First of all, my apologies to those people who had problems getting at the last freebie (the little lion) I have no idea why some people couldn’t open it – that’s never happened before. Anyway, if you had problems and would still like the file, just drop me a “comment” asking for it and I’ll send it out to you.

OK, now for this week’s story, which is really interesting – at least I think it is! Some time ago I saw a fascinating work by my friend and neighbour, textile artist Mahri Prince, which she’d recently finished. It was a deceptively simple piece – quite abstract, all in browns and blacks with pale stripes running over the surface. I loved the way the stripes changed colours as they ran from one part of the work to another, and eventually I did a couple of sketches that had the same kind of stripes. The one I liked best was one of a group of fish, with the pale stripes of Mahri’s work turned into rays of sunlight changing colour when they struck the silvery bodies of the fish

When I asked Mahri if I could post a picture of her work in this blog, she kindly sent me a picture of what had inspired her to make it. It was a very straightforward photo of an office in a modern building – not on the face of it a very inspirational picture! But I was astonished to see that the pale stripes of Mahri’s work had been inspired by the rays of light in the original picture, and in my work the light rays reappeared, even though I hadn’t known that that was what they were in Mahri’s piece. So here are the three pictures, showing how inspiration flows from one to the next

 

A picture of a modern office – maybe not very inspiring? But…

 

Mahri’s piece, with the pattern of light in the office picture translated into an abstract pattern playing over brown and black shapes

 

 

And finally in my piece, the patterns of light reappear in the rays of sunlight striking the bodies of the fish

 

Unfortunately, the scan doesn’t really capture the subtle shine on the bodies of the fish, so you’ll just have to imagine it! The sunlight in my embroidered piece was suggested by a very thin overstitching of Sulky Holoshimmer thread, which adds a subtle touch of shine to the surface without changing the colour too much

This little lion is adapted from the larger Leo from the Zentangle Zodiac series in my For Sale section, but it’s a little simpler and comes without the complicated background designs.

A little zentangle lion

It might do for a Leo friend, or indeed for anyone who likes animals! Click here for the design (in .pes v.6) and here for the worksheet

Once again we're back in the realms of (and please excuse the pretension!) Art, with a design based on Tom Phillips' abstract work Concerto Grosso. I liked this painting a lot, but it took me a while before I “saw” anything in it. Eventually it struck me that it looked like a galaxy suspended in space, with all the complexities of constellations and planets inside it

Tom Phillips' abstract Concerto Grosso

So I invented a “Horse Constellation” along the same lines, with a complicated, abstract interior that shaded into a dark background. It was one of those designs that was totally impossible to predict. It might work out or it might not, but there was absolutely no way you could tell what it was going to be like until the stitchout was finished, because so much depended on the unpredictable interplay of thread colours with the background and the applique fabric. More than once I changed my mind in the middle of stitching a colour, and went back with another colour and stitched over the first.

 

Constellation

It isn’t entirely a success but next time I will have a better idea of what to do. One thing that you can’t see on the scan – the horse is finished off with a very thin outline of opalescent Sulky “sliver metallic” thread, which turned out to be a surprising success (and that's really the way it's spelled – it's "sliver" and not "silver"). I’ve begun to use a lot of opalescent and shimmery threads recently, and I do like the glints of shine they give. I might add a bit more of this next time I stitch it out

Now, I know that I seem to be going far off into left field with all these strange designs, but I do like to see how far machine embroidery can be “pushed”. These unconventional designs are very good ways to develop interesting effects to use in designs of more conventional subjects

And if you’re interested in how I got those odd circles in the painted background, I just stamped the open ends of the tubes of green and blue paint onto the blue background. Easy!

Our new exhibition opened last night and there was so much work involved in getting it ready that we’re all quite shattered. Still, it’s up now and should stay there for three months, so we’re hoping that in that time a lot of people will be through the doors. Here are a couple of pictures of the displays with some of my embroideries, which you may recognise from old postings on this blog

 

 

The arts and crafts exhibition at Goodbrand and Ross, Corgarff, Aberdeenshire

But back to some new designs, and this week we have another one inspired by the Dorset Bay artists.

A swarm of fish

I really liked this deceptively simple pattern of fish swarming like insects, but after a bit of thought I organised the fish into a more disciplined spiral, which held the eye better than the all-over pattern. At first I just digitised some swirls of stitching behind the fish to provide some water for them to swim in, but eventually I realised that this would be a good place to use some subtle text. I was lucky enough to finds a lovely poem by Rupert Brooke, called “Fishes’ Heaven” which I loved at first sight, and which was perfect with the fish. The fish are overstitched with a little metallic thread, not too bright, but just enough to catch the eye

 

Fishpool, with words by Rupert Brooke

 

I have to admit that in the scan it looks sort of dull, but framed in a square black frame it looks quite good, and I have a feeling that it will sell pretty quickly

Recently I’ve been working on a lot of serious, “heavyweight” designs for various exhibitions, and suddenly I felt like doing something silly and colourful for a change. So I sketched out a cartoony rooster while I was watching something on television and then spent an enjoyable afternoon digitising him. He took a while to stitch out because it’s quite a large design, but it did make a change from all the arty things that are on my to-do list

 

The silly rooster

However that's enough fun for the moment – now I'd better get back to work on the serious stuff

It seems that nearly everything I’m working on at the moment has been inspired directly or indirectly by the Baffin Island artists I mentioned a few weeks ago. At first glance their work seems very simple, but it’s so inspirational that I find it difficult to stop thinking about what they do and how they interpret their subjects.

