It’s occurred to me that for some time now most of the things I’ve been doing have been very low-key in colour – lots of browns and dull greens and not much else. That is doubtless because we’ve just been though a long winter, and although Aberdeenshire in winter can be spectacular and dramatic, nobody could call it colourful. In fact, it’s a bit short of bright colours all year round, so if I want to do something in primary colours I usually have to retreat to a kind of folk-arty style. Here’s an example. I’m not sure where the idea came from – I think the tree came first and then I thought it needed something else so the horse came along

Blue horse under a colourful tree

This is of course one of those appliqués with thick satin stitch borders covering the edges of the cut fabric, but in this design it isn't really a problem. It's a simple, almost cartoonish design, and the fat borders aren't the same problem they would be in a more naturalistic design. In fact, they add a three-dimensional quality which I quite like

This one should have gone up on the blog a long time ago, but it got lost among some old files.  Some months ago I went to a fabric printing workshop, where I turned out some fabric in reds and yellows, and some in blues and whites. Here's the blue and white piece:

A piece of fabric from the printing workshop

I used the red fabric as a background to some pinkish birds, and the warm colours suggested the title “Sunrise Birds”. The blue companion piece, of course, then had to be called “Night Birds”.

 

Fabric plus birds

The wings and tails were done at a very low density, to let the background show through a little bit and help to unify the background and the embroidery. Personally, I think I prefer the Night Birds to the Sunrise Birds, as the colours of the background and the birds are better balanced, but in any case both pieces sold at last year’s exhibition. I wish I knew if the same person bought both – they were really supposed to go together

Now, before we get to April’s free design, regular readers will know that from time to time I get my knickers in a twist (to use a good old British expression!) about readers “blocking” their e-mail addresses from their comments when they ask for the freebie. This is of course very frustrating for me, because it means I have no address to send the freebie to

 However thanks to a concerned reader (thanks, Bev!) I now think I know how this happens. If you access the blog from Google, for some reason it doesn’t pass on your e-mail address, and there are also some problems with making comments. So if you want the freebie, just quit Google and access the blog in the usual way by directing your browser to http://theaccidentalembroiderer.typepad.com, and ask for this month’s free design. I hope this will help your address get through

 OK, this month’s freebie is another example from my dim-and-distant design past. In olden times I did a lot of art nouveau and Art Deco-inspired design, and recently I’ve been thinking that many of my old works could be re-drawn and re-interpreted.  Meanwhile this is just a simple design from one of my old collections, done in a 1930’s style as redwork  – that is, in just one colour. It’s a bit simple just as it is, but you could use it as a frame for a text. I can see it serving as a cover for a book or notebook, with the title embroidered in the open space between the trees

 

Two simple Art Deco trees

If you’d like me to send you this free design, just drop a comment to the blog asking for it. There’s no worksheet for this design because it’s all just one colour, but it’s for the 5×7 hoop, and there are 7070 stitches in it

 

 

 

First, a message for Jacki Tyndall. All your messages have ended up in my spam folder (I've no idea why!) and don't have your e-mail address on them.   Can you just log directly into the blog (theaccidentalembroiderer.typepad.com) and try again?

OK, on to this week's project. Some time ago, a visitor to one of our exhibitions asked me if I would be able to do a special commission for her. Intrigued, I said yes, but maybe I should have had a look at what she wanted me to do before I agreed. She produced an illustration by a well-known Art Deco artist, and said that she wanted me to reproduce it in embroidery.

The original image

That was fine, and the design would have been easy enough to do, if she had wanted it at a small size. The problem was that she wanted it done at a really large size – something like a yard/metre tall. It goes without saying that I didn’t have a hoop anywhere near large enough to do that, so to embroider it would mean splitting the design and “piecing” it on the fabric. And the various parts of the design were all at different angles, so the placing of the hoop would also have to be at different angles

