The Accidental Embroiderer

Just for fun

A couple of weeks ago we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens
in Edinburgh. which is overflowing with unusual plant forms and is an inspiration
for art of all kinds. In one of the tropical conservatories we spotted a small
scarlet flower, and we both agreed that it looked just like a small red bird
perched on a branch

 
IMG_1845

From flower…

When I got home I digitised it and stitched it out. It still
needs some work but after a few more tweaks and changes I think it can take its
place in the series of comic birds that I’ve been working on recently

Redbird

…to bird

And while we’re talking about silly birds…

…here is a panel of cartoon birds that I did a while back. I think the main problem with it is that I made it too small, so you can’t see all the detailing on the hand-painted fabric I used for the applique. I’ll re-do it at a larger size, and it should have more impact
Birdline

Yet more cartoon birds

A few funny birds

I’ve recently had a lot of fun sketching a series of silly comic animals
and birds, and they digitise very easily. So here are a couple of funny birds.
I have a few more of them and one of these days I might get around to putting a
group of them together in a panel

Funnybirds
Just for fun…

The Waterhouse heron

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve last written here – I’ve
been confined to bed for a couple of weeks with a back problem. However things
are slowly getting better and I’m now able to sit at the computer for long
enough to post something

Heron
Heron in the Waterhouse style

This hasn't turned out quite as I wanted. I did it after the
style of Alfred Waterhouse, one of my favourite artists, who designed the
wonderful terra-cotta reliefs of plants and animals in the Natural History
Museum in London. (There don’t seem to be many pictures of this work on the
web, but here are a few small sketches: http://www.architectureweek.com/2003/1022/culture_2-2.html)

 This heron is more or less in the Waterhouse style, but as
with so many of my designs I haven’t got the colours quite right on this first stitchout.
I chose intense blues for the bird in an effort to make him stand out against
the background, but now I think that both the bird and the  background should be in more muted
tones. And maybe there should be some more detailing in the background foliage. And maybe the bird should be more obviously standing on something – at the moment he looks a bit as if he were suspended in air. However all these thinsg are easy enough to fix when I do the next version

One advantage of being unable to move for so long is that I’ve
come up with all kinds of ideas for future work, and yesterday, on my first day
of sitting up, I managed to do 28 sketches. All I need to do now is get back to
the digitising

Buried in spam – for the moment

As I understand it, Typepad blogs have been having a major problem with spam recently, and this blog is no exception – last night alone I had close to 500 spam "comments" and then several more in the past few minutes. So I'm taking steps to restrict the comment facility for the time being. Eventually the problem will be resolved and then I'll put things back to normal

The Siberian Tiger

Some time ago, one of the people for whom I did a commission
lent me some fascinating books on Siberian nomad art, a tradition which was
completely new to me. Most of the work consisted of beautifully observed
animals interpreted in intricately chased metalwork. They were natural subjects
for embroidery and I did sketches inspired by this art for what I hope will eventually be a large
number of Siberian animals

Here’s the first one – a Siberian tiger. He’s appliqueed
with a fabric with a light glittery metallic finish, which gives an interesting
glint to the finished work.

 
Tiger

Siberian tiger stitched with a lightly glittery gold fabric

Which reminds me – if anyone is looking for an interesting
gilded fabric to use in applique, I can recommend Fairy Frost from Michael
Miller. However – take care.  There
are two kinds of Fairy Frost, as I learned the hard way. Plain “Fairy Frost” is
just an ordinary glazed cotton – nice enough but nothing special. If you want the glittery
kind you need to order ”Fairy Frost Glitz”

The silver lame salmon

During the past few weeks I’ve been busy with several different projects, including a couple of entries for a competition. Frankly I don’t think that either of them worked out very well, but in any case I can’t post them here in case that would violate the competition rules. Instead here’s something I’m a lot happier with. It’s the first of a series of animals local to this part of Scotland – he’s a Dee salmon (or perhaps a Don salmon, as that’s our nearest river)

SalmonembThe Dee (or Don) salmon

The first stage of the construction was to lay down an applique fabric of silver lame, which was then overstitched to cut back the garish shine and make the effect more subtle. The fins are also stitched with metallic silver thread. As often happens, the original is a lot better than the scan: the scan does distort the colours a lot and doesn’t replicate the shine very accurately. The white patches on the fish’s side are actually shiny silver

The only criticism I have to make of him is that perhaps he’s just a bit too realistic – too much of an accurate copy of the fish. Next time I’ll try to do more of an interpretation of a salmon rather than simply a photographic copy

Two little birds

After stitching out what seemed like hundreds of goldfish
and really liking the effect that several layers of overstitching gave to the
designs, I’ve been trying to find other ways of using the overstitching technique.
At the moment we have flocks of little birds at our bird feeders so I thought I’d
try some detailed bird designs in a semi-realistic style. So I’m working on a
four-part design with a wren, a goldcrest, a coal tit and a (British) robin.
Here are the wren and the goldcrest

Wren
 Wren

 

Goldcrest
Goldcrest

 

 

They’re sort of OK but for some reason they haven’t turned
out quite as nicely as the goldfish, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it has to
do with the fact that goldfish are smooth and shiny, so the overstitching gives
them a clear definition and dimension. The birds, on the other hand, are fluffy
and feathery, with less defined shapes, so the effect of the overstitching
tends to get lost in the depth of all those feathers.They're also a lot more complicated than the fish, so there's more that can go wrong with them. Never mind – they’re
still appealing and I’ll continue with the series

 

More goldfish

I’m still trudging on with the commissions. I have two or three more goldfish designs on the go at the moment and here’s one I’ve just finished. Apparently the image of a goldfish means Good Luck in Chinese tradition, and I believe that this embroidery was intended as a gift for an elderly Chinese lady. It’s just a simple combination of three of the fish and a design of waterweed. Unfortunately the scan misses a lot of the subtlety and shading of the original embroidery but it’s a pleasant enough composition

Fishpict

Three goldfish for good luck

 

The subtle seahorse

This is just a small embroidery that I did as a commission
for someone who wanted a little seahorse as a present for a friend. The brief
was to design a small, subtle seahorse in blues and greens, with just a little highlighting
in metallic threads. Left to my own devices I would have used silver leaf for
the body, overstitched with blue metallic thread, but in this case I tried to
restrain myself and just used pasinted fabric for the appliqueed body. The only metallics are the subtle gold swirl in the background
and the blue surround to the eye. To my eye these are perhaps a bit too subtle,
but of course the customer is always right!

Seahorse2
A little seahorse as a present for a friend