02.27.09
Posted in Classes, Dance at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Not much time today — I’ve got to work a half day and then come home and change and put on make up and go all the way across town for a bellydance performance.
Luckily, I’m (theoretically) up near the beginning of the show, so I’ll get to enjoy watching the rest of them without worrying about whether or not I’m going to fall off of the stage or bean someone with my zill (finger cymbal).
The show is the beginning of a weekend-long workshop, so I won’t be posting my yellow post until Sunday afternoon at the earliest. Hopefully I’ll have bellydance pictures for you, too!
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02.25.09
Posted in Design Theory at 7:00 am by deRomilly
For years I designed little cross stitch designs, all the while claiming I couldn’t draw. And I still hold the belief that not drawing shouldn’t keep you from designing pieces you want on your wall, especially if you can’t find a designer who designs just exactly what you want.
Options for the non-drawing designer!
- Make geometric counted work by making shapes on graph paper and repeating, rotating and connecting them. Yes, this is how I come up with some of my more elaborate pillow patterns, as well as my small motifs for my samplers.
- “Specialty” stitches make nice band samplers, vertical, horizontal, and round on different fabrics, worked in squares or shapes, and so on.
- Free embroidery can be designed from your own drawings, yes, but you can also combine sources of images from copyright-free materials, for example, Dover pictorial archives (royalty free), or other clipart. If it’s for personal use, you might work needlework from a coloring book page (note: be very aware of who owns the copyright of any image you plan to use on something to sell or display, whether it’s your stitching design or a finished object. If in doubt, write to the artist or the publisher or to be really safe, both, and ask permission. The worst they can do is say no or ask for a portion of the sales for royalties, and most artists are extremely friendly when approached politely. You might even make a new friend!) Personally, I still sometimes use the Dover series, especially the book and CD combos – the computer makes it really easy to copy, paste, resize, rotate, and otherwise mess with the image until it’s something I want to stitch.
Note: Dover also will send you sample pages weekly of some of their pictorial archives if you sign up for them at the Dover Website click on Free Samples in the menu bar at the top.
- The Dover and clipart method can also be used to create cross stitch by tracing the outline onto graph paper and then playing wth colored pencils to color in the appropriate squares. This takes practice, but actually is the same method I use with my own artwork when designing. This can also work with photos you have taken, and you can also use a program such as PatternMaker by Hobbyware, or PC Stitch to do this playing quicker, with DMC or Anchor colors, and then print a chart directly from the software. These programs will also take your artwork or photo and convert it directly into a needlework chart, but I don’t recommend that method – the design generated is usually huge, uses a huge number of thread colors one or two stitches at a time to visually blend the color in the photo. Basically you get a huge mosaic design that once stitched you need to stand across the room from to actually see the image. It can be an interesting exercise, it can be a nice starting point if you want to clean it up by hand, but I find that tracing the outlines and choosing my own colors produces a better product in the long run.
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02.23.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:00 am by deRomilly
I have put several needleworked/embroidered pins up on my Etsy shop. The original intention was to get them up early enough to be available for the holidays. Unfortunately, life really intervened! I thought you might like a few details of my thought process on these -
The first three are embroidered beadwork. The purple ones were created a couple years ago as I bean playing with found objects. The main purple focal point cabochons are rescued from a vintage pair of earrings. For earrings (posts, no less!!) they are huge. but re-purposed into a brooch for someone’s jacket they work beautifully.
The cameo at the center of the white piece was a gift from an artist friend years ago that has been looking for a home ever since. I like how it fits here. The surrounding beadwork on all three of these grew organically, which is a very different method from the very structured way I usually work embroidery. Mostly I just added beads until encrusted. With the asymmetric purple pin I spent a lot of time forcing myself to keep it asymmetric, because my personality always leans me toward perfect symmetrical balance; something that can become boring over the long run. I’m working on it!
The off-white and green triangle I’ve decided to keep. It’s more symmetrical, less organic, and more my typical style, and I’ve fallen in love with it.
As a bonus, here are photos of a work in progress – it’s a commission for a local tribal-style dancer and drummer who loves copper and can’t have anything up near her throat – it will sit at the collarbone when I get the band on it. It still needs assembly and then drops or fringe added. I’m inordinately proud of it.
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02.21.09
Posted in Design Theory at 9:39 pm by deRomilly
I was right. Orange is difficult to find in spring in a way that *I* consider pretty.
There are a lot of construction flags. I was trying to avoid actually taking pictures of oranges or carrots. I didn’t manage it. But here we go:
The orange sweatshirt on the construction guy with all the orange traffic cones in his truck:
First I felt the need to cheat and use the doodle I did on an orange scratch pad at work:
I resorted to photographing the ads:
I found the orange lid of the glue at the office:
Then I noticed that the book I’m knitting from has a great deal of orange in it:
And I finally resorted to food: oranges, and then noticed the baker’s chocolate in the baking cupboard of things I can no longer eat:
And I took a close up of the bag for the oranges because as well as being a beautiful deep orange, the texture was just so cool!
So. Did YOU find anything neat and orange this week? Trackback or post a comment so I can see, too!
Edited to add: Next week… Yellow!
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02.16.09
Posted in Stitching Genres at 7:00 am by deRomilly
As I’ve noted here before, I collect historic needlework books, including the facsimile editions of Weldon’s practical needlework that Piecework put out several years ago.
In these volumes (and in the early 20th century Weldon’s Encyclopedia of Needlework that a friend gave me) is a canvaswork style they call “Ivory Embroidery.”
Weldon’s says, “The work is known as ‘Ivory Embroidery’ fom the fact that its being entirely executed in white, at least as far as the filings are concerned. Silk is used in preference to cotton as being more glossy, and filoselle is more useful than any other make, as being readily splet and used coarse or fine to suit the requirements of any particular portion of the pattern.”
It goes on to describe various canvas stitches – mosaic, byzantine, etc. that we use in modern needlepoint. They never mention if you stitch the background: indeed some of the partial patterns they show indicate that you might not…
It sounds absolutely beautiful. But I’ve got a problem. When it talks about designs, it says they are available for sale. there is no image of a finished project (at least not that is easily interpreted.) I haven’t been able to find a clue as to the type of design considered suitable in the day. (Or that nagging question about background, either). In addition, the only reference I can find for this type of work is IN Weldon’s. No one else seems to talk about it, nor have I found even one extant example.
Has anyone seen an actual design for one of these? Or an extant example you can point me toward? I’m fascinated by the idea and I’d really like to see an original.
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