Year: 2015

For some time now I've been working on quite a complicated design, and ideas for it came from several different sources of inspiration. I’ve always loved groups of animals – herds of deer, schools of fish and especially flocks of birds – and I’ve often tried to use them in designs. But it’s not all that easy. It’s not enough to draw each individual animal separately – that just makes for a stiff and rigid composition, with no sense of movement. So when I was playing around with using really thin layers of stitching as a background (as I did in the Klee Garden – see post of 13 November) it occurred to me that I might be able to use thin, transparent shapes of animals to suggest those in the background of a flock, and then stitch thicker layers for the animals in front. The vague background shapes (of stitching at very low density) worked well, so first I tried to put some applique birds and fish over the background shapes. But that was just heavy and boring, and ruined the lightness of the thin background shapes. All the same the foreground needed to be different from the background, so in the end I just did the foreground animals with running stitch outlines only. They were clear outlines, but because there was no fill or applique in them, you could still see the shapes and colours of things behind them. You can’t really see the thin background shapes clearly, but that’s the idea – they just suggest the vague presence of something behind the animals in the foreground

Realm of water, realm of air

I like the result, although (as usual) I didn’t get the colours quite right. I know it’s a bit “busy” but I like that effect, because it reminds me of the visual commotion and confusion you can get in a flock of birds or a school of fish. As for the name – well, it just seemed appropriate as a description of the combination of fish and birds

It’s almost Christmas, and many of us will be too busy to have much time to think about embroidery and design. So I will take a break from blogging for a couple of weeks, and be back in January as usual. May I wish everybody a very happy and peaceful holiday season

Time for another free design! December’s freebie is based on a motif by the gifted Scottish artist Charles Rennie Macintosh, who with his wife Margaret played a key role in the development of the Arts and Crafts movement in the last years of the 19^th century. You can still see his decorative works in some buildings in Glasgow, and if you’re ever in that city it’s well worth searching for them

The Macintosh Rose is among his most famous motifs and he included versions of it in much of his decorative work. The free design is an applique of a Macintosh rose in his distinctive style. It’s for the 4×4 inch hoop, and is a simple little design, but none the worse for that

The Mackintosh Rose

 

The direct download of the freebie worked well last month, so I will try the same thing this time. I have noticed that many people can’t use designs done in PEDv.9, which is what I digitise in. So I will put up the rose as a v.6 file, which everybody should be able to open and use (I hope!) If you have problems with it, send a comment to the blog and I’ll try to fix the problem

To download the file,  Download Mackintosh rosev.6

To download the worksheet, Download Rose worksheet

First of all, I’ve finally managed to finish final versions of the Zentangle Zodiacs and the Elemental Horses, and organised the worksheets and the other designs that go with them. Both sets are now available on the Designs For Sale page (see the tab at the top of this page). The whole zodiac project took me something like two years from start to finish and I’m SO glad to be able to get on to something else!

Second, I’ve spent the past two weeks on a very complicated commission, so I don’t have any new complete designs to post today. But I’ve been playing around with a few new techniques. These aren’t designs in themselves – they’re just new methods of using machine embroidery which I might use in future designs. The first one came about because several people commented on the use of the frayed-edge squares in the colourful pheasant panel (the posting of 29 October) One reader suggested that this fringe could be used to suggest grass that the pheasant was walking through (thanks, Deena!) so I thought I’d try to make some more realistic fringe-grass. I just stitched down a square of green fabric, leaving a couple of inches free, and then frayed the edge. Then it was just a matter of putting in some loose running stitching over the “grass” to hold it in place. It worked pretty well and I’m sure I’ll find a use for the technique somewhere

 

"Grass" made of frayed fabric

The second technique came about because we’ve been having some very foggy weather recently and I thought I’d try to capture the vague shapes of the trees round our house as they appear through the fog

I cut three squares of tulle and appliqueed them on the background fabric, stitching each square with the shape of a leafless tree. The squares were slightly overlapped, and you can just about make out the shapes of the trees on the “far-side” squares, just as far-away trees look dim and distant through the fog

 

Misty trees, with the aid of tulle

The effect wasn’t too bad and again I might use this approach in a future design. However now I need to stop playing around with new techniques and get on with some real designs

 Here are four different decorative horses, each representing one of the elements – Air, Earth, Fire and Water. As I’ve stitched them out, they’re fantasy horses with decorative motifs on their coats and in the background. But if you’d prefer something more realistic, you just have to leave out the decorative flourishes and stitch them in realistic, horsey colours.

