As you're probably tired of hearing me say, our annual North East Open Studios exhibition is about to open, and yesterday I went along and set up my machine there and got prepared for my usual embroidery demonstrations. These demonstrations are always very popular, as most people have never seen an embroidery machine in action and don't often have any idea of what it can do

So I was setting things up and putting out some sample stitchouts for display when someone came along and bought one of them! This was the rooster I mentioned a few weeks ago

 

The popular rooster

It's certainly a good beginning to the exhibition for me! However, I won't be posting here for a week or so, because I'll be at the exhibition full time and won't really be able to think of anything else. Now – I know that a few blog readers live quite near here in Aberdeenshire, so if that's you, please do come along to "Art in the Buchat", which is our exhibition at the Glenbuchat Hall. It's on from the 11th to the 19th of this month, and we'd all love to see you!

I was going to post this in October so it would be a little closer to Halloween, but then I thought perhaps if people were going to use this for decoration it might be useful for them to have it a bit early so they would have time to plan the work and stitch it out

Most of the designs I do are based entirely on my own artwork, but this one isn't – I only wish it were! It's a famous image – the Black Cat by the French Art Nouveau artist Theophile Steinlen. I'm sure it will be familiar to many people and it's been in my "Inspirations" file for many years.

 

Theophile Steinlen's original Chat Noir

 

It was very easy to convert it to an embroidery design which might go well on Halloween decorations of many kinds.

This sample was stitched by my friend Cherri, using a zipper bag design from her stash, and making some very effective fabric choices. I love the black cat print she used for the bag – it really sets off the design well

 

Cherri's version of the Black Cat

 

I'm offering it in two sizes – small (5×7 inches, 130 x 180 mm) and large (8×12 inches, 200 x 300 mm). The design is very effective when stitched at the larger size, but I know that not everybody will have the larger hoop size on their machines, and in that case the smaller version might come in handy

Here is the large version, here is the smaller version, and here is the worksheet

This isn't a simple design: it has three applique areas, but I hope that it will be worth the effort! If it really is too much, you could always leave out the moon

Now that I've worked out the way to give embroidery the appearance of fur by sketching over appliqueed fabric I don't seem to be able to stop designing things that make use of the technique.  Here's another one which makes use of the method to give a nice furry appearance

We have a lot of red squirrels around us, which is very nice as they're not all that common in the UK. But they come all the time to raid our bird feeders and we're always glad to see them. 

 

Two squirrels on a tree

 

You can't really see the details clearly on this final version with the painted background, so here's a test stitch out of one squirrel which perhaps shows the textured fur a little more clearly

 

The test squirrel.  But is he the right colour?

 

There is one problem, however, with stitching a design that is supposed to be quite realistic, and that's getting the colour right.I have a collection of many hundreds of different threads in many hundreds of different colours, but all the same I found it difficult to find threads for these squirrels that were exactly right. A colour might look OK on a chart, or even on the spool, but for some reason once you have something stitched out, the colour isn't necessarily QUITE right, and that's what I found with these. Oh well, I'll just call it an "artistic interpretation" and let it go at that

OK, I have to put some more effort into pieces for the show, which usually means more complex and less decorative designs – things which you have to look at for some time to be able to "see", rather than designs which you can appreciate quickly. This is a scene which I picked up from our garden, where a wind was blowing a willow sideways and a flock of sparrows was trying to hang in there in spite of the wind. I know that sparrows are often thought of as common birds but I love them – when we lived in London they were about the only kind of wildlife that visited our house, and I still appreciate their noisy company in the garden

 

Sparrows in the willows

But to be honest I'm not sure about it. It's a nice enough image, and one with birds that I like, but it's not what you could call madly exciting. Still I think it will show up well at the exhibition, and I'll be interested to see what sort of comments it gets

For the past few weeks I've been spending all my time working on very serious, very worthwhile pieces to show at the upcoming NEOS exhibition. And I'm getting a little tired of all those brown and grey animals and faded green leafy backgrounds, so I decided to break loose and do something really colourful and abandoned, but something which I could still use for the exhibition. So I modified an old design by adding lots of leafy fronds, painting a bright background and then stitching it out

 

Eighty-four colour changes!

