08.11.10
Posted in Stitching Genres at 7:00 am by deRomilly
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
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08.02.10
Posted in Stitching Genres at 8:28 am by deRomilly
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.
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07.28.10
Posted in Stitching Genres at 7:00 am by deRomilly
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.
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07.02.10
Posted in Artwork at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Some of my hand-carved stamps
I admit it… I’m a craft dilettante!
I was, several years ago, trying to integrate my rubber stamping hobby into my textile art. I loved the depth it gave backgrounds, and being able to use the stamps themselves as designs to stitch.
Then I ran into a problem. I had too many pieces to keep for myself, and, frankly, I didn’t just want to give them away to relatives and friends who might or might not appreciate them. (I have been asked on occasion, why would you want to do that by hand when a machine is so much faster? !) So it would be nice to sell some of my art.
Unfortunately for the situation, though not in the long run, copyright law applies to stamp designs (and needlework patterns, and designs in books, and coloring books… and a lot more, too!) You might think this is silly, since stamps are tools to make art, but how you are licensed and allowed to use the images you stamp varies by company to company. My stamp collection sometimes doesn’t specify company any more. Many of the stamps I have date from before I went looking for “angel” companies who allow you to sell your hand-stamped work. Even angel companies have different policies regarding how or whether you notify them. Prints of artwork created are generally not allowed, although this can be negotiable. I didn’t want to have to go to the bother of tracking down the specific policy of each and every stamp I owned, and then keeping all the paperwork needed to prove I was in compliance – and what if I made art that just came out so cool that I thought notecards made from it as prints would be neat? Out of luck.
I decided that the easiest thing for me, was just not to use commercial stamps at all any more. Enter learning to carve my own (which has, in turn, led to woodcarving as an actual hobby {I didn’t think I was capable of hobbies any more!})… Did I ever mention that I play with WAAAY too many crafts? Maybe this blog should be Craft Dilettante! instead of Stitching with a Shimmy!
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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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