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Well, we’re back at last after a really enjoyable trip around the Southwest of Britain. We spent some very enjoyable days on Dartmoor, which Sherlock Holmes fans will immediately remember as the home of the Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s surprising that even after more than a hundred years, this story still has a real presence in this part of the world

Anyway, it’s back to normal life now, and to some essential work on things to exhibit at the local art shows this summer. I mentioned some time ago that I wanted to include some more local wildlife in these pictures, and one of the most famous of our local animals is the red squirrel. These lovely creatures are endangered in the UK, and even in Scotland they’re far from common. So we’re very lucky to have a family of red squirrels in the forest not far from our house, and they come by all the time to raid our bird feeders

Here is a simple design of a single squirrel launching himself from one pine tree to another, which is how we usually see them. As I’ve mentioned before, machine embroidery is a wonderful medium in which to re-create the soft, furry coat of a small animal, and the technique of dense overstitching works well in this little picture. Unfortunately the scan doesn't pick up the details very well, but if you saw the stitchout "in person" you could see the realistic furriness clearly

 

Red squirrel in one of our trees

It’s a new month again so it’s time for a freebie. Here’s another one I found in my long-ago files – I can’t remember what I meant to do with it but it seems to date from the time I did a lot of Pennsylvania-Dutch inspired things. It has an appliqué area (the large heart shape) and it’s for the 5×7 inch (130 x 180 mm) hoop, but the design itself is just 4 1/2 inches (115 mm) wide.

 

Be careful of the pinks!

 

A word of warning – don’t make the same mistake that I did! I used a pink fabric for the appliquéd heart, but then I also used pink thread to stitch out the birds, and the two colours were too much alike. So when you stitch it, be sure to use nicely contrasting colours for the heart and the birds. Here it is, in .pes v.6

Now, I won’t be able to post for several weeks, because we’re off on a long tour around southwestern England – mostly to Devon and Cornwall. We used to spend a lot of our time in that part of the world, but haven’t been there for a long time, so it will be interesting to see how it’s changed. I’ll post again when we get back

So – important! If you’re one of the readers who can’t download designs directly from the blog and need to have me send you the design as an e-mail attachment, bear in mind that I won’t be around to do it for a couple of weeks. Just write to me as you usually do and I’ll send the file when I get back

 

Some time ago I ran across an unusual photo on a BBC website. It’ s supposed to be a picture of two doormats that have become frozen and frosted, but it looks far too much like a work of art just to be an accidental picture – I think the house-owner must have been doing some work of his (her?) own in order to make such an interesting image

Frozen doormats or works of art?

 

Anyway it looked so much like a black and-white image of leaves and flowers that I couldn’t resist using it as inspiration for a coloured version of the same subject. OK, I know it isn’t anywhere like the original, but it was fun to do, and it might make a nice mat or chair cushion

 

Inspired by an icy mat

 

OK, I know it’s only spring (although at the moment here in the Scottish Highlands it’s snowing heavily) but all the same, as I’ve mentioned, I must make a start on some works for our summer exhibitions. These works need to be more complicated and “arty” than the decorative things I usually do, so they take a lot more time

At our exhibitions, I’ve noticed that pictures with animals are popular, so I thought I should do some pictures featuring our local wildlife, and I’ve started with a running rabbit

 

Rabbit running in the green

 

One thing I love about using embroidery for animal pictures is that you can get such interesting textures with the threads. Of course in a conventional painting you can add some texture with a paintbrush, but you never get the same three-dimensional effect that embroidery gives, and it really adds a lot of interest to a picture – assuming of course that it’s a picture of a furry animal! You can't really see the effect very well in this scan, but you'd notice it if you saw the real thing

As some readers will know, I’ve been designing and digitising for many years now, and as a result I have a HUGE collection of designs in my files. I have no idea how many there are but it’s up in the thousands. I know I should try to file them in some kind of sensible way but I never seem to get round to it, and as a result it can be difficult to find a particular design, or to discover what use I’ve made of it

Which means that this month we have a freebie which I don’t THINK I’ve offered before, but I'm just not sure. It's one of so many designs in the files, so if you have it already, many apologies.

 

A bird from the past

 

It’s a classic William Morris sort of bird  and I know I’ve offered a lot of free birds recently, but I hope there’s room for another one in your collection. It’s for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and HERE it is, in .pes v.6

I really wish I could post on this blog every week, the way I used to, but now that the exhibition season is approaching, I need to produce works which will be right to hang on gallery walls – that is, they need to be less decorative and more “arty”.  And that means that they are usually very complicated and take a LONG time to do. Oh well, I’ll post when I can. And I’ve just finished a design which will do as a small scale work for an informal exhibition somewhere

 

Flutter

 

It comes from an abstract sketch of three birds fluttering in a tree, and it’s colourful enough to draw the eye. I’m not sure if I think it’s very good, but it’s astonishing how these colourful little things can sell unexpectedly, so maybe this one will find a new home. Or, looking at it critically, maybe it would make an interesting round mat of some kind. So I might just re-invent it as a kind of table decoration

Anyway, I will be back as soon as I can – that is, when I have something new to post.

