For the past few weeks I've been working on a selection of less arty and more crafty things, intending to take them round to a local craft shop. But when I did, they said that they already had quite a lot of cushions and bags in their stock, and rather to my surprise they were more interested in things to hang on the wall. So I've been working, not on conventional things to frame, but what you could call wall-hangings – that is, textiles intended to hang up rather like tapestries.

 

I quite like these wall-hangings because they're soft and touchable, and not locked away behind glass. Here's the first one of what might be a series. It's made up of nine separate 5 x 7 inch panels, so the total dimensions are something like 21 x 27 inches. The only problem with these things as far as I'm concerned it that the separate parts need to be sewn together, something I'm not all that good at, as you can see! But this is supposed to be handwork after all, and maybe practice will make perfect, and I'll slowly get better at it

 Finally – a belated freebie for February. I've been busy with a lot of big projects recently, so I've had to raid the back files for something the might do as a free design.

Maybe a foretaste of spring?

This is a very old design from a Mexican collection I did a LONG time ago, but I've always liked the vivid colours and energetic designs of Mexican folk art and I hope this won't have dated much. And it's a nice bright reminder of the coming spring, in what is still a very dark and dank February for us. Here's the file (in .pes v.6) and the worksheet is here

 

 

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I last posted. I have no real excuse – it’s just that I’ve been working what seems like 24/7 on a new design – or rather a series of designs, because this is going to be a wall-hanging consisting of nine separate parts. I’m doing it at the suggestion of the owner of a local craft shop, and as she needs it as soon as possible, there just hasn’t been time to do anything else. Even now, it isn’t anywhere near finished so it will be a while before I can post it here, but until I can finish it, here’s a little goose that I did some time ago.

A temporary goose

I had intended it as a motif to go on a tote bag but I’m not sure it would be quite right for that. However, I quite like it and I’m sure I’ll be able to use it for something eventually

And I know I’m way behind with a freebie for February but I’m working on it! I’ll hope to get it out in a few days

By the way, I’m SO grateful to all those readers who wrote suggesting ways to deal with the problems of stitching on a large, unsupported area of fabric, of the sort that I was complaining about in my last post. I haven’t tried anything like that again, but now I have some very good ideas of what to do to avoid those awful pull problems

Over the past few weeks I’ve pretty much given up doing designs for “wall art” and am concentrating on craft designs – that is, things to use on useful items such as bags and cushions. I miss the wall art, but it’s probably good for me to change the focus a little bit. 

The Iona Galley

This week we have another cushion, with a design based on a stone carving in Iona Abbey, an ancient Christian settlement on a tiny island off the coast of Mull, which is itself an island off the west coast of Scotland. I’ve simplified it a little bit and it looks quite modern for something that originated in the first century AD.

 

An Iona design in a modern setting

 

To stitch it, I used for the first time the 9 ½ inch (240 mm) hoop that came with my new machine, and it was a real eye-opener. You can do such HUGE embroideries with these big hoops! Of course, I’m learning the hard way that there are also huge technical problems associated with them, such as excessive pull caused by trying to stitch on such wide, unsupported areas of fabric, but I’m learning fast, and I hope it won’t be long before I can stitch a lot more of my designs with these super-sized hoops

Recently my friend, local artist Audrey Riach, had a brilliant idea. She suggested that for next year’s NEOS (North East Open Studios) we should put together a tree, consisting of a large bare branch covered by all sorts of different leaves, all made by our community of artists. I thought this was a great idea and have been working on some ways of producing bright embroidered leaves

As they need to be seen from both sides, I wanted to make the leaves as free-standing applique objects, stitched on water-soluble stabiliser which would then be washed off. However there were a couple of technical problems. For one thing, I wanted the embroidered pattern on the top of the leaf to be very complicated, and the pattern on the bottom to be very simple. This meant that I couldn’t just sandwich the fabric for the top and bottom layers together for stitching, because then they’d both have the same pattern on both of them

So after some thought, I thought I’d try stitching the leaf upside down, so that the top would stitch first and the bottom last. The sequence was this: first, I hooped some water-soluble stabiliser. Then, I stitched the outline of the leaf. Then, I added Mylar for some shine, the top layer of fabric, and a layer of stabiliser. Then I stitched the complicated pattern I wanted on the top of the leaf. THEN I added a layer of the fabric I wanted to use for the bottom of the leaf, and stitched the pattern for the bottom. Of course this would come out on the top layer too, but I didn’t mind that as these were only small details of the leaf structure (the veins etc.) Then I trimmed off all the fabric I had added – all four layers of them! Then I just needed to stitch the final outline of the sandwich, wash off the stabiliser, and it was finished

 

                                                                                                                 
The top (left) and bottom (right) of the completed leaf

 

The technique worked pretty well. I’m afraid you can’t see the detailed stitching on the top of the leaf clearly, because I used a thread that was a bit too pale, but it’s there all the same, and it’s not on the bottom – which was the point of the exercise!

