I’ve recently discovered a new world of wonderful, inspirational design in the work of artists living in Cape Dorset, on Baffin Island in the Canadian arctic. There’s no one particular website which will show you everything they do, but if you Google “Cape Dorset art” and then look at the images, you’ll begin to get some idea. Their subjects are mostly the animals that inhabit the far north, and they treat them with such honesty and respect and affection that I find them irresistible. At first glance the work may seem naive or even primitive, but if you look closely at it, you can see that there are actually some very sophisticated ideas being expressed

Even though I’ve been drawing birds and animals all my life, I have picked up many new and interesting ideas from their work, so you can expect to see quite a lot of Cape Dorset–inspired designs here over the next few months

And the first was suggested by a simple carving of an owl. (I can’t find the name of the artist of this, so I can’t give him/her the credit they deserve). The asymmetry of the wings and feet and the bright eyes give it a tremendous sense of energy and personality, but I was mostly interested in the upraised wings.

A moon bird from the Arctic

So here’s a bird in a pose suggested by the little owl. It doesn’t have quite the personality of the original, but it works well enough. The sun between the wings came about because I thought of the owl as being a bird of the night, with the feeling of the moon shining on the dark figure. My bird, however, was more of a daytime creature, with a reference to the sun, and once I noticed the feeling of a sun behind the bird, it was just a matter of painting in a blotch of yellow and emphasizing it by some light overstitching

The sun bird

I do apologise for missing last week’s posting – we spent a very enjoyable few days in London and then when we got back I was laid low by a nasty cold. London was hugely enjoyable – we used to live there and it was fascinating (and sometimes frightening) to see how the city had changed since that time, but all the same it’s still one of the world’s great cities, with wonderful galleries and museums and theatres

But back to more ordinary things. I’ve been looking over my list of pieces that are finished, or nearly finished, and I’m staggered to see that they’re ALL about birds. Birds are wonderful things, of course, but I really need to get out more and see if I can find some different subjects. But we’re stuck with birds for the next few weeks, I’m afraid

So – here’s another one of Scottish Birds in Scottish Places. It’s a flotilla of mallards that I saw one day when I was driving along the banks of the Don, our local river. All the birds are identical so it was just a matter of stitching out the same duck 5 times on a painted background. The alignment of the members of the flock was easy enough with the help of a few basted guidelines and the video camera on the Innovis

A flock of mallards on the River Don

The whole thing is quite a large panel – so large that the picture doesn't give much of an idea of the size. Each duck is about 6 inches long and the total length is about 20 inches. I'm afraid the fabric is so lightweight that you can see wrinkles between each duck, but that problem should disappear when the piece is mounted. It’s a cold, wintry scene, but believe me the Don can be a pretty cold and wintry river, and it was one of the waterways that flooded badly during the recent heavy rains

This month’s free designs date from a LONG time ago, when I was just a baby digitiser and hadn’t yet the confidence to work from my own drawings. So at the time I used designs from many different sources, and one of them was the work of the incomparable Arts and Crafts artist William Morris. I did a series of designs taken from Morris tapestries and fabric, and here are two of them for this month’s free designs, both for the 4 x 4 inch (100 mm x 100 mm) hoop

 

Morris carnations

 

Morris Irises

 

Just a couple of words of warning. First, do stabilise these well, because there can be quite a lot of pull on them. And second, because I digitised these with a very old version of the PEDesign software, I found a few glitches (mostly unnecessary jump stitches) when I stitched them out on my very modern machine. I redid parts of the designs and I think I’ve fixed all the mistakes, but it’s possible that one or two small ones may remain, especially if you change the format from .pes to something else. But all the same the final result should be OK

You can download them by clicking Morris carnations and Morris irises, and don't forget the worksheet

As I said a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been working on several designs inspired by the work of Tom Phillips, and have just finished the latest one. This was one of his paintings that caught my eye:

Tom Philips' Arabesques

It’s called “Ornament II: Arabesque” and I can see why: all those shapes do look like arabesques of some kind. But to me the picture looked more like a flock of birds whirling around in a mad cloud, bumping into each other and then breaking away. I liked the patches of different colours in the background too. So I did a quick sketch of a mass of demented birds bouncing in all directions, and digitised them over patches of different colours and then stitched them out in different pastel shades. It’s sort of crazy but it will do to pass on to an Aberdeen gallery who has been asking for some works to exhibit – it would be at home in an arty atmosphere, I think

A crazy flock of birds

Right – back to my occasional series on Scottish Birds in Scottish Places. In the winter, anywhere in the country you can see great flocks of the tattered black shapes of crows blowing in the winter gales on bare fields and around old, leafless trees, and the sight and the sound of their cawing almost defines winter for me. This work was just a response to a gaggle of noisy crows flocking around an old tree on the road to Banchory, but it could have been anywhere in Aberdeenshire.

The Crow Tree

The tree and all the crows are done in a combination of stitching over applique. It’s a big piece, but technically it wasn’t difficult to do. The tree itself fitted into just two hoopings, and the only part of the design that extended from one half to the other was the single branch stretching out to the right. And after the first hooping (of the left-hand side) it was easy enough to align that branch in the right position with the aid of the machine’s video camera. Finally the left-hand bird on the ground was stitched over the “join” of the two halves in a third hooping

I’ve recently discovered a British artist whose work has given me fascinating insights into several aspects of design. His name is Tom Phillips, and this is his website: http://www.tomphillips.co.uk. Recently I’ve been working on several different things that have been directly or indirectly inspired by him, and I feel as if I've entered a new and exciting area of art

Like him, I’ve always loved the idea of incorporating text and words in design, so I was intrigued by some of his pieces which do the same thing. This is one of his works which adorns the cover of the menu of The Ivy (a very upmarket London restaurant). If you know that it’s for The Ivy you can just about make out the name, but the text is mostly there as design, and it's not really meant to be read as text

Tom Phillip's menu cover for The Ivy restaurant

Of course, when you use text in a design, even if you can’t read it clearly it should be something that’s worth spending time and effort on, and it took me a while to think of something suitable to try myself. But I’ve always loved William Blake’s poem “The Tyger”, and it has such a strong visual presence that it seemed a natural to translate into design. Here’s the full text of the poem: The Tyger, and here's my version

The Tyger takes the central place in the design, and the rest of the text forms the background. You can’t read the text very clearly, but that doesn’t worry me, because as in Phillip’s Ivy work the text is a decorative element, not a script to be read

The Tyger

This was a technical nightmare to stitch out. First I had to stitch an outline of the main shapes onto the background fabric, and then paint the red and yellow background. Then the tyger was appliqueed into the centre. But the tyger plus the frame of words was far too big even for my largest frame, so the frame of words had to be digitised in several different parts and then “pieced” onto the figure of the tyger – that is, I stitched one part, then moved the fabric in the hoop, stitched a second part and so on. I’m not 100% sure about it but it sort of works, and at least it’s nice and bright, and cheers me up in this wet winter weather

Welcome back to the blog for 2016 – I hope everybody had a peaceful and enjoyable holiday. As it’s the first week of the month, it’s time for a new freebie. I adapted this one from the last design I posted (“Realm of Water, Realm of Air”) As you can see, it’s one of the outlined birds from the top of the panel poised against a background of a “shadow” which echoes the shape of the bird. The bird is an outline only so you will be able to see through it clearly to any pattern on the background fabric. You can of course stitch the bird without the shadow if you prefer.