It took me three solid hours and there were EIGHTY-FOUR colour changes in it, but it did make a change from all the sober wildlife portraits, and I hope will add some colour to my exhibition

The other day I was sorting through my (huge) collection of stitchouts and old projects, when I came across this little bag, which I made when I thought I might try sewing things for craft shows. However I quickly realised that my talents lay in other directions, so I put this little bag aside. But the design is nice, and it does go well with the small bag, so perhaps it might be of use to someone. It's for the 4 x 4 inch (100 mm x 100mm) hoop and it's just embroidery with no appliqué

 

Destined for the craft show, but disappointed

 

Now – warning! I'm having some problems with my PEDesign software – it seems to be refusing to convert from pes v.11 (which is what I work in) to pes v.6, which is what most blog readers can use. I think the v.6 version I'm posting is OK, but if you see any problems with it, PLEASE send me a comment saying so and I'll try something different. Technology, eh! You love it and you hate it (well, I do anyway!)

Oh – nearly forget the design. Here is is, in .pes v.6 (I hope!)

All my designs seem to fall into one of two categories – the "arty" or the "decorative". Arty things are what I do for exhibitions and galleries. They tend to be complicated works that you need to look at carefully, and which are happiest framed and hung on the wall. Decorative designs, on the other hand, are more at home on things like cushions and soft furnishings and garments, and are often simple in shape and bright in colours. To be honest, I find decorative things more fun to do, but they don't look quite right in galleries, so for the exhibitions I get more serious

And at the moment, with our annual NEOS (North East Open Studios) exhibition coming up, I'm almost totally into the arty stuff

So here are two deer headed for the exhibition. We have a lot of deer around here (and they play havoc with our young trees, believe me) but all the same they're beautiful animals and I can't resist drawing them. These two have rough coats done with the "scribbled applique" method I've mentioned, and I think the technique suits them quite well

 

Two arty deer for the exhibition

 

But all the same I'm looking forward to getting back to the bright colours. Wail 'till you see the rooster I'm working on now!

I mentioned last week that I've been playing around with a new technique for adding texture to embroidery. Well, it's new to me anyway! It's quite straightforward, if a bit time-consuming to digitise. As I said last week, it's just a matter of appliqueing a piece of fabric onto a background, and then scribbling over it back and forth, with a simple running stitch

So, as cats are furry animals, I thought the new technique might be useful in giving an embroidered cat a nice hairy coat. Here's a cat in a folk-art style, with the stripes done in yellow and brown scribbling. It gives a nice, three-dimensional feeling, but unfortunately this isn't really clear in the scan

 

The cat among the flowers. Or is he maybe Ringo Starr?

My friend Cherri says that he looks a little like Ringo Starr – I'm not sure I agree with her there, but at least he does have a bit of character!

 

 

(As they used to say in Monty Python). After all those flowers I thought it was time for something else, so here is something suitably arty that I've prepared for this year's NEOS.

I do know that not everybody will like this weeks effort, and it's a big change from the colourful, traditional designs that I've posted recently. But you have to bear in mind that  this piece is for an art exhibition, so it needs to be different from most designs or it won't attract attention

We have a lot of crows around here, and although they're not exactly my favourite bird, they have such personality that I can't resist drawing them. Here are five of them in a nice orderly line.

 

Five crows in a row

This was a real headache to stitch out. Each crow is for the 5 x 7 inch (130 x 180 mm) hoop, so it was a question of hooping the painted background fabric 5 times, and getting each bird aligned in exactly the right position. If you have sharp eyes you can perhaps spot where I made a mistake, but if you don't see it then I'm not saying where it is!

 

A feathery crow close-up

One problem with looking at the whole panel is that you can't see the details of the stitching, of which I'm rather proud! Each crow is made from grey fabric appliqueed on, and then overstitched with a free-hand scribbled stitch, which gives a rough feathery finish that fits well with these birds. I was quite pleased with this finish and have used it with one or two other designs featuring hairy, rough-coated animals, which I'll show in the coming weeks

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm up to my neck in floral designs at the moment. Goodness knows where the original ideas came from but it seems as if all I've done in the past weeks are vase after vase full of flowers. Of course I never seem to be able to design anything without at least a bit of wildlife included. Here are a couple of examples

Flowers and birds

 

Flowers and butterflies

 

These are BIG, BIG designs. They're for the 6 1/4 x 10 1/4 inch (160 x 260 mm) with lots of colours, and the second one took me nearly three hours to stitch out. There are 7 of them in all and I'm REALLY looking forward to getting them finished so I can get on to something non-floral.  I think I might concentrate on the birds and animals by themselves for a while