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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06.28.10
Posted in Design Theory at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Color experiment
Color has always been tough for me… I tend to use analogous color schemes — like yellow-green, green and green-blue, so I can avoid the entire issue!
Color experiment
But I spent quite a bit of time learning – once you can pair value (how light or dark an area is) with color-brightness and contrast, and complimentary colors, the world opens up. I play with all of this in paint first these days – no intention of creating finished or resolved work from them, just little experiments in what works and why, and my color choices in threads need to be ripped out much less now, although I have discovered that what works in thread on a small scale may not work when enlarged — for example, three colors that work as a small face don’t necessarily work together when enlarged to an 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of work. This seems to happen more in thread than in paint for me, at least right now. Still working that out.
Color experiment
I’ve been trying to learn this academically for a long while now – but the more I read, or even pushed buttons for (online resources follow) the less I understood. It finally took getting a bunch of cheap acrylic paint and doing it myself to actually grok it. My experiments may be ugly, but they did what they were intended to do! (I used quite a few of them as backgrounds in my journal, or I’d post more of the photos here.)
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04.15.10
Posted in Stitching Genres at 1:22 pm by deRomilly
Wow. It has been quite a week and a little bit over! I finished the stumpwork design in the last post, and now I’m working on a method to finish these little designs so that they can be displayed together in a group. More to come (and instructions) on that project!
In the meantime, I’ve been distracted a little bit from my model stitching (I’m having a grand time getting the new line ready – I’m planning on taking part in the Online Needlework show in October, so there’s a built-in deadline that reminds me that stitching isn’t goofing off any more – it’s actually work, no matter how much fun I’m having!) with a couple of projects.
I’ve got a project box that contains a pile of things I’ve started and never, for whatever reason, finished. In that is Tracy Horner’s Cirque des Cercles. When I take a break, I’m putting a few stitches into it here and there. Unfortunately, or not, I started it on black, in a variegated DMC color that isn’t made any more, so I’m HOPING that I have enough thread to finish it. I should – I bought out the store when I realized it was being discontinued! And if I’m one or so skeins short, they DO still sell it in the packages of all the variegated colors that they still sell, at least it wasn’t one of the completely discontinued ones! And I want to do the matching triangle design as well!
Artwork by Harry Clark - Studio, 78
Add to that my new obsession. You see, I’ve been researching Art Nouveau design for my next line of teaching patterns. And in one of the Dover books, I found this (click it for a larger view – it’s amazing!):
And me, being the obsessive I am, decided it HAD to be stitched. So I enlarged it – it’s now about 20X26 inches or so, and I’m in the process of tracing it off to simplify it for stitching. That’s one of the main keys to designing needlework – SIMPLIFY!! This piece in particular, is probably a bad idea, because of all the gorgeous pen and ink details. But when it comes to stitching, I’ve never been known to give up just because something’s a bad idea! (will I ever learn?)
So anyway. This is my new non-cross stitch project. It’s huge, it’s going to take forever, and I’ll try to keep you posted on the progress. I may need to set it aside for a while in the middle, too! I am thinking silk, beads, possibly sequins, and maybe even cotton and wool as well. It seems to scream for the overly baroque treatment!
So I’m stitching my models for the show (and having some of them stitched, again, if you’re interested in model stitching bellydancers or geometric pillow designs for me, send me an email and we’ll talk!). In my breaks, I’m putting a few stitches into my pile of half-started cross stitch projects, including designs by InkCircles, Indigo Rose, Teresa Wentzler and Miribilia (I don’t do anything that’s SIMPLE, do I?!)
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05.27.09
Posted in Design Theory at 8:52 pm by deRomilly
With summer well on its way, here in NC – (I saw my first fireflies today. They never cease to send me into a fit of wonder.) insects are suddenly on my mind again. (The 8 mosquito bites just from planting a melon vine yesterday don’t help keep my mind away from insects, either!
Gardens and their denizens have been favorites of embroiderers for centuries. Spiders and their webs hold pride of place in crazy quilt blocks. In the renaissance and Tudor embroideries, all manner of creepy crawlies appear among the flowers.
But did you know that bellydancers also have a love-hate relationship with the creepy-crawlies? Costumes have been decorated with sparkly versions of butterflies, dragonflies, and so on — usually things with wings (although leaving hte garden mataphor for a moment there have been some unfortunate run-ins with seafood and misplaced, disembodied hands, but hopefully those are rare…)
What interests me is the fact that it seems to be very difficult to do insects on bellydance costumes in a less-than-tacky manner. Butterflies with bra cups for wings, usually made out of those sequinned camisoles that were so popular back in the day (Camisoles and tops that I often love on their own, with a pencil skirt by the way…). Dragonflies on the belt with the body vertical in… umm… suggestive locations. It’s all been done. And often in beautifully executed sequin embroidery.
I have an idea for a garden/insect costume myself, despite the current “thou shalt not even go there” attitude that has developed from the above sad costume choices. Wish me luck — I’ll probably need it. 
But I’ve got other costumes to develop first… and I have GOT to get back to beading that turquoise bedlah I’ve been documenting here!
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