 

The shadowbird

The design is in .pes v6, which most people seem to be able to use, and is for the 5×7 (130×180 mm). If you can’t use v.6, just drop a comment to the blog letting me know what version you need

Download the design by clicking here: Download Shadowbirdfreev6 : download the worksheet here Download Shadowbird

For some time now I've been working on quite a complicated design, and ideas for it came from several different sources of inspiration. I’ve always loved groups of animals – herds of deer, schools of fish and especially flocks of birds – and I’ve often tried to use them in designs. But it’s not all that easy. It’s not enough to draw each individual animal separately – that just makes for a stiff and rigid composition, with no sense of movement. So when I was playing around with using really thin layers of stitching as a background (as I did in the Klee Garden – see post of 13 November) it occurred to me that I might be able to use thin, transparent shapes of animals to suggest those in the background of a flock, and then stitch thicker layers for the animals in front. The vague background shapes (of stitching at very low density) worked well, so first I tried to put some applique birds and fish over the background shapes. But that was just heavy and boring, and ruined the lightness of the thin background shapes. All the same the foreground needed to be different from the background, so in the end I just did the foreground animals with running stitch outlines only. They were clear outlines, but because there was no fill or applique in them, you could still see the shapes and colours of things behind them. You can’t really see the thin background shapes clearly, but that’s the idea – they just suggest the vague presence of something behind the animals in the foreground

Realm of water, realm of air

I like the result, although (as usual) I didn’t get the colours quite right. I know it’s a bit “busy” but I like that effect, because it reminds me of the visual commotion and confusion you can get in a flock of birds or a school of fish. As for the name – well, it just seemed appropriate as a description of the combination of fish and birds

It’s almost Christmas, and many of us will be too busy to have much time to think about embroidery and design. So I will take a break from blogging for a couple of weeks, and be back in January as usual. May I wish everybody a very happy and peaceful holiday season

Time for another free design! December’s freebie is based on a motif by the gifted Scottish artist Charles Rennie Macintosh, who with his wife Margaret played a key role in the development of the Arts and Crafts movement in the last years of the 19^th century. You can still see his decorative works in some buildings in Glasgow, and if you’re ever in that city it’s well worth searching for them

The Macintosh Rose is among his most famous motifs and he included versions of it in much of his decorative work. The free design is an applique of a Macintosh rose in his distinctive style. It’s for the 4×4 inch hoop, and is a simple little design, but none the worse for that

The Mackintosh Rose

 

The direct download of the freebie worked well last month, so I will try the same thing this time. I have noticed that many people can’t use designs done in PEDv.9, which is what I digitise in. So I will put up the rose as a v.6 file, which everybody should be able to open and use (I hope!) If you have problems with it, send a comment to the blog and I’ll try to fix the problem

To download the file,  Download Mackintosh rosev.6

To download the worksheet, Download Rose worksheet

First of all, I’ve finally managed to finish final versions of the Zentangle Zodiacs and the Elemental Horses, and organised the worksheets and the other designs that go with them. Both sets are now available on the Designs For Sale page (see the tab at the top of this page). The whole zodiac project took me something like two years from start to finish and I’m SO glad to be able to get on to something else!

Second, I’ve spent the past two weeks on a very complicated commission, so I don’t have any new complete designs to post today. But I’ve been playing around with a few new techniques. These aren’t designs in themselves – they’re just new methods of using machine embroidery which I might use in future designs. The first one came about because several people commented on the use of the frayed-edge squares in the colourful pheasant panel (the posting of 29 October) One reader suggested that this fringe could be used to suggest grass that the pheasant was walking through (thanks, Deena!) so I thought I’d try to make some more realistic fringe-grass. I just stitched down a square of green fabric, leaving a couple of inches free, and then frayed the edge. Then it was just a matter of putting in some loose running stitching over the “grass” to hold it in place. It worked pretty well and I’m sure I’ll find a use for the technique somewhere

 

"Grass" made of frayed fabric

The second technique came about because we’ve been having some very foggy weather recently and I thought I’d try to capture the vague shapes of the trees round our house as they appear through the fog

I cut three squares of tulle and appliqueed them on the background fabric, stitching each square with the shape of a leafless tree. The squares were slightly overlapped, and you can just about make out the shapes of the trees on the “far-side” squares, just as far-away trees look dim and distant through the fog

 

Misty trees, with the aid of tulle

The effect wasn’t too bad and again I might use this approach in a future design. However now I need to stop playing around with new techniques and get on with some real designs