarn – I still knit socks! And the yarn for one or two specific projects. I also haven’t decided what to do with the undyed lace yarn. I may skein it and dye it for embroidery. It’s very thin crewel-like.
But last week I came home with my dream drawing table — the one I’ve wanted for 20 years. And realized that although I’ve gone through SOME of the yarn, and the studio was usable for a while, it needs a concerted effort to turn it into a place of business. And that’s really what it needs to be. So LOTS more weeding to do – it’s now unusable entirely because of this! – and some serious rebuilding. First step – get the air conditioning fixed up there – it’s been unusable in the heatwave for the last three weeks, just on the basis of temperature.
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As you walk in the door.
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The pseudo-sewing area.
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Believe it or not, this is where the drawing table is going…
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