Year: 2015

Time for October’s free design. I thought maybe we’d had enough birds and flowers recently, although I suppose you can never have too many birds. At any rate here’s something different – three butterfly designs (OK, two butterflies and a moth…) A while back I was experimenting with using my computer printer to print designs on fabric, so I tried reproducing a page from an old Latin book on biology. I then stitched these three butterflies on the printed fabric. It turned out well enough and had a nice vintage look to it Anyway, I thought I’d pass on the embroidered butterflies I used to make the picture.

Three butterflies stitched on fabric printed in a computer printer

The butterflies come as three separate files (each for the 4×4 inch hoop) so you can stitch them separately if you like – you don’t need to stitch them together as I did. Also, when I digitised these, I was in my Mylar phase, and these do stitch very nicely over Mylar, if you want to try it. But they’re also OK stitched just as they are, on plain fabric. The stitching is quite thin, though, so any printing on the background may show through a little

If you'd like these designs, just click on the "Comment" button at the bottom of this post. In your comment, ask for the butterflies and I'll send them out to you. BUT: be sure that you haven't blocked your e-mail address from Typepad – if you do, then I won't know where to send the designs. I answer all messages, so if you don't hear from me, something has gone wrong with the system somewhere, and the most usual reason is that people have blocked their e-mail address

ALL my apologies for my recent silence. Our internet connection has been down for almost two weeks, and believe me that’s no joke when you’re isolated as far up in the mountains as we are! I have a HUGE list of unread messages to go through, and I do apologise for what will be some very late replies.

The mysterious design from the past

But first things first – I’m way behind with the freebie for September. The other day I was going through some old files, looking for something that I could post as a free design, and I came across this. It’s one of a pair of designs that I apparently did in 2011, but for the life of me I can’t remember doing them and I can’t remember why I did them. The flower seems to be a campion, and the bird is some kind of warbler. Maybe I was going to do a series of wildflowers with wild birds – I simply can’t remember. I don’t think I even stitched the two designs out – at least I can’t find any stitchouts and I can’t remember doing it. Anyway, I’ve changed the design a little bit – making part of it applique rather than keeping the whole thing entirely embroidery – and I’ve given it a test stitching. If it’s popular I might put up its companion as another freebie sometime. A word of warning – be sure you stabilise this design well. I’ve run connecting lines of stitching for the flowers and leaves behind the stems, and if the fabric shifts in the hoop, these connecting lines may show. But if you use a good firm stabiliser and work with tightly hooped fabric, there should be no problems.

If you'd like this design, just drop a comment to the blog asking for it and I'll send it out to you. If this is the first time you've asked for the freebie, be sure to read the information on the "Free Designs" page (on the menu above) 

What with one thing and another, life is so busy at the moment that I haven’t had time to do much work on the Memory panel that I started last week – or indeed on anything else, so this is going to be a short post! However I finally have finished versions of all the zentangle zodiacs, and here are Cancer and Capricorn, the last two.

Cancer the Crab as a Zentangle

Capricorn the Goat as a zentangle

To be honest I think that these zodiac designs have improved from the first ones that I did – or maybe it’s just that the first ones were human figures (which I’m not all that comfortable with using in embroidery) and the last ones were animals, which I love doing. Anyway the whole series of twelve designs is finished now, and once the NEOS show is over I’ll work hard to get them up on the “Designs For Sale” section of the blog

A few weeks ago we went to a little concert at an old country house not far from here. During the interval I had a look at the pictures on the walls, and among the 17^th and 18^th century family portraits there was one modern piece. It was a collection of small squares, on each of which was a separate little drawing. It was a fascinating piece which I thought would translate really well to textile art, and ever since then I’ve been working on an embroidered version. From the beginning I thought that each little design should have some personal significance, so I thought of it as a memory panel, with each square holding a design that has some significance to me or to my past

I’ve digitised 20 squares so far, and although I think maybe I should do 30 squares and make it a bigger piece, I really would like to get it done in time for September’s NEOS exhibition so it will have to stay at 20 for the time being. Here are three of the small vignettes, each done to fit in the 4×4 inch hoop.

Three memories

As to the meanings – the little pot of geraniums (I know, they’re really pelargoniums) is a reminder of my volunteer work for Plant Heritage, a conservation organisation dedicated to the preservation of rare and endangered garden plants. The lovely woman who I worked for sent me a cutting of a very rare pelargonium cultivar, that had been called “Mia”, and which I’ve grown ever since, so this little embroidered pot will remind me of that.

Mia the Plant

The underwater scene will bring back memories of the many years I spent scuba diving around Britain’s coast, and the guitar is of course a reminder of my present attempts (largely unsuccessful) to master the classical guitar

The other squares will have similar nostalgic meanings for me. The only thing that worries me is being able to organise all these little vignettes into one big panel – the little squares are all of different widths so it will be a technical challenge. I fervently hope that I’ll be able to work it all out

Before we get to this month’s freebies, just a word about the free dove from last month. I’ve been experimenting with this new way of doing applique, and I find that I get the best result from using a fairly sturdy, non-fraying fabric for the appliqué fabric. If you use a fabric that leaves lots of “pokies” (threads poking out from raw cut edges) the results may not be very good.

Right – here are two free fish designs for August, both of them for the 5×7 (180 x 200 mm) hoop. I quite like them because they’re bright and decorative. They were originally designed to be used as part of a large panel of gilded fish (which I posted on the 28^th of April 2012) but they also work well on their own. I digitised them a couple of years ago, and the applique is done in the old-fashioned way, with borders of satin stitching covering the raw edge of the fabric. However in these simple, stylised designs it doesn’t look too bad

August's free fish

If you’d like these fish, just drop a comment to the blog asking for them and I’ll send them out to you. If this is your first time asking for freebies, please have a look at the “Free Designs” page – the link is at the top of this page

I’ve been looking through some scans of recent projects to see what I could post this week and I found this one, which I did a long time ago and then more or less forgot about. It’s a portrait of a flock of ptarmigans that we spotted in Glen Shee, not far from here, and which I thought would fit nicely in the Scottish Birds in Scottish Places series.

Ptarmigans in Glen Shee

They’re all in their summer-to-winter blotchy plumage which made them tricky to design, and to be honest I wasn’t happy with the final result. But it gave me the chance to play around with overstitching as a way of finishing off applique, and the technique worked pretty well. Actually this one has recently been sold at the Aboyne exhibition, which surprised me as it’s a bit crude in places and I didn’t think it would appeal to many people. Oh well, maybe you could describe it as “naive art”, which is popular these days!