I thought maybe we needed a break from so many florals, so to get away from them for a while I'm posting some recent work – a few letters from a Celtic alphabet. I do like designing alphabets – they're more interesting than plain monograms – and I've done several in the past. But I don't do many because it's such a lot of work drawing and digitising 26 different designs, and even when you're finished, not all the letters are going to be useful. But all the same they're fun to do

So here is the beginning of a Celtic alphabet – or maybe I should say an alphabet in the Celtic style, because these aren't genuine Celtic designs – they're just my take on the general style

 

The beginnings of a Celtic alphabet

As to how to use them – well, the only thing that occurs to me is perhaps to embroider a name or a line of verse on a pillow of some sort. I'm not sure if I'd have the energy to do that but I might give it a try sometime

I'm afraid everybody is going to get totally fed up with flowers over the next few weeks, because for some reason I seem to have been doing very little else. I think it all comes from my recent researches into Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts styles, both of which seem to concentrate on flowers. Whatever the reason my files are filling up with florals and bouquets and flower vases of all possible kinds, so flowers are really all I have to post

 

Anyway, here are two recent things. The first seems to be mostly Art Nouveau inspired, while the second – well, I'm not entirely sure where it comes from. Maybe Arts and Crafts? Maybe Morris? Both designs are quite large (for the 8 inch x 8 inch hoop, which is the 200 mm x 200 mm hoop). In style they're more design than art, so although you probably wouldn't want to frame them, they should do quite well on bags or similar craft projects

 

 

 

 Inspired by the Art Nouveau style

 

 

 

inspired by….something Victorian?

I don't usually do monograms because I find them limited and, to be honest, mostly rather boring. But recently I was asked by a friend and neighbour to design a monogram in memory of her late mother. I learned that her mother had loved birds and flowers, in particular sweet peas and lilies of the valley, and this gave me some ideas of how a simple monogram might be converted into something a little more interesting than just a simple letter

So here are the results:

 

Lilies of the Valley

Sweet peas

My neighbour liked both of them, but in the end she chose the sweet peas, and I can understand why. Those big paddle-shaped leaves on the lilies of the valley don't look very good, but the problem is that those are the kind of leaves that lilies of the valley have, and if I were to make them into something else it just wouldn't look right

But I'm not sure that the sweet peas are right either. They are very difficult flowers to draw – very "loose" and blowsy and unstructured. Oh well, this version will just have to do

 Now this one really is from the dim and distant past. I did it years ago – so long ago that I can't remember just why I did it or what I meant to do with it. It's not really like my usual stuff – less colourful, more abstract – but it might come in handy if you do a lot of embroidery on soft furnishings and things like that. It's just a simple corner design with a foliage motif

 

A simple corner

Of course this could be repeated and inverted, and made into a useful pattern for a cushion or some other kind of soft furnishing

A simple corner x 4

There's no need for a worksheet for this – all there is to know is that it's for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, it has just one colour and it has 7188 stitches (that is, 7188 stitches for just one)

Here it is, in .pes v6

As I said a couple of weeks ago, I've recently been enjoying myself having a look through some of the design styles that have been popular in past years. First there were the clean, spare lines of the 1950s, then the sinuous tendrils of Art Nouveau. And recently I've been revisiting the solid Victorian values of the school of William Morris – the Arts and Crafts movement. I did a few sketches in the Morris style but I found that my recent attempts at Art Nouveau were having an influence – the lines of the designs were more fluid and curving than you usually find in Morris' work. But the results were OK, if not quite up to Morris' standards.

 

The stems are Art Nouveau, the roses are Morris

I'm not sure what you could do with it – maybe duplicate it and reverse the duplicate, and use it for a cushion cover? That would be suitable for a Morris design – he was heavily into tapestry and soft furnishings of various kinds. Oh well, it's not my immediate problem. I'll keep it for a while and see if any ideas present themselves on what to do with it

A few weeks ago I posted a couple of birds from a new set that I'm working on – a series of colourful birds in birdcages. There are now 12 of them, and while I won't bore you with all of them, I will put up a few more. After the last posting I got some interesting messages from readers who were saddened by the idea of so many birds in cages. So for you, I've added one of a bird breaking free

 

Still caged…

 

Almost out…

 

Free at last!