Of course for this to work you have to use coloured thread in the bobbin, but this is no big problem. There are still a few technical problems to be worked out, but I think the general idea will be fine. This is just a trial run – it’s not a particularly spectacular leaf in itself, but with some bright fabric, lots of sparkly Mylar and some metallic threads (and a more interesting design!) the idea should work well, so I’d better get digitising and finish some more leaves

Well, they’re exotic to me, anyway! Whenever I draw and paint, I always try to use as subjects things that I can actually see around me. This is why I draw so many deer and horses and crows and pine trees, and why I don’t do many lions or flamingos or palm trees (you don’t get many of those running around in rural Aberdeenshire). Of course, there are times when you really need an exotic subject (for example the Beast from the East that I posted last spring) but for the most part I like to be inspired by what I can see around me. So I don’t usually do designs of American birds. It’s not that they’re not beautiful – quite the opposite – but it’s just that it’s frustrating not to be able to observe the living animal. I have to work entirely from photographs and that can cause problems. But, a while back when I asked for ideas that blog readers might like to see as freebies, someone suggested the cardinal (that is, the North American bird) and of course these are such spectacularly beautiful birds that I couldn’t resist the idea.

Cardinal 1 (the male)

 

Cardinal 2 (the female)

So for the first freebies of 2019 here are two cardinals, a male and a female. I’m not sure that they’re very successful – I did have several problems with them. In the first place, although the picture is accurate enough, the female looks as if she's got a Christmas hat on! And it was frustrating not to be able actually to see how these birds moved and flew and sat on trees. Finally I don’t think I chose quite the right thread colours for the stitchouts, so maybe you might want to consult some pictures of real cardinals to see what you should use. But they’re such wonderful birds that I hope these will turn out OK for you

If you'd like to try them, here's the male, here's the female, and here's the worksheet

My friend Cherri belongs to a sewing group, and apparently every year it’s their custom to make Christmas presents for each other. A few weeks ago she asked me if I could come up with something she could stitch on small bags for their 2018 present, so I had a look through my “For Inspiration” file and found a photo of a lovely little Art Deco screen.

A little metal screen from the Art Deco era

This looked exactly the sort of design that would go well on a purse, so I used it as the basis of a digitised design, and Cherri has just spend a very busy couple of weeks stitching out all the purses. Here they all are, with the names of the recipients attached,

All the bags together

and here is a close-up of just one, so you can see the details more clearly

A bag by itself

I think they really turned out well, and I love all the different colours Cherri used. That rough grey felt is not an easy fabric to work with, because it tends to suck colour and texture out of anything that’s embroidered on it, but in this case the colours are just right and the background and the embroidery really work well together

Well, Christmas is next week, and I hope everybody will be too involved with holiday events to think too much about embroidery. I’ll take a short break from the blog and be back in January, but meanwhile I wish all blog readers, and indeed all embroiderers everywhere, a happy and peaceful holiday season

You may remember that a few weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to try to make more embroidered “crafty” objects – cushion covers and bags were the things that occurred to me. I wasn’t looking forward to this, because I am particularly clumsy at the sewing machine, but I’ve just finished a little embroidered bag and I have to say that I quite like it.

A Brand New Bag!

The design is an old Jacobean one that I did years ago – it’s in four parts which are stitched separately to make a single embroidered area of about 9 ½ inches square (24 x 24 cm). This piece of fabric is easily incorporated into a bag, and I think it works well here. The bag is actually lined, which is something I was surprised to find that I could do quite easily. So I’m never going to make a fortune by making tote bags, but it’s nice to know that I can actually make them if I try!

You may remember the commission I received for embroideries of the Four Evangelists done in a Celtic style? Well, I’ve done something extremely stupid. I finished all four and then sent them off to the client, WITHOUT scanning them first. Fortunately I had scans of early versions of the Lion and the Ox, but I can’t show you the Eagle or the Man unless I stitch them out again, and I’m not about to do that just now. I have to confess that my fantastic husband has surprised me with an early Christmas present of the new Innovis Luminaire (other embroidery machines are available, to use the accepted disclaimer that you have to use in Britain!). It’s just SO huge and impressive that I’m almost afraid to touch it. But over Christmas I should be able to get to grips with it, and then maybe in the New Year I‘ll try the Evangelists again. Meanwhile here’s the Winged Ox of St. Luke

 

St Luke's Winged Celtic Ox

OK here’s a little Christmas project for you, which I’m posting early so that you can have time to make them. These are four little Christmassy texts, which you can stitch out and mount in blank cards to use as Christmas cards. (By the way, the French text is in honour of all the French readers of the blog, of which there are an increasing number!)

All the designs are for the 4×4 hoop, but because all the designs are of slightly different sizes, you’d do best to stitch them out first, and then measure the text so you can get the right-sized cards to mount them in. You can buy the blank cards on-line – just do a search for “aperture card blanks” and a lot of things should come up

Stitch them on a firm fabric, such as felt, and as these are for a festive occasion, you can use metallic thread to great effect. In the pictures below, the background and most of the little details are all done in metallics, although the effect is difficult to pick up in the scans.

 

 

 

 

Four little holiday cards

 

I’m not doing worksheets, because you should be able to cope without them. The first color is always the background pattern, and the second one is the main text. The third (and sometimes fourth) colours are the outlines and various miscellaneous details of the texts

Incidentally, these are very old designs, digitised with very old software, and like many of my very old designs there may be weird thread jumps here and there. As I’ve mentioned before, these are tricky for me to fix, so I hope they won’t irritate you too much. If necessary they can, of course, be trimmed after the embroidery is finished

Here are the four .pes v. 6 files: just click to download

    Merry Christmas

    Joyeaux Noel

    Happy Holidays

    Happy New Year