Well, it’s back to doing yet more pieces for exhibition, although to be honest the particular design I’m posting today is almost more decoration than art. It owes a lot to my recent preoccupation with Mylar. If you’re not familiar with Mylar, it’s just thin transparent plastic sheeting. I think it’s mostly used for industrial purposes, such as food bags, emergency blankets and things like that. But it can be used in embroidery as well, because it’s so thin and flexible you can just applique it on to give an interesting shiny and transparent effect. I’ve used it a lot to make shiny things like fish scales, but I’ve been trying to come up with some new ways to use it. And then it occurred to me – what’s shinier and more transparent than glass! So of course it was then just a question of making some Mylar vases and designing some flowers to go in them

 

Mylar for the exhibition

 

The Mylar is just appliqueed on and then overstitched with decorative patterns to give an interesting texture. As always, though, the scan doesn’t really give a very accurate idea of the final effect but you can probably get some idea of how it looks. 

As some readers may know, I have a few collections up on the commercial embroidery site “Secrets of Embroidery”. They have some very interesting designs for sale, and I thought that my style would suit them, and so it has turned out. I’ve done several collections for them, and they’re a lot of fun to do, because the decorative style I use for them is very different from the more “arty” and formal style I use for exhibitions. So when I get tired of art, I can just turn to decoration and produce something for Secrets.

 

Recently I posted a collection in my Secrets of Embroidery store of 10 “Fantasy Horses”, which consists of horses with wildly un-realistic colouring and completely un-natural decorations. They were a lot of fun to do and were an excellent exercise of the creative imagination. Here are three of them:

 

First Horse in gold

 

Second Horse in silver

 

Third Horse in green

To be honest I’m not quite sure where these horses could be used. On bags or jackets, perhaps, as gifts for someone with horsy interests? On towels or cushions? Oh well, I’m sure they’ll find good homes somewhere. And now I have to return to the world of Art, and start worrying again about things for upcoming exhibitions

Well, after a LOT of work I’ve finished another piece that’s destined for an exhibition. I always like doing designs with animals, and I usually prefer to feature the animals that are native to this part of the world – which explains the red squirrel of a few weeks ago, and also all those shiny fish. And today we have another animal (well, another bird) that’s very common here – the mallard duck. I get more than enough time to watch them, as crowds of them are always sitting on our large pond, and indeed they usually have their young ones in our garden. So here’s a mass of mallards swirling around in the water. It’s rather a complicated design but it should look fine when it’s framed

 

A lot of swirling mallards

Yes, here's yet another one to add to what must be your massive collection of colourful free birds! And I know it’s not quite July yet, but I promised this freebie to some people a few days ago so I think I’d better get it out now. 

 

Yet another one…

 

I can’t remember exactly when or why I did it but it looks a bit folk-arty, so perhaps it dates from my Pennsylvania Dutch phase. It’s a simple enough design, for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and it’s embroidery only, no applique.

Here it is, in .pes v.6. Good luck with it!

 

 

Sorry for the long silence, but as I explained, I’m not able to post now as much as I usually do, because I really have to concentrate on things that I can show at this year’s exhibitions. OK, I know that it’s a couple of months now before I have to have anything ready, but it can take a long time to do something complicated enough to be worth exhibiting, so I have to get started early

But at last I have a couple of things which should be OK, and this week we have another design that is meant to show off the effects of Mylar (that is, plastic film). The problem is that there aren't very many subjects that are really suited to Mylar, and the one I always come back to is fish

 

Oh dear – they don't look as shiny as they really are 🙁

 

They’re really well suited to stitching with Mylar, because the stitching of the scales can emphasise the shininess of the plastic film – although I have to admit that this scan doesn’t show the scales to be nearly as shiny as they really are. Maybe a couple of close-ups will show them to be shinier

 

Shinier in close-up?

So they're better when you can see them in detail. But that's really enough fish for the time being, and I’ll eventually have to discover a new way of using Mylar. Perhaps it could be part of the design of a glass vase filled with flowers? We’ll see what I can come up with in the coming weeks!

I’ve always loved when people say “dustbunny” to mean one of those annoying little dustballs you get under furniture when you haven’t swept a room in a while. It’s such a good description and I began to wonder what a real dustbunny might look like. So that was the beginning of this month’s free dustbunny design.

