A year or so ago, I held a little exhibition as part of a scientific conference, and showed a lot of designs based on biological subjects. These proved very popular, and I'm still getting requests and commissions from biologists who like my artistic interpretations of science. One recent commission was for a little school of zebrafish. These are pretty little fish which can be bred to produce all sorts of interesting colours and patterns. They are popular subjects for geneticists to study, and my client wanted a gift to present to a colleague of hers who had just published a big paper on zebrafish genetics

I'd done zebrafish designs before so these weren't difficult to do. The only new thing about them was the use of Mylar, overstitched in different colors to make the fish's bodies.

 

The glittery zebrafish

It is VERY frustrating, but neither scans nor photographs can really reproduce the shine of Mylar and metallic threads, so you will just have to take my word for it when I say that these fish glitter very nicely, and the shine gives an extra dimension to the piece

 

Now, I love really complicated designs. The more intricate the better as far as I'm concerned, and the more colours there are (preferably overlying each other) the more I like them. But there is one big problem with these designs, and that is that you never really know what they're going to look like until the embroidery is finished, and then it's too late to change things. If you've chosen the wrong colours, or digitised something at the wrong density there's nothing you can do about it.  You just have to stitch the design out again and as I'm not very fond of stitching things out I usually don't bother, but try to learn from my mistakes so I don't make them again the next time

But this little falcon was different. My first version of him looked understated and boring, and I thought he deserved better than that.

 

The falcon, version 1

So I broke the habits of a lifetime and stitched him out for a second time. I used a warmer brown on his head, made his shoulders in more contrasting shades of grey and brown and changed some of the other colours. Finally I made the detailing of the feathers and the stripe on his face in a darker and more conspicuous shade

 

The falcon, version 2

It's still not perfect but it's better. Now all I have to do is figure out what I'm going to do with two stitchouts of the same falcon

 

Now, I know I should have firmly controlled my impulse to post this but I was so pleased about it that I just couldn't resist! Some time ago a local conservation group put up an art exhibition devoted to wetland birds found in this area. You will know that I can never resist doing designs featuring birds so I had a big selection of them in my files, and it was no trouble to give them several for their exhibition.

But I was amazed last week to find that my work had actually featured in two local newspapers who had reported the exhibition – they both printed a picture of a large flying heron that I'd done some time ago.

The heron in the Aberdeen Press and Journal

So thank you to the Aberdeen Press and Journal, and to the Deeside Piper for their very kind coverage! OK, I know they may not be quite as widely read as the Sunday Times, but they're very popular papers around here and I am very grateful for the publicity

But I'd better post something new, so here's a little deer. There's a family of deer who make regular trips across the grass in front of our house, and the fawns love to run and jump. So here's a little sketch taken from them – not a fawn but a young buck. Now all I need is an exhibition run by deer conservationists, and he'll be on his way!

 

A young buck on our lawn

Another month, another freebie! The folk art panel that I posted last week seemed to be very popular – many thanks to all who posted such kind comments about it. I've already passed on some designs from that panel as freebies (the rooster, the rabbit and the cat) so I thought I might as well add to your collection with yet another folk art animal. A blog reader said that she particularly liked the fish, so here's the big fish from the panel.

 

A free folky fish!

I should point out that this image is a computer-generated one – I didn't use a stitchout because the fish in the panel was stitched with different colours than I suggest in the file, so it would have looked a bit strange. But it's the same design as the one in the folk art panel. It's for the 5×7 (130 x 180 mm) hoop, and the main part of the fish's body is appliqué. Here's the design (in .pes v.6 and here's the worksheet

If you were reading this blog last February and March, you may remember that I posted a couple of designs in a folk art style, and indeed gave some of them away as freebies. The designs were supposed to be part of a big folk art panel, but because digitising is so much more fun than actually stitching things out, I never seemed to get around to finishing the panel. However I've finally got my act together and managed to baste all the little folk art flowers and animals together into a single panel.

The (mostly) finished folk art panel

It's not well finished, but eventually I might get round to putting a border around it and embellishing the junctions between the separate embroideries with some decorative stitching. But as they say, don't hold your breath, so I think I'd better post this now before I forget about it and get distracted by something else

I just can't understand it. Only 5 minutes ago it was March, and here it is almost October, for heaven's sake. I really don't know what happened to summer – maybe it just disappeared because I've been spending so much time indoors, in the same place. But whatever happened to it, I really miss not having any summer this year. So maybe it's a good idea that this idea came out of nowhere, to remind me of our usual flocks of swallows and our wildflowers. I honestly have no idea why I felt compelled to do this design – perhaps it was a subconscious realisation that this would be about all of summer I'd see this year

 

The only summer I'm going to get…

A few weeks ago on the 13th of August I wrote a post about being inspired by netsuke (small carved toggles used as part of Japanese traditional dress). As I said at the time, I don't necessarily like all netsuke, but many of them can serve as wonderful inspirations and the designs can be taken a lot further. For example, there is this little carving of a spitting cat.

The netsuke cat

It is of course very simplified, because the carving is very small and you can't get many details onto something that size. But all the same it's beautifully observed and it has life and energy. So I thought I'd try an embroidered spitting cat

The embroidered cat

Mine is more realistic, just because I don't have to worry about things like carved tails or ears breaking off, but it owes a big debt of gratitude to the tiny original ivory carving

Well, last month I promised that this time I'd offer something a little more elegant than a tractor as a freebie. I'm not sure if this entirely fits the bill but at least it's not another design of machinery! It's a simple flower motif, based on the William Morris style which I've always liked. It's pretty simple in itself, but you could copy it and then mirror the copy, to make a symmetrical floral design that might go well on soft furnishings. It's for the 5×7 hoop (130 x 180 mm) and there's no appliqué – it's all embroidery

 

     A flower from the William Morris tradition

Here's the design file (in .pes v.6) and here's the worksheet

When I was a child, my parents and I spent a lot of time in Mexico – they were both artists and were deeply inspired by the landscape and culture of the country. Naturally we brought back with us many examples of Mexican art and crafts, and some time ago I ran across a little decorative Mexican comb from that time, carved from (I think) some kind of bone or horn.

 

A little Mexican bone comb

I've always liked it and the other day I thought I'd try to interpret it in embroidery, making use of the vivid colours and simplified shapes of Mexican art

…and its embroidered version

It worked out very well, although the comb part of it didn't really make visual sense. It was too much of a distraction, and started you wondering "What's that spiky bit at the bottom?" So I changed it to a bowl shape and it worked much better

First of all, it's likely that the "virus" I mentioned last week was probably due to an over-reaction by someone's over-enthusiastic virus protection software. It probably couldn't tell the difference between a .pes file and a virus! In any case, it was all a fuss about nothing and there was no virus to worry about. I hope I didn't scare people about it

Now back to embroidery designs. I've always liked the complicated but delicate designs of the mille fleurs tapestries that were done round about the 15th century – in style they're sort of mid-way between medieval and renaissance, I suppose.

 

Mille fleurs – the real thing

It's the combination of plants and flowers and animals and birds that appeals to me, and some time ago I did quite a lot of designs in something like the same style. I haven't visited the style for several years, but the other day, for some reason, I felt an irresistible urge to do another one, and it didn't take me long to put together this little mille fleur quail.

 

 

Mille fleurs – a modern version

To give it an authentic look I really should have stitched it out on a dark background, but as it was just a spur-of-the-moment impulse I didn't bother. Next time I stitch it out, though, I'll try to make it look a little more like its 15th century original inspiration