Inventive Needlework, by Shay Pendray, was designed with the needlepointer in mind. All of the examples are painted canvasses, and the techniques are described for working on painted canvas.
While I adore painted canvasses, and dream of sitting down and stitching one –I’ve even bought several — they are usually the last thing I choose to work on. Frankly, they are one of those projects that I want to enjoy the finished product, rather than the journey to get there.
One day this book may change my behavior. In the meantime, the way she challenges you to look at designs in a different way has changed my approach to most of my work. Shay Pendray encourages her reader to think outside the box of tent/basketweave stitch for canvasses - or even beyond the counted stitches in general. She utilizes crewelwork, long and short stitch shading techniques, metal thread embroidery, and even some stumpwork techniques to take the painted canvas beyond pillow or rug and will into the area of Art.
Even if your favorite technique is cross stitch, you could use some of these techniques over the top of your work. It’s expanded my vision into integrating more and more different techniques together. Sometimes simple is better. Other times getting extravagant can be really really cool!
I have, somewhere in my mess of a studio — a doodle cloth that I took with me to many of the classes I took at the Creative Arts and Textiles Shows (CATS, now sadly extinct).
They are, in a very literal way, true samplers. Moreso even than the ones I usually work on my own to play with patterns, colors and stitches. They are totally random, have no pattern to speak of, and have often been abandoned because of this lack of integrity.
Over the years I have taken to focussing more on where I place stitches on this type of thing - and my doodle cloths are taking on a more coherent sampler-y feel. More, actually, like a colorful version of my pen and ink doodling - where I tend to attempt to make every stroke count as a basis/practice for larger abstract works. Not that the true samplers will ever look like those, though! But I find myself transferring the pen and ink to fabric and stitching them more and more as well, as in the photo. Maybe I’m just getting brighter again (or having a second childhood) whatever it is, I think I’m enjoying it!
As I write this draft (on Nov. 21), we are having our first flurries of the year here in the Piedmont of North Carolina - by the time it’s posted we will probably be back to our normal mild Thanksgiving weather — but I rather hope not.
Last night the end of my cherry tomatoes, which were making a valiant efort for one last crop, froze (they couldn’t do much else, at 20 degrees fahrenheit!). The lettuce, insulated by a layer of fallen leaves, was apparently alive when I left this morning. If it’s still that way when I get home, I’ll harvest it.
And yet — the snow is undeniably pretty. Winter is officially here finally - we missed it completely last year. Its arrival makes me happy. Perhaps the only thing that could make it better would be to be at home with a cup of tea and my needlework instead of grabbing a quick break with a cup of tea at the day job.
I realized this morning that I haven’t done any designs featuring snow or winter holidays. Ever. Which is kind of interesting, since it’s my favorite time of the year. Maybe I should think about it a little more deeply!
I have a bit of an addiction. If it’s a stitch dictionary, if I don’t already own it I am probably standing there considering buying it. Recently I have become more adept at turning myself down when that inner child starts begging, “but MOMMY, it’s a stitch dictionary! I WANT it!!!”
A-Z of Embroidery Stitches: v. 2
Until this one. Now, you have to understand - I don’t own the first volume. Not because I don’t want to - if I find it reasonably priced I’ll probably buy it, too. (I also hate incomplete sets, even if you don’t need all the volumes!)
I bought this volume because it came highly recommended for crazy quilters. I’m always looking for new stitches and combinations of stitches, even though I don’t often do crazy quilting.
Because this is a companion volume, it is missing the very basic stitches that you find in most stitch dictionaries. For me, with all those dictionaries on my shelf, this is itself an advantage. There is an introductory section on how your choice of thread - twist direction, tightness, ribbon, etc, may effect the look of a stitch, how to keep work clean in a hoop, and how to choose the right needle. The tips provided may even prove useful for the experienced embroiderer — I know I found ideas I hadn’t thought of or ever been taught.
The stitches themselves are illustrated with step by step photographs that make it very easy to reproduce them on your own fabric. And the entire book is filled with spot illustrations of vintage tools, and also of completed projects from various Country Bumpkin publications. All in all, a pretty book that I look forward to using until beyond the point it wears out!
I’d been without time to read my blogs for a while and when I came back, I couldn’t find Sharon B’s blog! I was horrified. Just a little wandering to her main website later and I discovered she’s moved again. Back to a custom url.