 

A puzzled bunny

 

I think it has that puzzled look that you might see on the face of a real dustbunny that's spent its life under a bed!

It makes use of detailed overstitching, so there’s a lot of texture going on in the coat. It’s embroidery only – no applique – and it’s for the 5×7 inch (130 x 180 mm) hoop, so it’s actually quite a large rabbit. It’s not a conventional design but you could use it in a cushion or wall hanging for a child’s room. Here it is, in .pes v.6

By the way, I think I should just mention again that not all the designs I post here are available free – I’ve had one or two readers recently who have assumed that everything here is available as a free design, but I’m afraid that’s not true. I try to post freebies once a month, around the first of the month, and the posts always mention “free” in the title – like this month’s “A free dustbunny”

 

 

Well, we’re back at last after a really enjoyable trip around the Southwest of Britain. We spent some very enjoyable days on Dartmoor, which Sherlock Holmes fans will immediately remember as the home of the Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s surprising that even after more than a hundred years, this story still has a real presence in this part of the world

Anyway, it’s back to normal life now, and to some essential work on things to exhibit at the local art shows this summer. I mentioned some time ago that I wanted to include some more local wildlife in these pictures, and one of the most famous of our local animals is the red squirrel. These lovely creatures are endangered in the UK, and even in Scotland they’re far from common. So we’re very lucky to have a family of red squirrels in the forest not far from our house, and they come by all the time to raid our bird feeders

Here is a simple design of a single squirrel launching himself from one pine tree to another, which is how we usually see them. As I’ve mentioned before, machine embroidery is a wonderful medium in which to re-create the soft, furry coat of a small animal, and the technique of dense overstitching works well in this little picture. Unfortunately the scan doesn't pick up the details very well, but if you saw the stitchout "in person" you could see the realistic furriness clearly

 

Red squirrel in one of our trees

It’s a new month again so it’s time for a freebie. Here’s another one I found in my long-ago files – I can’t remember what I meant to do with it but it seems to date from the time I did a lot of Pennsylvania-Dutch inspired things. It has an appliqué area (the large heart shape) and it’s for the 5×7 inch (130 x 180 mm) hoop, but the design itself is just 4 1/2 inches (115 mm) wide.

 

Be careful of the pinks!

 

A word of warning – don’t make the same mistake that I did! I used a pink fabric for the appliquéd heart, but then I also used pink thread to stitch out the birds, and the two colours were too much alike. So when you stitch it, be sure to use nicely contrasting colours for the heart and the birds. Here it is, in .pes v.6

Now, I won’t be able to post for several weeks, because we’re off on a long tour around southwestern England – mostly to Devon and Cornwall. We used to spend a lot of our time in that part of the world, but haven’t been there for a long time, so it will be interesting to see how it’s changed. I’ll post again when we get back

So – important! If you’re one of the readers who can’t download designs directly from the blog and need to have me send you the design as an e-mail attachment, bear in mind that I won’t be around to do it for a couple of weeks. Just write to me as you usually do and I’ll send the file when I get back

 

Some time ago I ran across an unusual photo on a BBC website. It’ s supposed to be a picture of two doormats that have become frozen and frosted, but it looks far too much like a work of art just to be an accidental picture – I think the house-owner must have been doing some work of his (her?) own in order to make such an interesting image

Frozen doormats or works of art?

 

Anyway it looked so much like a black and-white image of leaves and flowers that I couldn’t resist using it as inspiration for a coloured version of the same subject. OK, I know it isn’t anywhere like the original, but it was fun to do, and it might make a nice mat or chair cushion

 

Inspired by an icy mat

 

OK, I know it’s only spring (although at the moment here in the Scottish Highlands it’s snowing heavily) but all the same, as I’ve mentioned, I must make a start on some works for our summer exhibitions. These works need to be more complicated and “arty” than the decorative things I usually do, so they take a lot more time

At our exhibitions, I’ve noticed that pictures with animals are popular, so I thought I should do some pictures featuring our local wildlife, and I’ve started with a running rabbit

 

Rabbit running in the green

 

One thing I love about using embroidery for animal pictures is that you can get such interesting textures with the threads. Of course in a conventional painting you can add some texture with a paintbrush, but you never get the same three-dimensional effect that embroidery gives, and it really adds a lot of interest to a picture – assuming of course that it’s a picture of a furry animal! You can't really see the effect very well in this scan, but you'd notice it if you saw the real thing