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.

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!

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.)

What Embroidery Style Should I Learn?

I don’t get any results back from this, but I’d love to know what your results are! Feel free to post in the comments. I got “freestyle” which is funny, since I started with and design cross stitch and crewel designs before I expanded out. But I guess we all change over time!

If you know how to create a quiz I can post IN my blog – please give me a heads up. My google-fu is failing mightily on this subject! And I’d rather not make you all click more than necessary!

What we did was the following:

1. Find an iron on transfer or a line art/coloring design she liked from a clip art book.
2. Transfer it onto a piece of counted fabric. In this case, aida.
3. Now fill in the various areas with the stitch of your choice. In my friend’s case, I taught her long-armed cross stitch. You can also use tent stitch, cross stitch, satin stitch, or any other filling stitch, lacy or solid that you like. Or a variety of stitches.
4. Stitch over the outlines with stem or back stitch.
5. Voila! apparently counted work that wasn’t counted.

Note: I’m not sure how regularly I’ll be posting for the next few weeks. Our old lady cat is in home hospice care, in the last stages of thyroid disease AND renal failure, so I find myself watching her and worrying more than I ought to, perhaps.

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?!)

The finished embroidery

Welcome back! Hopefully the videos helped those of you trying this who were a bit confused about the needlelace leaves. Now that the leaves and petals are finished, we can put it all together!

Step 7 – Completing the Embroidery

1. First things first. We need to get those detached lace leaves off our muslin and Free!!! Turn the work over so the back is up, and carefully clip the couching threads, gently pulling them out to remove them.
2. Now go back to the front and clip the threads close to the away waste knots. The leaf should now come off of the muslin pretty easily.
3. Clip the dangling green threads close to the stitching. You should have secured them when you covered the wire with buttonhole stitch. You did do that, right?
4. Now clip the fabric around the blue petals. I like to do this in two passes. One to separate the petals, and another with very very fine, sharp embroidery scissors (I use the same ones I use for hardanger) to snip the fabric off very close to the stitching.
   Note: At this point I should have taken my navy blue Sharpie and colored in the white muslin fringe and a bit of the tips of the wire. I didn’t. I KNOW this is going to haunt me. I may even end up going back and re-stitching the petals because of it…
5. Put the actual embroidery back into a hoop. Make sure it’s taut.
6. Using an awl, or the points of your sharp scissors, poke a small hole where two of the red petals come together, right down by the base of the french knot center. The hole should be large enough for the wires to go through, but not easily. We don’t want them swishing around wherever they want to go when we’re done!
7. Poke the wires from one of the blue petals through the hole.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for the other three petals.
9. On the back of the work, interlace the petal wires together and secure them by stitching over them. I made a cross and then secured each pair of ends with a few whip stitches. Using your wire cutters or the pair of scissors you don’t care about, clip the wires about a sixteenth of an inch away from the stitching.
10. Referring to the pattern or photos below for location, poke holes next to the stem and poke the leaves’ wires into them. These holes need to be even smaller than the ones for the petals, simply because they aren’t going through stitching as well as the fabric.
11. On the back of the work, secure the wires with small whip stitches and trim them as you did the petals.
12. Congratulations! Your stumpwork is finished! You can bend the wires on the raised portions so that they lay the way you want them to, and then you can now frame it, or finish it as you like. (I’ve got a finishing suggestion in mind for these little pieces coming up soon!)

If you have been having problems with the needlelace leaves, I hope that these will help a bit.

This weekend I’ll post the finishing touches for this little piece.

Making the needlelace leaf:

Covering the wire with buttonhole stitch:

Hang tight. I’ll get it sorted as soon as possible. And tomorrow I will try to post the next step for the stumpwork!

Thanks for your patience! Darn technology!

Again, the images are in a gallery at the bottom, with descriptions. Click on them to enlarge.

Step 6 – Wired needlelace leaves

The finished leaf, from an odd angle.

1. Start in the same way you started the small petals: couch the wire down along the muslin pattern. Note: This is where I would have done something different: You will be pulling these couching threads out in step 7. I’d suggest using contrasting thread to couch with, rather than something that will blend in, like the blue I used.
   
2. Using 2 very long strands of green floss and the tapestry needle, secure the thread at the FRONT of the work, a bit away from the leaf, and bring your needle up about halfway down one side. Wrap the thread around just the wire up to the point. This will secure the thread when we are finished with the leaf.
   Note: This is another thing I would have done differently: I would have used one strand of fine perle cotton, maybe a size 12 for the leaves. (and maybe for the stem, too…) Needlelace is much easier to work with a thread with some body.
3. Starting with one buttonhole stitch at the tip of the leaf, work detached buttonhole downward, filling the leaf. This is detached from the muslin, not from the wire. Make sure you wrap each row of buttonhole stitch around the wire at the sides. I can’t find a tutorial for this. Near the beginning of next week I will try to video one and get it posted, if I can figure out the technology!
   Note: I wanted a lacy look to this leaf. If you are just trying out this technique, you might want to work a Corded Brussels stitch (with a returning thread bar for stability) instead of the Brussels (just buttonhole) stitch. The corded stitch is easier to maintain tension and make even stitches with.  I’ll include both versions in the video.
4. When you reach the bottom of the leaf, wrap the thread up around the leaf edge and park it to the side of your work.
5. Start another length of thread, again 2 strands, and as long as you can work with: I find that 24-30 inches is about as much as I can handle without it becoming a mess.  Secure it using the same method, but this time, come up on the left side of the leaf, 1/2 way up and wrap it to the bottom. Buttonhole around the wire and the wrapped threads all the way around the leaf.
6. Secure that last dangling thread by switching to your thinner, sharp needle and running it up under the last few buttonhole stitches you have made, between the stitches and the wire.  Clip the dangly green threads and your leaf is finished.
7. Repeat for the second leaf.