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.

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?

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?

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!)

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.

Crewel Bird...

While I’m finishing up the design work for the big huge shower curtain project from the depths of my over-commitment (yes, I’m getting cold feet… a little!), I’ve been working on this little bird – he’s 8 inches or so tall, and so far worked in long and short stitch. I’m sure there will be other stitches soon, but I do tend to lean towards the simple, effective use of a few stitches, despite my love of the baroque!

He comes from an old Dover iron-on transfer book Jacobean Crewel Embroidery. (It looks like this is out of print these days…)

He’s being stitched on cotton canvas, and I’m doing him in the Paternayan tapestry wool I’ve had in the cupboard for years. He’d fit in in the new bathroom, but won’t be remotely washable. Maybe I’ll actually make him into yet another pillow (I seem to have gone pillow-happy since I broke my fear of making them…)

A Bird in the hoop...

Interesting slant on things

]]> http://stitchingwithashimmy.com/2010/08/11/another-project-from-the-ufo-box/feed/ 2 http://stitchingwithashimmy.com/2010/08/09/crewel-work-yay/ http://stitchingwithashimmy.com/2010/08/09/crewel-work-yay/#comments Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:18:44 +0000 deRomilly http://stitchingwithashimmy.com/?p=1035 The linen for the shower curtain arrived Thursday, astonishing me with the speed of its arrival. It is, as I write this, drying after its quick trip through the washing machine.

It wasn’t quite what I expected, but I can blame myself for not ordering a swatch before I bought it — and it is very pretty in a rustic way. I may wash it a couple more times to soften it before I stitch it. Linen gets softer with use, but I don’t really want to wash the wool stitching — even washable wool – constantly.

So I have the linen, the design is being enlarged – almost 1/2 way there at this point. The leaves are about 10 to 11 inches long. I think it will be gorgeous in the heavy wool on the coarse linen.

Now I get to play with color. I haven’t ordered the yarn yet. Much fun!!!

Liberty Sofa Cover Design

So, I decided to go ahead with a new shower curtain — we’ve been talking about going gothic in the hall bathroom – gothic the time period, not gothic the lifestyle, although there is some overlap there….

Really, it’s going to end up being a Victorianesque pastishe of the medieval period, which is fine by me. A long time ago I started stitching a shower curtain that inluded a border of German Brickstitch work. That border broke me. There’s no way I’ll finish it!

What I have decided to do instead is based on last week’s post, and a Victoran design from an old book from Liberty of London. The original was designed for a sofa cover – 36 inches by 62 inches. I printed it out from the catalog at just under 8 1/2 by 11, and am currently enlarging it using the old fashioned grid method to 42 X 63 inches, which will fit our tub nicely. I think eitehr the reproduction scan was skewed, or I stretched it in printing, because I can’t get the ratios to work out to what the catalog says the original is, but I don’t think it matters TOO much.

There is a nice heavy plainweave linen on order from fabrics-store.com, and I am going to attempt this in washable sock yarn from Knitpicks.

I’ll walk through this project as I go, although it’s not high on the priority list for finishing right now, but it is a lot of fun to plan!

I’m still contemplating the Art Nouveau piece — I’ve traced it to size, and simplified for stitching, but I’m still debating fabric choices! I thought I had picked out the one I wanted to use – a nice, soft black cotton that I had on hand, but now I’m not sure again. I’m wondering if something a bit smoother might go better.  <sigh> When the right fabric jumps out at me I’ll know and be able to start work for real.

The Design in Question

One of the things I’ve been doing in this heat is reading out of print Victorian needlework books on my kindle — doing research for new crewel designs and new embroidery designs in general.

The other day i was happily bouncing through Ada Wentworth’s Jacobean Embroidery, its Forms and Fillings, Including Late Tudor, when I came across this description of a bed hanging or valance:

…measuring about 5ft. 8in. in length, and 1 ft. 8in. in width. Each leaf was about 22 in. long and 19 in. across.

I did a double-take. The length and depth of the work made sense to me, but the sheer size of each leaf amazed me. Crewel work today, even when “reproduction” work, is so much smaller in design? Can you imagine the detail and stitch variety available in just one of those leaves?

I’m going to need to reevaluate my understanding of this needlework genre. The largest leaf I have ever seen modernly is about 5 inches long – and that was considered huge. Working them so much larger, and in a heavier tapestry weight wool would make it much quicker to stitch a set of bed hangings than i have been imagining. I know the smaller designs existed as well – I’ve seen some of them. But my mind is still boggling from the idea of this scale… Maybe that shower curtain is in my future after all… I could use superwash sock yarn instead of crewel wool and it would be washable! …. hmmmm.

Squished Car

Welcome to post 200 – wherein I cheer that I’ve made it this far, plan for the future, and whinge a it (but only a bit) about my last month.

200 posts, a couple of years, lots of stitching, knitting and dancing, and wow! Obviously I am not the most consistent blogger, though I do love sharing what I learn and what I stitch — life often intervenes in my plans to do so.

The short whinge – this month has seen negotiations for a new day job sputter (not necessarily a bad thing), the AC in my studio die during a heat wave, and it hasn’t yet been fixed because the EO was in a car accident and we’ve been more concerned about fixing him than the AC (he’s doing well, thank you). that last part also means that I’ve been doing quite a bit of chauffeuring to doctors and to work, or being without my own transporatation during the day.

On the other hand, I’ve also gotten a lot of planning and writing (though not blog posts) done.

And I have a question for you, lovely readers, going forward — what do YOU want to see in this blog? More tutorial stitch alongs? more detail on how I design? Dance? “How to shimmy?” What I’m currently stitching? antics of cats? I’ve got more ideas than I know what to do with, and knowing what you like helps me narrow it down to things that are helpful for you!

Email me or leave a comment – I love to hear from stitchers and dancers in any way, shape or form.