Each horse comes with a separate file with its name (Air, Earth, Fire or Water) digitised in a decorative script

Sizes of the designs. The main designs measure 8.00 x 5.75 inches (203 x 146 mm) and are for the 6 ¼ x 10 ¼ inch hoop (160 x 260 mm). The names of the horses are for the 4×4 inch hoop (100 x 100 mm), but the size of the embroidery varies according to the length of the name. For example, “Air” is  2.9 x 2.3 inches  while “Earth” is 3.8 x 2.3 inches.

A note on colours. The worksheets that you will get with the design files mention possible colours that could be used in stitching these designs out. However PLEASE don’t think that you have to follow this guide. I include it in the worksheets because many people expect it, but the colours that you use must always depend on the colours of your background and appliqué fabric. So – be creative and follow your instinct as to the right colours to use

Price. The price of both designs for each horse is $10. The price for all 4 horses (plus the names of the horses) is $30

Click on the designs to see close-ups of the stitchouts

 

The Air Horse

 

The Earth Horse

 

The Fire Horse

 

The Water Horse

First of all, a warm welcome to the new subscribers who have joined the blog since last week. However I’d better point out to new readers that I can’t give a design away every week. It’s just one freebie a month, I’m afraid, and the next one will go up in the first week of December

My most recent project – just finished today – was inspired by some browsing I did through the works of Paul Klee. I love Klee – I love his colours and his naive designs and his deceptively simple compositions. The one that caught my attention this time was called “1924 Bird Garden”. So – birds and a garden – what’s not to love? (as they say). And you really have to laugh at those endearingly silly upside-down birds

1924 Bird Garden: Paul Klee

My first thought was to make the embroidery background light and summery, as you might expect of a garden with birds. But if Klee was brave enough to give his birds a dark background, who am I to argue? So the background is blotched with grey, black and dark green, and the plants are sketched in with very vague, light shapes that blend with the painted background

Although I liked the “buildings” that Klee has in his painting, I thought that adding them to the embroidery might be a step too far, and complicate everything unnecessarily. So I compromised by painting a brown "wall” around the whole garden

When I started on the birds, I wanted to make them simple and child-like, like Klee’s. But somehow they didn’t want to be simple, and as I worked they kept whispering to me that they wanted to be more and more complicated and colourful until I really had to force myself to stop

2015 Bird Garden

So there it is – a sort of homage to Klee. I think it’s sort of funny and cheers me up in this autumnal season. And maybe next time I’ll be brave enough to put in some of the birds upside-down!

It's getting near that time of year again, and although I really don't like the idea of celebrating the holidays until at least the middle of December, I do appreciate that festive sewing has to begin well before the important date. So here's a decorative frame embellished with holly leaves, for the 5×7 inch (130 x 180 mm) hoop. The design can be used horizontally ("landscape" orientation) or, as in the scan, vertically ("portrait" orientation). You could use it to frame a holiday text or greeting, or another seasonal design. Or if you have a favourite photo you could use your ink-jet printer to print it on special fabric and use that to appliqué in the centre of the frame

The frame with an appliquéd centre

Alternatively, you could leave out the appliquéd centre altogether, and just stitch the design straight on to your fabric. The choice is yours!

Now – I'm trying something new this month. Instead of writing to ask me for the design, you should be able to download it directly by clicking THIS LINK. And don't forget to download the worksheet by clicking this worksheet link

I’ve mentioned before that though the Aberdeenshire landscape can be spectacularly beautiful, it isn’t exactly colourful. Every so often I really feel the need of bright colours, and in that state I usually draw a design that can be done colourfully. So this week’s posting is of an Aberdeenshire bird (the pheasant) dressed in some unnaturally bright colours

However, first of all, a word about backgrounds. Ever since I’ve started painting again I’m more and more conscious of the role that backgrounds can play in design, and I’m less likely these days to leave a design hanging in mid-air without some kind of background. And as I’ve been playing around lately with frayed-edge applique, I thought I’d try some frayed applique as a background for the pheasant

 

I digitised a series of appliqueed rectangles and stitched them out, using lightweight quilting cotton as the applique material and leaving a wide margin of fabric around the edges of the squares. 

