Celtic and Pictish designs – The Accidental Embroiderer

Two more Celtic animals

12 April 2013MiaCeltic and Pictish designs2 Comments

Right – back to the new series of Celtic animals. Here’s a
double dog motif and a cat, although the cat is really part Pictish and part Celtic
in style.

The double dog, with details in metallic thread

The Celtic-Pictish cat

The cat is done with a Fairy Frost black and silver fabric applique,
and embroidered with black and grey threads. It’s a very subtle effect – maybe too
subtle, as the details aren’t very clear. Next time I’ll try a little less
black and a little more silver

Another Celtic dog

30 March 2013MiaCeltic and Pictish designsLeave a comment

Here's a companion piece for last week's hunting dog – more
of a golden mastiff this time. Again, the applique fabric is gold Fairy Frost Glitz

The Celtic mastiff

The gold hunting dog

23 March 2013MiaCeltic and Pictish designs1 Comment

One advantage in being immobilised for several weeks with a
back problem is that you can get a lot of drawing done – I counted up
everything I’d done and there were 28 finished sketches. A lot of them were drawings in the Celtic
manner. I’ve always loved Celtic art and have tried for a long time to master
the style. I’m still not all that good but I’m beginning to get the feel of it, and
worked out several ideas which I’ve since digitised and stitched out

Celtic hunting dog

Here’s the first one – a running dog in a “pure” Celtic
style. I’ve stitched it out with my current favourite applique fabric – Fairy
Frost Glitz (from Michael Miller) in a muted blotchy gold. The subtle gold
glint goes well with the subject. I thought for a while about perhaps stitching
the scrolls with a metallic thread, but in the end decided that it would be a bit
over the top and perhaps distract from the basic shape of the dog

The Pictish wolf

17 August 2012MiaCeltic and Pictish designsLeave a comment

Right – this is the last Pictish animal for a while, I promise. Next week something different! But meanwhile I really like this wolf, appliqueed with metallic leaf. It can be difficult to figure out what was in the Picts’ minds when they drew animals. Some (like this one and last week’s boar) are beautifully observed and completely realistic in treatment, while others are pure fantasy – so much so that we moderns can’t figure out exactly what they’re supposed to represent. I have a couple of these strange creatures in the files and will get round to digitising them eventually. But meanwhile there’s no mistaking this one – a memory of the days when wolves roamed the Scottish forests

The Pictish wolf

The Pictish boar

12 August 2012MiaCeltic and Pictish designsLeave a comment

Things have been so manic for the past week that I'm afraid the blog has had to take a back seat. In just a few weeks time I’m taking part in a NEOS (North East Open Studios) exhibition, which is a big event and takes a lot of time and effort to organise. My main worry is not having enough interesting pieces to exhibit, so for the past week I’ve been frantically digitising and stitching.

Part of my exhibition will be concerned with the Pictish designs that I’ve been working on for some time. Aberdeenshire is rich in ancient standing stones carved with strange motifs, and many of these make wonderful embroideries. I’ve shown one or two on the blog in the past, and here’s another, taken from a carving of a beautifully life-like and vivid wild boar. I’ve stitched him with copper leaf applique, which works well and gives him an air of strength and antiquity

The Pictish Boar, appliqueed with copper

The gilded serpent

29 June 2012MiaCeltic and Pictish designsLeave a comment

I don’t seem to be able to give up the idea of using metallic gilding foil in embroidery. When it works, it looks wonderful, and gives an effect that nothing else quite matches. On the other hand, it can be a technical nightmare to work with, flaking off from the fabric when you least expect it. I keep telling myself to forget it and get on with other things, but I keep being drawn back to it. In some designs, such as re-creations of Celtic and Pictish art, it gives the effect of old gold that works like nothing else to gives these ancient designs a feeling of antiquity and mystery

I’ve come a long way in working out the technical details of how best to apply the gold to the fabric, and although even now it doesn’t always work, the results are better than they used to be. Here’s an example of red-gold gilt foil used where it has a real effect – on a Pictish design taken from one of the ancient carved stones near where we live. As usual, the effect of the metallic gold doesn’t really come through on the scan, but it looks wonderful on the original

A Pictish serpent from Aberdeenshire, appliqued with gilded fabric

A few new approaches

26 January 2012MiaCeltic and Pictish designs / New approachesLeave a comment

In the past week, several different ideas have come together to contribute to some new designs. In the first place, Frances Crawford (who runs our painting class) has drawn our attention to Pictish art. There are many carved Pictish stones in this part of Scotland and although their designs aren’t as well known as the more elaborate classical Celtic work, I love the simple, natural style of the Pictish animals and birds.

Second, we’ve also been discussing ways to use transferred images in painting, and I thought that transfers could also be used as backgrounds to embroideries

Third, I’ve been following through the idea of using metallic foil in embroidery, and the Pictish designs seemed natural subjects for gilding

My first attempt at using metallic foil was encouraging (see last week’s blog entry) but I think I was lucky in choosing a small design with a lot of overstitching. More recently I’ve found that there are technical problems in applying foil to large areas of fabric. However with a little experimentation I’ve got to grips with the technique and have now been able to use quite large areas of foil in embroideries

So here are two Pictish animals – a deer and a goose - embellished with metallic foil. The background to the deer is transferred from a computer print-out, but the goose is just stitched onto plain fabric

A deer, taken from a Pictish stone carving, stitched onto a transferred background and embellished with silver leaf

A Pictish goose, with gold leaf on the head and copper leaf on the back and wings. The metallic leaf is applied first, and the embroidered detail on the wings is stitched on top of the metallic foil