If you are having trouble finding her, she’s now at www.pintangle.com. I’m amending my link in the blogroll, too. She’s moved all the comments and old posts there, too, so you won’t miss much if anything, either.
Right now there are only a few of my id/flash drive lanyards, but I’m hoping to add several bead-embroidery brooches and goldwork pendants soon. Textiles are, after all, my forte. I feel a little silly that my first foray back into business has been strung beadwork when it really isn’t what I’m known for!
But within a week Golden Circle Designs will be back up and legal. This weekend I’m going to layout all the existing designs into a current publishing program. And I’m still playing with website design. I’d REALLY like people to be able to download the designs in pdf form immediately after payment. But I’m thinking that might not be workable right now. So I’m still doing research…
This is a post for Mary Corbet, who posted this summer about the Inspirations camels, and for whom I promised to search for the photos. I was lucky enough to find them.
I’ve read Inspirations Magazine constantly for the past many years — I didn’t realize just how many until I pulled up these photos and found I’d stitched them in 2004! Now I really feel old! I’ve been reading the magazine for a long time before that, too…
Usually I read the projects and get inspired and go off and do my own thing. But when the camels found their way into my hands, I was happily ensconced in my bellydance troupe and looking for a way to thank them all for the wonderful times they’d given me. These were perfect!
I stitched them individually on small pieces of Weeks Dye works hand dyed wool felt for each of the troupe members. This let me try out the stitches and experiment with the specialty threads on the blankets — since I couldn’t get many of the Austrailian threads in the states at that time - and didn’t have the money to order them all at once.
The wool flannel blanketing for the blanket came from Jenny June before the owner folded the business (I’m still bummed about that closure…let me go pout in a corner for a while). I got the last yard she had of the blanketing. There is still enough for me to stitch the camel sequel for me (Inspirations # 43), but I haven’t gotten around to it.
If you have access to this magazine, sadly no longer easily available, I highly recommend this project! It’s quick and fun, and absolutely stunning in person. As usual, click the photos to enlarge them. I still see the camel on black every week at a friend’s when I go to rehearsal with my new troupe, Phoenix Rising (which shares two of our old members in addition to me) and I’m still honored that it hangs on her entryway wall.
It really isn’t her embroidery technique that makes Helen Steven’s work so wonderful. It’s her eye, which she turns to the countryside around her cottage, history, and to myth, that is inspiring.
She has a long list of books to her name, many of which are out of print at the moment, I especially love Myth and Magic of Embroidery, which includes her mythological work as well as her nature studies. Very pretty, and the words that go with the pictures are carefully chosen to pull you deep into the moods of the pieces she showcases.
Her newer books have taken the quick technique overview from the back of her coffee table books and brought it front and center as master classes. Working the projects in these books will give you an understanding of silk shading that is unparalleled. And the designs are her usual gorgeousness (all right, so maybe it isn’t a word, but it ought to be!)
She has masterclass books on animals, butterflies, landscapes, gardens, and flowers and I cherish each one I own. They are as beautiful and almost as lush to read as her overview books. Read just to lose yourself in the English countryside for a while!
My mother doodled all the time. — she made little geometric designs on napkins, scratch paper, letters… once she even doodled in ballpoint pen all the way around my father’s good drafting tape (on the EDGES, not the main part — she ruined the whole roll) I took the heat for that one - mom wasn’t home when he found it and “she knew better,” so I was obviously lying. Well, yes, she did, but it didn’t stop her. and I didn’t, at that time, doodle at all.
Why not? Doodling was hard for me. I’d ask Mom or friends how they did it, “Just turn off your brain and move your pen” was the answer. But I couldn’t seem to achieve both of those things at the same time, although I am perfectly capable of doing either at once (and I’m capable of turning off my brain and dancing!). What I realized much later is that the “turning off your brain part isn’t really necessary - what they really meant was “make your brain get out of the way for a while.”
Doodling, like rough drafts of writing, requires you to turn off the inner critic that says to you “but you’re not accomplishing anything. That’s not REALLY art!”
Well, no, it’s not. It’s the building blocks of the practice of art, however. Think of it as a brainstorming activity - it doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t have to be finished, it just has to BE.
Geometric Doodling
I have a few rules I set myself when I doodle geometrically. They were very effective in getting me started on geometric doodling.