 

The digitised overlapping rectangles

 

The stitched and frayed rectangles

Then I removed the fabric from the hoop and frayed the edges of the squares. After that it was just a question of rehooping the fabric and stitching the pheasant on top of it.

The finished pheasant

I like the effect of the frayed squares – they give texture and a gentle three-dimensionality to the design, and the density of the pheasant’s tail is loose enough to let the shape of the squares show through a little. Another time I might sketch in some tree-like shapes in the squares to give a bit more of a background, but for the moment this will do, and it definitely cheers up the grey autumn days

 A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was working on a series of four “Elemental Horses” – that is, Earth, Air, Water and Fire horses. They’re all finished now but it’s proving unexpectedly difficult to work out good colour combinations for them. I thought I’d use silver lame for the applique on the Air Horse, and gold lame for the Fire Horse, but it hasn’t been totally successful.

The silver lame Air Horse

The Air Horse is OK, although the scan doesn’t pick up the glitter of the silver lame, and the background should have been paler. The Fire Horse also needs some re-thinking. The figure of the horse is OK, and the gold glitter of the lame is nice (although again you can’t really see it on the scan) but as with the Air Horse there isn’t enough contrast between the horse and the background. I think I overdid the pattern on the background – maybe this would look better with a quieter fabric. Still, he does look as if he’s trotting through flames!

The gold lame Fire Horse

 One thing I like about these horses is that they can be used in two different ways. If you stitch the background pattern and the pattern on the body, they’re decorative pieces. But if you leave out the background and the body pattern and use natural colours like black or brown, they immediately become more realistic

 

 

Not far from here, on the road down to Royal Deeside, there is a strange little birch forest. The trees aren’t very big, but they’re twisted and ancient
and covered with lichens and mushrooms, and there always seems something mysterious and haunted about the place. It reminds me of illustrations by Rackham, or by Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland.

 

The old forest at Dinnet

The other day as we were driving through it I started musing about mythological creatures who might live there, and I suddenly “saw” the images of silent deer moving among the strange old trees. That was enough to spark off the idea of a design, with mystic, transparent deer in a birch forest.

 

Magic deer in the Mystic Forest

The shapes of the deer are broken up by the blotchy white trunks of the trees, which I think gives them a strange, unworldly feeling. Everything is done in fill stitching at a very low density, which helps give the feeling of light passing through the shapes

First of all, my apologies to those who received some accidentally mis-labelled freebie files last week. The file labelled “Luna” was in fact the swallowtail butterfly, and the file labelled “Swallowtail” was the Luna moth. But I’m sure people managed to work that out! 

Several months ago, on the general theme of “little birds on the hill”, I did a quick sketch of ptarmigans and eventually it became a flock of embroidered birds (see it on the posting of 30 July this year). However I wasn’t all that happy with them, so I re-thought the same theme and it became a flock of little grouse…or do I mean little quail? Well, they started out as grouse and turned into quail. (These would be European quail, by the way, and not the cockaded California sort)

 

Mystery birds…

This is a big panel, 16 x 12 inches (41 x 30 cm) – way too big to be able to stitch all the birds together in a single hooping. So each quail was digitised separately, and then the group was assembled on the painted background fabric – that is, each bird was stitched separately and the fabric re-hooped between each stitching. It’s one of those techniques that the video camera on the machine is so useful for

 It’s nice enough but it still isn’t quite what I wanted. I think I’ll re-do it once again, this time making it a group of three birds sitting in a field of wild flowers

By the way, for the digitisers out there – look closely at the breasts of the birds. They have an interesting striped effect, which is very effective in catching the light and makes the birds look quite unusual. This is not an ordinary fill stitch, but the piping stitch used over quite a large area of appliquéd fabric. I can recommend the piping stitch highly – if you're not used to using it, do give it a try. You will probably have to adjust the density and other such things, but it's worth the effort

 Finally, for those people interested in using embroidered designs on quilts and wall hangings, have a look at Cherri's blog to see some wonderful work

http://www.thecherritree.blogspot.com

 In her work she’s included a big flock of birds that I did some time ago, and also one of my dragons