Someone also suggested that these designs could be used in a long thin panel – that is, a bellpull. I'm a huge enthusiast of bellpulls so at the moment I'm working on this idea. The cages by themselves wouldn't be all that interesting, so I'm drawing a lot of lush foliage to surround all the cages. Both the drawing and the digitising, as well as the eventual stitching out – will be a lot of work, but I hope it will be worth it

 Some of my happiest hours have been spent leafing through the works of artists of past generations and trying to analyse past styles of painting. Of course, very few artists have ever designed for embroidery (and even fewer for computerised embroidery!) but that makes it all the more interesting to try and work out how styles from the past can be adapted to modern techniques. One of my favourite styles is Art Nouveau – to my mind it manages to be spontaneous, elegant and emotional all at the same time

 

I've recently discovered the work of the artist Arthur Mackmurdo, and here's one of his best-known works, the cover of a book on London churches

 

The work of Arthur Mackmurdo

 

Who could resist those wonderful sinuous lines! I certainly couldn't, so here's an interpretation in embroidery of his leaves and flowers.

 

A modern version

 

I would never put myself at his level – I still have too much to learn before I get that far! But I hope that he would at least be flattered at proving such an inspiration to future generations

Recently, when I asked for ideas of designs that I might post as future freebies, someone suggested Celtic knots. This really rang a bell with me, because a long time ago, in Another Life, I did a big series of Celtic knots, and I'd be only too happy to pass some of them on now.

I'm not doing worksheets for these, because there doesn't seem to be much need for them. Both designs are for the 4×4 (100mm x 100mm) hoop

 

Celtic knot 1

 

Celtic knot 2

 

Celtic knot 3

 

Now – WARNNG!! There are jump stitches in all of them, and numbers 1 and 3 have a HUGE number of jumps in the final colours. I've been puzzling for a long time over how to get rid of these, but I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only way to do away with jumps involves the sacrifice of stitchout quality. So I'm afraid there's not a lot I can do about them – just think of them as part of the Celtic style

Here is number 1, here is number 2, and here is number 3. All are in .pes v.6

This design has been hanging around my files for a long time now and I thought it was probably about time for me to post it. I did it some months ago, probably as something to cheer myself up during this long depressing year. It's maybe a bit silly and cartoony but all the same I like the bright colours. The five birds were designed to fit together into a panel, but of course they could be stitched separately. But I'm not sure how I could use them. On a bag, perhaps? They're not really suitable for soft furnishings or napkins or garments. Oh well, they were done for fun, and there's nothing wrong with that. As it's currently snowing here in the Cairngorms we could use some cheer at the moment!

 

A flock of cheerful birds

Long-time blog readers may remember that a few years ago I exhibited some biological designs at a scientific conference. These works included an image of some zebrafish, which are small, delicate fish that are widely used in studies of genetics and development. The zebrafish design sold at the exhibition, and it was the prelude to several commissions for zebrafish designs, which were intended as gifts for zebrafish scientists. Indeed, since then a lot of these designs seem to figure prominently on Pinterest pages of zebrafish material.

Well, a while back I was asked to do yet another commission of zebrafish, which resulted in these two designs. The first one is a fairly conventional image. showing a school of little glittery fish. They were done with an applique of Mylar, which was then overstitched with a thin embroidery layer. Unfortunately, the scan just doesn't show up the shininess of the Mylar, so you'll just have to take my word for the glitter

Honestly, they really are very glittery…

 

The second image was taken directly from a scientific paper describing some aspects of the molecular genetics of the zebrafish, so this isn't really a portrait of the animal, but rather an expression of some of the science which the zoologist is using to describe the genetics of the fish

 

The Genetic Zebrafish

Both images were fun to do, and I hope will interest their recipients. But it does seem likely that I will now forever be known as a Zebrafish Artist