First, I was really pleased by the number of people who said they liked the Flower Bellpull in my posting of last week. Several people asked if it was for sale anywhere, so this is just to say that you can find it (along with more of my designs) in my Secrets of Embroidery shop: https://secretsof.com/machine-embroidery/designs/The-Accidental-Embroiderer

Anyway, back to this month’s freebie. It’s spring now (or it’s supposed to be) so here is a little spring-like design to celebrate the season. It’s for the 5×7 inch (130×180 mm) hoop, and it’s embroidery only, with no appliqué.

 

Two colourful birds for spring

It’s a fairly complex design, but if you hoop your fabric securely and follow the colour suggestions, it should turn out all right

There are a HUGE number of jumps in it, but I’m afraid they’re unavoidable. If your machine can cut jump stitches, there should be no problem, but otherwise I’m afraid you’re in for a long session with the scissors

So – good luck! Here is the design, in .pes v.6

 

In the dim and distant past, when I started to write this blog, I tried hard to post something new every week – and mostly I succeeded. But more recently I’ve been finding this difficult, because I just don’t have a new design ready to go up each week. This is entirely because I’ve been doing more and more complicated designs, which take a lot longer than a week to draw, digitise and stitch out. And this week we have the result of what must be about a month’s worth of complicated and detailed effort

I’ve always loved the “bellpull” format – that is, long, thin designs. They’re a challenge to design but they can look so effective when they’re mounted and displayed. So for the past few weeks I’ve been concentrating on a detailed and elaborate bellpull design. It’s made up of 6 5×7 inch (130 x 180 mm) panels, which are designed to align together when they’re stitched in sequence on a long, narrow strip of fabric

Now – this image is so large and long that you may have problems viewing it, but I thought I should try to show it close up so you can see the details. The whole thing turned out more or less as I wanted it to, so I shall now breath a deep sigh of relief and go back to designing something a little less challenging!

All right – I know I’ve been trying to get away from my constant preoccupation with images of birds and flowers, but I can’t help it – that’s just about all I’ve been working on recently. One reason is that I want to produce some more collections for my Secrets of Embroidery shop, and for that I need to create sets of designs that are more or less on the same general theme. And after all, what’s a more appealing theme than birds and flowers!

I am always been interested in art and design from past cultures and distant lands, and I’ve recently been captivated by images of ancient Persian art. It’s such a rich culture and so much of the art features animals and birds. So, still under Persian influence, I put together a collection of “Persian” birds. Now, these are NOT reproductions of Persian art – a genuine Persian would never recognise them! They’re just inspired by it. But the colours and shapes are genuine enough, and they translate very well to modern embroidery

 

So perhaps you can see that they're maybe a little more exotic than my usual productions. But I've finished 12 of them now in the same style, and they're all ready to go, so I should be able to go on to something different – I hope!

The fishmonger’s fish that I posted last week proved so popular that I thought it might be a nice idea to make them the basis of a freebie. My first thought was to give readers the complete design – that is, the two fish together with the scrolled background. But then I realised that the whole design was for a very large hoop (7 x 12 inches, or 180 x 300 mm) and not everybody has machines that can use hoops of that size. Also there isn’t really much you can do with such a big and complicated design except frame it and hang it on the wall, and not everybody really wants embroideries on the wall

So I thought it might be better just to give one of the fish, which could be used in several different ways. And this is the free fish

A freebie from the fishmonger

I strongly recommend stitching it out with a layer of Mylar, to give it that nice sparkle and shine. If you can do this, then stitch the first three colours -that is, the fins in silver, and the bottom and top of the body in cream yellow and mint green. Now, lay a sheet of Mylar over the embroidery , making sure that it covers the entire body. Reduce the speed of your machine to very slow and holding the Mylar in place, stitch “colour 4”, which is described as “appliqué”

Now remove the hoop from the machine and pull or cut the loose Mylar away from the stitching, leaving it in place over the body. Put the hoop back on the machine, increase the speed to what you usually use and carry on with the stitching

If you can’t get Mylar or don’t want to use it, then the fish will be fine without it, although it will lack those nice shiny scales

Good luck! Here is the fish, in .pes v.6, for the 5 x 7 inch (130 x 180 mm) hoop