Start with a small iconographic image in one corner. I use flags, flowerpots, a smiley face, hearts, a stylized cat, anything I can quickly churn out.
Draw a diagonal line from that image across the page in some way.
Add a ribbon over the middle of the page. The image is sacred, but I’ll cross any other lines with the ribbon.
Start filling in spaces with random patterns. I played roleplaying games for years, so sometimes I’ll role a polyhedral die to decide what to put where. Things I often use, set up for rolling two six sided die are (when you roll a number, fill the space with the description:
2 Wavy lines or wavy stripes
3 Dots
4 Large cowspots (blobs)
5 Concentric outlines
6 Lines radiating from any point
7 Checker Board grid
8 Stripes
9 Spirals
10 Checkerboard made from radiating lines
11 Crescents
12 Cross hatching
Repeat the last step until all the spaces are filled or you are bored out of your mind. (Or it looks cool to you and you want to stop!)
Organic Doodling
These are the first doodles I taught myself to do in high school.
Take your pencil and draw a squiggle. It actually works better if you don’t actually look at the page while you’re scribbling.
Open your eyes and look at what you have scrawled. Stare at it until you see something in it — like looking for cloud shapes in the sky.
Darken the outline of whatever you see. Instant (sort of) doodle!
Or, draw your squiggle large and use the list of geometric fillers to fill in the spaces.
Expand your horizons and try different combinations when doodling. Pretty soon you will be doodling with the best of them! And sometimes, those doodles can inspire embroidery!
Doodles that are currently inspiring embroidery pieces, though they aren’t on fabric yet:
Needles - now there’s a question worth pursuing. Using the right or wrong needle can make or break a foray into a new needlework technique.
Often people, even teachers, will assume “a needle is a needle is a needle…” and provide either a sharp or blunt point depending on the ground fabric. Choosing the right needle takes more into account than “is this counted work or not? Do I care if I pierce the ground fabric?”
There are at least three questions to ask yourself when choosing a needle.
Does the fabric justify a blunt needle? If the fabric is a loose weave, or you will be doing work where you need to not pierce the fabric threads (like cross stitch or pulled work) , then you probably want to use a blunt (tapestry) needle.
If I need a sharp needle, what kind of eye? Sharp needles come in several eye shapes. Each has its own properties.
ChenilleNeedles - a wide eye, usually quite a bit wider than the pointed end. These needles were created for stitching very fuzzy chenille (caterpiller in French) thread, and open up large holes in the fabric so the thread can go through without damage. This can be useful for ribbon embroidery. as well as thick threads.
Crewel Needles (also known as Embroidery needles) - The eyes on these are also a bit bigger than the body of the needle, and were designed to keep fabric from rubbing on crewel wool as you stitch. Depending on the size of the ribbon, this also may be a good choice for ribbon embroidery, because it doesn’t create holes as large as the chenille needle.
Milliner’s (straw) Needles - Developed for the hat-making trade, these needles are generally longer in length, and the eye is the same size as the body of the needle. Because of this, straw needles are perfectly suited to knot stitches and stitches that require pulling the needle through wrapped threads.
Betweens - This basic quilting/sewing needle has a medium eye. It’s usually quite short, and designed for easily and quickly making even running stitches.
Japanese hand embroidery needles - These needles are hand made and quite expensive.
What size needle do I need? Once you have decided on needle type, you are now faced with a boggling array of sizes of needles. Needle size refers to the thickness of the needle. It controls how large the hole created in the fabric is, and is just as applicable to blunt needles as to sharp ones.Usually you should select a needle based on the kind of thread you are using. You want to be able to pull the thread easily through the hole made in the fabric without much rubbing, but you want the hole small enough that it’s not noticeable in the finished work. Here are the basic guidelines I use. You will need to do some experimenting to find what works best for you:
Stranded Floss - 1 strand
Tapestry needles - 28 or 26
Embroidery & Milliner’s - 8-10
Stranded Floss - 2-3 strands
Tapestry - 26 or 24
Embroidery & Milliner’s - 6-8
Stranded Floss - 4-6 strands
Tapestry - 20-22
Embroidery & Milliner’s - I wouldn’t, I’d switch to a chenille needle!
She’s moved all the comments and old posts there, too, so you won’t miss much if anything, either.