 

A loon from Baffin Island

 

This is a loon drawn by one of the Dorset Bay artists in a very unconventional pose. To be honest I’m not sure how realistic the pose is, but then I don’t know much about loons! But whether or not it’s realistic, it’s original and interesting, so I used the same pose for a drawing of a brightly-coloured bird among flowers.

 

The loon translated into a summer bird among the flowers

This is another one of those pieces where I’ve played around with loose stitching to make a “lightweight” background to the main subject. The bright colours are probably a reaction to the long-drawn end of winter that we’ve been experiencing, and an expression of hope that the spring and summer can’t be too far away

Well, I hope it’s beginning to be spring where you are – here we still have the odd snow flurry, and the daffodils aren’t even out yet. But the good news is that we can hear the curlews calling on the moors, which up here is a sure sign of spring. In any case, to encourage the season a little bit, here’s a flower – a fuchsia in a pot. I did this many years ago for an exhibition but which exhibition I can’t for the life of me remember. Anyway I hope it will now have a new lease on life.

Fuchsia in a pot – beware the jumps!

A word of warning – there are a lot of thread jumps between the stitching on the flowers. I could have run connecting stitching between the flowers along the branches of the “tree”, but in my experience this stitching is difficult to keep from showing, and I think it’s preferable to have to cut connecting threads than to end up with a messy and imperfect stitchout It’s in .pes v.6 and for the 5×7 hoop. Download it here, and the worksheet here

One of the things I like about this craft is that if you don’t like what you do at first, you can just go back, change it and try again. That’s what happened with this week’s design.

The original idea was to do three “portraits” of different birds arranged on a large panel. So I started with the three birds and put squares of loose embroidery behind them, to suggest the square shapes of pictures. But the background was boring so I put in a few leaves here and there and stitched the whole thing over a blotchy background of leafy green. Here’s the result.

Tree with birds version 1

Well, it’s not exactly bad, but I had a couple of problems with it. The green tree has taken over, so that the squares looked out of place. And those flat-footed feet were all wrong. It was as if the birds were just sort of pasted in front of the tree. And the colours were wrong too. I’d stitched them in different colours to emphasize that the birds were different from each other, but they were just too different.

So it was back to the computer. I gave up the idea of making "pictures" of the birds and ditched the squares, or rather I turned them into yellow circles so they’d add a little bit of sunny light behind the greenery. Then I got rid of those flat feet and turned them into feet that looked as if they could grasp the branches they were sitting on. Finally I toned down the colours of the birds – they’re still different colours but they blend a bit better with each other

 

Tree with birds version 2

It’s still not wonderful, but it’s better. I think I’ll let this one sit a while and maybe look at it again in a couple of months to see if I can figure out what else to do with it

I also need to give warning that I won’t be posting next week. Out of the blue I’ve received an invitation to exhibit and demonstrate at an arts and crafts fair, to be held in Brechin Castle (on Scotland’s east coast, between Dundee and Aberdeen) over the Easter holiday. They haven’t given me much notice of this so I’m going to have to scramble to get things ready, and I’m afraid the blog will have to suffer. However I’ll be back in the first week of April with the next freebie

This week we have another design inspired by the Cape Dorset artists of Baffin Island. This is the original print that caught my eye.

Downwing owl

It’s a charming little owl, but what I noticed particularly was that although the artist caught the bird in flight, they drew it with its wings down. I realised then that I mostly draw flying birds with the wings up – I have no idea why. Maybe it's because a bird with upraised wings just looks more animated. But when I started to look at birds’ wings I realised that actually the back of the wing (which is exposed when the wing points downwards) is very interesting, with complicated patterns of feathers

So I drew and digitised several birds with downward wings, and here is the first. I chose a heron because they have really big wings with intricate feather patterns that I thought would look well on an embroidered design

 

Downwing heron

It probably doesn’t look it but this is a fiendishly complicated design, with several different grey applique fabrics and several different shades of grey thread, and with complex overlying areas of applique and overstitching. It got so complicated that I got lost once or twice when I was stitching it and it was more by luck than judgement that it turned out more or less OK. I like it – the downward-pointing wing gives it a peacefulness and calmness that would be lost if the wing was pointing upwards

I’ve rather lost track of Easter this year and can’t work out when it’s supposed to be. However, whenever it comes along here’s a slightly unkempt Easter chick for your collection. It started off as an experiment to see how I could make a rough, feathery kind of texture for a little bird – it’s not too bad but like all first attempts it needs a little bit more work. The body is appliqueed onto the background but the raw edges aren’t finished off – rather there are a lot of loose feathers extending over the edge of the fabric. It doesn’t look very neat but then it’s not supposed to

 

The rather scruffy chick

It’s rather large for a chick: it’s for the 5×7 hoop, which makes it stitch out a little larger than life-size, and with hindsight I should have made it a bit smaller. You can try “shrinking” it if your software will let you, but I haven’t test-stitched it at a smaller size so I’m not sure how it will turn out

To download it, just click here, and don't forget the worksheet here So – I wish you a Happy Easter, and let's hope that spring won't be too far behind it