 I won’t bore you with all the problems that cropped up during the weeks that I was working on this. It took 12 different files and 12 different hoopings, each at a different angle, but more by luck than judgement the result wasn’t too bad. There were a few problems with it – for example, there are a few inaccuracies in the placing of some of the elements, and the green felt that I used to embroider on rather “sucked” the light out of the gold thread, so the gold isn’t as bright as in the original. But the client wanted that shade of green, and I had to use felt, because if I’d used woven fabric the danger of rucking and buckling in such a large piece would have been too great. I also decided that embroidery couldn’t reproduce the little bright “stars” scattered around, so I used different kinds of gold beads glued in place

  The result

It’s not a totally accurate copy of the original, and the photograph doesn’t do it any favours (it’s washed out the colour a lot) but if you think of it as an “interpretation” rather than a copy, it does well enough

This big grouse was an interesting technical experiment. I love applique and use it in most of my designs. However I don’t like the way so many applique designs use borders of fat lines of satin stitch to hide the raw edges of the cut fabric. Sometimes I use this technique if it suits the design, but I’m always looking for ways to do things differently.

This grouse is made from a single piece of appliqueed fabric, but it doesn’t have a fat embroidered border covering the raw edges. Rather, the appliqueed fabric is overstitched with intricate patterns, which come right down to the cut edges of the fabric. There are a few very narrow borders in some places, but these are intended to indicate shadows rather than bind the raw edges, and there’s no wide border stitched around the piece of fabric

 

The borderless grouse

I thought that in a subject like this grouse it wouldn’t matter if some of the raw edges showed a bit, but I was really surprised to find that the overstitching itself was enough to bind the applique edges, and the finish of the raw edges is really very neat. In any case, it’s a lot better than a fat satin stitch border running all the way around the bird! As you can see, the overstitching is very dense. The grouse isn’t a very colourful bird, but it does have a lot of subtle textures on its feathers, so a lot of subtle texture in the embroidery is called for

And in case you were wondering, The Famous Grouse is a well-known brand of Scotch whisky

Please, please, please, DON'T block your e-mail address from Typepad when you send a comment (are you listening, Beverly?? :-)). If you do, there's no way I can send you the free design

This month we have quite a recent design as a freebie – it’s one of the pheasants from the Pheasants in Glenbuchat panel that I posted a few weeks back. I’ve simplified it a lot by removing some of the stitching and combining some of the applique areas so that now there are only two appliqués rather than the original three. This should all make it easier to stitch out, but it still looks much like the original.  The effect of the pheasant will depend largely on the fabric you choose for the applique steps. In the stitchout I used a blotchy brownish-red for the body and a blotchy grey-brown for the wing. Both areas are pretty thoroughly overstitched (apart from the breast area) but all the same if you can use printed fabric for these areas, it will help suggest the variegated plumage of the bird

A March pheasant

Here’s the second in the series of Scottish birds in Scottish places, but it owes a lot to Chicago. When I was growing up in Chicago, my parents’ closest friends were two other artists, Max Kahn and Eleanor Coen. I was very fond of them, and I also loved their work. They both had a wonderful feeling for animals and I have several of their prints on my walls now. One of my favourites is a big woodcut of Max’s, of crows sitting on a cactus

Max's crows

The other day as we were driving through Banchory, our local market town, I saw a flock of crows alighting on a bare tree, just as they’d done in Max’s print. So I combined a Max Kahn style with some Scottish crows

 

Banchory crows

The feet aren't quite right – I thought that by making them flat-footed it would make them look as if the birds were just about to land on the tree, but it didn't quite work out like that. Also I think I should have given all the crows two wings. But it will be a simple matter to change both those things

 

After a great deal of thought, and encouragement from some blog readers, I’ve decided to put up some of my designs for sale. The main problem in the past has been that many of the designs I’ve done were commissioned, made especially for a customer, or sold at an exhibition or gallery, so it wouldn’t have been ethical to sell the files. But I’ve contacted many of my past clients and most of them have been happy for me to sell on “their” designs.

I’m starting with a series of owls, which (when stitched out) have been very popular among visitors to our local exhibitions. To check out the terms of sale and have a look at the owls, please have a look at the "Designs For Sale" tab on the menu at the top of the page, and then click on the link to the "Owl Collection".

I’ll be adding other designs for sale from time to time. As in the past, though, I will still be putting up a monthly freebie, so do keep checking the blog regularly to see what’s on offer